I'm not sure which word best suits my absence from blogging, hiatus or sabbatical, but it's true, I've been away. Now I'm back, and I return to this blog with a new title, Grandma. It will be six weeks tomorrow since our first grandchild, a healthy baby boy, was born to our son and daughter-in-law in Hawaii. I'm the last of the Bethel Valley Girls to become a grandmother, but this is not my last grandchild. In fact, six weeks from tomorrow is the due date for our second grandchild, who will be born in California to our son and daughter-in-law. Notice the trend? My grandchildren will not be living by me, so I will miss out on a lot of the fun associated with being a grandmother. Of the four of us, only one BVG has her grandchildren living by her, and even she has three grandchildren who live far away, in fact in a foreign country. Now we can all work together on perfecting the fine art of 'Grandloving from Afar.' 

There has been even more joy to celebrate in our family. Our daughter was married on a Greek island three days before our son's wife gave birth on the other side of the world. This explains part of my silence on this blog: Two weeks in Greece followed by two weeks in Hawaii. The other is the sudden death of our computer the day before we left for Greece, which was finally rectified shortly before my husband left on a two-week business trip to Guam. Dealing with our jet lag after splitting our time in a month between Greece (10 hours ahead) and Hawaii (three hours behind) left us rummy and exhausted. Now my husband will have to readjust after being in Guam (17 hours ahead). Dealing with my old, extremely slow, dazed and confused laptop in the absence of my wonderful desktop with high-speed capacity left me visibly and audibly upset and ready to smash it with hammer. Now the computer's back, my husband is almost back, and we're getting ready for another Bethel Valley Girl event tomorrow evening. Life is good, and I'm happy to be getting back to some semblance of normalcy, whatever that is. With my hiatus, or sabbatical, behind me, I'm ready again to explore the special joys of endearing and enduring friendship with the Bethel Valley Girls.

The past four months have been pretty crazy for our family. At the end of April my husband and I flew to North Carolina for our son's musical recital prior to his receiving his master's degree with a double major in Jazz Performance nad Composition. Then came the trips to Greece and Hawaii. There will be trips to California in October for the new baby and back to California in December for the whole family to be together for Christmas. My head is still spinning. Last year our son was married in New Orleans right after we moved to a new house, and two months later our daughter was married in a civil ceremony in London, where she had been living for a year. We went to California in September to see her on one of her business trips, and then she and her husband moved there in January. A month later they were surprising us with the news she is pregnant, and they still went ahead with their Greek wedding, which was followed by a traditional American wedding. It's all be fun and exciting, but it's been overhwelming at times too. So at our last BVG gathering at my house two weeks ago, we did something we've never allowed ourselves to do in the past: We gave each one of us ten minutes to whine while we had a glass of wine before it was time to dine. I dubbed the evening 'A Whine-Wine Situation' and it was kind of funny listening to our attempts at being true gripers.

Truth be told, God has been very good to us, and the true gift of friendship is being able to share each other's joys and bear each other's burdens. And that's what it means to be a Bethel Valley Girl.