Two funny stories

On Tuesday, our daughter-in-law told her three year old son that we were coming to their house for Thanksgiving. He got quiet for a moment then said with great sincerity, "I love Granddaddy. He's my boy."

I made a pork dish for dinner Wednesday night, only the guys didn't actually get pork at the store. They got a smoked pork butt with bone in -- also known as a ham. Now there's nothing wrong with ham, and as it turned out the dish was fine, if different. Our other daughter-in-law wasn't feeling very well that day (she got bitten by a spider and the bite got badly infected) and she was a little zoned out from the infection and antibiotics. She fell asleep on the couch before dinner but woke up enough to come sit with us and eat. She wasn't actually all that alert as the rest of us talked through the merits/disadvantages of the purchased cut of meat over what the recipe called for. I kept calling it a ham, while my sons called it pork. I'm not sure what roused Sophie but she looked up from her plate and very solemnly told me that this was the best ham she'd ever eaten.

Yesterday morning, I ran with my younger son. He's in great shape and thankfully he took pity on me and ran at my pace.This morning I am off to Jen's exercise class at the Y. Did I mention she's the instructor? And incredibly fit? This class is a weight lifting class so I just hope I can walk afterwards.

We are family

We had such a great time in Virginia—so glad we went, so very glad Jordan and Sophie could be there also and very grateful that Ben and Jen are willing to host all of us.


We met Colin. Just look at those eyes! They aren't exactly brown (sigh) but they are also very different from Alison's eyes and Eliot's too. Both of those kids have crystal blue eyes. Colin's eyes sometimes look gray or navy blue.

Alison has changed so much. She's looking very grown up, not like she's in kindergarten. Some of that is her height (she's nearly four feet tall at age five), but a lot has to do with her new sense of confidence. This visit, she got to make cake pops with Sophie; watching her break the eggs and use the mixer was a lot of fun.

This picture shows perfectly how Colin is--a little love bug who grabs on tight and likes to cuddle. He's really fond of clutching hair in his little fists and can get a death grip you wouldn't believe. I'm not sure how Jen still has any hair left on her head.

Isn't this a great picture of Jen, Alison, Eliot and Colin? I swear Jen stays calm through anything.

Sophie posted this story yesterday about Jen:
The best mommy quote this holiday was definitely when 2 1/2 yr old Eliot asked his mom to get him out of the highchair. Jen, who had a baby in her arms, said "I can't get you right now Eliot, how about you sing a song to yourself."

Jordan and Sophie are just the coolest, always upbeat and looking to make sure everyone else is having a great time too. Kent took some great pictures of them "dancing" with Alison and Eliot and you should see the grins on the kids' faces.

OK, bear with me. Yes,it's another picture of Colin but this one is pretty cute even if he is crying.

Kent and I had gotten Eliot probably three different sets of train tracks from Ikea last spring before we left Boston.

I'd protested that three were too many plus the package said they were for children ages three and up and that Eliot would only be two at Thanksgiving, all to no avail.

I'm here to say that Kent was right.

Eliot loved his train tracks and splitters and whatever else was in there and so did everyone else.

Finally, here's our annual family picture. We clean up OK, don't we?

Music City

I wanted to have pictures for you but they will have to wait. Kent’s got to sort through almost 600 photos from our weekend, and then process the ones that make his cut.

We were in Nashville this weekend to see our daughter-in-law perform Saturday night. She was out of town until late Friday night so we hung out with our son. Saturday morning we met them for brunch—she didn’t know we were coming to town—and Kent got a great series of pictures where you can see her trying to figure who’s got a camera on her and why, and then catching sight of me. It’s a great series.

After brunch we hung out for a while and toured the Parthenon. Since Sophie had to scoot to get ready, Jordan, Kent and I found a bar near Vanderbilt and the old Peabody campus. Nashville got hit by a heavy rainstorm then so we just watched the rain pour down from the covered outdoor area of the bar.

Sophie is an amazing performer. She’s a vocal coach by trade and while she’s done a ton of studio work, she generally doesn’t perform. But she realized it would make her a better vocal coach to know first-hand what her performing students face. Regardless of the reason, I’m so glad we got to see her perform.

I’ll post pictures when they’re ready. 

My children made me cry

And in this post, I am counting all four of them as my kids (no disrespect intended to the mothers of Jen and Sophie).

We exchanged gifts with Ben, Jen and the kids and Jordan and Sophie on Saturday. The puppets were a huge hit with both children, which really made me happy. I have some great memories of playing puppets first with my little sisters and then later with Jordan and Ben. Seeing Alison and Eliot love the puppets like that brought all those good feelings back.

But I have to say I think that I got the most amazing gift of all. My kids completely surprised me and more than that, they got me something that just overwhelmed my heart. To understand why, I need to give you some back story.

I’ve written here before that as divorces go, mine was pretty civilized. Yes, a marriage ended and yes, dreams we’d both held of beating the odds and living happily ever after also ended, but for the most part, neither of us got nasty or vindictive. One of the few sticking points for me—and let me hasten to say that this wasn’t Rick being nasty or vindictive, I think he was just sort of oblivious—was that I got pretty much no photographs of our 16 years together. That also meant I had almost no pictures of my children as they grew up.

I’ve always felt this loss keenly. The boys loved it when I’d sit down with them and go through all the photo albums and tell them stories about what they were doing in each picture. Our albums weren’t scrapbooks, just the old-fashioned, probably ruin your pictures kind of albums but they held the pictures and we looked through them frequently.

Even this summer, when Rick was in Boston and took us both out to dinner, I mentioned that I had no pictures. He was shocked and promised to get me digital copies. I didn’t hold my breath.

Maybe you can see where this is going. Last year or the year before, Ben and Jen put together a picture book, bound and everything, that contained pictures of us with them and their children. That was a fantastic gift, so Saturday when I felt the texture of the book, I knew what it was.

But I was wrong. They’d gotten their childhood pictures, scanned them all, and had them printed into a book for me. They also burned the pictures onto a disk. It was a complete group effort by all four of them—I cracked up at the account of how Sophie just walked in to Rick’s house and took the pictures (yeah!).

I’m getting teary again just thinking about how much this book means to me. I haven’t looked at the disk yet. I am saving those pictures when maybe I’m having a sad or lonely day, or feel not so great about myself. I know for a fact those pictures will give me a wonderful boost.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have something in my eye.

Ben is on the left, Jordan is on the right. Cute lil stinkers, huh.

Nashville!

We are back from visiting my older son Jordan and his wife Sophie—we had a very relaxing time. In fact, I actually slept in (for me): 7 AM Eastern almost every day! Of course that’s still 6 AM Central.

I lived in Nashville as a little girl, so we took a quick drive by the elementary school I attended for first and second grade. You can’t see it in this picture but the doors on the far left and far right are marked Girls and Boys.

We’d been told by Ben that we wouldn’t see Jade the cat because she was even more shy than our Chloe cat. Well I don’t know what Ben was thinking, that cat cuddled with me every morning, purring like crazy. Or maybe I really am the Cat Whisperer.

We had a blast baking and decorating cookies, although Sophie was by far the best cookie decorator. I tended to go for the slightly macabre (which won’t surprise Jeanne any more, right Jeanne?). The round cookie was supposed to look like he’d been in a fight but the stitches part sort of ran together so he looks like he has a black eye.