My Grandma would be proud

I have always loved to cook, almost as much as I love to eat. I owe that to my Grandma G.. She started breakfast as soon as her feet hit the floor. After breakfast, she washed up all of the dishes and then started on lunch. Again, she did the dishes and then started supper. All of my memories when I was small were of her in the garden or the kitchen. She would cook all day to feed everyone when they came in from the fields. That is where my love of fresh vegetables came from. I would help Grandma pick vegetables, then she would cook them for supper. I remember my Grandma teaching me how to peel potatoes when I was six years old. We would sit under the tree in her front yard and break green beans or peel apples all day. I am very thankful for her. I grew up loving beans, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, squash, cabbage, turnip greens, zucchini and okra. I had never heard of fish sticks or hotdogs.

When our kids were small we always had a garden. They too loved vegetables. Brittany's favorite foods are still to this day corn and mashed potatoes. I could not cook turnip greens fast enough for Chad. They also had never heard of fish sticks or hotdogs. When they got a little older and we were running everyday we stopped putting out a garden. Now that it is just Brent and I, we have started gardening again for the past couple of years. We get so much enjoyment out of it.

This photo is a peach cobbler that I made last night from peaches that we grew on the peach tree in our front yard. We planted it years ago, but last year was the first time it produced peaches, and boy were they good. Notice my old speckled enamel pan and my cast iron skillet in the background? My Mom wanted to get us a set of "Wolfgang Puck" cookware for Christmas last year but I said no thanks, I am happy with the ones I have. They remind me of my Grandma.

Our Grand dogs

We have had a busy weekend baby sitting our Grand dogs. Majors is the Boxer and Abby is the chocolate Lab. They are a lot of fun, we really enjoy them, but our dog Kage is a little jealous of them. We get to keep them often, since Brittany is quite the traveler. This is her second trip to Florida and a Bahama cruise to Paradise Island so far this year.

Our Boy Kage

Our pride and joy.

Inexpensive entertainment

When Chad was little he was always coming up with inexpensive forms of entertainment. He would rather take an old empty paper towel roll and make his own toy, than to play with a real one that he already had. When he received a new toy, he would put it aside and make something creative out of the box that it came in. He has always been this way as far back as I can remember, even as young as age four. One night while I was cooking supper, I kept hearing a bumping, squeaking noise coming from the kids bathroom. When I got in there to check it out, there was Chad, completely naked, laying in a dry bathtub on his stomach, looking up at me smiling from ear to ear. There was 1/2 inch of shampoo in the bottom of the tub and an empty shampoo bottle on the floor. When I asked him what was he doing, his reply was "I made a slip and slide and all I used was shampoo".

Walking the Line

Yesterday my Baby (young adult) graduated from college. As I sat there watching her stand in line to receive her Bachelors Degree, all I could think about was how fast she grew up, and how independent she has always been, and how much she has always LOVED school. I remembered one rainy morning when she was in first grade. We stood on the front porch waiting for the bus. It began to pour down rain just as the bus stopped at the end of our driveway. As she ran to get on the bus she fell down in the mud. It broke my heart that she fell, scuffed up her hands and knees, was covered in mud and everyone on the bus saw it. I was so afraid for her to get on that bus, afraid that everyone would laugh and make fun of her. Not knowing the extent of her injuries I begged her to come back. I wanted to check her out, make sure that she wasn't hurt, change her clothes, and I would have taken her to school. She said "I'm ok mama" as she brushed off her knees and ran to the bus. My emotions yesterday were the same as they were that rainy morning, an extreme fear of letting her go, but an abundant amount of pride.

Chef Randa

Our dear neighbor Randa, brought over this wonderful strawberry pie in honor of Brittany's graduation yesterday. Randa is currently attending Culinary Arts school. Brent is her official taste tester (a job that he takes very seriously). She brings us pastries that are as beautiful as they are delicious. Brent always gives her an A on presentation. She was even thoughtful enough to make this pie with splenda because of our diabetes. Thank You Randa.

Moving my Baby (Young Adult) to Indiana

Emotions are running high this week as we move the rest of Brittany's things to Indiana. She will be completely moved out of her apartment tomorrow. She will come back on Sunday for Graduation. She is so excited about her future. She really likes the two Doctors that she will be working for at the Dermatology Clinic. Her plans as of now are to attend College there next fall (2010) for her Masters. She will have to live there for one year to receive in state tuition. She was going to enroll this fall but decided to wait after finding out the cost of out of state tuition.

She amazes me with her fearlessness of the unknown. She definitely did not get this from me. I have lived in fear my whole life. When I was a child I was afraid to climb a tree, afraid that I would fall. My current fears are what is this government spending going to do to my future grandchildren and great grandchildren. I worry about the swine flu, I worry about everything. When I was pregnant, I worried about something going wrong. I just wanted them to be born so that I could stop worrying. Then after they were born I just wanted them to get past the crib death stage. When they started to crawl, I worried that they would put something in their mouth and choke. Then, when they started to walk, I was so afraid that they would fall and get hurt. When they started Kindergarten I worried that they would get on the wrong bus. I lived in constant fear when they started to drive. I always thought that the next stage of their life would be easier and that me constantly being worried would eventually end. Boy was I wrong.

What more could anyone ask for

I had a really nice Mother's Day. Brittany came down to see me. She brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a $50.00 gift certificate and a really sweet card. Chad called, he is taking me out for dinner tomorrow night. He wanted to last night but I knew that it would probably be an hour long wait any where that we went. Tomorrow is better for him anyway because he is off work tomorrow night and we can spend more time together. Brent got me a beautiful Hibiscus tree with a braided trunk, my favorite candy, a sweet card, cooked dinner for me last night, and cleaned up the kitchen. I have such a fantastic family, God has blessed me with far more than I could have ever imagined.

A Mother's Day I Will NEVER Forget

My Kids have always been so thoughtful, sweet and creative on special occasions such as my birthday and Mother's Day. They would pick me wild flowers from the field behind our house and make me the sweetest cards. The night before Mother's Day when Chad was 9 years old, he came up with a brilliant idea. He thought that it would be really sweet to surprise me when I woke up the next morning if my Mother's Day card was hanging from a string in my bedroom doorway (which it would have been). Some time that night after we had gone to bed, he quietly brought a kitchen chair to my bedroom door, which was always left open. It was dark all but a faint light coming from the living room. He climbed up onto the chair with his beautifully designed card dangling from a 2 foot piece of red yarn. He reached up to tape it to the top of the door facing. He must have made a noise, because something woke me up from a deep sleep. All I could see was a black silhouette of what appeared to be a 6 foot tall man hanging by his wrist in my bedroom doorway. I sat up in bed, screamed, scared Chad, and he fell out of the chair backward. Best Mother's Day memory ever.

I Can't Believe These Young Adults Used To Be My Babies

I am so very proud of my children, as most parents are. I know that some Mama birds have to push their babies out of the nest, but not me. I look at the young responsible adults that they are becoming and I find it hard to believe that they are those little babies I gave birth to. It is unreal how fast time passes. I miss my little children. Don't get me wrong I love my young adults, but it is like someone came in and stole my babies. I enjoyed them the most when they were ages two to ten. Everything was an experience, fun and exciting to them. They had not a care in the world. We loved watching them laugh and learn from the most simple little things. They loved it when we would put them in a big laundry basket and pull them up and down the hall. The greatest thing was to ride the motorized pony outside the grocery store, it was better than Disneyland. It didn't take much to make them happy at that age. I see them entering the"real world" and it scares me to death, now that they have mortgages, utilities, insurances, taxes, jobs and the weight of the world building on their shoulders. As a parent the urge to protect them never goes away, but there is no way to protect them from the reality of this world. This sounds crazy but some of my most valued time spent with them was when they were sick. We would lay in bed all day. I would read to them and put a cartoon or a Disney movie in. I would lay cheek to cheek with them so that I could keep an eye on their temperature. The need to care for, to protect, and to nurture is still there, even if the kids aren't. When people ask me if I have any pointers for them, all I can say is cherish every second. Don't get aggravated and send them to bed an hour early, because that is an hour that you can never get back.

Brent's 1st four leaf clover

I think that Brent has been spreading clover seed instead of grass seed over our yard. We have more clover than grass. When I was a kid I loved looking for four leaf clover. At Easter Egg hunts I would find myself looking in the clover patches for a four leaf, rather than looking for the eggs. My kids were the same way. We would come in with at least ten, four leaf clover each, when they were little, and poor Brent could never find a single one. Never in his 44 years has he ever found one. The other day we were outside looking to see if our grass seed was coming up and I spotted one. I pointed a couple out to him, then he found one himself, then another and another. The three in the back are the ones that he found (we were so proud). It is almost funny how boring our life is now, I guess we could call this a form of entertainment.

It's OK to Bribe your Kids

When my Kids were little they were very well behaved, we could take them anywhere. People always complemented us and asked what was our secret. It was bribery. For example, when we went to the grocery, we would tell them that if they were good then they could ride the pony, or train or what ever electronic ride was outside the grocery. For good behavior they got to ride it once, if they were exceptionally well behaved, we would let them ride twice. If one was good and the other wasn't, then the good one got to ride while the other watched. That only happened a couple of times. It was an excellent learning lesson for the one that acted up to see it's sibling being rewarded for good behavior. This worked with food as well. Chad loved to watch "Popeye". We told him that if he didn't eat his spinach then he would not have big muscles like Popeye. He would eat anything green that we put in front of him, then he would flex his muscles and ask if we thought they looked bigger. We would squeeze his arm and make a big deal out of how strong he was getting. We also used this tactic with their grades as well. The better the grade, the more money they would receive. This one almost put us in bankruptcy since Brittany graduated class Salutatorian. I would rather call it a strategic plan to reward good behavior than Bribery.