Goodbye 2023

 Jeff and I are in Auburn resting and relaxing for a few days. It feels good to be quiet. It is cold! I am not a cold weather fan and even pulled out the jacket that I really only wear every couple of years up here. We will ring out the year out quietly. I will write more about that in a bit, but let’s share a picture or two from the last week. 

We celebrated Christmas with our little family on Friday, the 22nd. We had to share Lindsay this year but honestly doing it early since we are all agreeable makes it easy on both kids and their families. We don’t mind. Paul Allen and Lindsay usually work out a date together and Jeff’s sister and brother-in-law are fine with it too. 

The grandsons are at a wonderful age. They remind me of Lindsay and Paul Allen at that age in the same living room oh so many years ago. 

Here they are jumping on bubble wrap from a gift. It was quite loud, but little Miles was not timid at all. He couldn’t find space on it but he just jumped next to Tucker and Palmer. He stayed right in the mix of things with the big boys. What a difference a year made!

Mother spent the night with us on the 22nd since we would be opening presents until past the closing hour at her assisted living place. We got up the next morning and ate a big breakfast and leftovers for lunch before we took her home for the evening on Saturday. 

I drove her back and it was such a beautiful day that I slipped away to stroll on the beach while Jeff went over to a friend’s house to take a gift.

It was about 4:00 in the evening and let me just say I could have stayed forever. A lot of emotion was left out there on that stroll and God met me there for the walk.

Christmas Eve morning was church and such a beautiful service. Again, God met me there with comfort. After church we got Mama out and brought her back to our house and we made a pot of spaghetti. We all 3 sat down to watch a Christmas movie. We watched A Christmas… Present with Candace Cameron Bure. I highly recommend it. A nice family movie.

Donna and Al have modeled what to do with Christmas when you have adult kids. They have their own little traditions for Christmas Day. They take a drive down 30A and back. On Christmas morning Jeff and I took us a walk in the beach. A storm had blown in from the Gulf overnight and the water was still kicking and made for fun watching. I am pretty sure the waves were 7-8 feet at the second sandbar. We again picked up Mom and brought her to our house. She slept for most of the day on the couch. I think all of it had worn her out but one shouldn’t be alone at Christmas.

Still not too tired of the beach, Jeff and I once again made beach trip on the morning of the 26th. We drove west to Opal Beach and it was a bit chilly that day. The shells were heavy and made for fun scouring while we walked. 

I began taking Christmas down on that afternoon and finished the next day while Jeff and Paul Allen fished. I love the decorations but I am always ready for a clean slate.

I think it was Christmas Day evening I read or skimmed all of this past year’s blog posts. What a year! It has been a hard year… sinus surgery, 2 cataract surgeries to start with. I can breathe and see better:) Mom’s fall, spending a month in rehab and then with me, then moving and selling her home and having to get rid of a lifetime of things… then Jeff’s Parkinson’s diagnosis and retirement. That is A Lot to take in and really the year before had been hard too with Jeff’s brother passing. 

If you want to know the real honest truth I am not thinking 2024 is going to be a piece of cake either, not just with my family but with our country. You can’t have an invasion at the southern border and things not get wild very soon. Listen my own little town is seeing big problems already. 

I think I am going to need a lot of courage for the next year. I do know however that my Lord will walk with me through every hardship and provide me with the courage I need. 

I am going to rest these few days before going home. We took Mama to her sister’s to visit. I don’t think she will be able to make that trek again. I could be wrong but she really wanted to go so we took her. My Aunt Faye will try to get her to eat and cousins will drop into visit so she should be fine. 

I finished my last book for this year today. Kinfolk by Sean Dietrich. It was my 23rd book this year. A prime number and a nod to something in the book. A good one to round out 2023.

I am going to give January a couple of weeks to get used to a new routine with Jeff home before I blog again. 

Thanks for following along….

Sandy

Back to School

I have no idea where this week went. It is Friday, and I am left wondering what happened to the time.

Monday and Tuesday I went back to one of the schools that I had previously worked at and helped organize the science lab and do a refresher training for the teachers. It was fast and furious and at the end of it, my little feet were swollen and tired. My throat a little dry.

Little glimpses of my sewing room that speak ... she was once a teacher.

Wednesday was an attempt to catch up on just a bit of housework and laundry. It was a crazy day with all kinds of running around. My computer started acting real funky, so I had to drive to Destin to Best Buy. Thank goodness the traffic has let up or I would have been on that task all day. I have had this little MacBook Pro for three years this month. I am not even going to act like I don't just have a little love affair with it, so when it started doing the strange things, I was so sad. I thought maybe it was a goner. Hubby purchased the three year Geek Squad thingie with Best Buy when he bought it. It was one week from expiring...I really didn't even know he had done that, since it was a birthday gift. I had the box that it had all come in, so that is when I realized it. It did have a virus, and they were able to fix her. They called yesterday right after I got back from my Mama's and I rushed out to get it. That was fast.

Thursday was spent going to my Mom's. 

Y'all, it is unbelievable how much better she is. I can't get over it. Two months ago, I was visiting a retirement home and thinking things were fixing to be a downhill slide. She is up and back to her old self. I don't know exactly what happened. Maybe it took that long for the antibiotics to work or that long for the two sinuplasty surgeries to work...OR if God just took care of it, but I am rejoicing.

I am looking forward to day at home to catch up on cleaning, laundry, and maybe even a bit of yard work. That is if I can stand the heat. I keep hearing others say it is getting cooler where they are, but I am not feeling it yet. I am ready for the cooler temperatures, just not the shorter days.

The week picked up for Hubby tremendously. High school principals are busy!!! I could see the tired creep in. I tried really hard even with my busy week to make sure he had a good supper on the table and a pleasant evening. I really have to tell you that I love just being a little old housewife.

I made these bunnies about 25 years ago. They were popular at the time. This set was for my classroom. I made another for my daughter.

The world is just a little more nutty every day. I only have to be at a school and start hearing the stories to think how sad and how much trouble there is in this world. It reminds me quickly how much I need to pray for our country. I am so grateful for my many blessings, but most of all for my faith and family.

The globe never made it to a classroom. It was purchased with S&H green stamps when I was in the second grade. It was always in my bedroom. 

Well I am off to the day's tasks,

Sandy

My Love for Dick and Jane

My love for all things Dick and Jane began in the Fall of 1966. I arrived in first grade at Repton Elementary, a very small community in south Alabama. I did not attend kindergarten as there was no public kindergarten in those days. I can tell you, I was none to happy about starting school and spent the entire first day of school crying. I know I drove everyone nuts!!! I can truly remember the day, and several comments made by my classmates who thought I was completely crazy. 

I might add that I had a September birthday and was the youngest too. 

The truth of the matter was that I had quite a bit of stuff happen to me in a short amount of time. My daddy has just died of cancer in August, and we had moved back to Conecuh County, Alabama where my mom and dad had grown up. Then, September rolled around and off to school I went.

By the time the bus dropped me off that afternoon, my face was one big red puffy mess. Mama snuggled me up close the rest of the evening, but back the next day I had to go. It took me a few weeks to adjust. Now, you would think from that story that I would not have loved first grade, but I did come around and grew to love my life at school. I made two of the best friends, Jane and Debra, who took me under their wing and took good care of me. 

One of my absolute fondest memories of first grade was my introduction to Dick and Jane. I could not wait for my reading group to be called to the front to sit in the chairs arranged in a semicircle. I fell in love with the idyllic life held in the pictures.

I loved Jane, but my most favorite was Spot. I always loved dogs, but my mom.....not so much. She has often commented that she doesn't understand my love for them, and if there were such a thing as reincarnation, that she would want to come back as my dog, since I treat them so well. We do not believe in reincarnation...just a joke between us.  

I can remember staring at Spot dreaming that I might have a dog like that one day. 

Skip forward in time... I got married and Hubby began to talk of getting a dog. I was "Johhny on the spot" with my breed request.  A dog like Spot in our Dick and Jane readers. I came home from work one day to meet our first "child" (first "Springer Spaniel"). We named her Sally. Needless to say, I fell in love with her and she was really was like my first child!!! We have had two more since then... Murphy and Lucy.

I won't debate the pros and cons of the books as a teaching tool, but only that I loved them as a kid.

The family, the kids, the settings, the pets, everything just seemed so perfect to me. 

About 15 years ago, I decided I would find the entire set from my elementary years. I knew which ones because of pictures and yearbooks (which we called annuals back then). Apparently, I liked them so much that I brought them home often. I have several of them in photos that Mama took as I was waited for the bus in the mornings.

I have collected the entire set from the first paperbacks that introduce the characters and the first words, then the Junior Primer, Primer, and then right on up through 5th grade. The emphasis on Dick and Jane are only in the first grade books. From grade two on, other characters are added, and then in grade three they change to more of what would be in any reading book...stories of fiction and nonfiction.

My friends gave me presents with Dick and Jane for a good while there as well....magnets, a purse, etc. I have even made my own bag from fabric I found. In my last classroom, I made the cutest curtains from that fabric.

I might be obsessed.  Many of us like to collect things, and this is one of my favorite collections.

The older grades are special to me as well. I loved the addition of poetry to third grade. Some of my favorite poems as a kid are in these books.

Book 3.1

Here is one of my favorite poems, which leads to another of my obsessions and collections.

ALL ABOUT SPACE. I will share that one another day.

The poem was written in 1958.

One last picture. It has Book 2.1 in it, but get a load of that hair. There is a story there too!!!!!!!!

I love reading about other people's collections. They are varied as we are. This is one of my favorites. 

Sandy said, "Look, look at my collection!"

Do you have a favorite? 

Blessings,

Sandy