MY GRANDMA HAS A BLOG

I know what you're thinking. "Dude said his grandma died like last week." And yes, you're correct... however she now has a blog. You can check it out here.

It's pretty simple, just what my mom wanted so that some of those from Nor Cal and around the globe who knew my grandma can drop in and share some love.

Read more...

FOUR FOR FOUR

Friday is the day I try to schedule most of my personal meetings.

4 were set for today.

4 either ditched or canceled on me.

4 for 4.

I'm now gonna go have a big bowl of ice cream and get a bumper sticker made that says "If you want to ditch me, you're going to have to get in line."

My only remaining "meeting" is dinner with my family tonight before church. If they ditch me, I might just get that bumper sticker tattooed across my back.

Read more...

YOU GOTTA FREAKING BE KIDDING ME

Here's how my day started.

7:50 drop the two younger kids off at school and go to work. In my office praying about some stuff that's really not sitting well with me today. I'm already kinda on the verge of tears to be honest and writing a note to deal with one of the issues.

8:30 TJ's ride is supposed to show up to take him to school.

8:41 he calls me and says they have not arrived.

8:41 and a half- I call 2 families to try and find out if they are home and can help.

8:44- no luck. No one's home. I call TJ back and say I'll leave the office and come get him.

8:46 jump in the car and get on freeway to go home and help TJ get to school.

8:47 and 3 seconds, TJ calls my cell. I have not put in my earpiece yet, cuz I'm in a ridiculous hurry and not making calls, but answer the phone due to who is calling.

8:47 and 5 seconds. I pass a motorcycle cop with a radar gun.

8:48 and 7 seconds, TJ tells me they were running late and I hang up.

8:48 and 10 seconds, cop pulls out onto the freakin freeway. I pull off on next off ramp since I no longer have to go get TJ. Cop then pulls up next to me and pulls me over with that annoying pointing thing they do. He then sees that I have a hands free piece sitting next to me and I am not on my cell. I tell him it was a mistake and that I'm sorry, my son called me from home and.... whatever- he asks for all my junk and then gives me a ticket for a 4 second phone call. The stupid ticket even says I was doing 10 miles BELOW the speed limit. RIDICULOUS!!!

I don't think God likes me today. I know the cops don't. I'm positive my wallet is pissed at me and I might just have my feakin ear piece surgically attached to satisfy california law.

Read more...

OUR HIGH SCHOOL BLOG

If you happen to be one of the few parents of high school students at Journey or even fewer high school students who read my blog, then I have good news for you.

WE RE-WROTE THIS ENCOUNTER BLOG JUST FOR YOU.

• It now has a link to our calendar for the year.
• A weekly survey we'll tally the results on every weekend.
• The latest updated info you will want to know.
• And much much more

SPREAD THE WORD!!!! I hope you like it and more importantly, that you use it a lot!

Read more...

TRIBUTE TO MY GRANDMA DELMA

This morning I found out that my last remaining grand parent, Grandma Delma, had passed away while sleeping. She is my mom's mom and was the last of that generation for me. She would have been 86 on December 3. (born 1922!)

Today was both sad and happy. I was happy that my grandma was no longer trapped in an aging earthly tent, but sad that the memories with her physical presence have come to an end. It was hard watching my kids wrestle with their first close family death this morning. I was sad to see her go and happy she lived so long and shared so much with me.

On the memory note, I have lots to celebrate. I know you should not play favorites, but as grandparents go, I think my Grandma Delma was the most influencial on my life. Here's both the impact she had on me and what I'll miss the most. If you never knew my grandma, then let me introduce you. If you did, please enjoy the walk down memory lane with me.

LIVE GENEROUSLY, FOR I WILL MISS HER GENEROSITY.

• If my grandma was anything, it was generous. She put several of her grand children through college both in tuition and providing room and board. She gave financially until the day she died for causes she believed in. Her well earned pension checks allowed her to provide for not just her own aging needs, but to bless a lot of others, all the way up to her death. She did not hoard her time or her money, but spent them all liberally on many people beyond herself. She gave years and years and years of her life to teaching children and there are literally thousands upon thousands of readers in this world to whom they owe Delma Morton a great debt of gratitude. She eventually went onto teach other teachers at the college level and was always a well loved and treasured mentor. She even started her own line of books for early readers. That business never made her a ton of money, but it empowered her vision and her generosity.

• I cannot ever remember a time when there was not an envelope with $20 in it for me on my birthday and then some generous check at Christmas for our entire family. After I got married and had kids, they each got $20 for their birthdays too... like clockwork. I think I might have to lobby that our family start a birthday fund in honor of grandma. Maybe we can keep sending $20 to kids and grandkids for generations to come.... "Here's $20. Love Grandma Delma."

CAMP WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, FOR I WILL MISS CAMPING WITH GRANDMA.

• Grandma Delma loved camping. As a kid growing up, I spent at least 2 weeks every summer in the boyhood wilderness of camping and fishing in streams with my grandma, my sister, my 4 cousins, and my mom/dad. We have hiked and fished and cooked and sang campfire songs and experienced so many things together. I could blog for the next 3 weeks straight on nothing but stories of experiences in a tent and a car and maybe a trailer with grandma. I can count on one hand (with several fingers left over) the number of summers I have missed camping at Richardson's Grove camp ground with my grandma from the age of 2 to 34. All the way up to the end, she insisted on joining us for camping anytime we were there. As I talked with my mom this morning, she said we'd have at least one more family reunion for grandma, cuz we're gonna leave her ashes there. I can think of no better place than camping at Richardson's Grove for her body to rest. I'm sure she would spread them there herself if she could.

• I will camp for the rest of my life and I will have a smore while poking the fire in some fashion that will annoy my father in honor of my grandma. This I decree.

GOOD COOKING IS TO BE CELEBRATED, FOR I WILL MISS MY GRANDMA'S COOKING.

• My grandma cooked breakfast and dinner for my grandpa every day of their married life I think. It's a good thing he died first, for he would have likely starved to death.

• She baked and cooked everything she could from scratch for decades on end. I never remember a time growing up where we did not have a pantry full of gradma's canned jam and jellies, canned tuna, smoked salmon, peaches, green beans, apples, apple sauce, plums, or something else. In college I had her teach me to can tuna, in the hopes that I could keep the tradition alive. I have some catching up to do if that is going to be true though.

• I remember picking berries with her in alleys and hillsides and watching her peel apples by the bucket full in her kitchen or when camping in preparation for a fresh pie. I was always amazed at how she could do that so fast and effortlessly while us kids just clamored around waiting for the scraps to steal.

• I once even remade the wooden handle for her on a kitchen paring kife she had sharpened and used so many times that the wooden handle was all but gone and the blade was nothing but a piece of tin. I offered to buy her a new one but she insisted on keeping that one, so I made her a new handle for it. I really wish I still had that knife, but I'm sure it was tossed by someone at some point in the past decade.

EAT ICECREAM WITH ANY AND EVERY MEAL SOMEONE WILL LET YOU, FOR I WILL MISS EATING ICE CREAM WITH MY GRANDMA.

• My grandma loved ice cream... read LOVED ICE CREAM! She would eat it with you, sneak it with you, bitch at you if you were out of it, pull over and stop to buy some on a long drive, walk to the store to get it daily while camping, and the list could go on. I think some morning this week I just might have to go get a cup of black coffee, a piece of pie and some ice cream and enjoy a breakfast for my grandma. If there is no ice cream in heaven, God might have a problem :)

WORK HARD AT WHAT YOU LOVE, FOR MY GRANDMA LEFT ME A GREAT EXAMPLE OF A WORK ETHIC THAT IS HARD TO FIND TODAY.

• My kids will mostly remember a woman who had worked so hard she believed she had earned some years on her butt. Towards the end, getting grandma to go for a walk required a lot of tugging, cuz she would much rather have sat down and done a word search in her easy chair than have walked to the bathroom.

• But that's not the grandma I grew up with. The grandma I grew up with could work your butt off. She was tireless with yardwork and always had a beautiful garden. She woke up early and stayed up late, long after grandpa had gone to bed. She would come to our house and instead of expecting to be entertained, she expected to help. My grandma taught me by example that if you want something in life, you don't wait around for someone to just hand it to you, you work hard for it. She grew up in an Iowa farm with traditional values and an old school work ethic she honed through the Great Depression and teaching in a one room school house.

• Truth be told, she probably sprinted a little too fast at the beginning and ran out of steam at the end. She kinda "walked" the last 5 years of her life. But the other side of that coin is she earned that final few laps of coasting by the sweat on her brow. I know of few people who could have kept up with my grandma's drive for about 90% of her life span.

AND FINALLY, A FEW PICTURES. I don't have a lot on my computer since most of my memories are long before the days of the digital camera, but here's a few I have held onto from the digital age.

OUR GIFT TO OUR PARENTS FOR LAST CHRISTMAS. A "FINAL" PHOTO SHOOT BEFORE THE CRAWFORDS HEADED TO UGANDA.


THREE GENERATIONS IN DECEMBER 2007. WOULD HAVE BEEN FOUR GENERATIONS, BUT MY FAMILY HAS ONLY BOY GRAND CHILDREN!


GRANDMA AND TJ EATING ICE CREAM AT FENTONS IN BERKELEY. YEP, THEY FINISHED THE WHOLE THING!


JUST A NICE SMILE AT CHERYL'S HOUSE.


CAMPING AT RICHARDSON'S GROVE. PROBABLY WISHING SHE COULD GET UP AND POKE THE FIRE.

AT LEGO LAND WITH OUR FAMILY, PICTURED HERE WITH SHANNON.


ENJOYING ONE OF WHAT BECAME HUNDREDS OF WORD SEARCHES IN THE LAST FEW YEARS.


Grandma Delma. Thank you. You are loved and you will be missed. I'll meet you in heaven in the redwoods. I'm sure God has those there.

Read more...

JAKE TURNS 6

Today we celebrated Jake's Birthday. Technically it is tomorrow, but today was a day of no school and 6 years ago, when Jake entered our world, Shannon was redefining "labor day" for our family and bringing us Jake. So labor day in our family is Jake Day.

Life has never been boring since. The kid is a nut.

All he wanted for his birthday was a bike. So his grandparents pitched in and bought him a new bike which we broke in today on our favorite family bonding time- a bike ride up the coast from mission to PB. We had some lunch at the Pita Pit and then iced mochas at this little coffee shop around the corner. (2 more family favorites)

Then later that night we all crashed Chuck E. Cheese for a party. I'll admit, not my favorite idea for a party for the boy, but the 6 year old and his buddies didn't seem to care. I think next year though I'm gonna have to step it up and have a big ol boy sleep over with bikes and jumps and water guns or something.

Anyway, it was quite the day.

"Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." Psalm 127:3-5.

I am blessed. Thank you God for my boys. Thank you for Jake.

Read more...