A Lasting Legacy

Got my grandmother's gift the other day. She wanted me to have her dish set.

I can't help but be grateful that I have something to hold onto. It's a beautiful treasure to share with my girls.

1000 gifts three gifts ugly beautiful

• the storm clouds on the horizon, beautiful but I know the storm won't be. 
• our pet ratties. Many call them ugly, but I think they are beautiful. 
• some art. The stuff I look at sometimes I think is just awful, but someone thinks it's beautiful. 

WW: A Year Ago, May

Linking up with Mama Kat again this week for writers workshop. If you want to learn more about it, click the link at the bottom of this post.

The prompt I chose this week is: Throwback Thursday: Choose a photo from a previous May and write a blog post.

Here is my picture:

I really hesitated doing this, just because it's still so fresh.... but I feel like writing is my therapy.

This was taken my birthday weekend last year. I had zero idea that by my next birthday both my mom and my grandmother would be gone. It's hard to imagine my life without them, but I am slowly adjusting. I still pick up the phone to call mom sometimes. Or I will find a great deal on something at a sale and want to tell her about it. Right now, I am trying really hard to focus on the joy in this picture. Mom was so happy to have the girls and I there. I think grandma was too, though it is hard to know with her being like she was! It was a blessing beyond words to have this picture, four beautiful generations, something my girls and I can hold on to. So many people don't get to share their children with grandparents or even parents. I'm so grateful that I was able to do that.

This post inspired by:

1000 Gifts: A gift worn, white, whispered

• It is a gift to have some of my mom's shirts. Right now my sister has them, holding them safely until we can create a quilt with them. 
• It is a gift to have the white sand in our family unity jar. A color that stands for God. It's at both the base and the top of the family's colors and has started moving to the center. A reminder always that God is the foundation of our family and we are only complete with him. 
• It is a gift to have little girls whispering their secrets in my ears. I know they won't always share them, but I'm so glad they do! 

Grandma Spalinger

On Tuesday, I got some pretty upsetting news. My grandmother (mom's mom) passed away. This marks two deaths in the last four months of people very close to me. This death is complicated to me though. I am really struggling with some things and I thought what better place to get it out then here on my blog.

First off I want to emphasize that I love my grandmother. She loved us no matter what she said or how she acted but my grandmother was also an alcoholic. When she was drunk (which was often) she would lash out or have a "pity party" and just be a miserable person to be around. Even when she wasn't drinking, she wasn't the most pleasant person. But she is grandma and that's just how she was.

My mom was one of the few people who called her on a regular basis (that I know about!) She knew what times to call when she would be better then normal. When we lost mom, I started calling grandma. I don't know how mom did it so many years without giving up on her. Grandma and I spoke on the phone maybe four times and she always brought it back to how miserable she was and how sorry she was that she wasn't there when mom passed. It was really, really difficult for me to make those phone calls, but now, I am so glad that I did.

It's hard to process the fact that she's gone. You know those people you talk about, who are so ornery they will outlive us all? She was one of those! I thought it would be years before we lost her. It seems unimaginable that she is gone. I thought today to honor her memory I would share a few things I remember about our visits with her.

I still remember, every spring break and every summer we would make the trek over there. I have written about it before (right here if you wanna read it.) I remember playing on my grandparents property. They had a few acres, a couple were rented out to a guy for his sheep but the rest were free reign for us kids. There was so much for us to do. A grove of acorn trees was a favorite place to play. We were always dirty! There was also this GIANT (and I mean giant) lilac bush that we played in, on occasion, we weren't really supposed to! Grandma and grandpa had a ride on mower that we would pretend to drive. That was fun when we were younger.

As we got older, we became more adventurous and started getting into things we weren't really supposed to. We explored their old barn a lot. There were tools and a couple old cars and a bunch of stuff that we pretended with. I remember vividly a pair of garden clippers, just the small ones, and I pretended it was a monster (or dinosaur) that was eating the plants I was clipping. In retrospect, I am pretty sure that the adults all knew what we were doing, but it was exciting at the time to think we were doing something we weren't supposed to. We played a lot on the dirt driveway that ran between the grandparents' house and the neighbor's. The neighbors were even nice enough to let us play in their nice green grass a bit. Once in awhile we got the opportunity to share some scrap veggies with the sheep. They weren't real friendly, definitely not pets, but they would carefully grab things from us. It was also very exciting for us!

Once I got married and moved out, I obviously wasn't going twice a year, but we have tried to do some trips. It's been less and less frequent since having kids because it was hard on grandma and hard on the kids. She didn't let them do much play because she wanted them to be quiet and get along all the time (didn't even like it when they play argued!) Plus since they moved into a smaller place, there wasn't as much yard to play in. Makes it hard for kids that are their age. We were blessed enough to be able to get four generation pictures shortly after Liv was born. They are something I will cherish for a long time. We were also able to get this great shot when we saw her last (my birthday weekend)

Four generations of ladies and now I am the oldest remaining one, it's a little hard to understand 

1000 Gifts: three gifts manger small

Another one of the prompts that makes me scratch my head... are we talking gifts that are smaller then a manger or that were in the manger. 

• It is a gift to know that my savior comes from the lowly background of being born in a manger. 
• It is a gift to know that Mary the mother of Christ wasn't anything "special" by the world's standards, but God still used her. 
• It is a gift to know that Joseph the earthly "father" of our Lord was willing to overlook the social problem that Mary's unexplained pregnancy had. He married her anyway. I don't know how her story (and in turn the story of Jesus) would have been if he hadn't. 

Wordless Wednesday

The girls, me and my grandpa

The girls, mom, me and grandma

Four generations

As a mother's day present for both my mom and grandmother, we as a family, went to visit my grandparents. Its a six hour drive non stop, and with three kids was, lets say, slightly longer. lol! While we were there, it was requested by my mom that we get a four generation picture taken. If you know anything about portrait places they con you into buying more, so we got A LOT! Here are just a couple of my faves.

All four generations.

My three girls (she did edit the prints so my fingers weren't in there!)

Like I said, just a couple, keep reading to maybe see more (my version of a cliffhanger!)