Saturday, January 31, 2009

Grandma Update

Hubby and I were blessed with the gift of meeting our soon to be grandson's birth mom today. She is a wonderful woman and we are in awe of the sacrifice she is making to give her son the future she wants him to have. We are humbled that she has chosen our daughter and son-in-law to raise her little boy which ultimately means we get to be his grandma and grandpa. There isn't much else that I can say. I don't think there is really any way to sufficiently communicate how thrilled our family is to be adding this precious little addition.

Please continue to pray that the next four weeks go quickly and smoothly and that mom and baby are healthy, happy and wrapped in God's loving arms.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Big News!!!

I am going to be a grandma again! I am so excited! I want to tell everyone that I know. Heck, I want to tell people that I don't know!

My daughter and her husband were contacted by their adoption agency yesterday and told that a birth mom was interested in them. To read the whole story read my daughter's blog. She tells the story way better then I ever could. I can vouch for the part where she bumps into me coming back into the house though. She literally was a whirlwind blowing through the kitchen very animatedly saying, "there's a birth mom who picked us and she's due reeeaaallllyyyy soon." All I had done was walk outside to take the trash out and in those 15 seconds this all happened!

I believe that God is in control of this adoption process start to finish. I see that so clearly in the fact that my daughter was already here in So. Cal. and that's where the birth mom is. I even think that her 'touch of the flu' was to keep her right at home where she needed to be yesterday.

Today, in true Grandma fashion, I couldn't help myself. I had to take my daughter shopping to buy cute little baby outfits. Sure, there's a chance that the birth mom could change her mind or she might decide that my daughter and her husband are entirely too weird for her :) OR the baby could decide that he's a she. The ultrasound was done very early on and mistakes have been known to happen. But, when we went shopping they were having an incredible sale. All winter newborn clothes were on clearance. Today they were 60% off of the clearance prices. Well, any grandson of mine needs cute clothes. Right? Don't you agree? Due to the sale, $145.00worth of clothes were purchased for $46.00.

We pray for God's will in the next weeks and months and we want what is best for this new little boy. While we pray that he is supposed to be part of OUR family, we know that God has the ultimate plan.

All I have to say is that if he joins our family....let the loving and spoiling begin.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Help Needed From A Computer Literate Person

Ok, so all of my widgets have dropped down to the bottom of my main blogger page. Scroll down...you'll see what I mean. I've tried (actually, my daughter has tried) everything we can think of to move them back along side my posts with no success. We've even tried to change my template and they won't budge. Any suggestions? If you have any please put them in the simplest of terms so that even a computer flunky like me can maybe figure them out. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Grrrrr....who invented computers anyway?

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

2000 & 2001

Oh my goodness! I am so excited! We are almost done with the vacation series. Remind me to NEVER start something like this again.

The summer of 2000 we didn't take a big vacation and I really don't know why. We decided to take my in-laws trailer and go camping at one of the local beach campgrounds. We ended up being lucky enough to get a week at San Elijo State Beach. Anyone who knows how hard it is to snag one of those sights knows what I mean when I say we were lucky. Who gets those sights anyway when they are all reserved at 8:01 am on the day they start taking the reservations? Someone has to be cheating and, well.....that's a rant for another post.

Beach camping is one of my favorite ways to camp. It's so fun to just relax and listen to the surf, walk on the beach and play in the waves. The kids joined us for parts of the week, if not all and we had a good time. Hubby didn't write down how much we spent, but it couldn't have been more than about $200.00 all total.

In July 2001, Hubby and I went on vacation A.L.O.N.E. Yep, you read that right. Our daughter was working on campus full time that summer and our son had gotten a job working for the local recreation center. Neither of them wanted to try and take a week off. We debated on what to do and decided to go to Glenwood Springs, Colorado and stay in a friends cabin for a week. The cabin was nestled in the hills and was surrounded with every shade of green you could ever imagine.



There was a creek flowing right through the front yard. Wild turkeys strolled through the yard every morning. Here is a picture of hubby and me sitting by the creek. (Yes, I know, it's 30 pounds ago. I'm actually embarrassed to post this picture.)



The local town was cute and we enjoyed several dinners out. We drove to Aspen one day. We hiked to Moroon Bells(well at least part way.)



I called home at least twice a day because our son was only 17 and we let him stay home under the watchful eye of a friend.

Sadly, the cabin burned to the ground in a wildfire a couple of years later. They have rebuilt it, but it was sad all the same.

On the way home, we visited my Aunt and Uncle in Hurricane, Utah and went to Zion National Park:



We ended the trip with a weekend in Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel.

Total cost for the trip...$1015.00

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I've been tagged.

My daughter tagged me and here are the rules:

1) Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer
2) Select the 4th picture in the folder
3) Explain the picture
4) Tag 4 people to do the same


This picture was taken when my hubby and son went backpacking down into the Grand Canyon in January 2007. The rest is pretty self explanatory. Sorry it's such a boring picture, but that was the luck of the draw.

I tag Dena at Happily Ever After, Heidi at Nothingbutbluesky, Deb at Murphy was a Navy Wife and Heather at The Heaven I'm Headed To.

They all have some really cute kids that just might pop up as their number four.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

1998 & 1999

I've decided to combine these two years because both of them are to Lake Tahoe. In 1998 we let the kids both take friends again. My son took D again and my daughter took L. We had a great week rafting, going to the beach and hanging out at the cabin playing games.

There were a lot of mosquitos that year. My daughter and L decided that they were going to protect themselves from any potential bites by concocting a 'mosquito repellant getup.' I know I have a picture someplace, but I can't for the life of me find it. They wore long pants, socks on their hands, towels over their heads etc. They walked to the store one evening with us and my hubby was truly mortified. Everyone was staring at them like they had the plague. He was genuinely embarrassed and would barely even talk to them. Personally, I thought it was funny.

Here are a couple of pictures of all of us enjoying the lake.



As always, the week went by too fast and we looked forward to going back the next year. Total cost for the week $788.00.


In 1999, just the four of us went. My daughter had just graduated from High School and I wanted one last year as a family on vacation. I had no idea if she would ever go with us again or not. I remember trying to remember every little detail of that year because I knew that potentially our vacations would never be the same again. The pancake breakfast and hayride made me sad because I remembered so many of them when the kids were little.. Rafting was bittersweet because I could clearly see them sitting in the bottom of the raft wearing tiny life vests. The whole week was like that. As it turns out, my daughter still wanted to go on family vacations after she went to college, but in my mind, that year, vacation would never be the same. One week $$610.00. Next year we actually do something we had never done before.

Helping Mother Nature Along

Those of you who don't live in sunny, warm Southern California might not want to read this post today. You might hate me by the time it's over, which is truly not my intent. I'm actually gripping. It might not seem like something I should gripe about to all of you stuck in the tundra, but here goes.

When we left to visit my daughter and family in 'that other state she lives in' on the day after Christmas, the leaves on our trees still hadn't fallen off yet. They were all sorts of pretty colors, so we knew that it was imminent. It seemed really late to us though. After all, it was December 26th. I thought leaves were supposed to fall off in the fall, not the winter, but whatever. Anyway, when we arrived home our yard was COVERED in leaves. My son said that anyone who knew us would have instantly known we were gone because my husband would have NEVER allowed that many leaves to pile up. He's been known to vacuum leaves out of our landscape rocks with a shop vac, but that's another post all in itself.

A couple of days and nine large lawn bags later, hubby had the front yard cleaned up. The back yard trees don't create as many leaves, so add a couple of bags in for that and you have a good days work. Unfortunately, even after that the stupid trees weren't done. Now it January. Now it's TIME. Time to be done racking leaves. This is what the biggest tree still looked like yesterday morning. That's Hubby up in the tree after I jokingly suggested that he climb up and shake the branches to help Mother Nature along a little. After shaking:



and shaking:



and shaking :



and shaking this is what we ended up with:



And the tree still looked like this:


No amount of shaking or jumping up and down could get that tree to give up any more leaves. Somehow I think it will be time for the the new little leaves to pop out this spring and our tree will be holding on fast to last years leaves. Talk about a Hoarder.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

SAN DIEGO SUPER CHARGERS!!!!!

GO CHARGERS!!!!!


I can't believe we pulled that one out! We watched the game at my sister's and we were all going crazy when we won.


To my daughter: You wear that Charger's Jacket to church tomorrow up in Bronco land and wear it with BLUE and GOLD PRIDE!!!!


No matter what happens next week....this week was a blast. Thanks Darren Sproles for playing your heart out and thanks to the Colts for all of the penalties!