A Hodgepodge Salad

Welcome to this week's edition of The Wednesday Hodgepodge. If you've answered today's questions add your link at the end of my post, then leave a comment for the blogger before you. Here we go-

1. February is coming to a close. Give us a two-word phrase that tells us something about how yours went.

Baby love 

2. If you had to describe how you're feeling right now as an amusement park ride, what ride are you on? Explain. 

I'm going with Thunder Mountain Railroad which is a roller coaster, but without the super big dips, drops, and rolls. It's described as a train racing down a track, bumpy in places, but the main thing is it's fast, which is how life seems to be moving here in 2024.  

3. What's something on your desk or a nearby wall that cheers you up when you see it or walk past? 

For Christmas every year our girls make us a calendar with pictures of the grands from the year that was. My frig cannot hold a magnet so I have the calendar on a 3M hook on the side of the frig. 

I see it many times a day as I open and close the frig, or just work in the kitchen, and it never fails to make me smile. I look forward to flipping the page to a new month this Friday. 

4.  Are you a salad eater? How many salads do you typically eat in a week? Your favorite kind of salad? 

I love a salad, almost any combo of veggies (love a fruit salad too!), and I eat one pretty much every day, if not for lunch then with my dinner. I love a true Cesar but mostly eat some sort of 'garden salad' with whatever I have on hand. Oftentimes for lunch I make a salad and sprinkle a little cheese and maybe some ham or turkey to add protein, or I add a hard boiled egg. It makes a satisfying lunch, filling without a lot of calories. I do not like a lot of dressing on my salad and sometimes eat it without any dressing at all. 

5. Without telling us the category give us your top five ______________. 

How Great Thou Art 
This Is My Father's World

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

Crown Him With Many Crowns

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Today is my son-in-law's birthday so happy birthday to him! Next week my other son-in-law will celebrate his birthday, and what a gift these two men are to our family. Throwing it back to when they joined the party here-

January, 2021

January, 2015

They're wonderful fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, and friends. Hard-working, even-tempered, dependable, and lots of fun. We're so grateful to their parents for raising them to be the men they are, and we absolutely love the way they've grown our family and care for our girls. 

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No Such Thing As Too Much Sugar

So it's been a minute. Where were we? Oh yeah, we were waiting on a baby and she's here! 

Our fifth grandchild was born a little over a week ago, a precious little girl who already has us completely wrapped around her teeny tiny perfectly formed fingers. 

You might think number five would be no big deal, but I'm here to tell you every single birth is a very big deal, every birth an actual miracle. It's amazing to look at the 11-week ultrasound snapshot hanging on my daughter's frig and recognize the beautiful baby I'm holding in my arms is that same girl. 

I drove over to my daughter's house early (in fact, almost three weeks early) because the doctor was convinced this little girl was in a hurry. Turns out she really wasn't, but I don't mind. It was nice having some time with my own baby girl and it calmed nerves knowing I was in the house should she have to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. 

She did not, but! she was able to get her haircut, see the dentist, and have a pedicure without her toddler in tow. These are all things that going forward will require a lot more planning and likely be far less relaxing, at least for a while. 

To everything there is a season. 

My granddaughter's momma (aka Daughter2) was not big on sleep when she was a baby and hubs and I spent many a dinner hour with her wailing (and possibly me too on occasion). But you know what? We laugh about that now. It was just a part of who she was and who she is...a girl who knows her mind, who lives large, and who loves her momma. 

I look at my girl now, married woman and mom of two, and I remember her sweetness. I remember her spunk and her joie de vivre, but the night after night of interrupted sleep? The days where it seemed like bedtime would never get there??? Well those moments not so much.  

Which I know is not a great comfort when you're in the thick of it, but true nonetheless. Being with my daughter and her newborn baby girl and her 20-month old little man whose world has been rocked a little,  it comes back to me how absolutely exhausting those early years of parenting are.

And how absolutely wonderful too.

How Is It Still January?

Hi. Happy Monday. Let's catch up. On what I don't know because it's been pretty quiet round here, but I'll think of something. 

For starters...drumroll please....It's a BOY!!!

Daughter 2 and her hubs found out their baby's gender a little over a week ago, and it's all boy all the time in this household. Building our own football team one little man at a time. 

You can read her update in the link here-It's Elementary

God's design for families is completely amazing. I never imagined I'd be Nana to a houseful of boys but here we are. And I love it. LOVE it!!! I also love that these cousins will be close in age because cousins who are friends are such a blessing. I look forward to more noise, more chaos, more giggles, and lots more little boy hugs and smooches, which are my favorite thing on my list of favorite things. 

What else? 

The drive from my house to Daughter2's house is spectacular. As long as I'm the one driving I mean, because its a windy-curvy-bendy road that whips around a guardrail-less mountaintop, then hugs the Ocoee River for 20-something miles. The ride along the river is truly something special to see.  

In other news, I just finished this month's book club selection-Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan, and I really enjoyed it. The story is a fictional account (emphasis on fiction) of the love affair between C.S. Lewis and the woman who became his wife, Joy Davidman. Mostly though it was the description of Oxford and the English countryside and seeing it all for the first time that really won me over. Be still my heart. 

Quick topic change because hey, it's Monday...I know I was going to post the end result of our home improvement project, but y'all it is literally the project that never ends...it just goes on and on my friends...name that tune? If you were raising littles in the early 90's you know it as well as you know your own name, but I digress...our projects...almost there but not quite there. Closer but not closed. 

My builder's wife is a decorator and she's been an enormous help. She and her hubs are coming out this Friday to bring the brand new window treatments we had made for the office, a definite step up from the sheet that's hanging there now. And she's bringing a lamp she thinks will work in the room and maybe a small table to set the lamp on, so whew. Almost. We are almost there. 

I also need pillows for the Murphy bed and a chair for the worktable and I also need to decide if this worktable is right for the room, to which I say yes it will be fine once everything is in place and I have a chair to go with, but hubs is iffy. 

Hubs is so often right about these things, which is annoying but also helpful. We will see what the decorator thinks when she's here. And they're staying for dinner because we still like our builder, which is not something everyone who builds can say. 

The wood in the stairwell is also an 'almost done' kind of thing. Still no electrician, so while the wood is a beauty we need lights installed and the switch plate attached. Almost. Close. 

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, isn't that how the saying goes? 

I promise I will post pictures and details one day in the not too too distant future. Daughter1 and her family, along with some friends of theirs, will all be here mid-February. My aim is to have the office completely finished by then. Or at least more almost finished than it is currently. ahem. 

Christmas feels like eons ago and almost every day I speak as if it's already February, yet somehow it's still January. January is kind of forced down time for us and we need that I think. We're like bears who rest in the winter months storing up energy for a busy spring and summer. 

Happy Monday everyone!