Grandma

February 16, 1925 – March 11, 2009

Grandma went Home this morning at the ripe age of 84. As I have been thinking about Grandma I’ve been reflecting on the wonderful memories I had with her.

Grandma always loved trees and flowers. Something was always blooming or growing in her garden. She planted a mixture of perennials and annuals and would pick some to bring in the house for the kitchen table. She planted a variety of vegetables as well and was proud to show off her garden. She knew so much about different trees also. I remember as a girl when she and Grandpa came to visit Grandma and I went for a walk around the neighborhood and she told me about the various trees we would see.

As young girls Carrie and I would visit Grandma and Grandpa during the summer for a week. Sometimes we spent the week at their house. Grandma always made sure I practiced the piano so I didn’t get rusty after a week. It’s funny how I remember things like that. But one of the fun memories I have is that she and Grandpa went square dancing every week. Grandma made their dancing outfits, and they looked fabulous on them! Carrie and I got to tag along with them while they went square dancing. What fun it was to watch them on the dance floor!

When we didn’t stay at their house for the week Grandma and Grandpa took us camping. I have many fond memories of camping not only with just them but with our entire extended family. We used to go every fall as a family, and I always loved being together enjoying each other’s company.

Other memories I have of Grandma are National Geographic Magazine, knitting, cross-word puzzles, playing games, the butterfly garden, and lots of love. Grandma was such an intelligent woman, and she was always learning. She kept her mind active while she could, and she loved teaching me too. She made delicious spaghetti, canned peaches, and applesauce. I had told her that before she died I wanted her to teach me how to make applesauce, but it never happened. Grandma also made some of the best apple pie. It was always a favorite staple in the Taylor family.

One thing I’ve struggled with is where Grandma stood in her relationship with the Lord. Some of her theology was not biblically accurate, and she was not one to talk much about her faith. One time when I visited her I directly asked her about her salvation, and she told me about her experience. While she suffered with fibromyalgia she had written down and underlined some Bible verses that ministered to her. I have to believe that she sought the Lord in her pain and that she was a child of God. And one day I hope to see her in Heaven.

Grandma, I miss you so much! I’m so thankful for the fond memories I have of you. You’ll always have a special place in my heart.


P.S. You can read Carrie's post here.

Outdoor Fun

Lately Rebekah has been terrified of playing outside due to the roaming dogs in our subdivision. It really irks me that they are loose, particularly the dogs that are owned by our neighbors across the street, but what's worse is that because our neighbors allow their dogs to roam the streets Rebekah is scared if they are anywhere within her sight. The fear got so bad that she was even scared to go on the playground at preschool. As a result Darrin and I had a good talk with her, and she didn't put up a fuss about it at school today and even willingly went out in our own backyard to play, especially when she found out I was going to join them.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous lately, and I have been wanting to take some advantage of it while it lasts. We had such a nice time as a family hanging out in the yard playing with the kids.

Here are a few pics from our afternoon. Some of you may even recognize Rebekah's outfit. Yes, it's from LAST YEAR! Can you believe she's still able to wear some of last year's wardrobe? I love it that she'll get another season of wear out of some of her clothes. That will help on the pocketbook.



Joshua took a step or two on the ladder and then backed off. He just isn't confident enough to climb it yet.

Interview with Rebekah - 4 Years

One of the latest notes being done on Facebook is an interview with your child. The answers are pretty funny when asked of a four-year-old. Here is my interview with Rebekah.

1. What is something mommy always says to you? Love you
2. What makes mommy happy? That God made us
3. What makes mommy sad? Being disrespectful
4. How does your mommy make you laugh? Tickle
5. What was your mommy like as a child? Loving, happy
6. How old is your mommy? 33
7. How tall is your mommy? A lot
8. What is her favorite thing to do? Make a rainbow
9. What does mommy do when you’re not around? Go to Wal-Mart
10. If your mommy becomes famous, what will it be for? Because you love (Another time I asked this same question and she told me "For spanking our bottoms.")
11. What is your mommy really good at? Taking care of the kids
12. What is your mom not very good at? Spanking
13. What does your mommy do for her job? Love on me
14. What is your mommy’s favorite food? Bananas, corn
15. What makes you proud of your mommy? Because you’re nice, because you love me
16. If your mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be? You
17. What do you and your mommy do together? Play together
18. How are you and your mommy the same? We have lollipops together; we have the same mouth
19. How are you and your mommy different? We have different hair
20. How do you know your mommy loves you? You always hug me and kiss me; you take care of me
21. Where is your mommy’s favorite place to go? Wal-Mart

Joshua's New Ride

Call me overprotective, but ever since I discovered how much safer riding in a car seat rear facing is compared to forward facing I have not been eager to turn Joshua's car seat around. Legally we could have turned him around at a year old because he was already 20 lbs. by his first birthday, but he has been very happy rear facing, and I had no reason to turn him around. Some may claim that a rear facing child's legs could break in a car accident if they are too long, but it's much more likely to endure a broken spine forward facing which can result in internal decapitation. So for that reason, I would much rather have my son rear facing with broken legs than for him to break his spine forward facing in a wreck.

Well, Joshua is not far from the rear facing limit of 33 lbs., and although he has five pounds to spare I gave Darrin the green light to turn Joshua forward facing because our last trip he got pretty fussy after two hours of riding in the car. Turning him around would allow him to see more out the windows as well as to watch videos with Rebekah while on the road.

Darrin turned the car seat around on Friday evening before our trip to Columbia this weekend. After Joshua's nap I took him to try out his new position and for Darrin to determine where the should straps need to go. Joshua LOVED it! He did not want to get out of his seat! The only way Darrin could get him out of it was to move him to Rebekah's seat. Even on Saturday as we left for our trip Joshua was so happy to see the world.

Saying "Wee!!!!!!!!"


Enjoying the view


We couldn't leave Rebekah out.


Saturday through Monday we spent in Columbia at Grandy's house to visit with Darrin's brother and sister and family. Darrin's sister and her family live 12 hours away, so they do not get to visit as often. It had been about a year and a half since we had seen them last time, so we were looking forward to spending some time with them for a couple of days.

Sunday we celebrated Darrin's brother, Derek's, birthday along with Joshua's. Well, Rebekah loves birthdays so much that it was everyone's birthday. Rebekah helped blow out Joshua's candles (well, there were 2 for him and 4 for her) while Derek blew out his.


Here are a few pictures from our visit.


Joshua was giving a pouty face here and trying to decide whether to cry or not.

A Big Day

Not a lot has really happened lately...until today. Joshua had his 2-year well check-up with Dr. Rodgers. He looks great and has made great strides despite his difficult start early in life. Dr. Rodgers was really pleased with how he is doing in all areas. His stats are as follows: height - 35 1/2 inches (80th percentile); weight - 28 lbs. (60th percentile); head - 50 cm. Dr. Rodgers predicts that based on my husband's and my heights along with Joshua's present height he will be about 5' 10" as an adult. He also got a finger prick, and he didn't even flinch! In fact, he laughed while the tech drew his blood! I teased and commented that Joshua needs to be the one having babies one day since he tolerates pain so well. His levels were great. (I had forgotten what they were testing.) No shots today, and no more until next year.

After we left the doctor's office we headed over to Chick-fil-A for lunch. I had told Rebekah that they could play after they ate as well. During our meal Rebekah kept wanting to stand up on the bench seat or just be fidgety. I think she was just eager to play. I had told her to sit down, but instead of just sitting she turned to the side facing out from the table. She lost her balance and went forward over the side of the seat, head first to the floor! My first thought was about her scar from the stitches she had previously. I ran over and couldn't find exactly where she was hurt. All she did was scream and flail from the pain. I finally saw a place on her forehead directly across from her scar and just stared to see if it was raised or dented. An elderly woman who saw the event came over to see as well. I couldn't see a raised spot, but it didn't look dented either, so I proceeded to carry Rebekah to the counter to get some ice.

By the time we returned to our table I saw that Rebekah had a scraped place which was what I found initially after the fall, but she also had a light bruise above it. I held ice over the wound, and she just screamed at the chill. The manager came over to assess the situation and to see how he could help. He asked me if the Chick-fil-A cow might help, and I told him it might. I thought he was going to have someone dressed as the cow come visit us, and Rebekah cried that she did NOT want to see the cow. The manager returned with a stuffed toy cow, and Rebekah immediately calmed down. Joshua got one, too. We also got a bag of ice to replace the individual pieces I was holding on her head, and that seemed to be much better as well. After we got our table cleaned up and trash thrown away we headed home. No playing today! Rebekah acted fine the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully, she was okay, but I was afraid we were going to have an additional, and unexpected, visit to see Dr. Rodgers today. Now she has a matching red spot on the opposite side from her scar to balance her forehead. It doesn't look like professional pictures will be made in the near future.

On a completely different note, my Grandma is going downhill very quickly. Nearly a year ago we discovered that she had some form of Parkinson's disease. The doctors are not exactly sure what it is she has, but it is a combination of Parkinson's (Parkinsonism) and Lewy Body dimentia. The last visit we made to see Grandma and Grandpa was in January. It was a blessing to see Grandma respond, and I'm so glad I took the opportunity to reintroduce her to her great-grandchildren before she progressed any worse.

As of now, Grandma is receiving hospice in her home, and she is rapidly declining. She is not eating nor drinking (and is not on life support), and she is on morphine which I would presume is why she is sleeping so much.

At the same time we have plans to visit Darrin's family for the weekend. His sister and her family are visiting Darrin's mom from Virginia, and it has been 1 1/2 years since we have seen them, so we are very much looking forward to our visit with them.

I feel very torn about what to do. On one hand, I feel like I should go visit my grandmother one last time. On the other, I want to respect Darrin and his family and devote as much time with them as I can. If we were to go visit Grandma we would make a detour to Huntsville then drive up to Columbia later tomorrow. One concern I have is how Rebekah would handle seeing Grandma in the state that she is. I just don't know, and I'm not sure what she would think. I have talked to Rebekah about Grandma's condition, but you never know how a child may process all of this.

Please pray for us as we make this decision. My dad's family (brother and sister) as well as my parents are all going to visit my grandparents tomorrow. It might also be too much for us to go as well. I surely don't want to be a burden. Whatever we do I am so thankful that I took the kids in January to visit their great-Grandma. They won't remember much about her, but every good little moment matters.

Now I will leave you with a picture of Grandma and Rebekah from last June.

Defending the Truth

Every year our church, Woodland Park, has a Mission Conference to invite missionaries our church supports to come be refreshed, share what God is doing where they are at work, and to encourage the body to be missionaries wherever they are. Flags of all the countries where missionaries are sent out from our church are hung around the auditorium. It is incredible to see so many countries represented. I am truly humbled yet proud that our church places such a strong emphasis on missions. It is one of the many very unique things about Woodland Park.

While the worship services throughout the week are geared for the visiting missionaries, Bible fellowship classes invite the missionaries to share about what they do and how God is working. They share their needs and prayer requests. In addition, the children also learn about missions. In AWANA Cubbies the children learned about the apostle Paul and how he was a missionary. They learned what a missionary is and what they do. Throughout the week the children learned about a specific country where we have missionaries we support and what food they eat (and they even got to taste some if they wanted). They made a flag and pasted a map of the country with information about the missionaries there and a prayer request for them.

This year's conference had Ron Carlson from Christian Ministries International as its keynote speaker. The theme was "Defending the Truth". The unique thing about this year was that it focused more on equipping us in the church to defend the truth of Christianity. Sunday morning's sermon gave us an overview of different religions and cults and some of the basics of their beliefs, who they believe Jesus is, and what sets Christianity apart from them. His focus was their Jesus vs. our Jesus. They do not believe in the same Jesus we do nor the same God. Sunday night's sermon was about Evolution vs. Creationism and what science shows. Ron Carlson taught more in depth about the different Cults and what they believe on Monday night, about Mormonism on Tuesday night, and about Islam on Wednesday night. I had always wanted to learn about different religions and do a study on apologetics, and this was a great overview. I learned so much last week, and I was amazed at what some people believe. It is really sad that so many are misled.

I highly recommend listening to the sermons from last week's Mission Conference if you have never heard Ron Carlson speak. He is very intelligent, but he explains things in a way that the average peron can understand. Just click on the link above and you can download or just listen to the messages straight off of the website.

On a sidenote, I just realized that today marks the first anniversary of my blog. It's hard to believe that it has been a year already. It's been a great way to not only keep you informed on our lives, but it has been an outlet for journaling which I never would have done had it not been for my blog.

Photo Shoot

Leigh Anne works for Darrin and had asked me to take some pictures of her family. Her mother was in town yesterday along with Leigh Anne's 3-month-old nephew. I took some pictures of mostly the three of them as well as Liam, Leigh Anne's 16-month old son, although I got a few shots of Leigh Anne's husband and her cousin as well.

Since the weather was not very nice yesterday we did the photo shoot at their home. It was good practice for me, and we had fun. We did manage to get a few outdoor shots which was good because Liam wanted to be out the whole time.

Here are a few of my favorite photos.