I Want To Be JUST Like HER...

...but that wasn't always the case.

She was one of eleven children born in Virginia seventy years ago...

When I was seven, I was so angry she made a green, ruffled polyester dress that she wanted me to wear for Christmas pictures...She won.

When I was twelve, she made my sister and I spend the summer studying "Christian Sex Education" with HER as our teacher. I am talking audio tapes, workbooks, and lectures...I just about died sitting through that...but it was helpful...eventually.

When I was sixteen (until I was about eighteen), I spent too much time whining about how unfair she was, (she charged me MONEY if she cleaned up my room!) and plotting how I would be WAY different...

In college, my thinking about HER changed...and I was thinking I might have been blessed to have a role model like her...

By the time I was twenty, I was starting to realize she was a pioneer of her time-she attended college, married "late" at 26, and was a working professional until she had babies at thirty...

When I got married at twenty-four, she gave my new husband and I "space" to figure out life together.

When I started having my babies at twenty-nine, she came over every day to help me as I chartered the new waters of parenthood. She helped me with laundry, dishes, and encouraged my to love on my new baby.

At thirty-one, she was the only one who could get my colicky second baby to stop crying. She would hold him while I slept, and then again help me with laundry, and dishes-which were impossible to control with two little ones now.

By the time my first two boys were toddlers and I had little sanity left, she was attaining god-like status in my eyes, Tin Man's eyes, and my boys' eyes. She would come over once a week to give me a "day", as she called it. She was always up for a walk to the park to play, or reading to my boys, chasing them around the house or just listening to me as I talked (adult interaction was needed after baby talk all week, and at this point, Tin Man was working close to eighty hours a week).

I fit in one more (colicky!) baby that she again helped me with.

But last Fall, we almost lost her...

My (elderly) dad, my (pregnant) sister, and I rotated at the hospital for a week while she pulled through...We made sure she was never alone. MY Tin Man and my (dear) neighbor parented my boys, and I put my life on hold for her...How could I not?

But she is spunky, and a fighter and she bounced back. (Her birthday last year, two weeks after the hospital stay)

Within three months of her hospital stay, she was at my sister's house helping her every day with her newborn twins. (We couldn't stop her! She insisted...)

Within six months, we (Tin Man, my boys, my sister and her husband {with the twins in tow}, and my dad) all spent our usual week together at our cottage for Fourth of July. We were so thankful to be together...

A year has passed, and She is celebrating a birthday today.

Happy Birthday MOM!

You are feisty, but sweet.

You are full of faith in God, and fun.

You gave everything in you to Dad, J, and me-

Tin Man thinks everyone needs a MOTHER-IN-LAW like you!

(There wouldn't be mother-in-law jokes if that were the case!)

and you are the best Nana to my boys...

I want to be JUST LIKE YOU in every way!

"Give her the reward she has earned; she should be praised in public for what she has done."

Proverbs 31:31 NCV

~Ruby Red Slippers (...who was NOT named this by HER, but definitely inherited a love of shoes-(and sparkly ones especially!) from HER...)