October musings

I have not updated my blog since I spoke of Jaykin and Tiffany's wedding which was the end of June 2008. A lot has been going on and for some reason I stay busy but don't seem to acomplish near as much as I used to. Mother's house is finally on the market and looks really good. There has been a lot on internet activity and several people have looked at the house several times. I wish we could have had it ready to sell a couple of months ago but I just could not get everything done.

Brianna was on a soccer team for the first time this year. She did very well and had a good time. I wish she had been able to play before as she seems to have a nack for it and it is so good for her. They had the last game last Saturday and it was kind of sad. The whole family has gone and it has been a fun hour each week. The weather has been incredible all except one day when they nearly had to play in the rain.

Brad's whole family and I attended Brianna's first choir concert October 16th . She is in the advanced choir even tho she is just in the sixth grade. She looked so grown up and she sings so well. I am thrilled since singing has always been a huge part of my life. She is learning lifelong skills. I hope she will stick with it.

Last Saturday our church had it's annual fall festival. It is a huge party for the kids of the church and the neighborhood. The children dress up in their Holloween costumes and we have dozens of game booths where they can earn candy and outside we have lots of big jumpers and a small train they can all ride. This is all for the very small cost of $1.00.

The kids were all so precious: Brad's group starting with the youngest going forward was Silas as a mandrake plant, Memphis as Spiderman, Carson as Snow White, Cody as Hermione from Harry Potter, Brianna as Sarah Palin and Megan as Hillary Clinton. They were all so cute.

Then the great grandchildren came. Ryan, was a turtle, Jayden was a butterfly, Kadence was spiderman, and Kaya was a pea. I am really not a fan of Holloween as a holiday but I love seeing the kids all dressed up. I am not a fan of candy either but I hope the parents can dispose of most of it so the kids won't be on a perpetual high.

By the way our church runs between 400 and 500 each Sunday in attendance and we probably had 1200 plus at our festival. It was a huge success and the weather cooperated.

My precious daughter-in-law Megan writes a very clever blog so I am putting a link here so you can read hers. It is much better than mine and very enjoyable. Be sure to check it out, in fact I would check it out regularly because it is so much fun. Here is the link: Be sure and scroll down and check out her previous blog from baby Silas's point of view. It is priceless. Of course you have to remember that this is from a proud grandmother's point of view.

http://meganblythe.blogspot.com/ .

Beautiful Wedding

This post is a couple of months late and I am sorry for that. The last Saturday in June on the 28th, Jaykin Ribordy and Tiffany Kamp got married. Jaykin is the youngest son of my daughter Brenda. They got married at the Garden and Arts Center here in Lubbock and it was lovely. Jimmy Williams, my oldest son performed the ceremony and I thought he did an outstanding job. The wedding was small by today's standards but had a lot of family on both sides and was a lot of fun.

Jaykin is a special young man in many ways. His mother had had her tubes tied to prevent any more children in their family when she got pregnant with him so we have always felt he was special. God must have had a special plan for him to overcome those obstacles to get here.

Jaykin just recently graduated from college in the spring. This was such an achievement because he delayed even starting college in the first place a couple of years because his dad had a couple of strokes that turned their family upside down. He helped his mom out a lot since Rick will never be able to work again. He still works two jobs just to get ahead.

Fabric Fiasco

You might be wondering what in the world would be interesting about fabric on a blog. Bear with me. A number of years ago I operated a small clothing business from my home. I sold things in craft shows and a local craft mall. It was definitely small stuff but I did make $33,000 from things I made myself my last year in business. I made beautiful skirts, matching vests, decorated T-shirts, appliqued vests, appliqued blouses, beautiful glitzy jackets, a cute Santa sitter couple and so on. After reflecting on the hours I was working each day (7:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight), I decided to get a job. For awhile, I did not only the job but continued to maintain the booth at the craft mall and did both.

Those hours got to be too much after awhile so I decided to close the business. I always meant to do something with all that fabric but had never gotten around to it. The reason I had so much fabric is that to get the best price, you need to buy the whole bolt. Well anyway, I had the fabric stored in a spare bedroom. It was stacked according to colors, types and so on. One weekend a few years back while I was out of town visiting my oldest son Jimmy, my husband decided he wanted to pack away the fabric. He did so without my knowledge and when I came home there were 17 large boxes in the garage with my fabric.

Now the problem with all this is that I would have liked to do this myself. I would have put the stuff I wanted to keep and use somewhere different than the other stuff. Although I want to rid our lives of most of it, there are some fabric that I absolutely will not part with. I had much of it sorted out and in shelves with all the reds together, the blues together, the blacks together and so on. The purpose of this was so that if I wanted to applique something, or if I ever got around to learning to quilt, it would be easy to see what I had and get with the task. This was all mixed in with the other stuff.

I have to tell you that my husband Bob is the greatest. He is a good husband in most important ways but with regard to this one endeavour, his virtues were lost to me as he had no idea of the problems he created for me. To get back to the story, in getting my mother's house ready to sell, we have had one garage sale and now plan for at least one more if not two. The reason was to sell mother's stuff nobody wanted but I needed to sell some of my stuff to make room for the things I am moving to my house. So we have been selling not only her stuff but some of ours. I decided to tackle the fabric issue for our upcoming sale and started going through the 17 large boxes in the garage.

As I started this huge task, Sunday night I became angry all over again because I was reminded of the huge amount of extra work this had created for me. I was not a good role model of what to do when irritated with the spouse for some reason. Bob disappeared for awhile and I don't blame him. I finally got down to the last box last night and I have sorted, measured, and priced the fabric for the garage sale. It is all dirt cheap and I hope there a few people who will appreciate the beautiful assortment I have. One of the things that made my things different and pretty was the combination of patterns and fabric in my original way on the garments I created. I do owe Bob an apology although he has been sweet ever since regardless because I think he realizes he should have asked me before he packed it all up and I would have begged him to wait til I got home and we could do it together as it would be better for me that way.

To be fair, when these 17 boxes are gone and the stuff my packrat husband has saved for years is gone our garage might again resemble a garage. It has not been that I want to hold on to stuff, I just hate cleaning closets, sorting drawers, organizing cabinets, and all that builds up. I have noticed that I have over used the word "stuff" in this piece but really can't think of another word that would do the job.

Mother would be so proud of our garage as it will be in a few days, as she always hated it when I could not park in the garage. Bob is really trying to let go of some of the things and that is definately real good.

Getting Mom's House Ready to Sell

I have been meaning to update my blog but I have been busy trying to get the stuff out of my mother’s house so we can get her house on the market. It was really hard in the beginning but it no longer feels like her house so now it is just hard work. We are going to have a garage sale on Friday and Saturday and then everything that does not sell is going to be boxed up and donated to some place that can use the things. We have been working non stop for several weeks and I am beyond tired. I don’t have the energy or strength like I did when I was younger to work on something day and night and not feel the sting of it.

When my brother and sisters were here the last of June and the first of July we started the process. We pulled everything out of the attic, the closets and the high cupboards and divided those things of value at that time. However after everyone went home there is still tons of stuff to deal with.

Growing up, our mom taught us a deep love and appreciation for reading. Long before we had television, we would go to the public library and the whole family would check out books to read. Many times I would read all of mine and then in addition read my older sister’s before we had to return them. Mother read aloud to us when we were small and then we all read as a family later on. She had quite a collection of books herself. I am going to try and sell the paperback novels, but I can’t bring myself to do that with some of her finer books. Some of them I will keep and others will be donated to Exodus Prison Ministry or somewhere else that would appreciate them.

Mother loved the Lord and one of the ways she worshiped Him was through sacred music. She had many records by different Christian artists and later on she had all the videos by Bill Gaither and the homecoming friends. I am sure she has everyone they ever made and even some duplicates. She would forget she had ordered them and order again.

One of the nice things about keeping so much stuff is that everyone has been able to have something that will remind them of her. Each of the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren here have been able to choose something meaningful from her house. I thought it precious to see my oldest grandson have on display on a shelf an old beat up hand egg beater of mom's. Long before electric mixers came into being she could beat those eggs up a storm on her hand mixer. I remember her making her famous cream pies with that rusty old beater.

Rose

I have highlighted two of our 18 special grandchildren on my blog. I will get around to all of them even if it takes me all year because they are all special in their own unique way. Today I want to talk about Rose. She is the youngest child of my oldest son Jimmy and his wife Misty. I introduced you to her oldest brother Drew in my last post. As I thought of some of the thoughts I wanted to capture about Rose, I tried to think of the things that make her special. She is a adorable 9 year who is real comfortable in her skin. She is self-confident, happy, funny, smart, graceful, fun, and of course we think beautiful. She looks just like her mother did at that age and her grandmother, Shirley before her.

We had the privilege of attending Rose's ballet recital on May 17 this year. She has been studying ballet in a classical ballet studio for about 5 1/2 years and that is why she has so much poise and is graceful. Ballet does that for the dancers. They may never go on to become a professional dancer but the dicipline of the training molds the muscles in the body in a unique way to produce the gracefullness ballet requires. It has been so much fun to watch her progress from the tiny little child to the young lady she is now.

Rose seems to be real happy being herself. I think her parents are showing her they value her and know she is special. Life seems to go smoother for those of us who are confortable with who we are and I am praying that will be the case with sweet Rose. I pray she will always feel loved and cherished by all of us and that strong love will keep her safe and pure as she grows up. I love you Miss Rose.

What Make a 15 year old young man special?

What makes a 15 year old young man special?

Our 15 year old grandson Drew Williams received his Eagle Scouting award on May 19th. Drew is a part of a group of 8 young men who started their scouting journey in third grade. One of the young men moved away but the remaining 7 young men agreed to stay together as a group and to pursue the goal of Eagle Scout. All of the seven were awarded this coveted achievement on that night. To achieve this goal is extremely hard but for all seven to complete the task is remarkable.




Drew is a handsome 15 year old who plays tennis on the school tennis team, is active in his youth group at church and in his scout group and is on the honor roll. He is an artist and very mature for his age. Robert and I were fortunate to be at the banquet before the awards ceremony and at the ceremony where Drew received this remarkable award.





Of course a young man who achieves all this has to have a great set of parents and Drew has a great dad (our son Jimmy Williams) and wonderful mother, Misty. Misty and Jimmy are involved in all of their three children’s lives. Jimmy is an assistant scoutmaster and has been a big influence on Drew being where he is. Drew has established some valued life skills that will help him in all his future endeavors along with a strong spiritual foundation which will guide him in the days to come.

Requirement 6 of the Eagle Scout Rank Application was to write his Life Purpose and Ambitions. The rest of this paragraph is a quote from his paper. " My career and financial successes are not at all what my top priorities are for my future though. I aspire to be someone to be remembered, not just someone who did well and made some money. As a Christian raised in a God-loving home and an active member of a church youth group at First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls, Texas, my number one life goal is to be a living witness for Christ in all areas. I want to live as an example to follow. In my eyes, my life is worth nothing if I never use it to make a change in someone else's. As a Christian I strive to be somebody's door to Christ, and help lead them toward a new life."

This is a tribute to the achievement of Drew to reach this point in his life. It is also a grateful acknowledgement to his fine parents who chose long ago to demand the best of their children and to demonstrate these same elements in their own lifestyle. We are extremely proud of Drew but equally proud of Jimmy and Misty for the way they are raising their children.

Milestones in Grief

I now have survived not having mother at my house on Easter and Mother's day. For a long long time now, I have fixed lunch for my mother and Bob's mother on both days. It was sad to realize things would never be the same again. Tuesday May 13th was our church's annual Daughter's banquet for which I am in charge and have been for 12 years. I can't seem to get out of being in charge. We had about 175 in attendance and the program was good, the food great and the program wonderful. This is the first year since I have been in charge that mother has not been my special guest so that was sad of course. Her strength was beginning to fail last year. She called and told me she didn't feel up to coming but at the last minute changed her mind and wanted to come. I was so glad she came.

The family that did our program was a couple who met while at Texas Tech and were members of Calvary at that time. They married 27 years ago and have 11 children and they all play stringed instruments. 8 of the children and the parents put on a musical program for us. Anyway when they were in college they often ate Sunday lunch with mother and remember her well. They remember her graciousness to them while students away from home. We had an adopt college students program for awhile and the church members would adopt a student for a school year and help them feel welcome at Calvary and provide a home away from home.

I take comfort in knowing mother was proud of my involvement in things at church following in her footsteps. She was involved in teaching a ladies Sunday School class for many years and in a Bible study group that met on Tuesday's for years at her home. This was an outgrowth of ladies at our church who wanted to study the Bible in more depth each week. Out of that Bible study came the establishment of a Bible correspondance prison ministry called Exodus that ministers to men and women in prisons all over the United States.

Our church has been without a Senior pastor for 18 months. Everytime I talked to her on the phone or had lunch with her on Thursdays she asked how the search was going. I happened to be on the pastor search team this time so we talked about what we were doing often. Last Sunday, our church extended a call to Dr. Richard Rush from El Paso to be our next senior pastor and he graciously accepted. Mother would be so proud. I think she would have loved knowing him. She was our church staff's biggest supporter.