GETTING READY FOR NO. 9

The time has finally arrived for Daniel to make his entrance into our world. He will be leaving the cozy warm comfortable nest that has been his home for the last nine months and entering the large sometimes loud and crazy world that will be called his family. Hope he's happy with the luck of the draw.

We will be going out to spend three weeks with Sondra. We will try to pamper her, entertain her, and feed her some good old southern cooking while we are there. It will also be a little time to spend with David and new baby Daniel. I'm sure Jonathan will need some moral support too. Daddy's sometimes get the short end of the stick when it comes to welcoming a new baby into their world. Mommy has known for nine months that their is really a little person growing inside her, but I think it is not always real for Daddy until they actually hold the baby in their arms.

Sondra has had a really rough month. They decided to get some work done on the house but it didn't turn out the way they planned. The first contractor came in and ripped up the molding and took down the doors. and totally turned the house upside down and four weeks later it was still sitting there. On top of that someone stole some of her jewelry including her wedding rings. They had to get a second contractor and hopefully the work will be finished by the time we get there. Then to top that off, someone broke into both their cars one day last week. This has all been stressing to an 8 1/2 months pregnant woman. You have to hand it to her though, when she went to the doctor for her last visit, her blood pressure was a cool 122 over 89. Mine is higher that with blood pressure medicine on the most relaxed day of my life. I guess she gets that from her daddy.

The weather has really cooperated with us this week. A nice cool front moved in the first part of the week, which made all our lives more bearable. It was supposed to rain and I mean torrential rains today, but the rain gods must have been on our side and the day has actually turned out to be a nice breezy sun shiny day. We have been able to get out and mow the lawn, do the weed eating and a few extra things that we have been trying to get done but have just not had time to do. Maybe Johnny and John Pearson want have to do too much yard work while we are gone. John Pearson actually worked up a sweat while helping John dig up some buckets of dirt and fill a couple of holes in the front yard. I told John when he started that " this is going to be a one bucket wonder". Well cut my tongue out. He stuck with it until the hole was filled. I didn't give him enough credit.

We have a few other loose ends to tie up before we leave. The next time I post it will probably be all about David and Daniel. Wish us a safe trip, Sondra a safe delivery and in three weeks a safe trip home.

ANOTHER VISIT FROM THE GRAND KIDS

We have had a very busy week. Sarah, Cody, Luke and Charlotte came in for a visit from Nebraska. It is about a sixteen hour drive down here, luckily they are able to break the trip up a little by stopping at Cody's parents house in Syracuse. We were really excited to see them all. The kids just keep getting bigger and more grown up. Sarah is beginning to show a little with baby number three. Sarah was having her ten year reunion Saturday. There was a picnic at the park for everyone to show off their kids, new husband and wives etc.

Luke managed to get his foot stuck in a hole at the top of the playground equipment. Cody said when he got over to find out what was going on, Luke was screaming at the top his lungs and Charlotte was standing there looking at him with with her hands over her ears screaming as loud as Luke was. I don't know if this was sympathy or just trying to get mom and dad's attention. He wasn't hurt just a little panicked.

We took the kids to the water park Saturday night while Sarah and Cody went out to dinner for the reunion. Luke was all gung ho about running in the water but it took Charlotte a little while longer to venture out to play. All the running and playing wore them out pretty good so we didn't have any trouble getting them into bed when we got home.

Monday we were out on the back porch letting the kids paint and play when Luke ask me to do something, I don't even remember what it was now, but I told him I didn't feel real good and he ask why?. I told him that I had a Frozen Shoulder and it made me feel bad. He looked at me and with this real sincere look says, "Well Maw maw I hope it melts soon."

It was good to have the kids back in the house again. We have really missed them. I guess we have the fear that the grand kids will forget us since we don't get to see them very often. I guess that is something ingrained in kids, they all recognize us when we visit and always act like they have missed us.

We will be leaving Saturday to go to Sondra's. Daniel will be born on the 5Th of Aug. unless he decides to come sooner. John and I will be going to help out with David and to see that Sondra gets a little rest after the c-section. It will give us a little bonding time with baby No.9. We have been blessed with lots of wonderful grand babies. We must have done something right.

NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY DAY OUT

Meriwether Lewis Park

Jacks Branch

Glennrock Branch

A fungus as big as your foot

Purple flowers. Awe......

Happy trails

Wading in the creek

Looks like the end of the trail for us.

Monday we got up early and was greeted by the most pleasant day we had had in quite a while. The temperature was a cool 58 degrees and the sky was nice and clear so we decided it was a good day to take the bikes and find a nice place to ride.

As soon as John Pearson got out of football practice, we picked him up and headed out to the Natchez Trace. We have been up and down the Natchez Trace dozens of times, but we haven't stopped at any of the Historic sites to the north of us. We took highway 20 out to the Trace and went north. Our first stop was the State Line area, then Cypress Creek , Holly and Sunken Trace. All the areas had paths and trails that you could take. It was fascinating to see the old trace and the ruts in the road where long ago travelers had ventured from Nashville all the way down to Natchez Mississippi. The area is still dense with vegetation. I can't even to begin to imagine how people were able to navigate wagons through the area.

Next we stopped at McGlamery Stand, Sweetwater Branch, Glenrock Branch and Dogwood Mudhole. We took a drive out to Laurel Hill Lake which is just a lake for fishing, no swimming or wading. Just to the north of Laurel Hill Lake is a stretch of the old Natchez Trace that extends about two miles. We started to unload the bikes and ride the area. It is a good thing we didn't, we would probably still be trying to get back to the car. There was lots of hills and sharp drop offs along the road. We didn't even realize that we were in such high elevation. The scenery was just beautiful.

Then it was on to Jacks Branch. The kids loved this area because of the water that ran through the area and the flat rocks lining the bottom of the creek. I guess we were lucky that we tramped all over the place, through the weeds and water and didn't see a single snake. I was pretty sure they were seeing us though. After we left Jacks Branch, we drove on to Napier Mine then up to Metal Ford. Lots of fast moving water and plenty of spots to take a dip. To bad we didn't carry our swimsuits. The kids still did a lot of wading and splashing.

Our final stop on the Trace was Meriwether Lewis park and camp ground. Finally a place to drag the bikes off the trailer and ride for a while. We rode down a section of the old trace and back. By this time it was almost 4:00 and time to head back home. We drove over to Summer town hit hwy. 43 and drove down toward Lawerenceburg. When we got to Lawerenceburg we stopped and got a Little Caesar's Pizza ( thank goodness for their $5.00 pizza) pulled over at the first shady spot and ate then headed home. We dropped the kids off at their house a around 6:30 and came home and spent the rest of the evening in the recliner. Another fun but tiring day.

If you get the chance to drive the Natchez Trace at a leisurely pace ( speed limit is 50 miles per hour) there are lots of sights to see and lots of history to be learned. I didn't know that Meriwether Lewis is said to have died from a self inflected gunshot. Amazing!!! I'm not too old to learn something.

GRAND KIDS DON'T COME WITH INSTRUCTIONS EITHER

Fixing to go back home.

Water park at night.

Andrew on the waterfalls.

Light show at the water park.

Matthew on the waterfalls.

Grandaddy and the kids.

Is this where we are going to swim?

I have intended every day this week to get on line and post something on my blog. Not that I have any earth shattering revelations or mind boggling projects to report on. Just another week trying to entertain the grand kids. Sometimes I wonder what I would talk about if we didn't have such a mob of kids to keep us busy, make us laugh and not to mention getting the blood pressure elevated. This has been just another week in the on going saga of "Maw maw and Grandaddy".

As I said in my earlier post. Monica went to visit Sondra in Colorado, so we kept Andrew and Matthew. This has been a week of trying to keep four kids busy for a week, well not a whole week but five days. Monday we had to take a few things over to Keepers of the Past, but we were afraid to take all four of them into an antique store, so John carried the items in and then he took them to the Salvation Army and let them shop around while I displayed our items.

On Tuesday we took them to Lawrenceburg to David Crockett park. If there is a snake left in that entire park it will be a miracle. They splashed and crawled all over the water falls, rocks and sandbar.

The water was freezing cold. John was tough enough to get in with them. I woosed out, I can't stand that cold water past my ankles. John Pearson was able to actually spear fish. He found a piece of bamboo, broke it off and made a point on it and stalked a fish that was about 8 inches long. When he got close enough he threw the stick and I swear to you he speared the thing. Why do you never get stuff like that on video. The chances of him hitting it was probably a billion to one.

Wednesday we kind of hung around the house and I let them do some painting. They always amaze me how well they do and how imaginative they are. Later that evening we went out to the park and they played while Tracy and I walked. I think everyone was worn out by the time we got home, took a bath and finally got into bed.

Thursday was a day for riding bike and scooters and hanging out at the house until Tracy got off work. She wanted to treat the kids to pizza and a trip to the Waterfront water park. This is a really great place to take the kids to play. Just a large pavilion with water shooting up and lots of kids running and squealing. At 9:00 pm they have a light show with the different color light making the water looked pink, blue, yellow and green. While the light show is going on they play Muscle Shoals Sound music.(Lots of oldies). Just as we got home we had a tremendous wind storm. Took out a few trees in the neighborhood and knocked out power from 10:00 pm last night until a little after 12:00 this afternoon.

John took Andrew and Matthew out to the park for a while this evening and then to the Water Wheel ice cream parlor while I went with Tracy and Emily to take John Pearson to a CAP Civil Air Patrol meeting. We shopped for a while and got in around 8:30.

It has been kind of hectic this week, but we wanted to do a few thing to make the visit interesting. We don't get to see Andrew and Matthew very often even though they live just three hours away. Everyone keeps such a busy schedule that it's hard to fit all the scouting, school events and sporting events into visit time.

The week has certainly not be all happy smiling faces. We have had plenty of time outs to think about what we did and why we are sitting in the room by ourselves for fifteen minutes. We have learned that Grandaddy, in particular, does not like to be back talked to. We also learned that we shouldn't try to stick our arms in the spinning waterwheel in front of the ice cream parlor, not to change the item identifiers at the ice cream parlor, not to point guns at people even though they are toy guns, don't call your cousins stupid, don't try to kill you cousin with the dodge ball and I'm sure much more than I can remember right now.

Monica comes home tomorrow and already the boys are saying that they are not ready to go home yet. Maybe we haven't warped them to much with too many don't do this and don't do that and I hope you didn't just say what I thought you said...........

MAWMAW IS PULLING OUT THE BIG GUNS

Leaf art suppose to be turned the other way, oh well

Talking heads

Designer dish towel

Bountiful harvest ( someone else's)

My harvest

Harvesting the crop

Look Mawmaw it's ripe

The summer is moving right along, but we have been keeping John Pearson and Emily during the day since May. I think they may be starting to get a little bored with us. We did the pool, creek and river outings with them the first few weeks, but to be honest it was about to wear me and John out. The pool didn't have any shade, I am deathly afraid of snakes at the creek and like I said before when we went to the river there was so much goose poop it kind of grossed me out.

This past week we have stayed close to home and looked for things around the house to keep them entertained. John let them paint a picnic table and chairs, the mail box, the grill and I think they will probably paint the basketball goal and the cloths line post tomorrow. Hope the black paint holds out.

We went down to Hobby Lobby yesterday to pick up some supplies. The picture above is the kids with white Styrofoam heads. John came back to where we were taking pictures of them with the heads and said "Excuse me mam but I think I need to call security". A sale clerk that was just on the other side of the isle looked around and asked if he needed some help. John's face turned really red. He didn't realize anyone was within earshot.

We did some leaf painting today. I know there is a technique to it, which I don't know, but it kept me and the kids busy and entertained for a couple of hours. I probably enjoyed it more that the kids and will probably try to do it when I have a little time of my own to perfect my skills:)

Then I got out the embroidery thread and material and spent awhile showing Emily how to embroidery. She seems to have a lot of patience for that sort of thing. Our biggest problem was threading the needle. I can't see how to thread the needle and her little finger just have not got that skilled yet. It was funny watching her though, she was really concentrating, with needle right up to her face and her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. I should have taken a picture of that.

We also harvested my tomato yesterday. This is the fruit of my farming that I talked about on an earlier post. Actually I was really pleased that it grew to ripen on the vine without being eating by bugs, worm or birds and I have two more that may get ripe in about a week. My bell pepper is about the size of a ping pong ball. I told Emily we could put up a vegetable stand but the sign would have to read "TOMATO FOR SALE".

My friend Sandra called me today and ask if I knew anyone that had any fresh dill and I was able to say "Yes as a matter of fact, I have some". So she and Charles came up to pick up about twelve dill heads from me and came bearing this huge bag of fresh veggies ( Damn those St. Florian farm boys). I posted them so everyone would think that I had grown all that stuff, but alas my lone tomato is the only thing I have to show for all my hard work.

I have decided that I would never have made it as a pioneer woman what with all sewing for the whole family, the planting, harvesting trying to preserve enough food to eat all winter not to mention the birthing babies in the back of a covered wagon. I would probably have been buried along side the trail before we got twenty mile down the road.

WHIRLWIND MONTH

Well July has got here already and things are really starting to pick up. I guess this is going to be a whirlwind month so we better just grab a hold and hang on tight.

Monica will be going out to Colorado next week to visit Sondra. She is taking Aaron with her so David will have someone to play with, and she and Sondra can have a little sister time. Sondra is within four weeks of having new baby Daniel. Monica thought this might be a good time to visit and make these last few weeks go by quicker. We will be keeping Andrew and Matthew. We will also have John Pearson and Emily with us during the day. I am going to have to come up with some plans to keep two eight year olds, a eleven year old and a thirteen year occupied for about six or seven days. Too bad I can't get them to get interested in working, I have plenty of things in that department to keep everyone busy for days. That would be cheap labor, a jar of peanut butter and jelly would also make for cheap eats. Monica should be home sometime the weekend of the 17th.

On the 22nd Sarah, Cody and the kids will be coming in for Sarah's 10 year class reunion. Hope she is still going to feel like traveling. They are expecting a new baby in February. We are looking forward to seeing the grand kids. We haven't seen them since March. I'm sure they will keep maw maw and grandaddy busy while they are here. They will be here until the 27 th then they will head back to NE. Then they will start preparing for their move to FT Bragg in Oct.

Sondra has booked us a flight to Colorado on the 1st of Aug.. We will fly from MS airport to Atlanta to Colorado Springs. Hopefully we will get there before she goes into labor. It is going to be kind of a tight schedule. Her c-section is scheduled for around the 6th, but we are afraid she might go early. David weighed 10 lbs and the doctor says this baby will be at least this much. If we can just get there before her labor starts we will all be able to settle down a bit. We will be staying until the 20th of August then we will head back home to AL. Whee!!!

After we get home I will have just a couple of days before I return to work. My head is in a spin just thinking about the next few weeks. Just thankful that we are still able to arise to the occasion.

FOURTH OF JULY RECOVERY

It has been a long weekend of too much food, too much fun and not enough exercise to beat down that yucky feeling that you get from all of the above. The weekend actually turned out pretty nice between the rain showers. It was overcast a good part of the weekend so it made it easier to get out and enjoy the great outdoors.

Mark was able to make it into town. He got here around three in the afternoon. Our first big event of the Holiday was showing him the old Murray bike that we had purchased at an auction the previous week. It is one of those big heavy bikes with no hand brakes or other bells and whistles like they make today. Now, Mark is thirty one years old , so he is not a kid by any stretch of the imagination:0. The first thing he does is hop on the bike and start riding around in the side yard yelling "Hey mom look what I can do". Well he took off through the back yard and didn't come back. John and I walked around to the back porch but couldn't see him because the fig tree blocked our view. A couple of minutes later Mark hobbles from behind the fig tree holding his knee. Apparently when he started to turn around he got his foot hung in the peddle, turned over and landed on the concrete area behind the house. Same knee he had messed up on the ATV wreck he had a few months back. I was afraid he was going to have more problems with the knee, but it looked alright when he left Sunday.

On Saturday we got up early and went out to the farm on Jacksonburg Rd. where Emily had been having pony camp last week. They had a little exhibition of what they had learned this week. This was Emily's first time on a horse so she was a little intimidated at the beginning of the week. By the time the week was over she had learned how to saddle and bridle her pony, how to take care of the pony's needs ( feeding, watering cleaning hooves), cleaning stalls (shoveling horse poop) and I think she loved every minute of it. She says she wants to go back next year.

After the pony show Johnny, John Pearson and Mark headed up to Iron City TN. for an afternoon of canoeing. They canoed down to Goose Shoals and made it home around 7:00 pm. Like I say the weather had been humid and over cast all day so Johnny got a terrible headache so he took some Advil and went straight to bed.

We had our traditional 4TH meal. BBQ pork, hot slaw, potato salad, baked beans. As an afterthought I made a cornbread salad and Tracy brought chicken and a huge tossed salad. So needless to say we ate way to much. Tracy, Emily and I did take a walk at Killen Park after we ate. When we got back it was almost dark so JP got out his fireworks and put on a fireworks display for us. Our yard now looks like a bomb went off in it. That will be JP's project when he gets in from football practice. I will probably have to get him to sing the clean up song as he does it but he is going to do it:)

We got up Sunday morning and went to 11:00 church. Mark left heading back to South Haven as soon as church was over. He had to get back to work for a while. John and I came home and I took a nap. Later Sunday evening we went out to the park to walk and there was a huge crowd out there. Seems that the Killen Baptist Church was having a community celebration. They were serving free hot dogs, hamburgers and homemade ice cream. We passed on the food because we had had enough to last for a while. As we were getting ready to leave they announced that the fire work display would begin in about 30 minutes. We decided to find us a good place to watch from and stayed for the fireworks. They had a really great fireworks display. We got in around 10:00 it started to rain again. After a long and fun filled yet tiring weekend we came home and headed straight to bed.

Hope everyone had a great 4TH of July weekend.

Recipe for

Cornbread Salad

2 cups cornbread ( left over is great)

1 cup diced fresh tomatoes

1 cup diced green peppers

1 cup diced purple onion

1/2 cup mayo or enough to moisten other ingredients well

(Hellmans is better)

salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients. Toss well

AMNIOTIC BAND SYNDROME

When we learned that Sarah and Cody were expecting their second child the whole family was thrilled to pieces. They were living in Huntsville and both were working and Luke was in day care at the time. When Sarah was somewhere around three months pregnant we got a call from Cody telling us that he had just got a call from the hospital in Athens and that Sarah had been in a car accident.

When we got to the hospital in Athens, Sarah seemed to be doing OK except for a few bruises and a couple of scratches. Considering that a car had come across three lanes of traffic and hit her head on, totaling both cars we thought she was in great condition. They kept her at the hospital for a couple of hours while they monitored the baby, then released her. We were all pretty shaken by the accident so we decided we would stop at a restaurant and get a bite to eat and calm our nerves before we headed back in different directions to go home.

When we got to the parking lot, Sarah tells me that that her clothes are wet so she needed to get home and change. When I looked at her, I told her she needed to go back to the hospital because her amniotic fluid was leaking. We took her back to the hospital and they examined her again and told her to go on home that she could expect to miscarry in a few days. This never happened. Thank God

The pregnancy progressed normally and everything seemed to be going just fine. The baby was due the first week in January. We had Thanksgiving dinner with the family, most of the kids were home for the Holidays so I was surprised when Sarah called Sunday morning and told me that she thought her water had broken. I said to her that " I guess we are going to have a baby today". Sarah, Cody and I headed to Huntsville where she was to deliver. Charlotte was born just a couple hours later. She weighed 5 lbs and 6 oz. and was 16" long so even though she was premature she was still a good size baby.

Charlotte was diagnosed as having club foot, but not a sever case. Her feet turned in at the ankles. She did not have toenails on her left foot and the first joint of her second toe was missing. On her right leg there was an indention just above the ankle but below the calf muscle. No one gave us any idea as to what may have caused these problems.

The orthopedic doctor put her in cast on both legs when she was just about 6 weeks old. This seemed to straighten out her feet very well. Then as she got a little older he prescribed corrective shoes. She started to walk when she was around 10 months old and has never slowed down since. But still no one gave us a name for what had caused these problems.

One day recently I was on the computer and I got to thinking that there must surely be a name for what happened to Charlotte, so I typed in amniotic fluid leakage and club foot. Up came hundreds of articles about a condition called ABS or Amniotic Band Syndrome. I couldn't believe that all this information was there all this time yet none of the doctors Charlotte had seen in the last two and a half years had mentioned it to us. We were all relieved to learn that it had a name and that other children had the same condition. I think we were lucky that Charlotte came six weeks early. The band around her right leg could have been much more serious had she gone full term.

Charlotte is a typical two and a half year old that gives her brother Luke a run for his money and never slows down. Recently when Sarah took her for a doctor visit in NE., she asked him about ABS and he told her oh yeah that is exactly what she has. We could have had peace of mind sooner if the doctors here had told us that.

www.amnioticbandsyndrome.com

I posted this link because it has stories of other children with this same condition. It also gives you information about what causes the condition and things that can be done to prevent it if the doctors are aware of ABS.