Gram's Place

I am not sure when it happened.  Not the exact time.  But, sometime after our three older kids grew up, Shawn and I couldn’t wait to be grandparents.  We like to talk well into the night of our dreams of life… and I can recall many nights dreaming of what it would be like someday to be a grandma and grandpa.  It isn’t that we are real fond of the idea of getting old… just that we love God’s design for families and generations… and we adore children.  Early in our marriage, he always wanted 12 kids.  I wanted 2.  So, we settled for 4, and hoped for a slew of grandchildren someday. Sweet little LuLu is our first grandbaby.  And what a treasure she is.  Truly, all the dreaming of becoming a grandma was nothing like the real thing.   When this little girl was born, I stood outside the hospital room and prayed that God would keep this family in His arms.  And when I heard her for the first time, I wanted to lay down on the floor and die.  Amazing is not a descriptive enough word

I hate nights like this.  Well, usually, I don’t mind them when it’s night…it’s the day after that I hate. It’s 2:25am, and I am wide awake.  I was sound asleep.  But, about an hour ago, Emily came into my room coughing and saying she had a headache, sore throat, stuffy nose, and I could tell she had a fever.  We’ve all been battling this gunk the past three weeks at our house.  My own gunk has held on for three weeks, rearing it’s ugly head every night with coughing fits when I’m trying to get to sleep, and then again in the morning when everyone else is trying to sleep.    So, I comforted her and gave her some medicine, tucked her back into bed.  And then I went back to bed.  And laid there…. for an hour….trying to fall back to sleep. Until now, when I finally gave up.  I knew I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep.  But, I kept hoping I would.  I was weighing the dilemma in my mind…. I only have 3 more days of work before I am finished with my job there.  And of course, it’s r

Shawn’s sister Shanda (above left) went to college this past week.  She’s attending a private Christian college about 4 hours north of here.  We had the privilege of taking her to school and moving her in.  As we were driving away, I was thinking that it seemed like just yesterday when her mom was in the hospital with a broken leg and Shanda was still nursing and I kept her for a week.  She cried a LOT that week.  By the end of the week, we were in good shape.  I weaned her.  It seems like just last week she was dancing and prancing around the neighborhood in her dress up clothes playing house. It seems like yesterday she was in junior high. And yet, here she is… all grown up and going to college.

Nope.  I didn’t need google.  In the midst of a crazy life, crazy things, I need to be reminded that: 1. God is still in control. 2. The one who complains and gets angry about life – I don’t get to be that girl. 3. God is always looking out for me.  The things He chooses for me to endure are not always pleasant, but they are for my good, and His glory. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35, 38-39 NIV).   "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.  But we have th

Ah… the feet of a one-month-old.  So sweet.  So tender.  So not-calloused.  She knows nothing right now except eating, sleeping, crying, and pooping.  Her day consists of the same thing over and over and over again.  She’s oblivious to changes in her surroundings. Sometimes I wonder if things in my life will ever settle down.  Things just happen all the time.  It seems unbelievable when I actually tell anyone. Today at work, someone said “how are things going with you… any better?”  And I had to stop and think which “situation” they were talking about. My brain really quick thought … - does she want to know if our garage is back in order from the drunk driver that drove through it? - is she referring to the fact that we have 14 people living in our house? (which is way awesome by the way!) - does she want to know if my husband’s head is healing from the 21 stitches he got last week at the ER? - is she referring to my brother-in-law at the ICU? - is she referring to m

I’m home sick today.  Miserable is more like it.  My daughter asked me if I am going to stay home tomorrow too so she could make me breakfast in bed.  I said “no. I’ll probably go to work.” She said “Why? If you don’t feel good, maybe you should stay home.” Because that’s what grownups do.  We go to work when we don’t feel good.  We cook when we don’t feel like it. We do a lot of things we really don’t want to do. Sometimes I hate being a grown up. Drugs are helpful though. And today I figured out that nasal spray is a gift from God.  Here’s the list of drugs that have kept me breathing today: dayquil, ibuprofen, mucinex D, sudafed, nasal spray, vicks, tylenol, Echinacea, Emergen C. I have to say the mucinex D and nasal spray are officially my two favorite.  Summer colds are the worst ever.  It’s 89 degrees outside and I am shivering with chills.  blech.

Here is my #1 reason for wanting to work from home…. when we shared the news with her, she was SO excited.     

Just yesterday, I blogged about my beautiful granddaughter and all the things that has happened in the past three weeks since she’s been born. What I didn’t tell you, blogosphere, is that yesterday I gave three weeks notice at my current job.  I wanted to give my boss the opportunity to hear it from me first. For the past year, my life has been changing rapidly.  I quit my job at our family business in August of last year, where I had been employed for about 12 or 13 years, or possibly even longer because who keeps track in a family business? I left there to go to work at a manufacturing company in town.  I went through their interview process, was offered a temporary job, did the drug testing, was ready to start on Monday morning, and I got a call from the manager that hired me and he said the corporate office put a hiring freeze on that day effective immediately and I couldn’t start.  I decided that God (obviously) has other plans for me.  I accepted a job offer at a third pa

My granddaughter is three weeks old today.  Three weeks.  She is super duper cute, and it’s so hard to not just take pictures of her constantly.  In some ways, three weeks seems like a long time.  In other ways, it seems so very short. Really, three weeks is relative.  To wait three weeks for something you ordered online today is an incredibly long wait.  But, to be able to accomplish something in just three weeks seems so short. In three weeks, this is the list of things that have gone on in our life: 1. met our first granddaughter 2. had overnight/weekend visitors from Illinois in our home three times 3. went to my daughter’s for a weekend to help her clean apartments 4. started to harvest tomatoes and peppers 5. had a drunk driver crash into our garage in the middle of the night 6. father in law has been in the hospital, out of the hospital, in the hospital again, and out of the hospital again. 7. my sister decided to move from the northwest to the midwest, then