Gentle Years

Sorry, no photos; while downloading a Microsoft upgrade our computer crashed and the hard drive is being reformatted, so we can't upload any photos right now.  Here is the scoop on  our three days of Christmas, anyway:

Day 1-December 24-Christmas candlelight service at our church followed by dinner and a tree at home with the big kids and their sons.

Day 2-December 25-Stockings and a tree at home followed by a tree at my mother's house with the 40+/- people in attendance (just family, though, and with my two oldest siblings not there, my third sibling in Heaven, and some nieces and nephews not there-still a crazy population of people)

Day 3-December 26-Stockings a tree at G's mother's house with his sister and her family, our kids and grandsons.

Aidan loved Christmas this year!  He understood enough to feel the anticipation, to be upset that making a list doesn't mean you get everything on the list, and to already be asking why Santa isn't coming again soon even though it is currently snowing outside.

The best gifts are those from God, of course, and they include G's sister being just home from open heart surgery and recovering well, and all of the loved ones that we shared our holiday season with.

Aidan loves to cook and Little  Baby loves to play house, so you put the two of them together and you have a mess, not to mention a good time.  First they colored Christmas pictures, then they decorated the tree and the living area, and then they made gingerbread men and a gingerbread tree.  After that they walked to my mother's house to deliver some of their cookies, came home and had hot tea together (it was about 0º outside with the wind chill factor).

I'm not a knicknack person, except for papers and books-I have reams and stacks of those.  Although I do have some knicknacks and figurines, if there is no nostalgic or personal value to them, I toss them.  Christmas is my one exception, but even then I find that almost everything has some memory attached to it.

One of several Christmas decorations made by my second sister, Kate (1948-2004)

G loves Christmas, knicknacks, decorations, Christmas (did I already mention that?), and dogs.  So when I was at a fair a couple of years ago, I couldn't resist getting this little thing for him.

My niece and her mother (1951-2005) made this for me several years ago.  It was accompanied by a beautiful wreath made of straw that was stuffed with little squares of this plaid fabric, all cut with pinking shears, and accented with gold.  My niece was probably about 10 years old at the time.  The wreath has long since gone, but not the ornament.

Pretty Baby had a collection of fat-bottomed soft snowmen, and she loves the Misfit Toys so much that we bought her a collection when she first moved out, then bought some for ourselves.  So everything in this row reminds me of her.

I have a very early memory of being at my grandmother's house on Thanksgiving Day.  We were leaving to go home for Thanksgiving, so I don't know if that means that when I was small we would have two meals, or if we were just there getting or having pie.  My grandmother made both chocolate cream pie and mincemeat pie, so we might have been there to get a pie for my father-I'll have to ask older members of the family if we ever ate there. 

My grandparents were born in 1883, 1891, 1894 and 1897, so this grandmother was the only grandparent alive when I was born and she was 70 then.  She lived next door to us-I grew up in my great grandparents' farmhouse, called The Old Plantation-we could literally walk through the pasture to my grandmother's house.  Any time that I smell fresh baked bread, homemade soap, peonies, lilacs, or apple blossoms, I think of her.  Any time that I hear a rousing gospel song, I think of her.  When winter nights are filled with the smell of wood smoke, I think of her. 

She was a very tall woman, almost six feet tall, and at night when she got ready for bed she would take down her coronet of white hair and kneel beside her bed to say her prayers.  Her hair touched the floor.  She wore a flowered wrap-around apron, the kind that covered your top and bottom, and I loved her hugs.  She played the piano but could only remember a couple of hymns by heart.  Her television was only plugged in two or three times a year, when she knew that Billy Graham was going to be on. 

Her "settin" room was unused, and all socializing was done at the dining room table.  She kept aluminum cans, washed out, in a storage area beside her kitchen window seat, a window that was framed with the longest English ivy I ever saw.  We would take the cans out and stack them like bowling pins, then play bowling on the kitchen floor, which was a trick because there was a hump in the middle of the floor so you had to really get your roll down to hit the cans. 

She and I would spend hours together making scrapbooks and ornaments for missionaries and the children they cared for, and we made patchwork quilts and rag rugs.  Grammie had playing cards in the drawer-Crazy Eights and Go Fish, stuff like that-and coloring books and crayons with them.  Every week or so she made homemade doughnuts and we got to help.  Every week she made homemade bread and sent a pan of rolls over to my father.

I am so thankful for having had this woman in my life.  Her name was Ruth.  My little sister is named for her.

Now I hope to be as good a grandmother as my own grandmother was.

Aidan's Thanksgiving Day decoration

We all ate at separate houses, and then Pretty Baby brought over the pie.  She made blueberry for G and apple for the rest of us.  Her favorite is pumpkin.  My favorite is custard.  Pie is one of those things, isn't it, where everyone has a different favorite?  Pretty Baby is great at making pies! 

Our daughter in-law and first daughter, above, with MB; our son in-law and first son, below with Aidan and RB

The little cousins playing together.  MB is two months younger than BB, so he will end up a year behind him in school due to birthday cut-offs, and three years behind his brother even though they are just over two years apart.  It is such an arbitrary thing-when we were young they would have been in the same grade together.

Today I got MB to myself for a while.  He is such a sweet baby, easy to love and easy to watch.  He smiles just like his mother when she was little, has a thick head of hair like her, but his eyes remind me of his aunt every time I see him.  Overall, he bears a strong resemblance to my three biological children. 

I am sure that when Aidan has children, I will be looking for features and expressions that remind me of him as well.

Aidan came home on Halloween night, 2008.

He had no idea what he was in for.  We could not have asked for anything more.

Here are the boys and Little Baby-dinosaurs, Avatar, Mickey Mouse, and goth.

The boys catching rain with their shovels.  What else was there to do this week?

Aidan, enjoying some of G's onion rings, just before the parade got started, and wearing the Sponge Bob hat that G bought him at the vendor tables.

Here is the original monument and people waiting for the ceremony to get started.

Aidan, amusing himself during the wait.

My great nephew getting in on the action.

PB has a beautiful voice so my cousin (our cemetery sextant and organizer of these new monuments) asked her to sing the National Anthem for the event and then to lead the crowd in singing America, The Beautiful afterwards.  We both lament over the fact that the anthem we have was chosen instead of Columbia when Congress made their decision between the two, since Columbia is so much prettier and easier to sing.  But here she is, anyway, with motorcycles and passing cars for background noise.

(Sound to be inserted if YouTube ever finishes uploading the file)

And then here is my little flag bearer.  He really is quite fascinated with flags-he points out every one he sees on the ride home in the afternoons-so he was excited to get one of his own.

Last, here is a story that just has to be shared.  G was mowing the lawn this week and Aidan plopped himself down on the picnic table to watch.  When I asked what was up, he said, "This is for baseball".  Since he goes to daycare at a high school, I figured he was referring to the mowing that they do on the athletic fields. 

A few minutes passed and he came into the house to get his ball and bat, returning to sit with them on the picnic table and continuing to watch G mow the lawn.  Apparently G had told him that they could practice after the grass was cut.

A few minutes passed and he again came into the house, this time telling me that he wanted to wear his baseball shirt.  I didn't know which one he meant-he has lots of shirts with balls-so I went and grabbed one that I know is a favorite and brought it out.  He gave me that big boy disdainful look and said, "Not that one.  I want to wear my  Bib Papi shirt!"  So he is, without a doubt, pretty well Americanized now.