This is the post that I have been meaning to write for about a month now. I haven’t written anything else because I knew that this was the next post that I needed to write. But I haven’t written it sooner because, well, saying goodbye is hard, and I wanted to do it right…

Y’all. I wish you could have known my grandmother Frances. You would have liked her. Don’t think I ever met anyone who didn’t like her. She had a quiet personality, seemingly unruffled by circumstances around her. And patient. She was very patient, just like my mother, who is the fourth of Frances’ five daughters. I so admired her patience with my grandfather when his mental health was failing in his last years. It’s the kind of deep inner calm that I doubt I’ll ever have, but it made me admire it in her all the more.

Her inner calm often translated to an outer reserve. She was never one to heap on praise or cover her grandchildren with hugs and kisses, but just the same, I always knew she loved us deeply, because she always showed up. At least once a summer while I was growing up, she and my grandfather would make the trek north to Minnesota to watch myself, my brother and my sister all “play ball”. Grandpa would enthusiastically record our games with his gigantic camcorder sitting up on his shoulder (you know the kind that actually held an entire VHS tape on the inside). Grandma, on the other hand, would sit in the stands and just take it all in.

Music was one of the things that Grandma and I had in common. Being an organ and piano player herself, she found little ways to encourage me in my musical pursuits. Like buying me a Little Mermaid music book for Christmas and always listening to me play when I was at her house. She didn’t usually say much after my little recitals, but one time she went over to a cabinet and pulled out a much worn piece of music, carefully preserved in plastic sheet protectors. “This was my favorite piece of music to play when I was younger,” she told me. “You’re probably not ready for it yet, but you keep practicing and someday you will be.” Then she actually let me take that precious piece of music home with me. It was called “The Storm King” and the cover page is now hanging framed in my piano studio.

Quilting is something that anyone who knew Grandma will remember her for. She made quilts for every occasion. Every family wedding, every high school graduation, every grandchild and great grandchild arriving in the world, each celebration called for a quilt. A beautiful, one-of-a-kind work of art. She even gave me one for Christmas one year to match my new bedroom wallpaper. It was the 80s folks, your bedspread was SUPPOSED to match your wallpaper. I was probably only eight or nine years old and even I knew that! Although, it must be confessed that I was slightly disappointed that the quilt was not a Malibu Barbie, I was still incredibly pleased to be the proud owner of a bedroom where everything MATCHED!

Family was incredibly important to Grandma. My grandfather was Danish, so she bought me an aebleskiver pan and made sure I knew how to use it. She also spent countless hours researching our family’s genealogy, tracing our roots back hundreds of years and across the Atlantic Ocean. She formed family traditions, like the fact that at Christmas everyone in the family had the exact same homemade red cotton stocking with their name on it in white cursive script.

That’s why when Lydia was born I knew we had to go visit her. Even though she was living with my aunt in Seattle. Even though her mind was not as clear as it used to be and I wasn’t sure if she would even know who we were. We packed up the two girls and flew across the country to see Great Grandma Frances.

It must be acknowledged that the trip was a disaster in nearly every respect. I won’t go into the details, but stomach flu and unseasonably cold weather played a major role. However, I will never regret going, since it is the only time Lydia ever met her Great Grandmother and it was the last time I saw her alive.

On July 26, 2013, my grandmother Frances went home to be with Jesus. For me at least, I’m not sure that it’s fully sunk in yet. How odd it will be not to have her at family gatherings quietly sitting back and taking it all in. She was deeply loved and will be missed by all of us who were fortunate enough to be part of her family.

Bye Grandma. I love you so much and I’ll miss you!

I’m sitting on my living room couch writing this post, with a fire in the fireplace, lights twinkling on the tree, and snow falling softly outside the window.  Ahhh…  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Our whole family got outside this afternoon to enjoy a romp in the snow (a.k.a. Peter cleared the snow off the driveway with the snowblower while we girls watched).  The girls thought it was pretty fun at first:

Lydia enjoyed right up until she tried to walk through it.

Sorry, I don’t have a video, but you can look at the above picture and imagine her distressed little voice saying: “I’m stuck!  I’m stuck!”

So basically our afternoon felt a little like a metaphor for my life lately.  A little bit overwhelmed by the cold, beautiful snow…  What’s been coming down on me lately?

Tons of Christmas crafting/decorating (I’m loving my mantle this year, pics soon), a family tree hunt, directing the Christmas choir at church, a 1:00am trip to the ER with Lydia (she had croup and wasn’t breathing well), Christmas present shopping and card ordering, dentist appointments (Alethea’s first and she was a trooper!), piano lessons and our neighborhood Secret Santa.  I feel like I’m jumping from one thing to the next with barely a split second to catch my breath.  Whew!

So I’m taking this one snowy afternoon to relax, write a blog post and revel in the wonder of the season, just for a moment… before the madness begins again.

Breathe… just breathe….

Kids say and do the funniest things.  Mine are no exception.  I started thinking a couple months back that it was really sad that I haven’t been recording more of the moments that crack me up.  Nearly every day one of my children does or says something worth remembering, but as you all know, I don’t always get them posted here.

I am sure that if I don’t write it down somewhere, in a few months I’ll have totally forgotten that this summer Lydia excitedly pointed to a couple of butterflies fluttering through our garden and shouted out, “Butts!  Butts!”  Or the fact that for the longest time Alethea was calling bubblegum “BungleBum”.

Feeling that those precious moments were slipping away from me, but knowing how inconsistent I have been in the past at all my attempts in daily journal keeping, I searched Amazon.com for a line-a-day journal.  Just one line each day.  That I might possibly be able to do.

I ended up buying this journal which I loved not just for the gorgeous color of the cover (I’m such a sucker for robin’s egg blue), but also because it was a five-year book.  Here’s what it looks like inside:

I love the idea that not only will I be able to keep track of the cute things happening each day, I’ll also be able to easily look back and see what my kids were doing one or two (or three or four) years before.

That way I will get to laugh all over again at the day when I was so proud of Lydia, on her hands and knees, closely examining an ant hill on the driveway.  Just as the thought, “Wow, she’s really watching them so intently.  Maybe she’ll be a scientist someday!” floated through my head, Lydia suddenly bent her head down and licked that ant hill right off the driveway.  Yup, she is suspicious of cotton candy from the hand of her mother, but ants on the driveway she eats without hesitation… that’s my girl.

Speaking of things going into mouths, I chuckle each time I think about the day Alethea was in the bathroom washing her hands by herself.  I had recently changed the handsoap to a new citrus scent and from the kitchen I heard the following.  “Mommy got new soap.”  Pause… “I like it, it smells good.”  Longer pause… “But it doesn’t taste good!”  Who’d want to forget a moment like that?!

So far I’ve been pretty good at getting something written down every day.  Sometimes I have to play a little catch-up, and some days are less amusing than others.  But even the small details of my children’s lives are something I know I will treasure in the years to come.

I’m really glad I’m doing this.