It's My Birthday!!

Today is my birthday and I am spending it the best way ever at this time in my life!

With my kids and grandkids!!!

Here I am with my new granddaughter who will be 4 weeks on Saturday! I am getting as much cuddle time as I can while we are here with my son's family in Florida.

My daughter is here as well which also adds to the specialness of spending my day with my family.

Of course B-Daddy known as Poppa to the grandkids has to get some cuddle time in with Kaylyn too!

Even the dog senses his gentle soul and seeks some love as well.

 My daughter also known as Aunt Sara has her turn. 

We spend the days passing Kaylyn around! 

What fun!

Our older granddaughter at 4 years old is a little shy with us at first.

She warmed up to me on our first full day here.

We play a matching game with the blocks.

It is such a joy to hear her call me Grandma Nea!!

I am blessed to have hearing aids so that I can hear that.

It means a lot to me.

I did some grandma feeding and diapering as well.

I had forgotten how small those newborn bottoms are and her diapers are so small!

On our second full day Shaylee warms up to Poppa Ed.

What a thrill for Poppa to have both of his granddaughters in his arms!

Last year Shaylee did not give Poppa a hug until we were at the airport getting ready to leave.

Now we still have several days of hug time with our little girls.

And of course Helmi came along for the trip.

She would be very upset with us if I had left her home.

The plans for my special day include breakfast cooked by my son.

He claims his eggs are better than mine. :)

Then we need to shop for a shirt for B-Daddy.

I forgot to pack a few shirts for him. Oops!

So now we have no shirt to use for the family portrait we are going to get today as well.

I decided I wanted a family portrait of all of us.

Dinner will be at Cracker Barrel. 

Besides that I don't know what else is planned.

Just being together is the most important part anyway.

~Linnea~

Today Is My Day!

I am reposting my birthday post from last year and edited for this year.


Happy Birthday to Me!! The good news is I have made through another year. That is a good reason to celebrate ME. I am not doing anything special today though. Hubby and I both have to work . So today will be just a normal weekday for us. However, we will be going to The Container Store on Saturday and get more shelving for the sewing room closet. That is what I want for my birthday. I so bad want to finish the closet so I can organize my life. See my sewing blog for updates on that. We will also go out to dinner, but not sure when, probably on the weekend. And we plan to attend a Christmas Concert on Sunday.

But today is a good day to reflect and be grateful that I still have good health for the most part and have a job and that I am able to go to work. On the light side, I find it fun that I can fool people. Most folks I meet in my job think I am way younger than I really am. Heehee. I have to thank my genes for that one. I believe those genes I get mainly from my father. When he was younger he would get the same kind of comments. We were always amused by that. That reminds me, I am also grateful that I still have both of my parents.



I had to add this blinkie. I don't remember any hills. I am not planning on going over any yet either. Not for a long time!

When I was growing up one thing we did for my birthday was to go Christmas tree hunting. My mother usually had the family over to our house for a birthday dinner for me. But before the dinner we went to a tree farm to go and cut down our trees. The summer I was twelve we moved to where my parents live now and there was a tree farm right next door. That made it easy. That tree farm is not there anymore. The owners sold off a couple of lots and there are two or three homes that have been built. In the rest of the area the trees continued to grow and now they are quite tall. I remember the traffic on our street during the holidays when the tree farm was still in business.

For fun, I thought I would share a picture of me when I was a wee thing. Hope you all have a good day for my birthday!

Happy Day!

~Linnea

P.S. In the process of reusing this post, the comments that are here are from last year. But feel free to add to the ones that are already there!!! Because I love comments!

Happy Birthday to Our Granddaughter

Today our Granddaughter Shaylee turns 3 years old!

We sure wish we could be there to help her celebrate.

We have only seen her once so far.

But we do get to enjoy the pictures!

Here they are with their new little one.

My son, daughter-in-law and

Baby Shaylee Linnea.

Yes she has my name for her middle name.

She was born on Father's Day in 2006.

My son labeled this picture "Bird Perch".

See her bottom lip sticking out there.

I love this one too.
When my mother and aunt saw this one,
they both said Shaylee looks just like me in this picture.

Me with Shaylee.
The one and only time we have seen her so far.
This was the day we first met Shaylee.
Shaylee was 8 months old.
We had traveled to Florida to be there for her baptism
and for her Mommy and Daddy's wedding.

Shaylee wondering who this old guy is here.
This is B-Daddy other wise known as Poppa Ed to Shaylee.
I am known as Grandma Nea.

Her first birthday. She was eventually very blue in the face
after eating this cake. LOL!

2 years old here.
This picture reminds me very much of my daughter at that age.
My daughter Sara is Shaylee's godmother.

Here she is in a recent picture.
Happy Birthday Shaylee!!
Now you are 3 years old!
Sure wish we could be there to help you celebrate.
We love you tons and ask your Mommy and Daddy to give
you big hugs from us.
~Grandma Nea and Poppa Ed~

~~
P.S. Today is also the anniversary of the day our son left home to move
to Florida 9 years ago. Can't believe you have been gone from
home that long Son! Miss you tons!!

Wordless Wednesday-Happy Birthday to my Daughter!

Today the theme for Wordless Wednesday is Taxes.

Daughter was born April 15, 1984!

A new tax deduction until she grew up.

Thank you to Dixie at French Lique, Texas for hosting!

Theater!

Happy Birthday to my Sweetie Pie!

I wish you didn't live so far away.
Love, Nommy

Pink Saturday #14 and A Happy Birthday to Someone Special!!

Here we are at another Pink Saturday! I seem to be able to find pink somewhere each week so far. I want to thank Beverly at How Sweet the Sound who hosts Pink Saturday for us each week. Go visit her to see who else is participating in Pink Saturday. Okay, it is going to look like I am really pushing it to find pink here today. But there is a reason for this particular set of pictures. Today is my son's 28th birthday and since he is my first child, I have now been a mom for 28 years!! I find that hard to believe. So what do I have that is Pink on this anniversary of my son's birth. First of all, I want to note that his birthday falls on a Saturday and he was born on a Saturday. So I find myself reflecting on what I was doing on the Thursday before and the Friday before. On the Thursday before I had my college roommate over to our apartment for dinner. My due date was not until Jan 17th. I remember complaining to Debbie (my roommate who died in 1984) that I was tired of being big and awkward. I was just so ready to have this pregnancy over with and for the baby to arrive. Well, the next day, Friday the 19th, my water bag broke. At that time, the policy was that if the water bag broke the baby had to arrive within 24 hours. This turned into a long labor and our precious son was not born until Saturday morning. I missed having a C-section by 2 hours. The doctor who admitted me was all set to do a C-section on Saturday morning. But when he arrived to start his shift, there I was in the delivery room. I was very relieved to not have that C-section. Perhaps I complained too loudly and that was why my little guy came 4 weeks early. His weight was normal, nothing was wrong and I was able to take him home on Sunday, Dec. 22nd. My mother flew down to be with us and help me with learning to care for a brand new baby for the first time. Also it was the first time my family was split up at Christmas. It was strange for my dad and brothers to be without my mother and me. But it was all for a good reason. We also never got a tree that year, we got kind of busy obviously! LOL! So now that you read all that, you are probably wondering where is the pink here besides a new pinkish baby. On my table I have this basket of ornaments. You can see the basket in the first picture above. The next picture directly above is a close up of the ornaments in the basket. First you can see the ornaments I have posted on a Pink Saturday before I think. The fabric ones that are made from scraps of my wedding dress and my bridesmaids dresses. There is pink in the flowers in the print the bridesmaids wore. My sister-in-law had made these for us for our first Christmas.

This ornament you can see a little bit of pink in it. The present on there seems pink to me. This is the ornament given to us for our son's first Christmas in 1980. This side says "A son is...a maker of memories, a source of pride...A son is love."

Then the other side says "Christmas 1980"

Also in this basket is the ornament from our daughter's first Christmas in 1984. It is a pale pink ornament with girly things on it. This side says "Baby's First Christmas."

On this side, the flag at the top has the year on it. 1984. Across the bottom is says "A Baby Girl is love that grows in the warmth of caring hearts." There are different shades of pink in the pictures around this ornament. Try clicking on the pictures to see a closeup. Both of these ornaments are special to us. Since I don't have a big tree up this year, displaying them in a basket on the table was the next best thing. That way they are still out for me to enjoy!

Happy Pink Saturday!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for the other part of this post. My son's birthday! I wanted to share a few pictures of him growing up into the man he is today.

This is one of my favorite pictures of him. This was his Kindergarten picture. I still have it in a frame. I just love the cute little guy he was here. Oh wait, he is still cute. I get to say that because I am his mom!
When he was in 7th grade, he dressed as an old guy for Halloween. He did a pretty good job acting the part. We used something to turn his hair all white. That was also the year he had to help out at the community Halloween party as part of an assignment for his social studies class. His teacher is involved in local government and so pushed community involvement whenever possible. His teacher and I used to live in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools and were involved in the same 4-H club. It was kind of strange that both of my kids ended up having him for a teacher. His younger brother was my age and was in most of my classes as we were growing up.
His graduation picture! He is one handsome/cute guy here. Remember now, I get to say that cuz I am his mom.
Here is a more recent picture of him taken maybe 3 years ago or so. I love his soft look here.
I made this collage after he graduated from high school and gave as a gift to family members. I don't remember how many of them I made. On the back of the frame I have a listing about what year and where each pose was taken. I have a picture from shortly after he was born and for every calendar year until he graduated from high school. That last picture on the right is was at graduation. I got pictures showing the different things he did growing up. A couple of Halloween pictures, a couple of band pictures, boating, fishing, first day of school in kindergarten, baseball, scouts and theater. The picture just to the left of him in cap and gown was his costume as King Grin in the play "Snow Queen". The picture before that is just before he went to London with his high school band to march in the New Year's Day parade there. That was quite an honor for the band to go there. I still have to make this collage for my daughter and she graduated in 2002! I would say I am very very very late making that one.

So thank you for sharing my pink saturday and my memories of giving birth and my son growing up to the man he is today. And son, if you are reading this, HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY!!! I hope you are having a great day. I miss you tons and can't wait until the next time we can get together.

My Birthday Stuff

I have mentioned before that I have a secret pal at my church. This is what my secret sister gave me for my birthday. The lettering on the gift bag looks strange because it one of those images that changes as you move it. It does look kind of weird in the picture. This is what was inside the gift bag. A charming basket filled with jams and spreads. I have not tried any of them yet. I thought that was a good gift. I have not decided what I will use the basket for next. I am sure an idea will come to me eventually. It has a divider in the middle that does not come out.> My husband decided to treat me to a weekend away from home. We were not that far away. Only the next town north where I work. But we got a really good deal at the hotel we stayed at courtesy of our daughter. She works for them and she can get us a family discount. This particular hotel was part of a special deal where we got the rooms for very cheap. We could not have done this otherwise. Even though it was quite cold this weekend, we had a great time. We went Friday after my husband got off work. I had been off on Friday due to a low caseload. Other therapists had each taken a turn at taking an unpaid day off. They had me take Friday. Other than not getting paid it was nice to have a long weekend. I was already scheduled to be off on Monday as my birthday holiday. We get a paid day off for our birthday as one of our perks. So I chose Monday not knowing I was also going to have to be off on Friday. That made it a 4 day weekend for me. I have not had one of those in a long time.> On Saturday we bummed around Railroad Square. I was aware of it, but we had never taken the time to check it out. It was within walking distance of the hotel. The banners hang on lamp posts around the area. We looked at the Basement Antique store, but the prices were quite high. Nothing there I wanted bad enough to spend the money. As I told my husband, nothing was calling my name there. However at the Furniture Depot store in the top right picture there was a cake plate calling my name. We did get that at 20% off. I have it pictured later in this post. There were 3 different Thrift stores, each one benefiting a different cause. I did find a gravy boat at one of them and hubby found a couple of shirts to use for work. We also checked out the Whistlestop Antiques. Lots of stuff in there. There were several dealers with spaces in there. You could tell where one started and ended. It was laid out very well. Did not get anything there though. Did not want to spend to much money just yet. But we plan to go back sometime.> The Charles Schulz museum is in this town so there are Peanuts characters all over. These are the ones we found in Railroad Square. I am posing in the picture in the middle which is in Depot Park. Near where the old train depot used to be. It is now a visitor's center. We ate lunch at the Omelet Express. We did not have omelets though since we each had one for breakfast at the hotel cafe. So we had sandwiches. I had the Grilled Cheese with Tomato on Rye bread. It was yummy. My husband had the Reuben also on Rye bread. Inside this restaurant there were this car fronts hanging on the wall. Hubby said all three were from Jaguars. I thought that was interesting so I got pictures of them. That is him taking a break from chewing down his Reuben sandwich.> After we ate we went on a carriage ride. The ride was free, but we gave the driver a tip. The other guy helping was gracious enough to take our picture with my camera. I had never been on a carriage ride so this was fun. It was also short and sweet.

This next shot includes the horse. Did I tell you it was fun? Yeah I guess I did.In this collage, the picture on the left is where we had some coffee. Well, I had a mocha. The upper right is the street where the shops we went was on and you can see the sign for the Omelet Express where we had lunch. The table made from a slab of slate or something was outside of another coffee shop. There were several of these tables outdoors. Interesting tables too. But no one was using them. It was too cold. We checked out this coffee shop on Sunday morning and it started raining while we were in there. We got wet walking back to our hotel.

Saturday evening we went to my work staff Christmas party. It was held at a bowling alley. We had a great time. And it was a short drive from our hotel instead of about a 40 min drive from home. That made it nice. Inside was this Snoopy. Look at the size of his shoes. 23 !/2!!! I couldn't resist getting a picture of that. I did not do very well. But someone else did worse who got the low score of the evening. There was a good turn out. Dinner was pizza and then we could bowl as much as we wanted until the ending time of the party. This was more fun than the two previous years where it was dinner and dancing. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it this year!!

This collage I took mainly for the benefit of our daughter. That way she could see what this one looks like inside and out. In the top left picture, our room was on the top floor in the window to the left. It was a nice room. Thank you to our daughter for the discount.
This is the cake plate I bought at the Furniture Depot store. I have never had a cake plate before. I finally have my first one. Can you believe that? It is Vera Bradley Majolica in the Red Sunflower pattern. I think I have that right. I want to eventually get the plates, cups and bowls too. They also have chargers in this pattern. I hope I can accumulate them over the next couple of months or so. But I do love this cake plate. When we got home on Sunday, I baked some cookies to put on the plate. Doesn't that look yummy?! In the background you can see a cookie jar lid I painted quite a few years ago. Also the bird on the wall too. I know it is hard to see. I will have to post a better picture of those sometime.
In one of the thrift shops we found this cute little gravy boat which is something else I never had. When I saw this one I just had to get it. It was only $3. Can't beat that! So that was my birthday weekend. It was wonderful even though it was cold. But that is what happens with a December birthday.