Its time for a change

Its only Tuesday and its been a rough week. I cant really go into the details out of respect to all the people involved. All I can say is since Sunday I have had to dig deep for strength, faith, and hope. I have had to try very hard to not let stress overcome my life. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I cant fix everything and to not beat myself up for only doing what I can do. Without my sister and husband I don't know how I would handle stressful things. I apologize for the vagueness but when the time is right I may be able to write more. The truth is that everyone is okay and I know each day will get better. I believe that God will only put on you what you can handle so with faith, prayer, and time this thing that seems like a huge crater in the road will merely be a small bump.

Its almost Christmas...

Yep its almost Christmas and I am so excited!!! Christmas Eve will be here in just a few hours and then the family togetherness starts. Tomorrow evening my Dad, Step-Mom, Brother, and Sister will come to the house and we will have dinner and then open gifts. My Brother n law most of the time doesn't make it because he has to work and we never know if Eric will be there or not. It usually stays pretty low key. Eric and I get up Christmas morning and open gifts together when we can but we never know what his schedule will be like.

The CRAZY Christmas doesn't happen until we go to my Mom's parents at noon on Christmas day. We pack 20 to 25 people in my Grandparents fairly small house and let the fun begin. Somehow we all manage to find a place to sit and eat. Imagine being in a busy restaurant with people being very loud, and some being rude all asking for 5 different things at once, well that's what its like. You get to a point where you cant hear yourself think. Its a little more than my Sister likes to deal with but I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. After we eat we all cram into the living room for our dirty Santa gift exchange. That gets pretty hilarious to because we all end up fighting over a 6 pack a beer or lottery tickets....really redneck I know. Eventually that game ends and then we spend the rest of the day laughing and drinking and playing games in-which my little cousin wins every-time.

Later that day we will head to Eric's Grandmas where they will play cards into the wee hours of the night if possible. They like to play pretty serious so I usually try to hang back for a little bit and visit before I play. They don't really appreciate it when you are playing a game and trying to visit. They don't mean any harm by it, its just how they play.

As I wrap this blog post up we are 30 minutes before its officially Christmas Eve and I cant wait to spend time with my families. Even though we can be pretty dysfunctional it makes me who I am and lets face it will make for some good blog post.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Grandma Bonnie

I have been blessed with having many influential people in my life. Some good some not so good but all play a part in making me the person I am today. One of the most important people I have been blessed to have in my life was my Grandma Bonnie. She was like a second mother to my sister and me. She was strong, honest, and loving everything you could ever want in a grandmother. Since my parents were divorced when it was my Dads weekend it pretty much meant that we were going to be at Grandma and Grandpas. Honestly my sister and I didn't want it any other way. Grandma spoiled us. Not by buying us lots of things but in other ways. We had our own room there which occasionally we had to share with our other two cousins but that was okay we knew it was ours. We would spend hours playing dress up or barbie or house whatever our minds could dream up. We would sing, dance, put on plays the things you do as a child that can't be bought. She did her best to teach us to be ladies, to treat people with kindness and try to do what is right. She was a very traditional Grandma but at the same time understood that we were young and would inevitably make mistakes. Some of the best times were sitting around the table listening to Grandma tell stories of when she was a little girl. She would sip on her coffee and we would get so caught up you actually felt like you were living her memory. If there was blogging back then she would have been the blogger of all bloggers. She actually wrote a memoir and had a few of her stories published in magazines here and there. I admire her writing very much.

The sad truth is when Grandma passed away in 2001 I was 19 and it wasn't until then that I truly understood her influence. For awhile I felt anger because I wasn't there when she died, I felt my family had lied to me about how she was doing. We were on vacation which Grandma told us not to miss but anyway.... After the anger passed I realized that when I was younger, I cant say for sure how old Grandma was diagnosed with colon cancer. She fought like hell and beat the cancer, she beat the cancer because she knew she needed to be there for me and my Sister. My Uncle Doug told me not long after Grandma died that at one point she said to him,"I will beat this cancer because I have to help raise Bridget and Shelly." I think that she knew that there would be times that even with our parents best intentions that we would need someone to be a shoulder to cry on or a safe place to go. You see I was mad that my Grandma had been taken from me before I was ready but the thing is that I had been blessed to have her in my life for years longer than what could have been. I think of her almost every day and wonder if she would be proud of me and sometimes wish so badly I could ask her for advice. I miss her and will always hold her closely in my heart.

I need to know these things

My husband has the worse habit of forgetting to tell me things that are really important. This particular case and point would be that one of our close friends/Eric's cousin-in-law's Grandma passed away on Sunday. I knew that she had been sick but had no idea that she had passed. Eric talks to his cousin almost everyday so I figured that he would tell me as soon as he found out. Well that was not the case. I found out today while cutting a family members hair! I was like "how is your Mother-in-law?" She very nicely said, "Bridget she passed away on Sunday." I felt like an ass and in my head was cussing Eric's name! This is the second time he has done this to me. The last time it was 3 weeks later and we were out to dinner with friends that I asked about their Grandmother and yep that's right she had sadly passed 3 weeks earlier. I guess I should start getting the newspaper so things like this don't happen anymore. However I have to ask myself why Eric can remember to tell me the smallest detail about something at work but things like this get put in the back of his mind? I think it's a guy thing. Sorry honey it had to blogged.

Charity, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

What made my childhood bearable???

My favorite thing of the week is here again...Mama Kats writing assignment, here are this weeks prompts....

1.) For your birthday a sibling has decided to have the first six months of your blog printed and bound. Write a forward for the book.

2.) Write a 26-line poem using all the letters of the alphabet, where the first line starts with the letter "A," the second "B," the third "C," etc., culminating with the final line starting with "Z."(writersdigest.com)

3.) Start your story with, "In retrospect, I wouldn't say it was my best idea." And end it with, "And that's how I attempted to make this world a better place.(writersdigest.com)

4.) What would the truth have done? Write about a time when honesty was NOT the best policy.(writingfix.com)

5.) What made your childhood bearable? Write about it.

I have choose to do #5. What made your childhood bearable? This is an easy question for me to answer. Although my grandparents are close runner ups my sister is what made my childhood bearable. Our parents were divorced when I was three and she was only three months. From the time I can remember we have been looking out for each other. Even though I torchered her at times as you read from last weeks assignment, I was the only one allowed to do so. I can't even begin to explain how she made my childhood bearable. We have a bond that only sisters can have. The kind of bond that at its worst is more than you could ask for. I love my parents but being divorced things were not always the easiest on us. Sometimes we felt torn between them and I become much of a people pleaser wanting everyone to be happy. My sister on the other hand was the opposite, she felt what she felt and didn't apologize for it. Even though we are almost complete opposites we have always been close. Some of my best memories were spent riding our horses at Grandmas and being completely silly. We would do things that only we thought were funny and spend hours riding up and down the same dirt road. The days of being a kid are long gone and yet the closeness we share is as strong as ever. She is my go to person, the one person that even if I am wrong she will do her best to side with me. I could call her in the middle of night for any reason big or small and I know she would be there for me. My husband sometimes gets a little upset that I say this because he feels like he should be that person. In some ways he is but I try to tell him that she has been there my whole life and there is an unconditional love there that cant be broken. I love you sis, I cant imagine my life without you, your the best sister anyone could ask for.

Thanks Dad your the Best!

So to trying to make a long story short, my Dad and I have not always had the relationship we have now. Thanks to getting married and building a house I now have a much closer relationship with him. My dad knows that Eric and I love to sleep in and that I also like reading the Sunday paper but rarely do because I don't go get it. My dad gets up early everyday and often drives by our house and always says, "I drove by at 6a.m. and it didn't look like anyone was awake." Although he already knows we wont be. So this morning my Dad called at like 10:30 and said,

"What are you doing Bubb?" (That's what my family and some friends call me).

I said, "I'm in bed drinking coffee."

Then he asked, "are you reading your paper?"

I was like, "no, is it on my porch?!"

Dad said, "no its in your mailbox...enjoy."

Me, "Thank you, thank you."

As I put on my boots and practically skipped to the mailbox we chatted some more about my lil brothers first sleep over, when Eric would be home from work and a few other random things. To most people this is really no big deal but this small act made my day! Thanks again Dad! Sorry I cant tell a short story I did my best.