“THE most amazing thing about getting to be a grandparent is that the very kids you made so many mistakes on

(may have-could have damaged irreparably) 

grow up and honor you by trusting you with their babies.  Could there be a greater grace?”

You may quote me on this!  It is true!

The first five: Guini, Averi, Hunter, Gavin and Gemma. (group shots by Aunt Stormie)

And baby Amelie Belle…soon to have her own plastic weapon.

What sort of wee ones surround me?  I know I tend toward “the glass is half empty” but I don’t necessarily think that is a bad way to look at things.  It keeps me pushing for more and zealously pursuing what I actually want to see in the glass.  Yes, I overcompensate, but then I never run out!  How much does it really say, anyway?  It made me ponder my little grandbebes.

Gavin, 7.  The glass is half-full, of course.  Everything will be alright.  There is a way to solve any problem, plenty to go around.  Just look for it.  Keep a good attitude and chin up and all things will work out fine.

Hunter, 5.  It’s not half-full or half-empty.  It is in the middle.  It is what it is.  That is how I wanted it and so that is where it will be.  Not a drop more or less.

Guini, almost 5.  Why is this all I get?  How much did the boys get?  More, please.  The glass seems half empty.  Sensitive to what’s right and true justice, Guini will come back for more until she has had her fill.  Then she will smile with contentment.

Gemma, 3.  The glass is delightfully half full. ”Look how much I have!!”   In fact-even just a drop in the bottom of the cup will cause GemGem to twirl with delight and satisfaction, full of gratitude and laughter.

Averi.  I will fill my own glass, thank-you very much.  And I will also sweet-talk you out of some of yours.   Give it!  She is 2.  : )

Amelie, 3 months.  Remains to be seen.  But we currently make sure her glass is full to the brim.

And me, really?  My cup is full.  Overflowing.

Here is a list of the reasons I want my grandbebes to garden with me.  And why all kids would benefit!!

1.

Dirt is fun.  And dirt is creativity!  God actually made man from the soil in a garden.  I want the kiddos to know they can plant a seed and nurture life, too, just like their Creator!  And making mud just for mud’s sake is alright, too!  PLUS?  Bugs!

2.

Patience.  The seed goes into the ground and we wait to see it sprout.  The plant is plopped into a hole and we wait for the fruit.  In between the beginning and the end, there is watching the tempertaure, the watering, the sunshine, getting rid of competing weeds.  It is a good thing to learn to wait with hopeful expectancy!

3.

Poop makes stuff grow – fast!  The hard things in life that get dumped on us?  They cause us to become better and stronger.  I once accidentally dropped some watermelon seeds near a nice, aging pile of manure I was going to spread.  The vines erupted like they were from the land of the giants.  The plants were enormous and the fruit was amazingly sweet.  Manure is good for the soul.

4.

Sometimes I have to tie vines against a support stake.  Sure they’d rather just meander off in every direction, but the tying is necessary.  While to the vine being tied it could look like it is being controlled and bound, but the truth is, the plant will actually thrive and produce more because the leaves are arranged to receive sunlight and the soil below can now get the moisture and feeding it needs.  Support is a good thing when you know you need it and especially when you don’t.

5.

You’re pruned if you do and pruned if you don’t.  Pruning-It is a cut.  There is no way around it.  Sprawling huge shrubbery that are leafing and flowering are difficult to approach with the pruners.  But if you don’t?  It will become long and leggy, overgrown and weak.  And when allowed to go on in that state, it will lose its beauty and much of its fruitfulness.  Jesus said He’d prune every branch that wasn’t fruiting and He’d prune every branch that was pruning so it would produce more.  He knew His gardening!  So see?  You ARE pruned if you do and pruned if you don’t, so we may as well let Him do in us what we must do to our plants.  And everywhere you cut, life explodes in every direction, making the plant stronger and thicker and healthier and more wonderful!

6.

God will bless you to be a blessing.  He gives seed to the sower.  When I started gardening and didn’t have a clue – just mentioning that very fact brought out the giver in all the gardeners I knew.  They hooked me up with starts and seeds and plants and tips.  I, in turn, had a wildly successful first garden year and blessed every single person I knew with so many tomatoes and zucchini and onions and radishes and peppers…they all started running from me.

7.

Bees are our friends.  According to The Bee Movie with Jerry Seinfeld, bees are becoming extinct.  I am not sure if that is so, but I know we haul our Colorado bees to California wine country during the winter and then back again for farming season here.  There are less bees now and that is true.  And bees are the great pollinators.  They are wonderful and NOT aggressive.  You can work side by side in the garden with the bees just a few inches away on your prettiest flowers and to them?  You are just a landmark.  I want the kiddies to know that there is a purpose for the bee and they shouldn’t be afraid…

8.

Deadheading is a necessary part of having fabulous flowers.  When the bloom has passed, remove it so the bright lovelies can shine.

9.

You have to prepare the soil to have your plants grow.  You cannot just plop something in this hard, rocky, clay-ey Colorado dirt and have it grow.  In fact the only things that will grow in this native soil are weeds.  If you want a good garden, you’ve gotta amend.   You have got to add decomposing matter and time-released fertilizer and manure and compost and hummus and vermiculite.  You have got to make sure what is in the pot or the garden plot is ready to receive and surround and care for the seed or young plant.  Thought and preparation are so important for any wonderful project in life!

10.

Gardening?  It’s messy, hard work.  But anything worth having is! Oui?

11.

The great joy of the fruit of your labors will finally and most certainly happen!  One day the flowers will blossom and the veggies will become edible.  One day the tree will provide shade and the grass will be so green.  And rejoicing!  Zany-crazy-happy dancing!  Cartwheels and hallelujahs!  You actuallty get to REAP what you have sown!  Glory be!  No joy quite like it!

12.

Everything between God and man started in a garden.  I want the grandbebes to know that God will meet them there, that they’ll hear His voice whispering in the wind and see His majesty at the first fully ripe beefsteak tomato.  I want them to know He will talk to them and give them understanding in the garden just like He did with Adam and Eve.  And that sometimes He’ll ask them, like He did with Adam: “Where are you?”  Not because He doesn’t know, but because He’ll want to know if they understand where they are in life right at that moment, if they comprehend how the lives they are living and the choices they are making are affecting their futures. 

Yes.  I want my grandbebes to know that I have found Him in the garden and they can, too.

It isn’t too late to do some fun gardening with the little tykes this summer!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Go check in on the grandbebe gardens and assist as needed.

Pictured:  The yard.  The garden.  This morning.

If they didn’t already both have great parents, we’d just legally adopt them.  Meanwhile, since their bio-fams are far away, we have scooped them up and just love the stuffing out of them.  It’s a match made in heaven.  So, sweet bebe Sawyer is due to arrive on 8.9.10, which is a very cool date and works for me, but if if she should decide to arrive earlier, say July 31 when Heaven Fest is happening?  I will have to miss HF for I am serving Stef and Wrex as their labor and delivery doula/keep-Wrex-in-line coach!  Oh yeah, baby!  I was pretty good at having babies myself and though there are three previous births I was supposed to coach people through, each time something would happen and I didn’t get to (medical or the out-of-town husband would make it back in time or whatever).  So this will be FUN! I hope I don’t end up needing Wrex to hold smelling salts under my nose and Stef to fan me while she is laboring.  I am pretty empathetic.  Haha.

We had a little waiting-with-great-anticipation-for-you-baby-girl-Phipps Shindig.

Tredessa (Stef and Dessa are tight!), Tara, Stephanie, Jovan, Stormie and me threw a little shower in Casree’s backyard not long ago.  The day was brilliantly sunny.  Which is what we ordered.  But exTREMEly windy, which we did not.  For you see, we had decided on PAPER decor.   We got together and gathered our zany-patterned scrapbook paper and big wads of brightly-colored tissue paper from another baby shower (recycle, people!!) and piles of paper the school was getting rid of and jars of old buttons and old pickle jars and some goldfish and glue sticks and bits and pieces of ribbons from previous projects. 

It was all about creating a colorful, vibrant, bright, engaging, fun, delightful afternoon for Stef and her beautiful friends and family, all of whom adore her wholly.  And the key words were: Lavish. Recycled. Reuse. Re-purpose.  And utilize dishes and serving utensils we already have! 

Pictures of the preparation~

Click on thumbnails for a closer look.

We cut circles and made pinwheels, by hand!

We created miles and miles of paper chains.  We made accordion-fan circles.  We created old-fashioned paper fans with pinwheels on them and fancy tags for all the treats and foods.  We used every bright color from the spring pallette, but zeroed in on orange and hot pink.  Goldfish swam in a bowl on the treats table, around the orange daisy stems, for they matched the decor.  Huge, fluffy tissue-paper flowers hung as garlands from posts.  Hot pink coffee-filter roses were woven vines ’round about.  No one knew, it is safe to say, they had once been white coffee filters.  We also grew some triticale (a wheat/rye-blend seed) for display purposes on the serving and buffet tables.

We ate, drank and made merry.

There was a triple-layer coconut cake made with love especially for mommy-to-be.  There were candies and sweets galore, lemon-poppyseed cupcakes filled with fresh lemon curd and topped with mounds of delicious cream cheese icing.  There were swedish meatballs and spinach-artichoke dip along with deli meats and cheeses.  Fruits artfully arranged on skewers and chocolate, of course, were there, too. All the girlies and me made the food. Bright-colored cookies on sticks were even more incredibly delicious that they looked!

We withstood tornado-force winds. A slight exaggeration, perhaps.

Seriously?  It was windy.  That was the one tiny, little thing that did not go our way.  Kinda messed up some backdrops and wreaked some havoc on having all-paper decor.  Had to go to Plan B (devised there on the spot), but it was still lovely because Stef is lovely and it was our chance to tell her so.  But the one thing that was nice about wind?  No sweat.  The wind kept us cool in spite of the heat and brilliant sun.

Thing that made me most happy at the end?

Mandy asked if she could have the decorations for her daughter’s upcoming birthday party.  Yes. Yes!  YES!  Recycled yet again, which I LOVE!  Because I am sort of becoming a greeniac.  {I may just have invented a new word again}  I kinda like that whole waste-not-want-not idea.  I am so happy Sawyer will see these pictures someday and know that the real value of the day, the place most of our energy was spent?  Was on the love for her parents, on our delight in the creating, all because she was going to soon arrive!

Etc.

The people.  Are the real decorations.  And everyone of us?  Love Stef and co.  Something to celebrate!

PICTURES:  Mostly by Stormie, but 5 or so by Mary!

annual, familial  FEU de JOIE

Father’s Day 2010, Dave and his family.

“Celebrate the little things in life, appreciate tomorrow, love your neighbor…never condemn yourself to a life without cause to celebrate and be thankful for what you have. Never forget the people you love and love them when you have an occasion to do so. Celebrate their life and celebrate yours.”  ~Unknown

Feu de joie, a French term meaning “fire of joy,” is actually a gun salute, described as “a running of the guns” as they are fired on occasions of public rejoicing and celebration.  It can also reference a large bonfire being lit as a token of national joy.

But we have just navigated our way through our very own rapid-fire of joy and celebration.  For during a 12 week period between Dave’s birthday (March 23) and Father’s Day (3rd Sunday in June), we do a whole lotta shaking!  There are 9 family birthdays during that time…no wait!  Amelie was born a few days after Dave’s birthday, so now 10!  This is immediate right-here-local family, people!  Plus, there was a HF fundraiser, a big baby shower or two, the aforementioned birth of a new grandbebe, some travel among us, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, a couple of theater productions for the patriarch, a holiday, tax-day and some end-of-the-school-year plays and programs.  Oh.  And cakes.

I think I feel a summer cold coming on.  A little worn out, but whew! Still, mostly intact.

Jubilate

Oh, how Averi loves her little Flintstone-esque car; Gemma said of her big sister, “Guini is so nice.”  Hunter is a great big-cousin to the girls!

“That it will never come again

is what makes it so sweet.” 

~Emily Dickinson

Dave with original 5, and with the 6 grandbebes.  On Father’s Day.

Make merry

 Scenes from good times: Jovan and Aunt Dessa with baby Amelie.  Gemma and the cone.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck

Dave with grandbebes, left-right: Hunter (5), Amelie Belle (almost 3 months), Gemma (3), Guinivere (almost 5), Averi (2), and Gavin (7)

Celebrate ~ a LIST of reasons:

Birthdays, anniversaries, firsts, promotions, making the yellow light, getting the good parking spot, your husband’s first novel getting published (buy here!), a moist spring, summer arriving, a full moon in an azure-blue sky, the first sip of amazing morning coffee, a grandbebe tying his own shoes and riding without training wheels, tomatoes ripening on the vine, and a new granddaughter.  Also, achievement and success, failures we made it through together, a good movie, really green freshly-cut grass (that deserves an ice cream cone at the very least), a completed project, an upcoming festival, finding out some one is praying for you, healing for dad and brothers in light of heart junk, first teeth, first lost teeth, seeds that sprout, weeds that pull out easily.  Moms.  Dads.  Brothers, sisters, neices, nephews and grandbebes.  Aunts and Uncles and family in the faith.  Growing love and re-ignited passion.  Good times.  And even hard times with people who won’t leave. 

For these and many other reasons, throw a party.  It can be filled with lavish decor and a seemingly endless buffet of tempting tidbits, or as simple as a blanket on the grass with milk and cookies as the stars come out to dance.  Find your reason.

Can you over-do on celebrating?

I guess that remains to be seen.  On our deathbeds, when total clarity and perspective comes to us, we may realize that some of the extra fancy cakes or over-the-top decor wasn’t themost important thing, but I doubt I will ever regret using every possible chance I could to show the people I love the most their great worth to me by planning, scheming and finding ways to celebrate their lives and existance.  And if it should disrupt ”normality,” or be a little taxing, so be it.  I’d rather know I did it because I loved them.  And not regret missed chances to say so.

My family always complains that when I take pictures, I never count and give them warning.  See left.  Well, when I FINALLY did a one-two-three count, this is what I got (see right).  Improvement?  Not sure.  My photographic philosophy: just snap away and hope for the best.

“Love your life and prove it.” ~You may quote me on this, actually

Nehemiah 12:43 (New Living Translation)

  Many sacrifices were offered on that joyous day, for God had given the people cause for great joy. The women and children also participated in the celebration, and the joy of the people of Jerusalem could be heard far away.

I would say our neighbors, based on what has been “heard far away” would think we have!…Jeanie

.

as my Gavinators reminded me. 

We will work in his b-day GARDEN a bit

{after VBS, of course} 

to CELE – BRATE!

Hunter* and Gavin: Best Cousin-buddies.  On Father’s Day

Summer Breeze (by Seals and Croft) so totally makes me feel fine!

*NOTE:  Hunter’s shirt, a gift for his poppa on Father’s Day, references Dave’s main character in his first novel, Altar, which is available on Amazon.  CLICK HERE.

Jovan posted this picture of Averi on Facebook recently.  Love this little girl and her pretty blue eyes.  And it made me laugh, too, to remember her new pediatrician asked if her head had always been this big.  It is her gorgeous HAIR, I tell ya!  Or perhaps her extraordinarily tiny shoulders.  Seriously.

This has been one of my all-time favorite songs since I was 14 (“My eyes adored you”).  So pretty.  So…sweet.

I do love a rainy night – especially after a sunny day. I am not really a fan of several days of rain, but a rainy night is good.  Very good.   I love the green the rain brings.  And I love how the garden looks because water from a hose just isn’t the same.  Rain from the sky is magic.  Green magic!

Well, I love a rainy night

It’s such a beautiful sight

I love to feel the rain on my face

Taste the rain on my lips

In the moonlight shadow

Galoshes

On the way home from church today I saw the cutest little girl in my neighborhood running up the driveway in her pink galoshes and pink and yellow rain slicker.  She was so cute twirling her pink and yellow, floral umbrella.  It took me back to the 1960s when we all owned galoshes and rainslickers and umbrellas and placed them in the cloak room at school.  Yes.  I am that old.

Showers washed

All my cares away

I wake up to a sunny day…

I saw this at church this morning:

I got permission to snap some shots of some little girls at church.  I don’t know them, but aren’t they sweet?

Puts a song

In this heart of mine

Puts a smile on my face every time

‘Cos I love a rainy night…

Yeah, I love a rainy night

Oh – and look: The Gav borrowed Aunt Stormie’s umbrella

Yeah, I love a rainy night…

Well, it makes me high…

I love a rainy night

You can see it in my eyes….*

And as Gemma always sings: The sun will come out tomorrow…which is what I am hoping for!

But this rainy night is luscious, too.

Gemma at Cold Stone with Aunt Stormie recently. The sun always shines on GemGem.

*LYRICS:  I Love a Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbit

Pictured: Black Spiderman Cake

Yes.  Spiderman is hot-glued to a non-stick spray cap.  That’s right, what of it?

I hand-carved the small Spiderman figurine using  from-scratch fondant…  NOT!  Bought him at WalMart.

10″, double-layered chocolate cake with chocolate icing, tinted black.  I used pre-made icing and augmented DH mixes.  I cut notches in a piece of cardstock and ran it around the side to create the comb-effect ridges.  A little white icing from a tube.  A little red icing from a tube and voila!

And to think: my first “specialty” cake ever (or at least since the ridiculous venture into Wilton-type cake decorating in the 1980s…maybe someday I will have the courage to share those pictures…) was for Gavin’s 4th birthday when his mommy requested a dinosaur cake. I plotted for weeks-it nearly did me in. {sigh} June 2007.  Time flies…and I get a little more laid-back about the cakes with each birthday.  Nicer for everybody!

On the occasion of the celebration of Gavin’s birth

His mommy got him a Spiderman costume.  And Aunt Jovan got Uncle Rocky one, too.

Averi looked lovely in lavender and yellow, from her two-piece and cover-up to her flip-flops and matching bag, not to mention her sippy-cup and sunglasses.  Her accessories and coordination were flawless.

Guini was all smiles and cuddly-ness.

The girls looked summery.  And it was 90-some degrees out, so – that seems appropriate.

As long as everyone has their own purse, everything is just fine.

Grilled chicken sandwiches on bolillo with the sweetest corn on the cob ever!  The boys were on edge with some intense Battleship strategy against Aunt Dessa (and with her accusations of foul play, who could blame them? tsk.)…

First grandbebe dip in the pool this year.

Simple toys are best.  A freshly cut lawn for running and staining feet bright green.  And good, old-fashioned latex balloons, all while using “outdoor voices”.  Entertainment in its most basic form!

Click on thumbnails for a larger view

Family get-togethers before Gavin-the-first-grandkid  was born were much much quieter.  And less colorful, too!

Cake devoured.  Black-tooth smiles.  Good times!