My Ruby Red Slippers: Like Grandma...

I have always thought I take a lot after my Grandma Anita, my dad's mom:

We even look alike - right?

She has probably close to 50 journals hidden in her basement; I have a trunk full of journals written from the age of 13 on up to around age 21.

She has more photo albums than journals, with pictures depicting our family from before she was born, up to her most recent great-grandbabies. I just had to move over 20 gigs worth of pictures from my laptop to a portable hard drive. Plus all the albums, framed pictures....

She passed on to me that love of photography, of capturing every great moment in life, to perserve a perfect memory on film. She sees beauty in everything and everyone. I'm trying.

We both love to write. She has written a cookbook with antidotes from her life as a farmer's wife and mother of 6. I wrote plays, skits, poems, & songs from a very early age...and plan to do even more writing in the future. Oh, and I currently write a little blog ;)

She hooked me on writing at a young age, when she send me long letters detailing everything our extended family was involved in, what birds she had seen in her yard recently, and what the weather was expected to be the following week. And always about God, how much He had blessed her, and how special I was to my Grandma.

She is my hero. She raised six kids succcessfully while keeping up a farm. She has cut the head off of a chicken, drained it, plucked it, and served it for dinner that very same day. Now THAT'S a *real* woman! She also worked a job for years, on top of all that.

Then, and my favorite story about my Grandma, she went back to college when she was in her 50's. Nowadays that's not so unusual, but this was over 20 years ago. I was in AWE of her, thinking, There is NOTHING I can't do because there is nothing SHE can't do! Every now and then I still think about finishing college. I feel my own dreams have been left in the dirt while I strive to foster a new generation's dreams. Then I think, It's never too late....my Grandma did it and so can I!

On our way home from Ohio last month, we stopped in to see Grandma. She lives half way in between our home and Chad's family, so we stop to spend the night, catch up with Grandma, and break up that 10 hour trip. Here are some pictures from that stop...of course :)

I took this as Chad drove like a bat outta Hell. We would always start whooping and hollaring as kids when we saw this sign. It meant Grandma's house was only about 20 minutes away.

I always considered this an official landmark of Indiana. Some things just make you feel like you are finally home...seeing the Polly Freeze sign does that for me.

Only 1.5 miles from Grandma's house...

Can you tell we are related? That is my Dad and Aunt Becky. They are Grandma's two oldest children. Aren't these pretty glamourous senior pictures? They were hotties! This is how I have such pretty babies ;)

One of the woodpeckers that lives in Gma's back yard:

Apparently there is a large woodpecker that only eats grubs & worms and he was my Grandfather's favorite one to watch with his binoculars. He'd always say, Now, Anita, that bird will never come eat your birdseed on the back porch. They just don't do that! Sure enough, he was right. Then, two days after he died, the woodpecker flew up to Gma's bird seed and went to eating. Since then she has had babies and THEIR babies eat her birdseed as well. She told me she always felt like that was the Holy Spirit. At first I thought she meant, that bird was the Holy Spirit. As in, the Holy Spirit is living in her yard and eating birdseed on her back porch. And, who am I to argue? I grew up hearing her testify in church about how her first boyfriend was Jesus. So, having the Holy Ghost in the form of a bird, eating birdseed on her back porch, wasn't much of a stretch for my imagination!

It wasn't until I was older that I realized what she meant about her first boyfriend: She got saved around the age of 15 and fell in love with Jesus. He was her "first love". My grandfather was her second love, at age 18.
Anyway, a little while later she did go on with the woodpecker story and tell me that she felt like the Holy Spirit had sent her that woodpecker as a little sign from her dead husband that he was okay and God was watching out for her.

~ Me & Grandma ~