Friendship

If you are a female and if you were in Girl Scouts or Brownies, you might remember a song about Friends. I remember it going like this:

Make new friends,
But keep the old.
One is silver,
And the other's gold.

There may be more verses, but that is what I can remember.

I met my friend, Joyce about 28 years ago. We became friends because we went to church together and were pregnant during the same time and became mothers with babies around the same time. Through the years our friendship has grown. Truthfully, that growth is mostly due to her and her heart.

She has always been there for me, not just in words, but in deeds.

Joyce was there for me those months Brian was at the BP Academy. She had me come over every Tuesday after picking up Jordan up from Kindergarten. We watched a soap together, she cooked lunch (with enough leftovers for the kids and I for dinner) and I ironed (a task that weirdly - I love doing). The boys played. It was a win-win deal.

I can't count the number of times she picked up my relatives flying into Tucson through the years. Normally, it was because someone else I loved was having surgery. She brought snacks up to the hospital waiting rooms, sat untold hours waiting for the doctors to come and deliver news of our loved ones and often would taxi people back to the airport to catch their flights home. She even housed some of us through the years during those visits.

She loves my children. She rejoices over the good things in my childrens' lives and prays over their struggles. She always wants to see them when they are in town even if we can only meet for a quick supper somewhere.

When she had her first grandson - Landon. She graciously let me share in Grandmothering him. She did this because she knew how I longed to be a grandmother and knew I would fall in love with her grandbaby. He was just a day old when she called and asked me to come and see him. I worried that his mommy and daddy wouldn't appreciate me coming so quickly to meet him, but I shouldn't have worried. They apparently have Joyce's gracious spirit.

When my family comes now, she (and sometimes her husband Martin) come down and share a meal with us or spend a day with us. She calls my Mom - Mom and my sisters - her sisters. She even calls Sharlene by her family nickname - Sissie. Joyce is family now too.

Joyce is my "gold" mentioned in the song above. She is a blessing in my life and has been for almost 30 years. The hardest part of leaving Arizona for me is that I won't have Joyce just an hour away. I will miss her.

In Storage and Out of Storage

I knew it would happen and today was the day. It began last night, Brian and I were going to play a game of Hand and Foot on the bed. Keep reading . . . that is a CARD game. We struggled trying to keep our cards lined up and keep ourselves comfortable. The cards didn't keep lined up and we weren't comfortable. This morning after our walk, Brian comes in and tells me that we are going to go get a card table and two folding chairs from storage. I just smiled. I knew it would happen since almost everything we own is in the unit. Now we have a card table with chairs to play a card game and for meals. Oh and by the way, I won the game last night.

What Is A Picture Worth . . .

A THOUSAND WORDS

Boys, A Lake and Rocks

While in Oklahoma last month, we took an evening to visit Lake Hefner. It is a beautiful lake and park. The guys decided to throw and skip rocks - Casen loved this idea. Pretty soon the big boys were trying to see who could make their picks skip more times and Casen was working his way up from throwing pebbles to throwing huge rocks. By evening's end the big boys were throwing rocks to see how big of a splash they could make too.

My Memory Card

About a month ago we took a trip to Oklahoma to see Amanda, Josh and Casen and then to Kansas to see family and watch our niece, Annie marry Jared.

During this special time my digital camera started acting up. I would be busy snapping pictures about 50 a minute (that # may be slightly exaggerated - but then again if you know my family - maybe not) and all the while feeling pretty proud of my 8GB memory card, yes - 8GB!

What I didn't realize was my 8GB memory card was not holding my pictures! It was apparently holding them for two days and then gone, vanished, wiped clean. Sad part is I didn't catch on right away that my now "evil 8GB memory card" was doing this. And even sadder part is that once I did catch onto its' plan, I didn't think to start using the protecting lock on my camera to ensure my pictures would not end up in No More Land. Shows you where pride gets you!

Anyways, I share this with you to explain why I haven't posted any Kansas pictures. I did make it home with some of our Oklahoma part of the visit and will work on getting those posted.

By the way, I now have a new memory card - 4GB and I'm using my protection lock - just in case it is not 8GB memory card's fault and instead it was my camera's fault. But that's another story for another day.

Another Treasure

A while back I wrote that one of my favorite parts of moving is sorting through things and getting to take a trip down memory lane. When Jordan was here a few weeks ago we took another trip.

When we originally packed up in Laredo for our move out here to Arizona, we packed everything the kids left at home. Our storage room was crammed with childhood toys, books ranging from cloth baby books to novels in hardback with a few text books thrown in, school and band awards, memory items - you get the picture. A couple of years ago we started taking bins to Amanda since she and Josh had their own home. I tried to downsize it before taking it to her, but I really wanted her to decide what to toss and what to keep.

Jordan's treasures have just been stuck in storage, until his recent visit. We had the idea of letting him go through everything with the hopes he would get rid of the things he had no interest in keeping (and that passed Mom's memory gauge). Jordan went through all his bins - things ended up in the trash, others back into bins (to stay with us), some treasures went with him and he passed a few things down to Casen. We accomplished what we had hoped for including a fun trip down Memory Lane. It was so good to play "Remember when . . ." and "Look at this . . ." with Jordan. We laughed and talked, it was good.

Simple chore turned into Treasure - Good Times with Jordan.

Oh and Amanda, we've got a few things for you . . .

A Mountain Steam

We've had a pretty dry year down in Arizona, so Brian and I really enjoyed the abundance of water up in Oregon. This just one of the beautiful streams we enjoyed! Don't turn up the sound too loud - it is better as a gentle sound!