Ending the Year on a Happy Note

A note to you of course. I am so excited about going to California that I woke up at 4:30 in the morning. That should say something to you, I am not a morning person. I have no cattle, I milk no cows, and my name is not Pioneer Woman, 4:30am I am usually sawing some zzzzzz's, I snore. That's for all the poor ribbed husbands who get bounced and elbowed, my husband says I can make a racket with the best of them. Oh dear, should I have really told THAT secret?

2008 is over tonight, and it is the custom to reflect on the old year and think on the new one.
It has been a very blessed year for us. Piglet graduated and has finished her first semester of college with 2 A's and 3 B's, not to shabby. Tigger is thriving with her tutor. I am trying to quit job hopping and settle down somewhere to build a new retirement fund, shoot it's all on sale these days.

One of the biggest highlights of the year was going to Colombia for the second time. I am praying already because there are more places to go. I would like to go to Western Asia and India. I cannot think of India, and not think of Amy Carmichael. I would love to go there. Hopefully my new position which starts on the 19th will have 3 weeks a year vacation days. I've never really taken big vacations as a nurse but with God all things are possible!

2008 was the year of the blog, that's when I started this obsession and met a lot of you! People I feel like I am getting to know and like! The kids have me on Facebook. I am trying not to get hooked on another computer gig or my life will turn into a keyboard. There is more to living than writing. Isn't there? Food! Laundry! Cleaning! Taking pictures for the blog!

We had visits with lots of friends, Coffee Bean came. Debbie in CA, came with her two girls, and I'm going there today!!!!! Which is why I am awake at this incredible hour. I think I have packed enough stuff not to need anything. We are going to be making almost daily changes in order to visit everyone we can. I'm flying in tonight to Sacramento to see Debbie. I will be with her until the 2nd, when I will go into San Jose and meet up with my Big Daddy who will get in about 7pm. Then we will pick up a rented car and head over our beloved mountain and into Santa Cruz. We will stay with another Debbie for 2 nights, Sat morning is the memorial for our friend. An old pastor we have loved for many years is doing the service. It will be at the church where we met and we have a lot of old friends there, should be quite a day! The next day we will take Norma home, back up to Paradise. We will get a nice visit in the car it's a 5 hour trip and spend a night with her. The next day we will spend in Elk Grove, with Papa's middle son, his family, and new baby girl that we haven't got to snuggle with yet. This poison oak had better be gone by then!

The day after that we travel out of Sacramento to Livermore and see my lovely Auntie Mum, one day there. From there down to San Jose and spend another night with the #1 firstborn son, his wife and family. It's really hard to visit a place where you lived most of your life, there are probably another 10 to 20 people we could really enjoy getting to see, it's just impossible!

It's not over yet. From San Jose we go back over the mountain and UP the mountain to see the youngest son, wife and the 2 year old baby. Pa has seen her once, it'll be my first time. They are expecting another! Pa has a cousin who lives a couple of doors down so we'll have to stop by and say howdy since we are driving right by their house! They live in a cabin with a million dollar view of the mounatins and ocean, you can see Montery Bay in their front yard, it is spectacular, I am hoping for a clear day and sun that day so we can see it!

After all this whirlwind of family and moving about we will go down into Santa Cruz actually still in the mountains, off Branciforte Rd into a serene little cabin setting. We will spend the last leg of our journey with two couples who are some of our closest friends. A three day weekend. By then we will be ready to consume some California wine and take a load off. There will be laughter lots of it and wonderful food. My friend is a fabulous cook! We love to stay with them. They actually came out to see us once, we'd love to have them back, and repay the hospitality!

Now you can understand why I am awake. That's a lot to pack for. It's going to be cold. We are probably going to be "camping out" at the kids houses, no guest rooms. I packed my pillow, my down jacket, my Ugg boots, sweats, and about 6 pairs of pajamas. Not to mention everything else I might want, including a new book for the plane. I'm considering taking my crocheting so I have something to busy myself with. I'm serious, sitting still isn't easy to do! Even though we will be very busy I won't actually have anything to work on. I guess I'll take it. I'm making a baby blanket for the baby, maybe I'll finish it there.

It's almost 6:30, wonder if I can go back to sleep? I doubt it. I probably won't be able to post until I get home unless we post together at Wisteria and Roses, who knows what great fun we'll have together. I just wish I could peruse the gardens but they will be snow covered. Instead we will have pots of hot tea and talk a million miles per hour. Debbie can talk very fast, she's passionate about life and so interesting to have conversations with. If we're not gabbing theirs something to see or somewhere to go. Too little time, but oh what a way to bring in the New Year! Can we celebrate or what?

lOOK OUT HEIDI pick up your rewards

MAKING LEFSE AND SHOWING US STEP BY STEP THIS PROCESS WE WILL NEVER DO because we aren't as talented.

PICK UP YOUR REWARD
For being so cute and kind and FUNNY, not to mention the adorable boys, and wee bity milk dud,smooch it. pick up another reward, you are my friend. the sun on my rainy day kindof a shoot fire, holy crap, huggin, laughin, great woman!

Packed UP

Look out California I am ready to fly! 12 days what a blessing! I will be with Debbie from Wisteria and Roses tomorrow night! Happy New Year to all of you and much love to you bloggy buddies.

One Daughter

The little brother, little sister, and Tigger several years ago, our last family Christmas together.


Jenn with Auntie Mum THEE English Aunt.







Probably J's last family get together, shortly after this the kids were taken into foster care. Look at her joy, the light in her eyes. Lord save her again.











But to know this, we have to go back and start at the beginning.


Being 16 is not the time to have a baby. I knew that, I wasn't stupid or so I thought; so then why was I pregnant? Because I had gone "all the way." The really strange part of this story is that my mother set this up. My mom was loving, sweet, charismatic, charming, and probably bipolar or manic depressive. She decided it was time for me to have a husband and a family of my own so she brought a guy home and moved him into my room. I ain't lying. I was lonely, and well yeah he was kinda cute in a coarse kind of way. He had a steady check, as far as mom was concerned. We had nothing in common except teenage hormones.

That is how my one child was conceived and brought into this world. One daughter. Jenny.
A lot of the time I was really lousy at the parent thing. I'd just take my daughter up to my mom's house and give her to her, for weeks at a time. My baby and my mother had a very special bond. My mama made magic with babies. She was one of those women who knows what a baby wants, when it wants it, and how it wants it, and they quit crying. Miracle baby worker. I was 17 and my baby skills were on the slim side. So my teen solution was give the baby lady, the baby.
My mom would only go along with that too a point. She had migraines and those would usually get me a call to come pick up your baby.

We had strange lingo, when the baby was mine she said your baby. When it was hers it's Nanna's baby, Nanna love it to death...

The poor kid was pretty mixed up. My mom's ability to not only care for her but also provide for her made me feel very inadequate. She had a great room set up for her I had a crib in the living room with me next to the refrigerator with the TV on top of it.

I can't really remember how old Jenny was when I met the hippies. Now I am thinking do I really want to go here? If you don't want to know, quit reading and come back another day.
That will work. I can't skip this part because it helped and hurt our situation and it may have had a huge part of my daughters struggles.

Hippie women presented options to me in parenting styles. They showed me back packs, and baby slings, simple ways to haul a child around and simple ways to get places. While they showed me how they did their mothering thing all calm, cool and groovin, they also encouraged me to step into the roll of being my child's mother,and included in that, "here have a puff of this."

I took the plunge. I chose the child and the hippies, and began trying to make a life for us. A life that had fringe elements in it. It seemed ok at the time, kind of a everybody is doing it deal. I went with them because they supported me. Instead of taking my problem away they helped me solve my own, that so much of this occurred stoned seemed a minor issue.

Fast forward, I'm having a party. Jenny is in a play pen and a bunch of guys are laughing. The way they are laughing is alarming. They are getting my two year old drunk. I freaked, party over, go home. Poor baby. The mother is looking for a hole deep enough to crawl into.

Fast forward, I get a phone call from my junior higher, she is sick can I come get her? She was spending the night with some friends and got drunk. She had the spins, did I know how to help? I put her foot on the floor. She was funny and pitiful at that moment and I didn't want to come down hard on her then; because she was so awful sick, as in green skin, matching vomit sick.
We discussed it later. She buffaloed me it wasn't the first time.

Fast Forward, at 15 she starts to run away from home frequently. Home is now stable, mom quit with any fringey stuff years before. Mom as in me, has become a new believer during these years and is born again. Before Jenn is 16 she is pregnant. My heart sinks. Different people are telling me she has problems with drugs and alcohol. I don't believe them.

Fast forward, a tiny premature baby enters our lives. I repeat my moms behaviors and basically care for this child better than her mom can which makes my daughter furious and despise me.
Her hippies are into crack cocaine, not a pit of the old evil weed. It's seriously kicked up a notch.
I do see a pattern emerging here in generational dynamics. But I don't see a solution.

Fast forward,next year another baby, when these 2 little girls are 3 and 4 they come to live with me for the first time and this will last years. Mom is hitting one of many bottoms, that are never low enough.

Fast forward, the girls have bloomed, they are learning and getting secure, they are a joy to me.
Their mom gets pregnant again and wants to marry this guy. Mom has declared she has recommitted her life and is getting right with Jesus. Can they live with us? Big decision here.
Did not happen quickly a lot of thought and prayer went into this.
We said yes.

We lived in a huge 4 story house that had enough space for everyone who lived there to have their own space. We asked Jenn not to be sharing a bed with M until they were married while under our roof. They agreed to it, yeah right, in your dreams. It wasn't long before the 4th pregnancy was announced.

This is a hit list so far of the trauma and drama that brought us to where we are now. There are whole chapters between these little bleeps. What I want to focus on is showing you who my babies mother is.

When full of her love for the Lord she did street ministry in down town Santa Cruz. She shared food stamps with the hungry, invited them to church and talked with them about how they got there; and how much God loved them. She was amazing. She took the Word of God so literally that in her mind if Jesus Christ himself spent the majority of his time with the unwanted wounded of the streets, then she would be there too. She chose to roll model her ministry after Jesus. That's my kid go straight for the top. We shared a lot of good times during this period and we were close.
Close enough that when an opportunity came up for an apt for them, a them that is married, it was a natural process to have my two girls try to go again with their mother. They were 7 and 9.

What came out later was how much they hid from us, drinking drugs,abuse. A big black closet full of secrets. ugly secrets.

Daughter breaks off contact with us. No communication.
We pray in tears, afraid , "Lord deliver them from evil."

Fast forward; Tigger and Piglet are sent to us after 6 months in foster care. The little sister and brother are given to the Dad's custody. He is currently homeless and they are with their mother. This family is now separated, and the two older girls moved from their home and siblings to a foreign land, Mississippi. They went into immediate culture shock and just freaked.

Learning to cast all my cares upon you, Jesus. This time we have a secure home. Their mom is not in their lives to hurt them or manipulate. That is a plus, the minus is they love her, she is rejecting them and that hurts.

They are thriving, growing, adjusted, and basically happy, in an uphill/downhill/ teenager way.

Piglet has just had a huge victory of faith. It reminded me of her mother. I had fear for her mother, because I saw that the enemy of our souls wanted to take her out, destroy her testimony. I was so blessed to watch Piglet take a tough spiritual test and pass it so well.
A little fear came creeping in, can she handle it? Will it push her? Will it make her crave these moments? Jenn had the potential to be a huge evangelist and work with masses of people. Unlike her mom whose little blog reaches 20 people on a really busy day. This girl could have impacted masses of people. It was there we could see it, and then the lights went out. She withdrew, she turned around, and went back to the prodigal pigpen, to wallow another time....

She has not escaped yet. At times we thought she was getting her life together. It is our hope.
The truth is we don't know anything anymore. That's the way she wants it.

How does God want it? I don't know but let me get out of the way. He knows what she needs.

I'm not really sure about this post. I want you to know Jenn to pray for her. She hates it when I talk about her and if by some chance she stumbled onto this she'd be mad. So I have tried to just make a list, a non threatening recounting of the time line, with everybody's unwise choices starting with my own. I want you to know there was a time when Piglets Mommy was a prayer warrior, a teen leader, a camp counselor, and always her beloved street ministry.

Lord please restore the years the locusts have eaten. More importantly there was a time when I had a daughter who wanted to be near me. She liked to lie beside me in the bed and talk. She thought deeply, was searching for truth but war raged in her flesh, drove her to distraction, to hasty decisions , to a path separate from home.

My prayer is for this broken families healing. For my daughter who I miss, for her daughters who also miss her. Whatever she has going in her mind to fuel this mess, Lord I ask that you'd put the fire out. Protect them, keep them safe, keep them for yourself and don't let the enemy touch even so much as a hair of their heads. BUT do as you need to do, to bring her back into a right relationship with you, and then I pray for us. She was my only child. Only God can heal our hearts.

Maybe I'm Amazed-(no maybe)

The weather is wacked, I turned on the AC because it's hot in here. This is the same place that had a cold front blow through and we were in the twenties. Hard to believe isn't it?

But wacky weather doesn't hold a candle to what happened to Piglet this week. I believe that somewhere I have mentioned that my oldest, littlest, likes to keep busy and works at a hip deli.
The Newks, Primos, Panera, kind of happenin place. She works her little keester off.

The night before Christmas she came home and went straight up to Papa, she had a lot on her mind. She called a family meeting. I'm thinking to myself, what's up is she engaged? No, Nannie chill out. Well, it could happen, she's adorable. What's a Nannie to think?

She was very serious so I quit with the kidding around. I really couldn't believe my ears, you won't either. Piglets story started with her sharing that her bank account was overdrawn. Oh dear not good, sounds like Nannie math. I have learned however to shut up in these sessions and just wait. It completely goes against my nature not to start in with the, "if you can't add and subtract close the stinkin bank account." You know the kind, gentle, sympathetic, approach, NOT. She elaborated that not only was she overdrawn by a hundred dollars she thought that God was impressing upon her to help the children of Africa.

You guessed it, this is the part where I go ballistic and talk about starting out by helping yourself, learn to add and subtract and be responsible with your money. Actually I had overdrawn accounts more than I care to confess, which is why Papa manages the money. My excuse is that I'm dyslexic and easily mess up decimal points. Your not buying that? Neither does the bank. As usual I digress. I should rename my blog, "I digress." This story is not about the dyslexic grandma. It's about Piglet.

Piglet continued, I prayed about what God was telling me, and told Him that if he would help me fix my bank account and give me the money to help the children in Africa then I would do it.

"So today I'm waiting on this man and his daughter and he offers me a tip, and it was a hundred dollar bill!"
" I was so freaked out that I just left it on the table!"

"All the other servers are saying to me, aren't you going to pick up the money?"

"I went back to the table and the man said to me, "You haven't taken your gift."

" I looked at him and said, "Are you a Christian?'

He replied, "Yes, I am" and smiled.

From here Piglet started talking faster. She relayed to the man how she was overdrawn and how she had prayed, and that God wanted her to help the children of Africa. She said that he picked up the tip and placed it into her hand. She continued to wait on them. When he left he pressed a ROLL of money into her hand and said,

"This is for the children of Africa, dear girl."

He gave her $700.

In the middle of Mississippi in a deli.

Go ahead, pinch yourself.

Ok so now the dear girl is asking her Pa and her Nan what to do. She says that because of her prayer and what the man said that she thinks the right thing to do is give all of it minus the first hundred for her account to the children of Africa.
Now this is where her Nannie gives her the godly advice.
Actually no, I didn't. I was thinking this girl drives this little funky car and has little to no money and school starts in a couple of weeks and that we could use the help with books. After all if this guy has so much money he can send money to Africa without going through her. I mean shoot fire, this was a god send to help her, wasn't it?

Pa and Piglet looked at me like I had come from another planet. Nannie, she says, "he told me the money was for the children in Africa, he didn't say it was for me."

I was speechless.

The girl has integrity. In my heart, I heard, "this is a test." I left the room and went to the bathroom. I have a lot of arguments with the Lord in the bathroom. Lord why would you do this? "It's a test." Well Lord, I'm glad you didn't do this to me because I'd flunk.
"Really?"

"Do you think this my last $700?"

"No, Lord, it is not."

I went out of the bathroom and apologized to Piglet. I told her to do what she thought was right. I was of course late, because she and her Pa had already decided that.

With the intranet a person can do things immediately. Piglet went downstairs and gave the designated funds to the children of Africa. Minus her overdraft. Immediate obedience.

Somewhere, no credit to me, something has gone very right. This is the child of my daughter, the daughter who hasn't spoken to us in years, the crack addict. This is the child who I have prayed for. I was so humbled. Awed. This child acted with great faith. There is no telling what God will be able to do in her life. Amazing.

and somewhere in Africa, poor children are receiving food, warmth, maybe medicine, and hope. God multiplies gifts. This gift may go on to do huge unimaginable things, that we won't know about until our King comes back for us.

He pressed the gift into her hand, "for the children." and she obeyed.

It's a beautiful thing. Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve & Morning

We took a plethora of pictures. Notice I used a high school level word, aren't you impressed? When I saw the picture of me at the table of food I decided to take charge of the camera. No satsuma wrestler got me beat. I need a new song, I like Dories songs, "keep on swimming," and how about "they'll be no eating here tonight your on a diet?" Tigger and I need to get ourselves on "The Biggest Loser." We are competitive enough maybe that would motivate us. How about that fruitcake? I make fruitcake people like to eat!

On to nicer topics. Do you see the photo of the linens? I hope you can make it out. My lovely favorite Auntie sent a beautiful satin slip case with embroidered needlework handkerchiefs that my Grandmother made and her mother collected. she also gave each lady of the house a special pin. Papa got some hankies too, a real hankie affair. Tigger pulled off the big surprise on me. When I had the jewelry party she played sneaky and took some upstairs to Papa to buy. That completely surprised me I did not expect that. The girls loved their presents and their stockings, it wasn't a large amount of gifts but everyone liked their little happies and we really had one of the best Christmas celebrations ever.

Today we received news that one of our friends is expecting a baby. I also got a call from an old friend who promised to start blogging. Last but not least the countdown is on for New Years Eve at Debbie's house and I can't even believe my blessed fortune for that!! It is my hope that all of you are celebrating and basking in the love and joy of your families and friends. Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Why Am I Surprised?

I really did wonder if anybody would post on Christmas? I did and um everybody it seems has posted. No missives, but at least a Merry Christmas. I think we had one of our best in spite of me waking up with poison oak on my face, neck, and chest. Think my sweet little kitty gave me a present. Speaking of presents we had some very thoughtful gifts and will be posting pictures of those later.
For tonight let me recap with the joyful Christmas Eve when we decided to go ahead and open gifts to sleep in. These are teenagers, I agreed because I didn't want to wait any more and I also knew their stocking were going to be the best part the next morning. I also figured that I would wake up and if they weren't up, Nannie would wake them and tell them Santa had been here! Actually that is exactly what happened. I being the old grown up antique relic of a grandmother ailing; woke them all at 7:30am THAT is sleeping in on Christmas! I've improved, really. This year the girls loved everything and they pulled off some surprises on me! But I am getting ahead of myself. I want to include photos. My darling Auntie Mum stole the show this morning with her lovely gift of family heirlooms, it's a hanky affair.
I caved on Christmas Eve day and got Papa a gift, just didn't quite make it. Our friends couldn't come over they had car trouble and wound up stuck on the gulf coast. We improvised and feasted on all the food and goodies, cake and goodies, candy and goodies that were to be found in prolific abundance around here. I stayed in my pajamas today drank eggnog with a bit of spirits and the girls and I gabbed and watched movies and relaxed. We got up to eat fudge. They were quite content and very pleased.
We spent some family time reading from the book of Luke about the birth of the baby Jesus and pondered on that, such a humble needy start. We played cards, Go Fish, and also drove up to the Canton square to see the display of lights, really lovely.
It was a merry time had by all, and as Tigger has been quoting since we watched a particular favorite film of mine; "God bless us every one."