Day 20: Describe 3 significant memories from your childhood - Dedicated to my grandparents.

Challenge day 20: Describe 3 significant memories from your childhood.

This blog is dedicated to my grandparents, Barbara and Larry Hale, who I love very, very much.

     This past weekend we went up to Memphis to get my mama, granddaddy and grandmama settled into their hotel. My granddaddy has multiple myeloma, cancer of his bone marrow, and has been taking chemo all summer. He's starting his most important treatment soon, intensive chemo to get his system ready for a bone marrow transplant next month, that will attempt to send his cancer into remission. He felt really good Saturday for the first time in a long time, so we all went out to eat where he wanted, at Cracker Barrel so he could get a steak and fried apples. He even felt good enough to sit outside in their rockers afterward for probably an hour talking to all of us. Definitely the best day we've all spend together in a very long time. 

     Being up there with them, just spending time like that, got me thinking about the many times I've stayed with my grandparents, or that we've gone on vacation with them, or all the Christmases we've had over there. Most of my happiest childhood memories are ones with them in them. Life was so simple and so laid back when I was at my grandparents' house. I have never felt less than amazingly loved and one of the most important things in their lives. They call me their 'loving' grandchild, because I have always loved crawling up in their laps and hugging and kissing on them, but really I think I got that from them. I was their first grandbaby, and I was probably the most loved baby that ever lived. Not much has changed since then; I'm still hugged and kissed on constantly, I'm still spoiled by them, and I'm still loved beyond measure.  

     My granddaddy was a farmer my whole life, and my grandmama either helped him in the field or stayed at their house to work in the garden or spend time with me if I was over there. Many of my memories with them are from the times they let me go with them to the fields, or of walking with Grandmama to the creek behind their house...things like that. Most kids didn't have such a precious, simple life like that, but I wouldn't trade anything in the world for those memories. I loved walking to the creek with my Grandmama, especially if it had just rained and I could walk barefoot through the mud. I remember getting to go to the fields with them if they were working, and riding the tractor with Granddaddy, and drinking the best, coldest water out of their water jugs and snacking on the salted peanuts Granddaddy always had in his shirt pocket. In the fall when they harvested the soybeans or cotton, they'd let me play in the trailerload of shelled beans or fluffy white cotton bolls. It was kind of like having the biggest sandbox ever full of little soybeans, or laying on the biggest pillow ever. If they worked in the garden I would walk behind them, digging in the dirt for marbles - the plot where their garden was used to be an old houseplace. Over the years we found dozens of marbles there. My first marble was a little periwinkle blue one. I still have it. Grandmama was never too busy to take time out to fix me biscuits and gravy for breakfast, or watch me ride my bike in the carport, or push me in the swing that used to be in their front yard, or walk me to my Mawma's house next door. At night, after they let me stay up way too late watching tv with them, they'd tuck me into my bed under as many blankets and quilts as I wanted, all of them soft as can be from being washed a hundred times. 

     I can't remember ever being unhappy with them, or wanting to go home, or wishing I had someone else to play with when I was at their house. If it was just me and them, the I couldn't be happier. I wish everybody had memories with their grandparents as wonderful as I have. I hope one day I'm as loving and as patient and as giving and as strong a role model of a grandparent to my grandchildren as my grandparents are to me. If I'm half the grandparents they are, I will have accomplished something great indeed. 

I love you Granddaddy and Grandmama.

Here's some of our pics. Please excuse them not being the best quality, most of them are old photos scanned into my computer on not the best quality scanner. But for my purpose, it's the picture and not the quality that counts here.

My grandmama and me, I'm about a year old.

My grandmama and me the day Molly was born

My granddaddy and Molly, Caleb, and me on Halloween, 1998

My grandmama mowing the yard, letting me ride in the leaf catcher

My granddaddy on one of our vacations. He wouldn't ride a real horse, but he said this one was safe :)

Family pictures, I think I'm about 13 here.

Our vacation to California. Behind us is the Pacific ocean.

Christmas card pictures, 2005

Another Christmas picture

And another :)

My loving grandparents

Christmas picture 2006, by my granddaddy's airplane

Christmas picture 2007

My Grandmama, Mama, and me on dressing making day last fall

My grandparent's Christmas card picture maybe three years ago

This was the last family picture we had made before my aunt Tiffany died in 2004, the last time my original family was all together. I miss her very much, and I know my grandparents do too. This week makes 8 years since we lost her, and I know that makes this week for them especially tough. 

A few years ago my uncle got remarried to an amazing lady named Barbara, and she has a fabulous daughter Molly's age, Lauren. Gable couldn't have picked anyone better. No one could ever replace Tiffany, but Barbara is the best mom Caleb could ask for and I know she loves him like he's her own son, and we love her just like she has been with us all along. Lauren has been great for Caleb as well. I don't think he'd know what to do now without an older sister to fight with, haha. Hopefully sometime soon I can convince everyone to do another set of family pictures, this time with our new additions :)