Look who's here! It's Caden!

This awesome little Texan was born on November 4, 2015.  His Grammy Black and Aunt Alanna and cousin Jocelyn met him first. They had a wonderful time playing and rocking and taking pictures and celebrating the happiness.

On Tuesday of this week, (Thanksgiving week) Gabe and I headed to Houston to give thanks.  It was a nice 12 hour drive. We drove through Auburn, Alabama, "War Eagle" or is that "Roll Tide?"This is actually the week of the Iron Bowl. so there was a lot of football energy reverberating onto the highway as we passed.

Travelling on I-10, the only highway to travel on in the winter, is fun for a California girl. I think to myself, "Hey look, it's Mobile, Alabama. Wow, I'm in Mississippi. Louisiana, I wonder if there are gators in that swamp? Baton Rouge, Who ever thought I'd be driving through Baton Rouge?" And on and on until I drive into Houston, TX where I remember that "Everything's bigger in TX." Mostly, there's a lot of flat land, but I'm sure it's awesome flat land. And then we landed at a special place. The place where Caden lives with his fantastic mommy and daddy.

My day of  driving was rewarded with some snuggling time with little guy. Another reward was to watch my son with his son. Such joy and pride and adoring and happiness. I watched him watch his wife and baby and saw that his heart was all tied up in that beautiful sight.

This little family reminded me how thankful I am that God sent me 9 babies so they could bless me as small children and then bless me again as they start their own families. The love just doesn't end. It grows and grows.

On Wednesday Paul flew in to join the Caden party. Grandpa thought Caden would enjoy The Hunger Games so he took us all to what I believe was Caden's first movie. He was a great date. He just hung out with his mom and dad quietly throughout the whole show. Then we ate Mexican food because Wed. is 1/2 price fajita night. We didn't feed it to the baby directly, but indirectly we contributed to what I'm sure will be a long life of salsa consumption.

Ariane and Nathan have a million skills; cooking, crafts, academics, sports, music... but one of the most enviable to me is that they are very organized. I learned a lot about running a household from them. The white plastic grocery bags are stored in a clorox disinfectant wipes container. When the container is full, that's all the bags you get. No saving millions of bags that explode out of the food closet every time it's opened. The brown plastic bags are folded into little school footballs. You know what I mean, the triangles. They are stored neatly in the baby's drawer at the ready for stinky diaper disposal. Baby supplies and diapers are stored in decorative containers over the changing table. The baby station supplies that need to be in the living room are stored in pockets in the rocking chair.

When it was time to decorate for Christmas, 2 boxes were brought out. The tree was trimmed and the nativities and crafty Christmas decorations were displayed in all of 30 minutes. When I thought of the 2 days it took to get my Christmas decoration act together I almost cried.

One might think that cooking Thanksgiving dinner in an apartment with 6 people, including a new mom and baby, might be overwhelming. That problem was solved by purchasing rotisserie chickens that frankly did not disappoint. We still had potatoes, gravy, (delicious from a mix) cranberry fluff, rolls, (one of Paul's super powers) Stovetop stuffing, and Marie Callender's razzleberry pie. And of course, Gabe's favorite part of the meal--cranberry juice and Sprite. It was delicious, and I'm definitely rethinking the turkey tradition.

Pi on the pie. Okay, they're a little nerdy at this house.

Friday was our outing day. Nathan is almost finished with medical school and we had never seen where he has spent the last 3.5 years. It was fun to tour a medical center from the perspective of a student mom as opposed to a patient mom---sooo much less stressful. Maybe I should have been more stressed for my student son, but he's almost done so yay. I did get a little queasy at some of the informative posters such as identifying an abnormal nodule on a thyroid and how to properly perform a tracheotomy. But Paul thought it was very cool.

In the afternoon we decided to take Caden to the USS Texas so he could tour a battle ship and learn about being in the navy in World War I and II. Once again, he loved his outing. His dad took him up and down the stairs and the sea breeze blew and he was a champ. Ariane and Nathan secured us a tour guide even though there weren't supposed to be any official tours on that day. Paul asked a lot of questions and was so excited to find out more that I couldn't help but learn something, like the sailors were in battle station for 52 days. That meant no one left their gun room for almost 2 months. I won't ever forget that fact, and I'm thankful for their service.

Ben Affleck's bunk in Pearl Harbor.

Friday night was time to relax. We watched the ever popular Muppet Christmas Carol  and drank wassail.I The script actually stayed close to the book plus there was some great music. Okay, I'm not a fan of Miss Piggy, but she kept a low profile so the movie was enjoyable and very Christmasy, and I slaved with the baby while we watched :)

So now we're ready for the Christmas season where we celebrate the birth of our Savior, that through him all mankind may be saved and families will be together forever. I'm thankful for each dear person in my family. I'm thankful for their imperfections that help me see my imperfections. I'm thankful for their gifts that bless my life and make me proud. Not only is it a privilege to know and love them, but because of loving them, I am changing into a new and better person. I'm thankful that they have married wonderful spouses and have homes full of love and devotion. I'm blessed to have each little new one that has expanded my heart and filled the world with more love. All this, because of God's love for each of us, his children, and the precious gift of His Son, our Redeemer.

Let the celebration begin.

Crocheting: a tutorial on life.

When I was a little girl, spending time at Grandma Miller's, one of the skills she would attempt to teach me was crocheting. I dreamed of the day I would be able to crochet my own doilies for my own table with my own vase of flowers on top.

 We started learning with yarn. Grandma would create the slip knot, and I would begin my chain stitch. Some were too tight, some were too loose, but no matter, I was doing it! Then she showed me how to go back and make double stitches and triple stitches. I held the yarn in my fingers just so and went in and out with my crochet hook. Somehow, my project didn't always look like Grandma's. Did it really matter which hole I put my hook into? One loop seemed as good as any so if I lost this one I'd use that one. When Grandma came back to check on my work she would identify the problem areas and suggest I pull it out to the point of the error and then start again.  Noooo! The agony of wasted work was more than I could bear. I was all for just moving on. I justified that "no one would notice" and continued to the end. When my work was finished, and I really considered the pattern created by my time spent, I had to admit, my mistakes were definitely noticeable and obviously interrupted the pattern I was trying to achieve. The project was not acceptable. Failing to right my wrongs was not acceptable. I continued to try, but since repentance was hard I tried perfection. Well, as anyone who tries to live a perfect life knows, I was always frustrated because I was never perfect. Besides that, this was all taking way too long. I wanted to be good at crocheting much sooner than was happening, so I quit. That's right, I quit before practice made crocheting easy, and the need for the re-do became much less frequent. and the desire for a quality outcome became greater than my aversion to starting over. I learned as much as my impatience would allow, but not as much I could have had I perservered and humility and desire.

Fast forward to Wednesday night. My friend is in charge of achievement days for the 8-11 year old girls at church. She wanted to teach them how to crochet a trim on a burp cloth for newborns. She called on all women who were free during the hour to help give the girls the one-on-one help they needed. I was not unrealistic about how much help I could be, but I was free that hour and thanks to Grandma, it was not as if I'd never crocheted in my life.

In came the little girls, full of enthusiasm and confidence. The needles and thread were distributed. Okay, I did hyperventilate a little when I saw it was thread, not yarn, but I remembered my doily dream and got excited. I listened to the instructions and then realized that I needed to be shown again. I was the person that was actually supposed to be helping, but no. "Could you show that to me one more time? Could you turn a little bit so I know which hand you're using?"  After monopolizing the instructor's time and attention for as long as I could, I understood enough to help my adorable 10 year old apprentice at least get started.

I was pleased to see that she was ready to go. Her face was full of determination and desire and hope. I showed her how to make the slip knot. (I had at least retained that.) She picked up the burp cloth and the crochet hook and the thread. Well that was definitely too much to hold at once. I decided I could help her best if I held the burp cloth so she could conquer needle and thread. As one could predict for a first time experience there was lots of dropping the loop, failed attempts at finding the right hole, and tension problems, At one point, my wisdom from many years of experience suggested that we throw the entire project across the room and never pick up a crochet needle again and have a nice doughnut, but cute 10 yr. old never wavered. Eyes fixed on her task she continued on.

 After 45 minutes she observed, "It's getting easier." It was true, each inch of progress yielded more accuracy and less disappointment. I was amazed at the determined strength of this little girl. As I looked around the room I saw other little girls with the same fixed resolution to succeed as they concentrated and pressed forward. It occurred to me that I was in the presence of greatness. This idea was confirmed when cute girl shared that  every day she makes a list of her goals and puts them on a poster by her bed.

So just learn a little from my young friends. We must not give up. We must be patient with ourselves and allow our abilities to catch up with our dreams through work and repetition and commitment, and know that our future is in good hands, hands that don't give up, that are patient and persevering, and focused and hopeful and ready to serve.