We are back home and after two weeks of being back in Texas and back with grandkids, family and friends, even though it was hard to say goodbye, the younger (sorry, but I refuse to say, “getting older”) we get, the better feeling it becomes to just get back to your own bed, your own bathroom and your routine. I remember my parents and inlaws always saying that they were always so glad to get back home after always being gone for vacations and I always wondered why. In my season of life back then, it was always just a dream to be able to travel and stay in hotels and eatting out and getting away from routine. But, I have found that, like them, I am now admitting that they knew what they were talking about. Because we stayed at our kids house, we were introduced to remembering what our households were like years ago, the cartoons always in the background, lunches of macaroni and cheese or frozen pizza, toys spread over the entire house, training potty’s, kids running in and out the doors with screams from parents saying, “shut the door behind you”. Yes, we were taken back to our days of what it used to be like, but we remembered it quite differently. Were our memories of how we ran our houses, really like we remembered them, or had our memories failed us? We remembered our houses as actually pretty quiet and that our children had been pretty perfect,always shutting the door without being reminded, with their perfect friends and that they had always said “yes mam and no mam” and that our kids had sat and talked with us about the meaning of life and that they enjoyed us telling them about our childhood each night at the dinner table. Were these memories of ours real, or fantasies?
As I boarded the plane to come home, humming to myself, “Sponge Bob Square Pants, Sponge Bob Square Pants”, noticing the man in front of me looking at me like I was crazy, I remembered that going home did have it’s rewards of quietness and normal routine, but there is nothing quite like having a grandchild come over and crawl up in your lap and share their fruit loop with you as you hear them scream, “turn up the tv, this is when Sponge Bob and Patrick work for all the crab patties they can eat….” Now there is a memory that will never fade. Think I will turn on cartoons this afternoon, just for old time sake.

Well, if you read my posting a few days ago about feeling old, you will understand this post a little better. It appears that if I wasn’t feeling “old” enoughthe other day by not being able to dance along to Just Dancing on the Wii or Singing along to Rock Band, I have now been shown by my adult children that my “sayings” are so old fashion. Apparently, when I say, “let’s have taters, instead of rice” the kids think that is hilarious. When I remarked that, “i’m tireder than the day is long” they were yelling at me to “stop” with the old sayings. I got so hurt that I ran to the bathroom and tripped on the steps that go up to the toilet where my grandson’s training potty sits over the commode. As I try to straddle the steps, thinking back over the years when this was all just a part of a normal day of training potties and cooking pan lids laying all over the kitchen floor, it reminded me that even if my “sayings” are a little out of date and I can’t seem to enjoy Dora the Explorer the way I use to when my kids were little, I am ever so grateful that this season of life affords me the luxury of never having to listen to Sponge Bob in the background or having to take the training potty seat down before using the toilet. Getting older does have it’s rewards, “you’re darn tootin'”.

It is official, I am now old. It became apparent when, sitting in front of the television at my daughters house in Texas that I discovered that I had crossed over into AARP Land……As I sat there and watched my family entertain themselves with RockBand, singing away to Lady GaGa and dancing to Just Dance with the WiiI, I asked myself, “what is going on?” I kept waiting for the song selections to sing along with or the dance tunes to dance to, to give me options of Barry Manilow, Frank Sinantra or even the Beetles, when all I could find were selections from The Black Eyed Peas, the Cranberries, Pink or Beastie Boys…..when did Black Eyed Peas or Cranberries go from a food group to a rock band? When did Pink suddenly go from a color to a rapper. In my day, the Beastie Boys belonged to a horror film which we were told as kids, to never watch or we would begin to grow fangs instead of teeth.

As I sat there trying to not feel 80, the kids (in their 30’s) switched over to Just Dance, which shows you how to learn the moves of the modern types of dance. They urged me to get up and try just one dance. I relunctanly agreed, not knowing that my son iin law was behind Jodi and I with a movie camera. While raising my arms above my head, the bursitis in my arms let me know immediately that this dance was not for me. When they began to jump with the “computerized people” on the screen, I tried to jump, right along with them, thinking, “oh my, I can at least do this”. But the “extra” skin around my neck and tummy area began to shake in such a way that I felt I might actually be lifted up off the floor. When my foot slipped and I turned my ankle, while doing the “kick, stretch, kick, stretch” I immediately remembered that I was raised a Baptist girl and for a great reason, I could never dance. Being Baptist always gave me a great reason not to get out on the dance floor. I could just sit there and act “smug” saying to anyone who might approach me, “thank you for asking, but I’m Baptist and I don’t dance”. That way, I never had to actually get out on the dance floor and make a complete idiot out of myself. At this point, I faked a fainting spell, told them I must sit down and counted the minutes to when I could go back to my room (yes, they have me a room which I am only allowed to come out of at certain hours,ha) and use my IPOD (see, I am a little “modern”) and fall asleep listening to Love Me Tender, by Elvis or Barry’s, “I Write the Songs”…….great music to grow old with……., gotta go, it’s time for Wheel of Fortune!

This is an exciting day, not only did I get Randy to wake up singing, “oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner” but he is going to take me to a Dillards two hours away. You might be thinking, why does she want Randy to wake up singing that song? Well, it takes Randy a little while to wake up, so when I can talk him into actually singing a silly song, it makes him laugh, which wakes him up, fast. So I try to think of the most ridiculous songs and tell him to sing them, looking me in the eye all the while singing it with feeling. Right away, we are laughing and begining our day with a smile on our face. But….to top that, he is taking me to Dillards, which is one of my fav stores and we don’t have one here close. He found this one on his way to an office he was headed to and called me and told me he had a surprise for me. I had begun to think I was going to have to live the rest of my life only getting to go to Dillards when I visited Texas, but….today is a special day, we are headed to Dillards and he has informed me that he will sit and drink coffee and just let me go explore the whole store. Now, is that a great husband or what? Tomorrow, we are off to San Diego to visit David Jeremiah’s church, which is one of our favorite pastors, so it is a good weekend. Dillards and David Jeremiah; and we started off our weekend last night with Cold Stone ice cream…..some weekends are just great, aren’t they?

If you are like me, you are going through Mothers Day withdrawal! I learned last year to tell all the kids that their placement in our wills depended on the gifts I received for Mothers Day. So…..instead of just getting texts on my phone spelling out, “hi mom, love ya, HMD to you, your little angel”, this year was a little different. A weekend of precious phone calls from children and grandchildren, Randy, taking me out to every meal over the weekend so I didn’t have to cook, the doorbell ringing and trying to answer with a look of “oh my, they shouldn’t have” but accepting the gifts of flowers, edible arrangements or candy, surprise cards in my Bible from Randy when I opened it at church, well, yes, I am a little down today. This past weekend made me remember why I wanted to be a mom in the first place. Last year, I volunteered some of our kids to the Peace Corp for the next two years in Yemen. This year, it was easy to forget all the nights I didn’t get any sleep when they were little. The emergency rooms at midnight when their fever won’t go down; The poop on the front porch because they didn’t want to take the time to come in to use the bathroom, the “oh mom, I volunteered you to bake a cake for 35 kids for tomorrow, which I heard when I tucking the little darling in bed at 9 p.m. But, back to reality..clothes are in the washer, beans are cooking on the stove and my phone hasn’t rang all morning…….So……am trying to think of what I can use to get their attention for my birthday, coming up in July. I’m thinking that I might tell them that since it is very obvious that they struggle with time to shop for their mom, Randy and I will just come live with them to help them raise their children, that way, they will have time for all the important things in life, like shopping for their mom and dad….will let you know about all the great gifts I receive for my birthday!

A friend just wrote and ask me where on the blog was the recipe for King Ranch Casserole. I discovered that it was not on there, so I just posted it. You will notice that it is a little different from the one that came out years ago in the Southern Living Magazines, but this one doens’t have the cream of mushroom soup and I tend to like it a little better. Just has a little more “cream flavor” other than mushroom…See what you think. Thanks Gwen for asking for it, I make it so often, I could not believe that I had never posted it. Hope Don likes this version.

When you have food in your pantry that you just don’t know what in the world you want to make with what you have on hand and nothing sounds good, go to http://www.recipe matcher.com and put in what you have on hand and this site will give you recipes to make that you have with the food already in your house.

This past weekend while everyone is coloring Easter eggs and baking ham and scalloped potatoes, Randy got up Saturday morning and announced that we would be going to our storage shed to begin cleaning out things that we had brought from Texas, but do not have room for in our new place. To entice me out from under the covers, he holds up my IPhone across the room, keeps backing up until to get my phone, I have no choice but to get up to retrieve it. (No, I am not addicted to my phone, I can get rid of it at any time, well, after I win one last game of Word with my sister-in-law, and after I text all my friends to tell them Happy Easter, and well, maybe I am a little “attached” to my phone)
So we are up and headed to storage. In the back seat are a few items that we drug out in the middle of the night so that our neighbors wouldn’t see what we were taking away. I know they must think that our walls are lined up with furniture, lamps and books, as we continue to climb the steps with more bags of “goodies” that we find on the weekends. So we have become embarrassed about what all we bring up, knowing that if they are looking out their windows, they must be thinking, “how in the world can they get another thing in that condo?” But we manage. Now you have to understand that we have been at Lowe’s the last couple of weekends buying shelves for closets. It really isnt’ us, its just that there is no real storage in this place.
So as we head into the storage unit we are talking about what all we are going to do with all the things that we will be giving away this weekend. We decided to give it to our church store that is just around the corner form our storage unit. It is Randy’s plan to get us out of this unit into a small unit where all we will have to store are Christmas decorations. So as we start pulling out the out of season clothes that we have brought with us to store until next Winter, but wait, is that a cold gust of wind that I just felt when we opend the car door? Maybe I should just get one or two jackets out of this bag to take back to the house. Also, if I take a jacket of two, shouldn’t I take the long pants that match them? While Randy waits for me to go through the sacks of clothes we have brought to store, he tells me that the only thing besides these “warm clothes” that we are taking back are the cookbooks that we have come to look for. I only have about 30 cookbooks there at the house, and cannot stand not having the rest of my collection, so we are on a mission. Find the missing cookbooks. While looking through plastic storage bins, we find another box of summer clothes, so we take those to the car. We do find my missing cookbooks. There were a few more than I remembered having, but Randy hauls them to the car. It looks like between the winter bedspread that we brought, the winter clothes, and blankets that we had brought to put in storage, we ended up taking back a whole bag of “warmer clothes, just in case”.Our car is still full. Because we are bringing back a few extra items, I begin to tell Randy that I don’t think there is room in the kitchen for all my newly found “necessary kitchen items” and that maybe we should stop at a furniture store to see if they have kitchen hutches. I won’t tell you about the “look” he gave me, but indeed, since the furniture store was next to the In and Out Burger stand, he pulled the car into the parking lot and we look around for kitchen hutches. Because we are too embarrased to have any more furniture delivered during the day and they do not have delivery hours between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., we didn’t buy a hutch. We came home and ordered one on-line to be delivered. That way, it will come in pieces and maybe the neighbors will just think we are having toys for our grandchildren delivered. Something totally necessary. We will be pulling down the shades to put it together. I don’t want them to see that we have bought another piece of furniture. The people in the condo downstairs have already had a structual engineer come to put more reinforcements in the ceiling. They have been up here and are worried that our floor will just come crashing in on them one day. We didn’t accomplish what we wanted this past weekend. All we did was end up moving and organizing the storage shed into depts. One side for decorations, the back for all the out of season clothes & bedspreads and the other side for all the furniture we will try to slip back in our new place, after dark of course.