What a wonderful first Mother's Day I had! LJ (and RJ) certainly knows what I enjoy.
For us, Mother's Day started the week before with family effort to make gifts for LJ's grandmothers. RJ has taken almost all the pictures since LJ was born, LJ has been the subject of most of said pictures, and I have edited most of these photos. We made a collage of pictures, framed the collage and sent them in the mail to be received by our mothers sometime before Mother's Day. We enjoyed doing it! It gives me practice using the software I will use when I get around to being serious about this digital scrapbook I'm thinking about making.
My Mother's Day was grand. LJ woke to eat at 6:20 am, I fed him and then I went back to bed while RJ was up for the day. I slept until 8:30...WOW! RJ had made me coffee...his 2nd pot to make...ever! He quickly made his third pot...ever as I tasted it and could tell (by the strength) that it was not decaf, so he threw it out and made a pot of decaf. Then, RJ took LJ to Lowe's with him and I got to read the paper and drink my coffee. When they returned, LJ was asleep and slept for another hour. RJ had come home with breakfast tacos, so we ate those while LJ napped. LJ awoke and it was time for me to open LJ's gifts to me. One was a nice journal in which to write and the other was... (And this is where LJ knows his mama) a DVR receiver for the dish! Of course, LJ is like his father and bought a refurbished one. This is amazing! Now, if I am watching a show and LJ wakes from his nap...I can push "pause". If I am feeding LJ and he gets so fussy I can't hear the TV...I can push "pause". You get the idea. This is MUCH fun! It has many more features, but I love it! Later, I did the normal things mommies (especially those who work) do on the weekend...go to the grocery store and do the laundry. We went to Mass that evening and I got to stand with all the other mothers during the prayer for mothers. This was my first time and it was very special!
We hope all the mom's out there had a great day and we hope you remembered to be sweet to your mom as well!
Question:
What is a memory that you have of my (MJ) dad?
9 comments:
I’ll have lots of memories of your PawPaw to share, but for now I have two that I think are relevant for you.
1) PawPaw’s feet were very unique. He’d take his shoes and socks off every night as he relaxed at the end of the day. He had very high arches and what looked like pretty tough toe nails. If you want to get a visual for what they looked like…look at my feet…they are pretty similar! We’ll have to see if you get feet from my side of the family.
2) PawPaw would rarely make a bathroom stop when we were on a car trip. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem for you, LJ, as you don’t have this issue yet, but for me, this was a problem. My needing to use the restroom rarely coincided with PawPaw’s needing to use the restroom. But, I guess when you have several people in the car, you can’t be stopping all the time or you’ll never get where you are going. I guess this is something to which I adapted because now I think your dad stops WAY too much!
I have many memories of your PawPaw...I will share two of them. The first is about her old car she drove in high school. He was very concerned that she took good care of it! I rode to golf with her a lot and whenever we stopped to fill up with gas, she would record her mileage in a little notebook she kept in the glovebox and then I would calculate her miles per gallon. I'm not sure if he ever looked at this book but she sure kept it up just in case he wanted to see it! And the other thing is, he always called me Lena Horne. So, when I would come over and come into the house, I would always be greeted with some comment like, Well, there's Lena Horne or How is Lena Horne?
Lena
I have very vivid memories of Mr. J (PawPaw). I remember sitting around watching TV with martyj and he would come in the room and grab the back of my neck, exclaiming, "I am gonna get your gauze (sp?)!!!". It was a little scary because martyj and I were young, and Mr. J seemed extremely big to me then - really tall and, well, just bigger than life.
Chrissy
I remember Mr. Josefy singing songs will silly words sometimes, like "I was dancing, with Henry, to the Tennesee Waltz", or something to that effect.
I remember his trade mark "get your gauze" antics. I think there was also an achilles tendon squeeze, if you weren't fast enough to get away in time.
I remember he had a great big smile. I have a nice photo of this smile, showing Mr. J with a big grin as he was taking Martha and friends on a ride in his ski boat at the lake house.
And then of course there are the priceless memories from the trip in the motor home to South Dakota, which include:
1. Mr. J mistaking me for a burglar one night when I was sneaking back into the motor home after a trip to the camp site facilities,
2. Mr. J "helping" me fish (I didn't catch any fish, but Martha, who was fishing unassisted nearby did, and she had quite a laugh about my predicament), and
3. Mr. J getting pretty ticked off about motor home malfunctions, one of which was allegedly caused by my excessive use of toilet paper.
Katherine
I have thousands of memories of Pawpaw and I can't even begin to tell you all of them. so, here is the short list.
-I remember when mom and dad would leave us at the lake for Mawmaw and Pawpaw to babysit for a few days. It was always fun to go on boat rides after dinner and just enjoy being with each other.
-Once when they were watching us, Pawpaw took us with him to a local church so that he could fix their sound system and do some other work. Pawpaw was always doing something for someone else.
-Pawpaw would always get up in the morning and read the newspaper and drink his coffee... that's how you knew when it was time to get up was when Pawpaw was at the kitchen table
-Pawpaw also used to drag us around the lake on the ski bob. He always went really really fast and it was really really scary but really really fun.
-He also drove the boat while dad tried to teach me how to ski.
-Be careful when you're eating grapes that you don't pick them off the vine out of the bowl. You have to CUT a bunch off and put them on your plate and THEN pick them off the stem.
-Pawpaw would always sit in his chair and watch golf in the afternoons and he would usually fall asleep, but if you tried to change the channel he would tell you that he was still watching that.
Well, I have like a thousand more... but you can ask me about them later!
Well, there are many good ones!
I remember when we would go to the lake house to visit during the winter and how he still wanted to barbeque despite it being cold and rainy outside. So, he just brought the BBQ pit inside the boat house and opened the windows! I felt obligated to stay in there with him and chat, even though I could barely see him for all the smoke. I think I just gave up on breathing oxygen for a while!
Also, on another trip to the lake house, to ask for permission to marry your mother, we were once again down at the boat house. He offered me a (bottled) beverage and a pair of side-cutters to open the bottle. He was pretty good at using the side-cutters for such a task, but this was my first time. After struggling a bit, I found myself looking down at a bottle without a cap and with a good part of top of the glass neck broken away. I watched nervously as bit after bit of broken glass settled to the bottom of the bottle. I did not know if I should just try to drink from it and hope to filter out the glass shards with my teeth or what. Remember, the purpose of the visit and the fact that I was trying to make a good impression! I suspect that he was keeping track of me out of the corner of his eye, and I wonder if he was waiting to see what I was going to do next. Thankfully, before long, he offered me another bottle and he happily showed me how to carefully open it with a pair of side-cutters. Oh, and as far as the topic of the conversation, that all worked out well, as you might have guessed.
In a less harrowing experience, I remember working on the boat with him, and trying to figure out what kept going wrong. We made a pretty good team!
I have two favorites:
1. One Thanksgiving Mawmaw had a very bad headache and could not cook. She left a list of what was needed to be done. So I made a few pies and some side dishes. While we were saying grace before dinner, Pawpaw said he was thankful that I had helped cook. He made a big deal out of something that was no big deal at all.
2. Once for some reason I hung around while Pawpaw was fixing one of the boat lifts. He spent several hours making two wooden things and when we lowered it instead of it going into the water it simply floated. This of course cracked him up and he had to add some weights in order for wood to sink.
Pawpaw's favorite daughter in law - KJ
So many memories to choose from. I remember when dad came home from Indonesia and he rode with me all over the oil fields from Scurry County to Santa Anna and home to Midland because I was working and needed to check on some things. I think he talked the whole way, which was extremely unusual for him.
I remember wrestling on the floor.
I remember playing wiffle ball in the backyard as an entire family.
I remember mending fences on the farm and getting to use the post hole digger.
I remeber working on lots of things in the shop and nary a word was spoken for 30-40 minutes and then he would open the door and spit from his chewing tobacco wad and then say a couople of sentences only to repeat the scenario multiple times throughout the afternoon.
I remember getting to eat lunch at precisely 11:30 on Saturdays and then hoping work was done because dad layed down for a nap.
what good memories they are.
Big Bro
I am new to reading your blog and this answer is comeing a little late, but the thing I remember most about my PawPaw is that when he was sitting on his green recliner, me and all my siblings would hope he didn't remember to do the tickle test, but he always would and I would always lose because he always knew where to tickle me. My oldest sister,SJ, would always win because she is the least ticklish.
Jrod92
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