January 30 Changes ...

 Thursday:  My sister and Terry have moved south to Georgia to be with Shari, Mark and their grandkids. Their house here is still very full of their "stuff" and is in need of selling--but Terry and Mark are going to handle that down the road a bit. It's strange, after almost two years of them being .5 miles away to now have them move so far away. However, I am thankful this has happened. Ruthanne's memory issues are progressing more and more. Having never been in my sister's company for more than a few hours at a time over the last 50+ years, I was completely naive how exactly it would work seeing her on an almost-daily-basis. I am so sad about her memory loss. I had no idea it could be this difficult to deal with. Terry does an amazing job orchestrating their lives! However, when Terry required surgery back in October, it became very evident that both of them needed better care in their home than they were getting here. Thankfully, Shari and Mark have a "cottage" on their property, about 50' from the main house, and with a tiny bit of renovation it will be quite suitable for Ruthanne and Terry. They really loved being at Calvary Church--but they need more than just a once-a-week uplifting. They are both terribly lonely. I think being around their grandchildren will be a good thing! I think Terry will feel relieved of the 24/7 burden of taking care of Ruthanne--they will have good support there.

The other HUGE change in my life is that my Kaity doesn't want to come over any more. She is 12.5 and there is really nothing she is interested in doing over at my house. It's not that there is nothing to do here--she just doesn't want to do those particular things. PLUS ... she is a very "social" person--and we have had some of her friends come over and I've fed them and played games, etc.; but Kaity just isn't interested in coming here anymore. What does that feel like for me?

Sad ...

Depressing ...

Lonely ...

It was inevitable ... I knew eventually Kaity would not want to come over anymore. I knew this! I just was hoping it would be off in the future somewhere more distant than ... N O W. I wracked my brain to figure out "fun" stuff we could do together; but it's difficult to compete with the instant entertainment she receives from social media and video games. My heart aches. I feel lost.

SO ... I am asking the Lord to help me know what to do now. How can I serve Him? Should I get more involved at church? They are always looking for helpers. And I do not want to WASTE these last years of my life doing ... nothing ... nothing of lasting value in His eyes. 

Please show me, Lord. Help me to know who to talk to and where to start. Help me not to be afraid ... and please help me with this loss.

January 24 with Cal

Friday: Whatever "bug" attacked me about 9 days ago has stubbornly held onto my system--I am better than I WAS ... but that's not saying much. I was truly hoping young Cal would be in a subdued mood today (a rare thing), and I asked the Lord to give me the strength I would need--and Cal was just about as laid back as I have ever seen him be! We stayed in my "dining room" almost the entire three hours he was here with me. We watched birds. We watched the squirrels! We played with magnets. We built castles! We laughed and played ... all while keeping a close eye on the bird activity outside. It was so much fun.

I will say this about Cal--he is interested in almost EVERYTHING. He loves books (my kind of guy)! He loves toys! He has a great sense of humor! Jeeps! What's NOT to like?

We kept trying to "catch" a bird inside my window feeder and snap it's picture; but they were too quick for us every single time! 

We also talked about dinosaurs and got a box of dinosaur cards out to play with. On one side of the card there is a picture of ONE dinosaur; but when you flip the card over, it becomes part of a giant dinosaur puzzle. Cal was very intrigued by this and was determined to put it all together.

We moved all of our cards to the floor where there was more room to assemble them.

Mr. Cal was super pleased when we had accomplished our goal. He loves dinosaurs.

I took out the MagniCubes and started playing with them and Cal took right over. We had built a dragon a few weeks ago, but Cal announced that TODAY we were building a castle.

It's very cool to watch this little one's brain at work. He sizes the whole project up in his head and then he goes at it with all of his heart.

Look how proud he is of his castle! Such a cutie.

I also have a set of tiny magnets (100 of them) that are very strong magnets. Cal told me I had to go into another room and hide my face so that he could add these 100 magnets to his castle as a surprise. Okay, then.

See the little round magnets Cal added to his castle? He was so pleased!

Cal fell asleep on the ride over to his house, but he woke up and was completely re-charged.

We played and waited for the other kids to come home from school. Brendan is always the first one home, since he is in Middle School.

Aidan and Erin get off their bus by about 4:10. These guys were all SO HUNGRY today! I usually bring fresh cantaloupe or strawberries or something healthy for them to eat; but this is not a good time of year in Michigan to find fresh fruit that is actually eatable. SO ... I brought Rice Krispie treats instead. Erin and I played a few games of "Sleeping Queens", and the folks came home at about 6:00 with yummy baked chicken for us to enjoy.

Back home at my house, I caught this sneaky squirrel eating all of the peanuts in my window feeder. We're friends, so it's okay. I talk to him while he looks intently at my face the whole time. I'd like to pet him sometime; maybe in the spring.

January 10 A "normal" Friday

Friday:  It was just me and Cal today at my house. This little guy really enjoys having the place to himself. He is not a difficult child to entertain at all--actually, none of the four kiddos are difficult to spend time with because they are interested in everything, they love to learn, and they love to play. Brendan is not a little boy anymore--which makes "play" quite different at almost 13. I really have to figure out more age-appropriate stuff for him to do when he is here. I haven't figured it out yet ... nor have I done a very good job with my Kaity-Girl about this very issue. BUT Brendan and Kaity are very different personalities with very different abilities and interests. Brendan is a reader. Kaity is not. They both love games, but they prefer video games of which I have ZERO. 

But back to Cal ...

He really loves to play with my toy treehouse. Erin told me last week that she was going to get a REAL treehouse in her back yard this summer! They do have some very nice trees in the back yard, but an official treehouse can be quite complicated to build AND a bit expensive. I didn't tell her all of that.

Cal and I decided to make our back yard scene a little more dangerous today. So we played out a whole scenario of alligators living under the pedestrian bridge. We brought "Happy" over as well as "Tiny grump" and our wooden alligator (we haven't named him!) and had fun making up a story about how dangerous the campground had become because of the invading alligators.

Cal loves "GARY" (scary) stories; so we kept this up for quite awhile.

Cal had some leftover spaghetti for lunch. He had a new, very fancy T-Rex shirt on today; so I convinced him to wear this paper towel "bib" to catch his spaghetti drips. He ate every single noodle! His "bib" was bright red and a real sloppy mess by the time he had finished eating, so I was glad it all landed on the paper towel instead of his new shirt.

After lunch, Cal began to construct a track for our cars. I helped him a little bit because he was having difficulty getting it to work properly. Once it was constructed, we raced cars for a very LONG time. Earlier, we had picked out about 35 cars (our favorite ones) and had them all line up to go to the gas station for a fill-up and car wash. Some of them had their tires checked too. It was a $10 charge--we had to send some of our cars to the bank because they didn't have the money available with them. So we had cars taking side roads to the bank and then getting back in line. It was a very big deal and took up almost an hour of our play time.

Cal! I think you love playing with cars as much as I do!

We drove home to Cal's house and arrived at about 3:15. Cal had fallen asleep in the car, so I decided to shovel the driveway. We had received perhaps 2" of snow throughout the day and I figured I shovel it out of the way before the kids came home. I was able to get in their front door! YAY! Jeeps. All of these weeks using their key WRONGLY was so ... stupid of me.

I brought "Sleeping Queens" with me so that Erin and I could play it. She loves this game. We had a great time playing together.

You are so precious, Erin!

Meanwhile in the basement, Aidan was intensely playing a video game. I already forget what game it was! 

I was attempting to get a good photo of Erin and little Cal kept photobombing my attempts! Plus, I couldn't find Erin's face for her hair--I showed her on my phone this upper left picture. She thought it was funny, but she did take her hands and moved her hair to the side--much better, Erin!

Aren't these cute pictures of these little people?!!

January 6 STUPID me

Monday:  I received a text last night from Kelly asking if I could pick Cal up from his preschool at 3:00 today. Dylan had a scheduled video conference from 3-4:00, and she had clients until late afternoon. Yes! I could certainly find a way to squeeze little Cal into my extremely busy schedule (I am joking here)!

I have no pictures to show you the following hours, so this narrative will have to suffice. I picked Cal up at 3:00 and we drove to his house arriving at about 3:20. The temperature outside was in the low 20's, so I kept the car running with Cal strapped into his seat while I went to unlock the front door.

UNLOCK THE FRONT DOOR?

How on earth hard could that be?!?!? I'll tell you what--I have been UNABLE to unlock their front door for months on end! It hates me. Truly.

A few weeks ago, we discovered that someone at their house (perhaps Cal) had gotten into the habit of locking both locks on the front door. The bottom lock is kind of a weird lock with NO key. So, even if you have a key to the top lock you still cannot open the door. This proved to be the case several times in the last couple of weeks. Dylan, Kelly and I have talked about this problem and they have made a valiant effort to make sure that bottom lock is left UNlocked for me.

BUT ... when I tried to unlock the door, it did it's usual unopening routine for me. I went back to the heated car and explained the situation to Cal--who is surprisingly easy-going during these times of stress for me. He just smiled at me and reminded me that Brendan would be home soon and maybe he could get the door to open. Yes.

BUT ... when Brendan returned home at 3:30, he couldn't get the door to open either. I was so bummed. And I was angry too! The little kids wouldn't be home until 4:15 and we were stuck sitting in the car for 45 minutes waiting for them only to tell them we can't get in the house! Frustrating.

I sent a text to Dylan with my complaints about his front door. I wasn't very nice either (sadly). I requested that he come right home after his video conference was over.

Brendan and I got into the back seat of my warm car with Cal and I played cute animal videos off of YouTube (on my phone) while we waited. I couldn't get the sound to work, though. I later discovered (while driving home) it was because my phone and my car are "synced" together and for some reason, YouTube was playing through my car speakers (which were turned off).

Dylan drove up the driveway almost in sync with the little kids' bus dropping them off at the corner. Dylan had the garage door opener and everyone got inside the warm house. Whew.

Here's the kicker though:  I asked Dylan to demonstrate opening the locked front door for me, using my key--and ... VOILA' it opened right away for him. He twisted the key to the RIGHT. I had been turning the key to the LEFT; but in all fairness, I had tried turning it RIGHT quite a few times (not today). When I did, nothing happened at all. Turning the key to the left? At least the key TURNED in the lock and it sounded like it was UNLOCKING the door. So I didn't bother turning it to the RIGHT again. 

Humbling and humiliating that at 71 years I can't open a simple door with the correct key.

Thankfully, I have an understanding and merciful son! He really needed to stay longer at work to finish up some business and I guilted him into coming home immediately because I was too stupid to open the front door. I stayed and played with the kiddos for an hour, which did allow Dylan to "remotely" finish up some of his necessary work. I played one game of "Sleeping Queens" with Brendan and Erin, and then just Erin and I played a second game. Brendan won the game he played, and I won the second game. Erin was not pleased, but she recovered. I brought over my new Mo Willems book: "Don't let the Pigeon drive the Sleigh" which we read and laughed about too. 

January 4 Sleepy Kaity

Saturday:  My dear Kaity-girl was not quite her usual self today. I picked her up from her dad at about 4:00--and it appeared as though I woke her up at that hour (!!). We came over here and ate some leftover spaghetti for our meal--and she was quite talkative as we ate--and then we played two games of UNO--they were super quick games! Kaity won the first one in about two minutes, and I won the next game nearly as quickly. I had to excuse myself for an extended bathroom stay and when I came back into the main room, this is what I found:

I decided to tuck her in right up to her chin and let her sleep, thinking that she would awaken in time to go over to Altitude to jump. But jumping was not in the cards tonight. Our Kaity was just too tired to wake back up. I watched her as she slept and prayed for her. I asked the Lord to give her a heart of faith, to believe that Jesus loves her and died to save her, that she would understand enough to give her whole life to Him. No one else will ever satisfy the deep, deep longings of her heart. You are loved, dear granddaughter.

January 3 Our third week of FOUR

Friday:  That's a confusing title to this post--it means that this is week three of having all four Pahman kiddos over for a few hours. This is the last Friday of their Christmas break from school. We have done very well all together here at my tiny place. Even Brendan, who is quite a bit older than "the littles" seemed content enough to be here. 

It is constant movement, action, service the entire time they are here--but it is very fun ... these are lovely children--so interesting, creative, smart, and very fun (all of them)!

There is a lot of stuff to play with over at my little house. The children know where everything is kept, so they make themselves right at home; which is very nice.

Little Cal actually played with the treehouse today without any competition ...

... his siblings are ARTISTS and were busy being creative in the next room.Cal hasn't really shown much interest in drawing/coloring/sketching, etc. yet. Aidan was an enthusiastic artist at age TWO (I'm not kidding), even holding a pencil properly! Brendan has always enjoyed art as well--and he is very good at sketching animals and robots, and all kinds of stuff. Erin started enjoying artistic things at about age four. She is quite a little artist now and is always busy making things for me! How sweet she is.

After we did our usual routine at my house [i.e. lunch, playing, watching short animal videos I had saved to show them, snack time, and a few more short videos], we headed back to their house. 

The kids' Aunt Shannon was here in Michigan to visit them! I missed out seeing Shannon last year when she came and I had quite forgotten that she DID come. I tried to get a few pictures ... young Mr. Cal was into "photobombing" as you can see ...

Gah! You are as cute as a bug, Cal!

We played with Aunt Shannon for awhile. She is currently living and working in Tulsa, OK and loves her job and her roommates too. She is such a nice person.

Look at Erin in her little hooded cape! 

It was a good day. Super thankful for good health and enough strength to share in the joy of this dear family.

January 2 KT and KenZ

Thursday:  When I arrived at Jesse's Thursday at about 4pm, I was greeted by a nervous Kaity stating that "I hope this won't be any trouble ... but can Kenzie come over too?" Yikes. Surely Kaity should know me well enough that I would give a very hearty YES to that question! But I do remember giving a very hesitant "yes" in the past when both Kenzie AND her sister Harper were invited (prior to my knowledge) to come over and play with Kaity (including dinner)--my reluctance was due to the fact that those two sisters did not get along very well (back at that time) and to complicate matters, Kaity didn't do well with the two sisters TOGETHER either. But just having either one OR the other come over has always been fun. I was more than happy to have Kenzie come over. And I actually had a ton of leftover spaghetti for dinner!

Here are a few pictures of these two playing:

Kaity and Kenzie enjoyed a few rounds of Trampoline Pong ... so glad I hadn't folded it up and put it away yet!

They made up their own games as well using my new set of tiny magnets and some jingle bells that I had in a container with my MagnaTiles ...

We also went to Altitude, where the girls jumped for an hour. Kenzie no longer has a membership there, so we looked up online how much it would cost for us to have a "friend" come to jump for an hour--since it was only $10, it was no problem. BUT what was even nicer was once we were checking in at Altitude, the owner/operator recognized Kenzie as a "regular" jumper and refused to charge us anything at all! He was sad that her membership had expired. What a nice fellow he is!

PS. Kenzie's mom (Megan) is scheduled for a total knee arthroplasty tomorrow morning. I warned Kenzie that her mom will need a LOT of help during the next six to eight weeks. Please help Megan's surgery to go well, Lord!

December 31 "He makes all things new"

New Year's Eve: This past Sunday (12/29/24), we had an extended communion service to usher in the new year. Pastor Jim only gave a short devotional "encouragement" to us that was so impactful. As a church, we've been studying the book of Ecclesiastes (which is not an easy book to understand) since September. Solomon is the author, later in his life, and he gives a whole bunch of really discouraging insights to life. I remember this book being Grandpa Jim's favorite book in the Bible. I think Jim related to the realistic picture Solomon painted of life--how hopeless and meaningless it can be--the nothingness of existence on earth. But Solomon also saw sensible and wise conclusions to his mental dilemma of living too.

Ecclesiastes is included in Holy Scripture under the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit--so it is good to respect it as such, even if it is difficult to understand. Pastor Jim has done a really good job teaching through it, stating that oftentimes we feel exactly the ways Solomon felt ... because life is difficult and sometimes really ugly. Solomon had a lot of complaints. Something that really bothered him was that "there was nothing new under the sun" and that everything had a monotonous rhythm of repeating itself to no one's advantage.

So Pastor Jim contrasted the "nothing new under the sun" thinking with the new life given to us IN Christ. We looked at 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Those who become Christians become NEW persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun." This is exactly what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus when they talked that night. Jesus told him that he had to be born again--that the Holy Spirit "gives new life from heaven." 

In Revelation 21.6 it says: "Look, I am making all things new!" If I am truly a Christian, I am been made new each day as I walk with Him. New! Fresh! Restored! Forgiven! 

We also looked at Mark 2.22 when Jesus talks about putting NEW wine into NEW wineskins--not the old, because the old skin would break and both the wine and the skin would be ruined. 

Pastor challenged us to ask the Lord to change our hearts this year, help us to submit to His plans and ways, and grow more and more like Jesus. Stop thinking of the old ways. Stop seeking wisdom apart from Him. Seek the Lord--an adventure! 

I am encouraged to OBEY this as much as in me lies. Surely God is not finished with us yet. I hope to memorize this verse this year:

"I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be." Philippians 3.12b