Yesterday was my mother-in-law’s and my father-in-law’s birthdays. What are the odds of marrying someone who has the same birthday as you? They are both deceased; Ken (my father-in-law) died in 1989 and Doris (my mother-in-law) in 2000. Here is a picture of them taken February 1985, the same month that Kat was born.

Doris & Ken Gibson, 1985

Doris was a wonderful person who taught me a lot about how to live life and I have missed her dearly since her death.  But I find that lately, since we moved to Arizona, I have been thinking about her much more frequently.  Mostly I have been wondering if she ever forgave us for moving her grandchildren so very far away.  Our children were such an integral part of her everyday life and suddenly they were 1000 miles away and she saw them very infrequently.  I know we considered how our lives would be affected by moving, but I don’t think we fully understood the impact that our move would have on those left behind.  Now that I am in that situation, being so far from our own granddaughter, I feel a lot of guilt about taking Doris’s grandchildren so far away from her.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t have moved, or that, if we had to do it over again, that we would have done differently.  But I do think that, knowing what I do now, that I would have made more of an effort to keep Doris and her grandchildren in touch with each other.  They were young, they were busy, they didn’t like to talk much on the telephone; it is really too bad that the technology we can use now to keep in touch wasn’t available back then.  She would have so enjoyed continuing to be a part of the children’s everyday lives through Skype.

Doris & Grandchildren, Thanksgiving 1994

Doris with her five grandchildren, Thanksgiving 1994.  Our three are the youngest; Bill’s brother’s two children are the others in the picture.

I think this is the very last picture of all five of her grandchildren together.  They are all grown up now and live in four different states.  Charles was four and a half in that picture!  In two months he will be twenty.  How the years do fly by!

Our blimp is back, but the mountain seems to be gone! No worry, it’s just behind all the white fog!

The blimp is a radar device used by the Border Patrol, watching for low-flying drug-running planes coming over the border. The high winds in early December knocked it out of commission and today is the first day I have seen it back in the air. It makes for a nice landmark when you are traveling the area, as it can be seen for miles and miles. Just head for the blimp at the end of the day and you will find home.

This is one of my most treasured pictures of my children. I think this was taken the summer of 2001, maybe 2000, on our deck in the woods of north Alabama. It captured them so well in that moment. Kat with her quirky hat and lovely smile, which she so rarely gives to the camera; David with his blue, blue eyes and ever-friendly grin; Charles trying a little tough-guy squinting and doing his best not to smile.

my wonderful children

I scanned this picture from one that sits on my kitchen counter, right above the sink.  Unfortunately, the picture was stuck to the glass in the frame and a small piece came off.  I hope I have the original somewhere in digital rather than a negative, but if it was pre-2002, it’s in a negative.  Another project for another year, sorting through old pictures!