Christmas Memories

As the Christmas season is about to end all we are left with are pictures and memories. I would like to share some of them with you, the memories that is. I have yet to learn how to put pictures onto this blog.

On Christmas Eve I took Ethan to his first church service. It was the Children's Mass at my parent's parish. I actually love this Mass and go every year. I love watching the children, and I love the music. Ethan was extremely well behaved. He is very curious and takes all the sights and sounds in. He watched everything and everyone. He stayed in my arms almost the whole time. There was this cute little girl just a couple of weeks younger than Ethan. She was staring at him and cooing. She kept trying to get his attention. She eventually did. He watched her for a few minutes. She was smiling he was very serious. Then he turned his head and his attention went to other faces and people. As my mother and I watched this scene we giggled. Then came the icing on the cake. I got to bring my grandson to the alter to have him blessed. It was a privilege and an honor to be the first to introduce him to God and bring him for his first blessing. I hope I will have many such occasions in the future. I was told in the past that Jesus must have been around 8 or 9 months old when the wise men came to him bearing gifts. Seeing how Ethan was with others makes me think of how Jesus may have been when the Wise Men came. How he would have looked at them and cooed and giggled.

I mentioned in that past that Ethan tried to talk and have conversations. This has temporarily stopped. I was told because he is teething. He has two tiny pearly whites on the bottom gum. He does love to be held and it is so wonderful to see him look at me with adoring eyes. He doesn't seem to have much trouble being passed around from one person to another in the family and when he is in a good mood he sometimes goes to the friends.

As far as opening presents, he doesn't have that quite down yet but he does love paper. It was fun to watch him tear it up :). All in all we all enjoyed the wonderful week together. I can honestly say I really miss my little guy and I miss his parents too. My other son and daughter-in-law will return to their home tomorrow. I will miss them both very much but I look forward to meeting the child they are to have in June. I am lucky my daughter is still with me for another couple of weeks.

The Best Christmas Ever

The time has finally come! Christmas is here and the house is filled with family. But the Christmas treat is having my grandson here. We had another wonderful experience today. We were blessed to see a live ultrasound of our new unborn baby. My other daughter in law is pregnant now. She is at 14 weeks yesterday. We took my mom with us. She had never seen anything like that. The new little one was very active.

The meeting between my mother and Ethan was a very emotional moment. No not for Ethan but for my mom. She started to tear up. As I sit here and write this, she is in the living room having a blast with that little stinker. Let me tell you how spoiled he is. He will not eat store bought apple sauce in a jar. It must be freshly made. Guess what his mom is doing right now? lol

Ethan is a riot. He still can't crawl but he gets around with an army crawl. Let me tell you his crawl is pretty fast too. He is so enjoying the attention. There are 9 adults in this house at his beck and call and we all enjoy playing with him. He laughs more now than he used too. I just love sitting around watching him and of course holding him and hugging him and kissing him. I guess the greatest thing of all is that he will come to me. He recognized me right away.

There will be more coming up as the days go on.

Christmas time with a baby in the house.

Christmas is almost here.

Again I don't know where this is going tonight but I felt I had to write. I went to Mass tonight, Yes, I worship in the Catholic Church, and the deacon gave the "sermon" or whatever they call it now. I found it very interesting because I felt he was right on as to what I have been feeling all week. This is the first Christmas in years where I have felt an unbelievable amount of joy and peace. You might say that I basically have it all, I have much to be thankful for. I have a wonderful family a grandson a grand baby on the way, my husband and kids are employed, I don't have to go out and work, a warm house etc. I am extremely grateful to God for providing all these things to me but it has been more than that. Since Advent began I have actually felt Christ's presence. You have to understand that I don't feel that often and every Christmas for quite a few years I have not felt that at all. I honestly don't know what has changed unless it is me. I know I won't always feel this way but I am enjoying this feeling at the moment. The deacon told us that Jesus is the reason for the joy. I have been studying a section of the psalms this year and they have made it very very clear that God is truly with us always, that he cares about everything we do, that he protects us and watches over us. What is different is that I am truly trying to take this to heart especially the Trust in Him statement. I have become frazzled several times in the past couple of weeks but I have told Him that I trust him and have truly tried to do that and I guess he honored that by filling me with joy. This is not the joy of excitement for Christmas though I am because I am expecting all the kids to come, but a peace that surpasses all understanding. As the deacon told us Joy begins with the letter J as does Jesus. Jesus and joy go together. I liked that.

I have also found a peace in having everything finished early though in the past everything was still done early and yet there was no joy. I have found great joy in going to church on Sunday. That too doesn't always happen. I want to thank my God for this joy and hope that he will give me this peace even as the house settles down and the children leave.

I sit in front of the tree in the evening and look at the manger. I think of my grandson as being the age of when the wise men probably found Jesus. I have been told that it took them several months from the moment they saw the star till the day they found him. I have had time to meditate on the shepherds that saw the star and went to that manger and saw the baby. I have thought about being one of the shepherds and how cool would that be to see that star and find a baby. If I found that baby what would I say? What would I do?

On that note, I say goodnight. More will come as the family arrives. I believe that this is meant to be a very special Christmas that will be unique. No other Christmas in this family will ever be the same with the same joy and peace as this one. Thank you Lord for this special gift.

Grandchildren What A Blessing!

As I was waiting to fall asleep last night, I was thinking about writing in the blog today. I had the most joyous encounter (if that is possible with a 7 month old over the internet) with my grandson. I wanted to write it down because I then print this blog and will show it to my little one when he gets older. I want to treasure and remember all these special memories of him. Last night I saw him again on internet video. He turned 7 months yesterday. So I started to sing him Happy Birthday and he looked up at me on the computer and started to sing too. Oh my gosh how cute is that? Let me tell you it made my entire day. I couldn't stop smiling the whole evening.

I know I told you that Ethan means strong and he is mentioned in the Bible in 1 Chronicals 15:17,19. But what I didn't realize till a few day ago, when my other son happened to mention it, was that Ethan was also a musician (percussionist) in King David's band. He wrote Psalm 89. It talks about the reign of David and the great things God has done. It praises God. It is interesting that God showed me this before I heard my little grandson sing. It warms my heart

even more.

At the present time I am studying the Psalms of the Assent. I just finished Psalm 127. It talks about the joy of children and what a blessing they are from God. Vs. 3 Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him. I have been blessed with three and the greatest blessing of all is the frosting on the cake, the grandchild.

Let Me Tell You About My Grandson 3

It isn't easy being a long distance grandmother. The trip from Utah to New York is very long. Flying isn't as much fun as it used to be. But it's all worthwhile when you have a smiling little face at the other end.

Ethan is getting cuter by the day. He has quite a personality. He is 6 months old now and he knows he is boss. He knows how to manipulate and he not only has his mother but also his dad wrapped around his little hand. He doesn't have to cry for very long to have someone run to his side to pick him up. I confess I did the same thing while I was there. He is very loved and he has two great parents and he knows it and knows how to take advantage of that. Babies learn fast!

He hates wearing clothes, (what baby does after all there was no such thing as clothes in the womb) and his favorite time of day is bath time. That comes in the evening before bed. As soon as he is in his little tub he will kick his feet and splash all over the place. He is fun to watch. He doesn't like his face washed.

He is starting to eat solid foods and he loves his applesauce. He also eats sweet potatoes and while he was there he tasted grapes from his aunt and his naughty grandmother (that would be me) put a little vanilla ice cream on her finger and he liked that too. He was going to start pears after I left.

He rolls over by himself now but he does not crawl yet. He can sit up but hates being on his belly. So he will sit starting at the toy in the distance. He will try to reach for it but not far enough that he will fall over on his belly. If he is put on his belly he will do his best to roll over. On the other hand he wants to walk! If you stand him up he is all excited and can almost stand up by himself. He can sit in his big round bouncy chair and bounce up and down for hours. This chair has music. When the music flips on he will bounce to the music like he is dancing. In fact, I think he will be a good dancer when he grows up. But best of all I love his conversations. He will look you straight in the eyes and start babbling. Of course the only two distinguishable sounds are ma and da but he is having a conversation. From time to time he will stop and if you respond he will continue talking. I just so enjoyed listening to him from the moment I got there till the moment I left. All these things will remain in my heart. I look forward to Christmas where I will see them all again.

Changing the subject I did have an interesting time on the plane. They now have internet. It is not fast enough to play computer games but certainly enough to surf the web and I chat with friends. I was able to have a free taste of this on the way to New York and it was really fun. I hung out on my computer till the battery ran out.

Quilts Quilts and More Quilts

There have been books (other than how to...) written about quilts. I have never read any of them but I think I am beginning to understand why it makes me think so much about my life. Maybe God inspired women to make quilts so he could teach us things. This past year I have put together 4 quilts I think. I wrote about one of them in a previous blog. My best quilt was the one I made for my grandson. It is the most beautiful piece of work I think I have ever created. I felt so incredibly satisfied with it that I kept thanking God for the inspiration, the equipment etc.

But it is the quilt I just finished that made me think the most. This quilt was quite a learning experience. It is by no means a perfect quilt. I am not a perfectionist and will never be. This quilt was a kit as most of my quilts are (other than the baby quilt). Though it is a square, it is built on the diagonal instead of straight up and down. So you build from the corner down. It makes sewing it a bit more difficult because it has a way of stretching out of place. The top came out pretty nice considering I didn't use a walking foot, like I should have. I didn't want to just leave the top plain. I wanted to embroider this quilt. I decided it was too big to machine quilt it by hand so I found a lovely machine embroidery that would fit in the square. I must say it was quite a challenge to center the three layers in the embroidery hoop to machine embroider it. There are 69 squares in this quilt. Anyway, many of the squares are not centered perfectly. Then I picked another pattern for the rectangles. Again not all of them are centered either. To make a long story short, the short sashing is bunched up with the little string of embroidery and the large sashing has a most beautiful design but isn't perfect either. Yet, I would look at the quilt from afar and think it was pretty cool and as a whole not bad, actually pretty. I then thought about myself. I am like that quilt. I have so very many flaws. I am just like that quilt, bunched up in some areas and definitely not always aligned in God's will. There is so much for me to improve on and still learn. Yet, God looks at this quilt that is me. He sees the flaws but he looks at the big picture. He sees the quilt as though it was perfect and he loves me anyway. He loves me like the person who will receive will love it because that special person will know how hard I worked on it and how much love and passion and frustration went into making it.