Sweet, sweet Gran

Eddie's dear grandmother, "Gran", went home to be with the Lord Thursday morning early.

Thankfully, it was a very peaceful passing, with her children there holding her hands.  There is something so perfect about holding the hands of the woman who brought you into this world, as she is leaving this world.  I can only pray that my passing is that peaceful.

Gran has loved me as her own granddaughter for a long time-- probably since high school.  And I am so thankful for her love.

She lived at the beach, so we were lucky to get to see her often-- the boys have grown up knowing her.  Which also made this harder. When we told them, Cal was very quiet, reflecting on what we told him, and Andy burst into tears, crying that he was sad he didn't get to say goodbye to her.

Her service is tomorrow, Saturday, and we are looking forward to celebrating such a sweet life.  We are all BEYOND thankful that we got to spend so much time with her over Christmas.  (here and here)

I am in charge of printing off some pictures to have on display at the service (#ofcourseiam), and here are some of the ones I am printing:

Look at how happy she was!

Gran gave her all every day.  She was living on her own and still driving.  She served at her church, a retirement home and at a hospital.  She gave constantly.  Hopefully we can continue in her footsteps. 

We know she is super excited to be reunited with her husband in Heaven!



 

Life Lately

Happy Hump Day, Y'all!

 

Here's a look at our life lately-- not a whole lot going on!

What we are reading:
Holy moly..... what a good book.  

Cal has been reading these Cars books.  I found several when I did some of my massive clean outs and he is having a great time reading them.

What we are eating:

Sunday: there is a new-ish restaurant in Chapel Hill that is AH-mazing.  They specialize in pizza, and I am sure their pizza is fine.... but their salads are ridiculous.
This was mine... it is huge.  And their home made dressing is to die for.  Why am I not a paid spokesperson?!?!

Monday: orange chicken.  
Tuesday (taco Tuesday!): the boys are having enchiladas-- momma is getting OUT!
Wednesday: Buffalo Chicken Garbage Bread (this is sooooo good!)
Thursday: I have no clue.
Friday: Over to Tricia and Tommy's house for his birthday!


What we are watching:
A LOT of football! Of course we are watching all of the NFL playoff games.  When we make Cal go to bed when a game is on, the first thing out of his mouth in the morning is always "who won the _____ game?!" He doesn't want to talk about anything else until he knows who won! We record all the games and the boys watch them during their rest time.  


What's making me happy:
When I cleaned out the study, I found this old newspaper clipping of Eddie...

 Did y'all know he went to Junior Olympics for diving? If you can zoom in and read the caption, it says "Eddie Williamson has been platform diving for less than a month. But this weekend, he could win a national championship." Eddie is the kind of person who can never have experience with something, and then he picks it up and is awesome at it-- he could never bowl in his life and then get 6 strikes in a row.  He could not run for months and months and then get up and run 10 miles like it is no big deal.  Yeah.  Not me.  Also, look at his rib cage.

Speaking of, check out this picture I found of me right around the same age:

I hit 5'10'' really young.  Like 5th grade. And I didn't break 100 pounds for a loooong time.  sigh.  Wish I could blame kids.  Thankfully, my chest grew as my thighs grew.  #findthebrightspot

Also making me happy-- Andy is obsessed with his Cam Newton shirt we got him for Christmas.  He wants to wear it every day.  He wore it on Thursday of last week and when he stayed home with me on Friday, he wanted to wear it.  I told him it was dirty.  He insisted on staying shirtless until it was clean-- and then helped me do laundry to expedite the process:

His little crazy self makes me happy. Also making me happy? He  is 100% done sucking his fingers and twirling his hair.  This is epic.  Huge.  Massive.  I was convinced it would be several more years before we broke this.  The finger nail polish helped, but I think it was mainly him decided he was done. 

What I am wearing:
lots and lots and lots of layers! burrrrrr!

Weight update:
well, this is frustrating.  I have a rock,  I was doing great and lost 4 and then just stopped.  ugh.  I need to get serious.  Mexico is coming... and I am not trying to be a beached whale by the pool.

note: I wrote this whole post and then lost most of it-- the post I wrote was set to publish on Wednesday, but never went live.  Not sure where it went, but I tried to re-create it, and it isn't very good.  apologies....