Weekend at G-ma's part 4

My grandma has always liked to knit. When we were little, there were always baskets of yarn and she always had a knitting bag where ever she went. She would knit all of the cousins matching or coordinating sweaters. Sometimes they even had themes like Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz. Sometimes they were the same style and different colors. She is amazing! I know I did not appreciate her sweaters back then like I do now.
Lucky for us, G-ma has continued the tradition and still likes to knit the youngest generation of cousins sweaters! We love love love her sweaters! About 25 years ago she made everyone Christmas sweaters that had music notes on them and if you stood in age order (I think it was age order) it played The First Noel. Last year, g-ma did those same sweaters for the youngest cousin generation. Needless to say we were thrilled! G-ma gave us the sweaters while we were there and they did not disappoint us! They are beautiful and she did a perfect job of picking out the perfect color for each child. They are priceless!!!

Weekend at G-ma's part 3

One of the things that I love about going to my grandma's house is that things just don't change too much there. I love that! I love it that the house looks pretty much the same. It makes me feel good to go there and things be just like they were when I was a kid. That brings me to one of the most fun things we did when we were at Grandma's.......SCOOTER SCHOOL!!! One summer our grandpa, Papa, bought 5 scooters, 3 roller racers, and 2 taxi scooters. I cannot even tell you how many hours we spent on those scooters. We would have routines with the scooters...I mean really, we almost made scooters a new sport for the Olympics cause we were so good! We played and played and played on those. And THEN we had scooter school. We had some old checks and old tablets they use at restaurants to take orders and we were off! Because the oldest cousin Sarah is a major type A personality, we had the most organized scooter school around! We would enroll our students, put them into a group for lessons.....I mean it was a great school! If only we could have really made some money with it! We were kind of like those books the Baby Sitter's Club! Anyway, those scooters sat with flat tires for years and years after we finally stopped scooter school until a couple of years back when Grandma got them all fixed up. Well, needless to say, the scooters are a huge hit. I don't think scooter school has come up yet, but watch out world because this new generation really might make it to the Olympics with their brave scooter tricks and synchronized scootering!

Here they are...pausing just a moment for a picture, but then back to scooters!
Yes...the gold-medal worthy performance of synchronized scootering from A and H.

This is a very brave trick ladies and gentlemen.....it is the triple twist jump, which actually just means jumping on the scooter. Oh, and I made up the name, not A...I guess I still really really like the scooters!

For some reason M just looks really old in this picture. she has really gotten taller.

Tricky tricky! Perfect routine girls!

You can see the concentration in her face!

Love this! cousin H getting a little help from his Issy (grandma)

Can't wait to go back!!

Weekend at G-ma's part 2

I love my cousins. On my dad's side, I have 3 girl cousins and a boy cousins, and on my mom's side it's the same. I am very close to them. When some people talk about their cousins, it sounds as if they don't even know them and I get very sad for them. It makes me really really happy that I have so many great cousins. And they are all great. Each cousin is doing awesome things with their lives. The girls also love having cousins. They love having that family connection with people, so pretty much anyone that we love a whole lot...the girls will call them their cousin. You know, those people that you just have a special-heart connection with? As Anne from Anne of Green Gables would say....kindred spirits. Anyway, those people are our cousins in the girls' eyes. The girls love playing with their real cousins too. We get to see Bethany's son quite a bit, but we don't get to Amarillo real often to see the other cousins. We do, however, get to see some of my cousins' children quite a bit. My cousin Sarah lives in Colorado, so we don't get to see her and her kiddos very often, and we miss them every time we get together. Anyway....enough of my family history! On to the pictures and the fun weekend!

I have tons of pictures and I have other pictures that show the closeness of the girls to their cousins, but I love these.
T and S are only a few weeks apart in age, and they LOVE to play together. The thing is, they are so much alike it is pretty funny. They play so well together....and they then they like their own space too! Their friendship reminds me so much of me and Macy, T's mom.

Macy and I have SO many hugging pictures like this. We were just two peas in a pod! I LOVE it that tradition carries on! When Macy and her crew were leaving, S climbed into their vehicle and hid so she could go with them....JUST like we used to do when we were little!

Even though the rest of the girls and the rest of the cousins aren't in these pictures, I think they tell the story of the love of cousins, and you KNOW that I LOVE that!!!!!

More weekend at G-ma pictures to come!

Weekend at G-ma's part 1

We went to my grandma's house this weekend for the annual chili cookoff. This has become quite the tradition for our family. We have gone for several years now, and each year more and more of the family gets to come. Autumn and I took a class a couple of years ago to learn to make tamales, so last year at the chili cookoff weekend, we all made tamales. It was so much fun that we officially added tamale making to our annual weekend. We had so much fun and made so many memories and took so many pictures, that I could not begin to put everything in one post, so I will do this post in parts--how ever many parts it takes. I will say that the worst part of the weekend was that not everyone was able to be there. We missed several of the husbands, but most of all we missed Connie, Sarah, and cousins N and A. It was so much fun but would have been so much more fun with them there. Keep watching the blog...pictures and stories to come!!!

ribbit

I know I talk a lot about A and frogs, but if you knew how much she talks about them that I don't tell you about, you would be proud of how LITTLE I talk about A and frogs! Really, she loves them. I even get a little jealous of frogs sometimes because they light up her face so much and not me. Now how ridiculous does that sound? Really silly I must say, but oh so true. Seriously, her eyes light up and she giggles the most joyous giggle when she holds a frog, then even before she puts it down, she is pouting that she misses her frog.
So, with A's birthday coming up, Autumn asked her what she wanted for her birthday. A's answer: a globe with a bunch of frogs in it, a wig with long hair, and a thousand frogs, I mean toads.
Okay, really? Please, my dear child, let's think of something a little easier than a globe with frogs in it. She said the wig isn't for every day, it is just for costumes and stuff. Why can't she just want a doll or a book or a stuffed animal. So, what does Autumn do? She looks online for a frog, and she found one that you can buy as a tadpole and keep it and watch it grow. But from the reviews, these frogs last years and years, and we really don't want a frog for a million years, so we decided to not get one of those. As we speak, Autumn is looking online for frog things. Let me tell you, there are lots of "fun" frog things!
And speaking of frogs........this afternoon, as A was helping me cook dinner, she talked non-stop. And I mean NON-STOP!!! She just talks and asks questions and answers her own questions and talks some more. So as she was talking, her dreams of the future came spilling out. She stated to me that she is going to be a poor old woman in a big house. She would not have children, but she would have frogs all over the house, and I mean ALL over the house. She said she would just have them in jars on the tables, floors, and everywhere! It's kind of funny that her dream home of a frog-filled palace sounds rather creepy to me!
So there you have it, a BRIEF clip of an afternoon with a frog-lover.

Plans for the future

The girls are constantly talking about what they want to do when they grow up. Many dinner conversations turn to what they want to do when they grow up. They like to plan and dream. Sometimes they dream of what jobs they want and sometimes they dream of which sister they want to live with, how many kids they want to adopt and so on! And, by the way, we are perfectly fine with them getting married...don't think that we tell them they have to live with a sister, that is just what they want to do sometimes...depending on the day.
So yesterday, we were getting ready for dinner and A was throwing a really really big fit about nothing really. She has a gift to do that. This fit lasted a while. We just don't allow tears at our dinner table, so she could cry all she wanted in her room and come to the table when she was ready while we proceeded with dinner. She FINALLY came to the table and made her apologies through gritted teeth (so much for a sincere apology) and threw her head in her hands and pouted.
Me: What are you pouting about?
As she is whining and almost crying she says, Cause I might have problems with my kids!!!
Of course I start cracking up. Usually, A doesn't even want to have kids because she is afraid she won't remember their name or she is afraid she won't know what they are allergic to. Yes, she thinks about those things and she is only 6! I guess thinking about the problems she was giving us made her think about the problems they would give her and that just made her not want to have kids at all. Then she was pouting because she would be lonely!!!! Oh dear Lord PLEASE give this child a peace so she doesn't worry!!!
Then she got a bright idea (and her whole demeanor switches in an instant from pouty to cheerful and back again all in less than a whole second). She decided she could live with M, to which M quickly replied, Nope, sorry A I already have my life plan in place, can't live with me.

Well of course that brought the cheerful face to a pout again. So then she decided she would live with S, but that got shot down quickly by S because she decided she is getting married. So she was back to square one....either have problems with kids or be lonely. We told them that while dreaming of the future is really fun, they really did not have to know their whole plan, and frankly they COULD not know their whole plan! I pray they will continue to follow the Lord in everything they do.

4 years

We celebrated H's 4 year anniversary this weekend! Our sweet H has lived with us for 4 years now....wow! Why don't you just take a stroll down memory lane with me.

Four years ago we had M and another girl (not related to our girls) living in our home. M was just settling down some, but still took a lot of energy from us, and the other girl was in junior high, which creates drama and lots of adventures in our home. Since we originally said we would take one MAYBE two kids in our home at a time....no kids older than elementary and no kids not in school yet....we had our hands full with TWO kids, one in junior high.

It was a Friday in September....we had great plans of going to the homecoming football game that evening. M went with Autumn to work, a dhs worker came and picked her up and took her to a family visit. She was supposed to be brought back to Autumn's work in the early afternoon at the latest with plenty of time for Autumn and M to ride with the carpool Autumn always rode with. Great plan right? Well, we kept getting calls from dhs that there were some delays and problems and M would not be back in time to catch the carpool, so the worker would have to bring her all the way home. What was the delay you ask? Well, things happened and they needed a home for H and A, who were ages 2 and 4 at the time. After many phone calls, Autumn and I just decided that we would take the girls for the weekend and WEEKEND ONLY!!!! We were so overwhelmed just thinking that we would have 4 girls for a whole weekend! So we got the girls that evening, shoved some food down them and headed to the football game! Since they came only with the clothes they wore that day, our sweet friends, the Hydens and Vanzants gave us some clothes and such to get us through the weekend.

Both girls had sad eyes. We noticed that they were slow to trust most people, but they were immediately comfortable with us. They just fit with us. We had a great whirlwind of a weekend, going to the game, the corn maze, and shopping and church. What in the world were we thinking? We took the girls back to dhs on Monday morning. They were SO sad to leave....SOOOOO sad. No matter how many times we told them they would be ok, they were just so sad. When we told them they would be fine, they agreed with us, but their eyes told a different story.

So all of Monday and Monday night, Autumn and I talked with Bethany and my friend Angie who also did foster care. We called on Tuesday to find out where the girls were, and they were in a shelter. We couldn't stand it. So Angie made a deal with us, and we took H in our home and Angie took A. At that time we really couldn't have all 4 and this way the girls could see each other at daycare and church, and it was only going to be a couple of months because they were going home. When Autumn and drove to get H and A from the shelter, we met them in a parking lot....as we drove up, we saw them.....and then their whole demeanor changed. They recognized our vehicle and started jumping up and down (which was huge cause they didn't show emotion in public). That's when we just knew it was going to be okay.

Through these 4 years, the Lord has brought H so far and the way we can tell.....her eyes. H has the prettiest, sparkling eyes. The Lord has made her sad eyes sparkle. That is what is so great about our God....he can bring joy and life to the worst of situations. H has brought so much joy to our lives. She is so thoughtful. We often find sweet notes that H writes us and hides them around the house for us to find. She is the best with littler children....she is so patient with them and listens to them and they just love her. We laugh a lot because H and I often have very a very similar thought process....scary I know. She is creative and loves to express herself creatively. She also loves to take pictures and is very good at it. We love our special girl and thank God for the 4 years we have had with her!!!