Our Week...

This has been a tough, tough week at our house. Please pardon the randomness of this post. I'm just writing it as I think of things to include!

On Monday, we found out that my mama's cousin, Tyron, lost his battle with cancer. He was several years older than my mama so his children were a good bit older than me, but I still have fun memories of growing up and visiting with them. Especially his mama, my Aunt Bertie. Oh my word at the stories we have from her. She's still living and I really need to go visit her soon (I haven't seen her since I was in college - and I was able to visit with Tyron on the same visit), but we laugh all the time about things that happened at her house.

First of all, she had the most wonderful, beautiful house. My grandparents all lived in Ashburn and she and my uncle also lived there, so we often went to visit her when we were in town. The house was big and gorgeous and oh my goodness at the hiding places and the treasures! We never went to her house without leaving with a gift. I always wondered how she knew we were coming so that she could have a gift ready for us. Later, I wondered if she had a gift closet! It occurred to me once I was "grown" that she was just giving away things that her own grandchildren were too old to play with! Ha! I believe that's where John acquired "Bed Dog" - a stuffed animal who had already been pretty loved on before John became his owner.

Another funny memory of Aunt Bertie is of the dinner bell in her yard. She wouldn't let me ring it! We couldn't even get close to it! She told us that the fire department would come if we rang the bell. I'm not certain that that was it's original, intended use, but I am quite sure that by the late 80s and early 90s that the fire department didn't make house calls for clanging dinner bells!

Mama had spent some time with Tyron in the past few years even though he lived several hours from her. When I started trying to work on family trees she would tell me that we needed to go visit Tyron because he'd done so much research on our ancestry.

On Tuesday, James got a haircut. Goodness gracious at the screaming and wiggling that went on during that! Eddie wanted to just trim a little above his ears because it has long since needed to be shorter. We sat James in his booster seat in the kitchen and quickly realized it was going to be harder than we thought. The scissors scared him. We'll have to try Eddie's beard trimmer next time. I did put those sweet little baby hairs in an envelope to save! It looks a little rough, but it'll do. :)

Wednesday we had an "off" day at our house. James and I were both cranky and tired. I've been staying home trying to play catch up from being gone last week (and everything takes twice as long to do now that I have my "helper") but we were just tired of being home. I ran the dishwasher FOUR times between Sunday and Thursday. FOUR! How does that happen? I can't imagine those of you with families of three or four kids. And it's mostly from Eddie and me...not James! Ha! It's just been "that" kind of week where I clean and clean and pick up and pick up and then look around and it's all filthy again.

Thursday Cacky was supposed to go to Tyron's funeral and then come by our house to play on the way home. Unfortunately, we got a phone call that Sonny's mother, MaMa, passed away. She's been sick for a while but this was something that was totally and completely out of the blue. I know without a doubt that Buddy was waiting on her when she arrived in Heaven and that she is thoroughly enjoying worshipping there with him (even if she arrived a few minutes after the service started!). Just like thinking about Aunt Bertie, I have the funniest memories of MaMa, too.

When I was in third grade, Mom and Sonny married. They got married in November and the following summer we went to Disney World for the first time. We actually took my cousin, Michael, with us, too. We had a great time but the pictures would horrify you (Anna and I had stupidly cut all of our hair off that summer and we look ridiculous) so I won't share those. Before we left, MaMa made me memorize her phone number in case I got lost so that I could call her for help! Ha! I am laughing out loud as I type this!!! What in the world was she going to do if I got lost and called her, I wonder? Oh my word.

She also picked us up from school every once in a while and when she did we knew that we were for sure going to go through the Dairy Queen drive-thru sitting in the backseat of her Cadillac. A dip cone? Yes, please! Those seats were mighty Armor-All-ed and if I recall correctly we did NOT wear seatbelts just so we could slide around!

MaMa was always, always looking out for ways that she could help people. She without a doubt had a huge heart. She also loved to play hostess to dinner parties at her house. She could be demanding sometimes, but I definitely know that the reason behind the demands was to help someone!

She was so proud when I decided to be a teacher and I can recall having lengthy conversations on the phone with her the summer before I became a teacher. I was living with Mom and Sonny that summer and she would think of something to tell me about running a classroom and she'd call to tell me about it. If you know her, you know that you could often be on the phone with her for quite a while! Between beginning to teach and going on a church mission trip to Peru that summer, I remember that she had a lot to tell me. Ha!

She also loved my baby! She apparently asked about him very often and was thrilled when she got to visit with him. She had my aunt bring her all the way up for his first birthday party last year and we're glad that she came. I'm glad James was blessed to get to spend time with two great-grandmothers! Not many little boys have that privelege!

So, needless to say our plans for the weekend when RIGHT out the window. I was supposed to play Bunco on Saturday night but it was fortunately canceled before I ever got the bad news. We actually had zero going on this weekend aside from things that needed to be done around the house and Eddie's homework.

(Thursday I took a few pictures. The first two are of James "practicing" with a spoon. I'm trying to let him do this more and more. He had yogurt for lunch...and then went directly to the tub. The last picture is of what we have to do around here for fun when it's rained all week. He turned the box from his water table into a slide and played for a LONG time!)

On Friday, we left our house around 4 to go to Tifton for the visitation. We took James with us so that he could visit with the family and then Grandmamma came and picked him up later. He was so funny around everyone. He's gone through a little bit of a clingy stage right now until he warms up to people. This is something we've never dealt with before, but I'm not surprised it's finally hit. He got PLENTY of time with other people this weekend, though, so maybe the clingy-ness will work its way out!

We spent Friday night at Eddie's mama and daddy's house and got up Saturday morning and had breakfast with them. I'm so thankful that 2/3 of the grandparents live in the same town. It has been so helpful to be able to drop him off with one or the other sets and take care of things we need to take care of. We rarely go to Tifton just to visit (unfortunately) so something always needs to be done.

After breakfast, we headed over to my mama's house and I got ready for the funeral. It wasn't until 4pm, but we were having a (late) lunch at MaMa's house so I needed to get ready early. The boys helped Sonny tie up a few loose ends here and there.

It was so nice to see all of my cousins. I hadn't seen some of them since James was just a few weeks old and a few of them had never seen James at all so it had been at least 18 months since I'd seen them! The "baby" cousins have all grown so much!

The funeral was absolutely perfect. I didn't expect it to be as hard as it actually was. But the preachers who spoke at her funeral knew MaMa very well (if MaMa knew you, you knew her very well!) and said exactly the right things. A few things we took away were how important it was to her to befriend others. How often do we meet people and not follow up with them? She did. She may have worried you to death about something, but she was going to make sure that things got done. Friendships were so important to her and they should be to all of us. She was a real, true friend and a very caring person.

So...after the funeral was over we had a "snack supper" at the church and then Eddie and I gathered up our things to head back home. James had stayed with Mrs. Bobby and Kelly for the afternoon and they wore him out. When we picked him up he hadn't had a nap all day long. We put him in the car at 8pm and he slept the whole way home. Once we got home I unloaded him from the car and put him on my bed while I unloaded and unpacked a few things and Eddie ran to the grocery store. I fully expected him to wake up and drink some milk before he went to bed. Finally, I tried to wake him up and couldn't get him to do any more than open his eyes for just a minute. I undressed him and changed his diaper and put on his pajamas and just put him to bed. He slept until Eddie woke him up at 8 Sunday morning! Tired boy!

Sunday we got up and hit the road again for Atlanta. We've been looking at cars through Carmax for a few weeks and reserved two to be looked at on Sunday afternoon (we're gluttons for punishment - we made these plans after MaMa died and we knew we'd be busy all weekend!). We met Dad and Laura for lunch at Taco Mac and then dropped James off at their house while we went to shop. We arrived there a little after 1pm and didn't leave until after 6! Whew! What a long afternoon. BUT...the best part of the weekend is that I'm now driving around in this pretty lady:

It is HUGE!

Cargo space with the third row up.

Cargo space with the third row folded down. I think I can lay down in the back with the seats in. There is SO much space!

There's also a thing that pops up that separates the cargo space. Keeps the small stuff from sliding around.

I think this is neat. There's a mirror that pops down in the front above the rear-view mirror that I can use to look at the back seats. I'm sitting in the middle row taking the picture. This will be great once James is turned around front-facing.

I am THRILLED to have this car. We've needed more room for a long time and knew if we ever have more kids we'd need more than we had. (No, I'm not pregnant.) After riding in several different friends' vehicles I knew that the top things on my list were cargo room, a third row, leather interior, and captain's chairs in the middle. We took both James' regular carseat and his infant seat to see how they'd fit in both cars we looked at (one with captain's chairs in the middle and one with a bench seat) and just decided we liked the options in this car better than the other. This one doesn't have a DVD player like lots of them have (it was a fleet vehicle and was probably just not needed for the former owner) but we'd already been using a portable DVD player and bungee cord to travel anyway. (And the benefit of NOT having it mounted in the car is that James won't have the OPTION of watching a DVD as we're just running errands around town. This was important to me.) It drives so much better than my old one and is SO quiet compared to it. There are a few things that have to be done to it so we'll have to go back to Roswell sometime in the next 30 days, but that's not a huge deal. I am SO glad to have a new car!

When we got home from Atlanta last night, this was the scene:

Once we got him to wake up he had milk (two cups...he hadn't eaten much all day because he was so busy!) and then helped Daddy with his homework:

We're hoping to get back on track this week. Last week, before we knew what all the weekend would hold, I was lazy, lazy and had my own little "spring break." This week I am going to be paying for that because I have a moutain of laundry and a sink full of dishes! Hopefully we'll get caught back up in the next few days!