Hysterical

This story requires a little background. Bob and I are not young anymore, much as we wish we were, but we have always been willing to learn new things for the most part. A number of years ago we got our first computer and have since upgraded 3 times. When we got the first one Bob dutyfully went to some computer classes and promptly never touched the computer again for several years. By the time he got back to the computer he had forgotten everything they taught him in the class so it was back to square one.

Now fast forward a few years; I have tried to teach him a bit of navigation several times over the years and he would take copious notes, practice the routine, then promptly put the notes up so good, they were never to be found again. This process has been repeated several times over. However in the past 6 to 8 months he has determined to learn the process again. He can now type in "Google" and then type in the key word and then generally find what he wants. He has gotten especially good on looking up the weather in Manuel Benavides, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.

What makes this story a scream follows. This evening we went to the Drug Emporium. Bob was looking at a natural sweetner and wanted to know the glycemic index of it, since we were unfamiliar with that product. He asked the young man to look it up on the computer and the kid said I don't know if I know how. Anyway Bob said just go the the address line and type in www.google.com and then when on google, type in the word of the product which he did. Then the kid said, I don't know how to find out the glycemic number on this. Bob said just type in the product name and then type glycemic index number after it, which the kid did. It immediately pulled up the information.

What is so funny is that as Bob was leaving, the kid said "You Sure Do Know Your Computers". I laughed until I nearly cried as Bob has been so frustrated over trying to learn this. We have not even tried to learn email yet.

Now I want you to know Bob is really smart and can learn anything, he just has trouble with his wife teaching him and he has trouble sitting still long enough to learn the process. Anyway laughter is said to be good for the soul and so we had a good soul day.

Missing Mother

As February winds down and we only have another week left in the month I think back to what we were all doing this time last year. Starting in January mother started her final journey which ended in Heaven. Her health had gotten so bad that Linda Mae and I summoned Patti, Neale, Greg, Joy, and Linda Lou and all came to see her in the following weeks. Patti, Neale, Greg and Lita all were so alarmed with her condition that they all decided to stay which finally culminated in mother's passing on March 5, 2008.



I find myself crying often as I think of all the firsts of this past year starting with Easter, Mother's day, 4th of July, mother's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and now the anniversary of her final journey. I still find myself wanting to pick up the phone and discuss something going on in our lives. She was always such a willing ear and always looked for the best in each situation no matter what.

I posted a photo of her on facebook and many of the family have all been thinking of her just like I have. A good friend of mine sent me a message and said that it had been 6 years since his mother's passing and not a day goes by that he does not miss her.

I ask myself what is the good in thinking about her like this and I guess I hope that I can have somewhat of the same impact on my children and grandchildren as she did and live a life worthy of her memory.

My niece, Lori lives in Germany and she made a chocolate pie today and was reminded of mother. Mother made the most devine chocolate pies and as far as I can tell no one can equal her. Some of us try but never quite achieve the perfection she did. Another niece Kristen who lives in the state of Washington expressed a similar experience around Christmas or Thanksgiving.

We are all missing you mother and although we would not want you to be sad or to back here, we do hope you know how much we all love you and miss you.

Survival

I can't believe it is only two weeks until Christmas 2008. It is always a glorious time of year as we contemplate all God has done for each us of us. The thing that resonates the most for me, is I cannot comprehend God loving us so much that He sent His only Son to die for our sins, but I am so grateful He did. I have not been able to comprehend why I was blest to have the mother I did but I am so very grateful for her. I don't know why I was blest to be born in the United States, but I am so grateful I was. I am so grateful for the blessing of living in Lubbock, Texas, the blessing of my church Calvary Baptist in Lubbock, Tx, the blessing of being able to worship the God I choose in freedom, the blessing of our new pastor Dr. Richard rush, the blessing of hearing God's word proclaimed each week and finally the blessing of my beautiful family.

Last year we made a special effort to be together at mother's house for Thanksgiving for which I am so grateful. Carleen and Neale were here and bless Carleen's heart the day after saw to it that all the decorations were up so mother could enjoy them. Linda Mae and Carleen spent the whole day putting them up.

I always have my growing family over on December 23rd to celebrate Jesus's birthday and we wanted her to be there last year, but she did not feel like it. She did come over for lunch on Christmas day. I thorougly enjoy the music, the decorations, the food, the family, the togetherness. This time is so sweet and such a priceless reminder of God's love but it is sad because it is the first season without mother. She loved all this so much and always wanted her house decorated early so she could look and savor the reminders of Christmas. She always started planning early on what gifts to give everyone and what food we would have. We are grateful that she was always able to do this with help from her children until the end.

Finally God bless all who might happen to read this post and may the gift of God's son be real to you and hopefully occupy a place in your heart.

Fall Reflections

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year and in Lubbock, TX, the weather is gorgeous. The days are warm, not hot and the nights are cool, a grim reminder that cold weather is just around the corner.

In my last blog entry I talked about the cute little spooks that visited our house on Holloween and our church's fall festival. We had a great time with the family but it was a sad time too. I think of last year before mother went to be with Jesus. She absolutely loved Holloween and made sure she had a lot of the best candy to give out. No cheap candy for her, she wanted all the real good chocolate candy and she wanted everyone to have plenty.....not just one piece from her. She wanted everyone to come in so she could see their costumes and we are grateful we have some cute photos of her last year. Who would have thought that last year would be her last year to enjoy this time of year.

This is part of the series of firsts I have had to experience since mother left this hard old world. Even though mother was 89 years of age, she would have been extremely involved in the sad election results of last night. I remember her saying over and over again that she didn't leave the Democratic party, it left her. She was not overly fond of John McCain, he has been too bi-partisan for her, but she would have absolutely loved Sarah Palin. (I just hope we have not seen the last of her. She makes me so proud of what it means to be a lady and she brought such class to the Republican ticket).

As I think over these last months, we have had to celebrate Easter, Mother's day, July 4th , her birthday, now Holloween with Thanksgiving and Christmas to follow all without her. It brings back a flood of memories because she was big on any excuse to get together with the family. Days in advance she would call and ask what the plans were. She was big into planning the food so we would do that and she was always involved until the last couple of years.

When our kids were growing up, we lived South of town in the country and we always had a cookout on the 4th. The whole family would come and bring their fireworks and we would gather in the front yard for our family fireworks display. Then, when it got good and dark, we moved to the back yard where we could watch a nearby race track do their spectacular fireworks show. I guess that is one of the few things I missed when we moved to town....no longer a place to have the family over for fireworks on the 4th. We do have a swimming pool now so for awhile, we had a cook out and swimming on the 4th, but the pool is in need of repair so we have not done that for the last several years.

I am grateful we had a good celebration for her last several birthdays and that we made Easter and Mother's day special for her last year. It certainly taught us that we are to live in the moment and to make each day special as we never know what is ahead for us. I miss you mother and I hope you know how much I loved you.

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.