Exceedingly Mundane

My mom passed away 5 years ago today. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you and miss you, Dodie (that’s what we all called my mom).

My mom hated, hated to have her photo taken, so I have very few photos of her. I went through my scrapbook pages from several years ago and found this one from Thanksgiving 2000. My parents had come to our house to have dinner with us and Gail and her family.

I miss you Dodie. I’m glad you’re not suffering any more, but I still wish you were here for me to see and talk to. 🙂

WARNING: Long, sappy, rambling, personal post ahead.

Today is my father-in-law’s birthday. I had originally thought I would post about this topic on a day associated with my husband, Tim. His birthday, Valentines Day, our anniversary, or some other day where I could blog about Tim, and about how wonderful it is that we found each other, that he shared not only his last name with me, but made me a part of his family. But, it seems I blogged about something else on all of those days. So, since this has as much to do with my FIL as my husband, I’m going to blab on about it today.

This post stems from the song “My Last Name” by Dierks Bentley.

[audio:http://www.hambones.org/blogs/stacy/mp3/My Last Name.mp3] Click (on the left, twice) to play the song and hear it in its entirety.

The lyrics that really get me all choked up are:

Daddy always told me, far back as I recall, Son, you’re part of something. You represent us all. So, keep it how you got it. As solid as it came. It’s my last name.

Darling if you’re wondering, why I’ve got you here tonight. I want to be your husband; I want you to be my wife. I ain’t got much to give you, but what I’ve got means everything – it’s my last name”

This song gets me every time, because it reminds me so much of my husband and his father. When Tim proposed to me (he got down on both knees, by the way), he said he didn’t have the world to give me, but he would if he could. He said he could just promise to love and cherish me all of the days of our lives. And he does. And I’ve come to realize what other wonderful gift he gave me – his last name and being accepted into his family as a daughter and sister.

You see, I had my own wonderful family before I ever met Tim and his family. I had a mom I loved (who is no longer with us), a Daddy I adore and two pretty awesome sisters. But when I married Tim, I got a whole extra family as part of the package deal. 🙂 And the head of that family is my father-in-law, Mitchell. Mitchell is one of my favorite men on the planet. He is right up there with my dad and my husband. I love and respect them all, immensely. Mitchell taught his three sons by example as much as the words, how to be a good man, how to be honorable, how to be respectful of yourself and others, how to love your family, love and honor God and be the man that God expects you to be. Mitchell has walked this walk all of his life, and his sons are the same way. They are honorable, hard-working, kind, very decent kind of men. Tim had the added benefit, as Mitchell did, of serving in the military, where he learned even more about honor, discipline and respect. I love the man my husband is, and I have his parents to thank for that. And I do, as often as I can. They did a tremendous job raising their sons, and I think my in-laws are so proud of all of their sons. I know I love them both to pieces (Tim’s mom and dad) and I am proud to call Tim’s brothers my very own brothers. It’s really great to have such wonderful family on both sides! 😀

So, today, Happy Birthday to my father-in-law Mitchell. Thank you for being the man and father you are.

I decided this morning to go ahead and participate in BooMama‘s Christmas Tour of Homes. She very graciously sponsored a tour of homes earlier this year, in the fall, but I didn’t get a chance to play along.

I’ve been trying to take some pictures of a few things around here for the last week or so, and the pictures have not been turning out like I want. I have been trying to take pictures of our new tree and all of our outdoor lights at night, and even using a tripod, they are coming out blurry. It bugs me 🙂 But, I thought I would play along anyway, and post a few pictures of our little home at Christmas. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy your stay!

Here’s our front door with garland, lights, our wreath, and you can even see the icicle lights that are on the roof peeking down (yep, sorry, this is one of those blurry ones!):

I love snowmen and have them scattered around, even one at the front door, to greet everyone:

We got a new tree this year, artificial but prelit:

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care (on my snowflake holders from Crate and Barrel, I love these, they were a surprise a couple of years ago from my husband!):

I put out my Snow Village pieces, but broke them up into two areas this year. We got a new entertainment center when we got our new TV earlier this year, and it has a wide area at the top, so we decided to put a few of the houses up there:

We also put out garland with lights and red bows on our deck railing, out back. I can see the deck from the kitchen, and I love being in there in the evenings, cooking or washing dishes, and seeing my deck all lit up:

I had already blogged about my snowmen here, but here’s a couple of them that I love:

And just yesterday, I blogged about my nativity that I love, as it has very special meaning for us:

I didn’t take a picture of our kitchen table, which has a metal tree decoration with tea lights and a nice red and green plaid tablecloth on it right now. It’s full of bags and mail and I just didn’t take the time to clean it off! 🙄 I want to post some pictures of some of my favorite ornaments, but I’ll save that for another day.

Hope you enjoyed the visit, thanks for stopping by and … Merry Christmas! 😆

I’m going to take a bit of a stroll down memory lane here…

I know it’s not right, but I had a favorite grandmother growing up. This was my mom’s mom, and everyone in the family called her “Presh”. I believe it was short for “precious”. My grandfather passed away before I was born, but I remember my grandmother very well. She was so sweet and very sentimental (like me!). She always called me by a little nickname too – “my little ange” (which was short for angel). When I would go visit, she would show me things in her old house, which was a church in the Civil War (I always thought that was so cool!) Anyway, she would tell me that she was going to leave me things in her will, and asking me what I liked and wanted of her belongings, trinkets, things in her house. It was a sweet little thing she always did, and I’ve only recently come to realize that she did the same thing with my older sisters! And here I was, thinking I was special! 😕

Anyway, my grandmother fell and broke her hip in her 80’s and soon thereafter went to spend the rest of her days in a nursing home. My parents had to sell her house and her belongings to help pay for the nursing home bill. I was in school at the time, and not really aware of what was going on. Most of the things that I had thought I would inherit from my grandmother were sold to an antiques dealer. A few things she had already given me, and I treasure them now. One of them, an insignificant thing, is a set of pink and white Pyrex casserole dishes.

Now, my grandmother loved pink. To say it was her favorite color is an understatement. She had pink everything, and she left in her will which pink suit she wanted to be buried in, I’m almost positive. My mother, in obvious rebellion, despised pink. I learned early in life to never, ever give my mother any gift or clothing that was pink. She refused to wear it or use it. Anyway, I love pink, and I’m so glad to have these dishes. I don’t use them, but I keep them in my cabinet to remind me of my grandmother.

I saw on this blog the other day, a link to a site that lists all the old Pyrex cooking and serving ware. I was so glad to find this, for I didn’t know what pattern my grandmother’s Pyrex was, or how old it was. Now, thanks to this info, I know that it’s called Gooseberry and is from the late 1950’s.

Here is mine:

And here’s where I keep them, waaaay up on the top shelf, for safekeeping, out of harm’s way!

P.S. I think I may start doing more of this. I’m going to take some pictures of things that I have from my parents or grandparents, or from Tim’s family, things that are sentimental and mean something to me or to Tim. I will blog occasionally about them. In fact, I’ve even setup a special category called “Treasures”. 🙂