I'm so glad when GrAndMa comes!

Whenever grandma comes we get out the paints...

Show off our gymnastics skills...

Play checkers, paint some more, plant flowers and veggies in the garden...

(Grandma calls it "playing in the yard.")

Samuel loves to get ready with all the other kids to go to school.

Grandma always volunteers in our classrooms. She even came to watch our American Celebration Day Assembly Program.

BUT the BEsT is when we get to sleep with her in bed! Sweet Dreams!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

It has been years since I was able to celebrate my mom's birthday with her. So when she came out for a visit we surprised her with a party. (Just imagine it is January, 1st.) Kaylea and Claudia went all out making birthday hats, snowflakes, and bracelets and wrapping it in beautifully designed tissue wrapping paper. Mom couldn't believe the work that the girls put into their gifts. (They worked on them for hours!) AND I made her favorite pie... Blueberry Cheesecake! Delicious! I know it will be one party that she will always remember!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Easy Cheesecake Pie

Favorite pie crust

Mix together

1 cup softened cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 container of cool whip

*I sometimes a about 1/2 confectioners sugar

Layer cream cheese mixture with favorite fruit. I start with fruit on bottom, layer of mixture, fruit, mixture, fruit, mixture, top it off with fruit.

Freeze until ready to eat!

*I have also added peanut butter to the mixture and then layered it with chocolate chips instead of fruit. VERY rich!

The kids play soccer

This is the first season that the kids have ever played soccer. So far this has been the best sport for them because they are runners and boy do they run! Daniel stays mostly on the outside waiting for someone to kick him the ball. Kaylea on the other hand is kicking the ball the entire time... even though she doesn't know where to run. While Kaylea and Daniel play, Claudia and Samuel do this...

It's a good thing that there is the park right beside the soccer field, no need to move my chair!

Kaylea and Daniel LOVE the ribbons that they get after every practice. (Scott pointed out to me that the shin guards go on the inside of the sock!) Boy, we have a lot to learn about this sport!

My Mamaw

Things I love about my Mamaw

December 16, 1922 - January 25, 2009

-Vacations with her were quite eventful and memorable! (She was always telling Marty to quit making me laugh so everyone could go to sleep! I would giggle and giggle until the wee hours of the morning.) The beach, NC mountains, going places in the camper, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Ghost Town, Dollywood... she always took us to the best places.

-The only hotel that was acceptible was the Holiday Inn. But before going to our rooms she had to "check" it out first to make sure the room was to her satisfaction! And if there wasn't a Holiday Inn in a town where she wanted to go, then we wouldn't vacation there.

-She was the neatest house keeper of all times. I will never forget when she asked me to help her dust the walls!? Who does that? Do walls even get dusty?

-Whenever we were disobedient... a hickory stick was close by, but always missing our bottoms by centimeters. hee, hee,

-She called me every, I mean every Sunday morning when I was in college to make sure that I was up and getting ready for church. My roommates still talk about that!

-Mamaw would take me out on "dates" which consisted of eating out and shopping for whatever I wanted. I was lucky enough to be the only granddaughter.

-Stringing green beans during the hot sticky summer afternoons out under the trees in her backyard were some of the best talks that I remember having with her. (I never enjoyed the canning part of gardening.)

-As long as I can remember, our entire family would meet at 5:00 for Wednesday supper at her house. As soon as you could smell the delicious homemade biscuits and taste the melted butter oozing all over, you knew that supper was ready!

-Mamaw would show up every Christmas morning around 7:00 and want to know what Santa brought us. Even until I went to college, the question and time still remained the same. (She would come and wake us up from a deep sleep when we were teenages just so she could enjoy Christmas with us.)

-Whenever she came over to our house, instead of giving us hugs or kisses she would sneak up behind us and pull on our ear or hair.

-Mamaw and Papaw bought us go carts one year for Christmas and my cousins, brother, and I made trails all throughout the woods. She would let us ride for hours.

-She never missed her Friday morning hair appointment at the beauty shop.

-I am most proud of her for teaching us how important it was to pray daily. As a child her prayers seem to last forever but now I am so grateful for the example that she set. Family and personal Bible study was also important part of her life.

-She always kept the Sabbath Day Holy. I will never forget when our mall started opening on Sundays, she scolded me for going and telling me that Sunday was the Lord's Day. Of course I said that "everybody is doing it" and she lifted up her eyebrows, giving me a stern look, said, "well that is your choice but I don't like it." That discussion is and will always be etched into my memory.

I will miss her so much but know that I will live with her again.

I love you Mamaw!

Peacons

There's nottin' better than cracking open a peacon* and eating the nut right out of the shell! Peacon trees grow like grass where I grew up in North Carolina. They are every where so during peacon harvest time it was my job to crack them so mom could use them for most of her dishes. My mom would make the best peacon pies, peacon cookies, add peacons to fruit salads... you name it, peacons went into most dishes around my house.

Now, they can be a stubborn nut to crack and most of the time it was hard to pull out a whole nut, which my mom only accepted whole nuts because those ones were the prettiest to use in her dishes. But because my nut crackin' wasn't so great with a hand held cracker, I got to eat the broken ones. If you have ever eaten a lot of peacons at a time you know that after a while your tummy doesn't feel so hot! Well that didn't ever matter to me. I would just eat and eat and eat. After a while my mom wised up and bought a special peacon cracker that is more like a simple machine. That thing works great and I would end up with very few broken ones. I was disappointed at my success rate of craking the peacons and getting whole nuts that I decided I would just eat the whole nuts anyway. I tried very hard not to get caught, but getting caught just meant a pop on the hand or a scream from my mom, "don't eat the peacons!"

Now, I don't have a peacon tree and they are super expensive to buy in the stores, so I have never bought any for my kids. But when my mom came out for a visit she brought her peacons and hand held cracker. My kids soon learned the joy of cracking and eating peacons. They would beg her to crack more peacons. Mom caught the kids on several occasions sneaking into the kitchen, getting the nuts out of the container, and slipping them ever so quietly into their mouths, savoring every bite. I never told them about my love for peacons... it was just in the blood!

While my mom was here, she did make me her world famous birthday cookie cake with peacons. The first one that I have had in years! The kids loved grandma's cookie cake.

"Sorry Claudia, I have tried getting the broken nut out of the shell many of times before but you end up with more bitter shell than nut!"

Next time mom will have to bring out hand held nut crackers for all to use!

And of course this was Samuel's nut crackin' lovin'!

Thanks mom for helping me remember my love for peacons... You are always thinking about ME!

*peacon - western NC way of saying pecan