My Other Blog

This isn't my only blog. Though techincally my Monday Morning Update (MMU) wouldn't be considered a blog per se, it operates in the same way as a traditional blog. Every Monday morning I 'post' my thoughts to what I call the 'MMU Family.' We are a 'family' of 15, and this 'family' actually includes my family members, all eight of us, and the other seven are 'adopted family.' One was our foreign exchange student from Sweden 15 years ago, and he's still part of our family. Another lived in our neighborhood (next cul-de-sac over) when we were raising our children. I met her when I would go in to our middle son's kindergarten class to help kids with reading. Soon she was playing in our backyard and, lacking any real supervision at home, she sort of became part of our family in a very special way. Another MMU Family member once dated our daughter, and his humor fit with our family's so well, he seems like he must have been born in to our family. Another is our son's best friend and roommate, along with our now-daughter-in-law's cousin--they make the cutest couple! Still another is the daughter of close friends of ours (they are part of the 'Warthog Crew'), and the newest member is my niece, who is close to our daughter.

I mention this here because to me, the Bethel Valley Girls are 'family' too. I have another group of friends I call 'The Warthog Crew,' and they're definitely 'family' to me. So what is FAMILY? I am pondering that on this drizzly Friday morning, thinking how amazingly blessed I feel and realizing things weren't always this way for me.

I decided to jot down the things that come to mind first when I think of the word 'family':

Love
Security
Trust
Traditions
Fun Together
Sharing Joy, Sharing Sorrow
Shared Values
Enhancing Life

Like so many people, I grew up in what would be by today's standards a 'dysfunctional family.' No need to dwell on that. It is what it is, or I guess I should say it was what it was. Not all was bad, so having made peace with what was, I have moved forward and have embraced the good. That's what I concentrated on when raising my own family. With God's help I have designed how I wanted my life to be, and along with my husband have set out to make family functional for our three children. At the same time we have opened our arms wider to keep family from being an exclusive, closed group. It is no accident that they have gone out in to the world with their arms and hearts open to good relationships, good friendships, lives of their own. We envisioned this for them.

So about this other blog, the MMU...Five years ago we became empty-nesters when we moved from Hawaii to Virginia. That's a huge move and a real cultural shift. We didn't know then that eventually we would finally make it back to Washington State, our point of origin. For me, I left the career I loved behind when we moved yet again because of my husband's career. I mourned the loss of friends in Hawaii while I still missed my friends in Washington. Both of our sons had lived with us through their college years, but now they were college graduates, off on their own like their sister before them, pursuing their dreams and their careers. Here we were living in a state I did not know. My husband's employer would only ship one of our cars with our belongings, so he took our van to work every day leaving me alone in our townhouse with no car, no friends, no interesting place to walk. I missed my family, and I literally cried out to God about it. He sent me a solution, although I did not see at the time what a great idea He had.

My husband and I are explorers. We spent every weekend in our new state exploring all this new territory, and we were doing fun and interesting things. I would send individual e-mails to our children--who all lived in different states--telling them about our adventures. When I was lamenting to God about our family being so spread out and how that made my heart ache, He clearly said to me, "If you want to do something to keep your family close, then write a Monday Morning Update to all of them at once." And so the MMU was born, and before long, our children were writing responses back and forth. I saw a new closeness developing before my very eyes. We loved it, they loved it.

Five years later, the MMU is still going strong. Our three children have married, expanding the original MMU list to eight, including my husband and me. Along the way, as I said, seven others have asked to be added to the MMU, and I learned recently that our children having been passing especially good ones to their friends. We have a following!

I mentioned The Warthog Crew---this consists of three other couples besides my husband and me. The husbands are my husband's three closest friends, and between them they represent over 130 years of friendship. Between the four couples, we represent about 170 years of marriage. I dubbed us The Warthog Crew after we started the tradition of meeting at the Warthog BBQ Restaurant to celebrate my husband's birthday every year.

Ah yes, traditions..........don't they keep families connected through the years, even through the generations? The MMU has become a tradition. It keeps our family close even though we are spread out so many miles apart. I suspect that after I pen my last MMU, one of my children will volunteer to pick up where I left off. With the Warthog Crew we have lots of traditions. We get together every September for the Fox Island Garage Sale, followed by lunch together. We have Christmas parties, celebrate each other's birthdays, do murder mystery parties, have a Green Party on St. Patrick's Day, etc.

THE BETHEL VALLEY GIRLS AS FAMILY

We truly LOVE each other. Our motto is 'Love us!' We are SECURE in the knowledge we are here for each other no matter what. We can TRUST each other with our very lives. We have our TRADITIONS, like our once-a-month gathering for dinner (Winings and Dinings) and our Christmas gift exchange. We have so much FUN together---hello, Spa Day!! We SHARE OUR JOYS and SHARE OUR SORROWS. For instance, they gave me an Attitude Adjustment Shower when I was pregnant with my third child--truly unplanned--and was so sick, reminding me that they were there for me during those difficult months. They really did change my attitude! By the same token, 29 years later they surprised me with a fun Grandma Shower, celebrating the imminent births of my two first grandchildren, the first to be born to that 'surprise child' and his wife, the second to my daughter. We have all suffered the loss of our parents during the course of our long friendship, and we have prayed for and encouraged each other as our various grown children have gone through their own struggles. We have SHARED VALUES, and for instance, I know we'll all be voting the same in this presidential election. But more importantly, we know and love God and have put our faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. And because of all of the above, the Bethel Valley Girls have ENHANCED MY LIFE.

This has been a long blog entry, but this is what was in my heart and on my mind this morning. Here's to the Bethel Valley Girls, my Sisters, my dear friends, forever and ever. May we be blessed with many more than just these 31 years of friendship. And together we say, "Love us!"   

Subway Art for the Bathroom

Today was supposed to be surgery day---not for me but for Elletu. I was ready to drive her to the hospital, be in the waiting room, sit with her in recovery, drive her home to my house and care for her needs. She asked, "Are you up to all that?" And like a good friend, I not only agreed to the above by told her I would have no problem holding the kidney-shaped spit-up bowl for her post-surgery should all that anesthetic make her sick to her stomach. As we sat together at a recent BVG event (there have been two since I last blogged, lunch out for Elletu's birthday and a dinner at my house), the synonyms for the word 'vomit' came up (no pun intended there). This led to an Internet search for phrases used to denote the 'evacuation of one's stomach contents,' and that led to what I call Barf Subway Art. Subway art is all the rage right now, and I love working on it, but I just don't think anyone else would be perverse enough to do what I am doing for Elletu. Hopefully this will keep her encouraged as she recovers from the surgery rescheduled for two weeks from now. This Barf Subway Art will be printed on premium matte paper and will be beautifully framed to be hung above her toilet. Funny thing, she's not planning to take it down once she is well. This is a true friend!

Barf PUKE Spit up

retch upchuck eject URP

laugh and the world laughs with you, barf and you barf alone

toss one's cookies RALPH disgorge

Throw Up HURL  lose your lunch

bow down before the porcelain god  VOMIT

GAG her barf is worse than her bite

disgorge  SPEW  throw up EXPEL un-swallow

gastro geyser sick to your stomach evacuate

baking powder or baking soda: that is the question

Nauseate regurgitate dry heaves

round-trip meal ticket  CALL EARL

HEAVE projectile EXPECTORATE

friends don't let friends barf alone

 

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.

This is where it all began. Three mothers of young children got to know each other while living on this cul-de-sac of duplexes. As their children played together, these moms discovered their shared faith as well as a somewhat humorous outlook on life. At least that's how I imagine it now. It was over 31 years ago, and I didn't live there. I just know that when I met them at that picnic birthday party, I discovered my shared faith with the three of them, and we laughed a lot that day because they are so fun and funny. I don't know when I first drove in to Bethel Valley Lane, but I know it was the start of something quite awesome. When I took a nostalgic drive through there recently, I noticed the playground is still there and is in good shape. I wondered about the kids who play there now, and I wondered about their moms. I wonder...............31 years from now, in 2043 will they be grandmas, and will they still be getting together at least once a month to celebrate enduring friendships? As for us Bethel Valley Girls, where will we be in 2043? Remember that shared faith? Well, thank God, we'll either be in heaven or will be pretty close to it. Together forever, that us!

Scanning a photo is an easy task. Scanning over 1,000 photos is a daunting task and one I took it on several weeks ago. It's not like I can work on it all day every day. Today I hit the 800 mark and realize that at some point I need to categorize these pictures. So far they all fit nicely in to the NOSTALGIA category. I've had some good laughs, and yes, I've shed some tears along the way. Working on this time-consuming project has given me even more appreciation for the Bethel Valley Girls and the 31 years of our friendship. One picture in particular reminded me of why I think of them as more like family than just friends. It was October 1983, and the occasion was my son's fourth birthday party. This was the only time we went to McDonald's for one of my children's birthday parties, and it was because my new baby was just two weeks old and doing it there was the easy route. Their staff took care of everything, including the birthday cake. The picture I have from that day is of my son preparing to blow out the four candles on his cake, and his friends were gathered around to wish him well. And there they were, Elletu's son and daughter (her older daughter was in school), j's daughter (her older daughter was in school) and Cool's two sons. My daughter was also in school. Not in the picture were the moms, Elletu, j, Cool and Firstelle---the Bethel Valley Girls, who had first met as a group two years before. That was at another birthday party, for Cool's older son. I found another picture from my daughter's fourth birthday party, held at our infamous Piggy Park, and right next to her in the photo is Cool's son whose birthday party had started it all. I'm still looking for photos from my daughter's fifth birthday party. She shared it with j's daughter because they have the same birthday. Coincidentally, j's husband shares a birthday with my son. And I'm glad I've shared so much of my life with my friends/family, the Bethel Valley Girls. Thus, when I set up those categories for my scanned photos, the first one is going to be 'Bethel Valley Girls.' Thirty-one years and counting!

It's not often that I am left speechless. It happened to me two nights ago, so much so that I wasn't even ready to write about it yesterday. I just walked by my kitchen table and was reminded the Bethel Valley Girls have a knack for knocking the wind out of me, and I mean that in the best of ways. A few weeks ago j said, "We need to have a planning meeting," and I agreed because summer is upon us and we haven't come up with a way to top Spa Day or Pink Day. Elletu texted me later and told me the day we would be meeting at a restaurant for a 5:15 dinner. I told them all, "I'll get there early and get us a good table," so I was surprised to see their cars in the parking lot when I arrived ahead of the appointed time. I came bearing gifts to celebrate our 31st anniversary of friendship, including earrings Elletu and I had made out of wine bottle corks. As I breezed in to give them all a bad time for beating me there, it took a few moments for it all to sink in. They already had a table for the four of us, and next to it was another table packed with "It's a Boy!" bags, stuffed animals and balloons. What was this? And wait a minute, those aren't actual balloons, those are blown up...oh my! Surprise! They were throwing me a surprise 'Grandma Shower'! With my first two grandchildren just months away from being born, these dear friends were welcoming me to the world of grandmotherhood in true BVG fashion. I was blown away, never saw that coming in a million years, and even now I wonder, "How did these wonderful friends of mine surprise me like this?" But it was not the first time they caught me off guard. It was 29 years ago this summer--maybe even this month--that Elletu invited me over to her duplex on Bethel Valley Lane. I was pregnant with my third child, and I was so sick it was pitiful. It was during this unplanned pregnancy that I developed asthma, and my medicine made me vomit six times a day and I still couldn't breathe. My husband was away on travel 12 weeks of that pregnancy, my mom had just died, and I didn't have any family around to help me. I suspect I was less than thrilled to be pregnant and must have expressed that a time or two. When I arrived with my five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son in tow, there was j with her two daughters and Cool with her two sons. These three friends of Bethel Valley Lane (and Bethel Valley fame) had plannd what they called an 'Attitude Adjustment Shower' for me, and the laughter first began when I saw the centerpiece on the table. A stuffed rabbit was upside down, with a few daffodils between its paws. 'The rabbit died' is an expression from our mothers' generation, and it was actually a 'medical term' meaning "You're pregnant." Any reader of this blog knows what I mean. Anyway, above the dead stuffed rabbit, hanging from Elletu's dining room chandelier, were a few balloon look-alikes. I'll be honest, they were condoms. That's right, condoms. Tucked inside were pamphlets explaining different forms of birth control, the message being obvious. ("Condoms can break, okay?") So fast-forward to June 6, 2012, and picture the BVG's trying hard to blow up condoms to join another real balloon to form a ballon/condom bouquet. It wasn't easy, but Elletu apparently has experience with this? That balloon/condom bouquet is still together on my kitchen table. I'm going to take pictures of the presents in front of the balloon/condom bouqut to send to my pregnant daughter and pregnant daughter-in-law, since the gifts go to their babies. I just hope I don't make them blush! Well, the BVG's made me speechless, and I might have blushed too. I'm overwhelmed. They helped me ease in to the life of a mother of three, and now they're helping me ease in to the life of being Grandma. I can only hope and pray my pregnant daughter and pregnant daughter-in-law will have a group of friends like the BVG's with whom to share the wonderful world of motherhood. And if they're exceptionally fortunate, as I am, they'll have that same group of friends with which to share the wonderful world of grandmotherhood. I'm almost there. Thank you, BVG's.......I love us!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BETHEL VALLEY GIRLS!
     It was June 2, 1981 when I first met the Bethel Valley Girls. Of course they weren't the Bethel Valley Girls back then, and I already knew one of them. We call her Cool now--that's her BVG name. When she invited me and my two young children to her son's third birthday party, I had no idea how momentous that day would be. She also invited two young moms from her neighborhood on Bethel Valley Lane. We went to a park on a lake as planned, but it was all locked up so we took the party to another park. And there we were, four moms, nine little kids, one fun afternoon and, unbeknownst to us, a new Sisterhood begun. I think God looked at us and said, "This is good," and the Bethel Valley Girls were born. Two years later I had another son, and so today we are four old moms (and grandmas) with ten grown children. This coming Wednesday we will gather to celebrate our 31 years of friendship. I realize they knew each other before they knew me, but since I write this blog, I can say they were nothing before they met me! Seriously, thank you, BVG's, for accepting me in to your circle of friendship even though I did not live on your circle which was Bethel Valley Lane.
CHEERS TO US------WE LOVE US!