NOJOMO DAY 4

Hello everyone,

Have you all been on pins and needles just waiting to hear about my great day yesterday? 

Well let me start from the beginning.  The day started out good for a few reasons. 

The number 1 reason was that Makayla was feeling better.  It was great to see her becoming her old self after days of feeling so bad.  She was still not 100% but was much improved.  She is still home today but it looks like she will be able to go back tomorrow.  I will miss her!  4 days of having her home with me and I enjoyed every second of it. 

Number 2 reason was that it was payday!  In my current living situation, our financial picture has been a lot better.  For the first time in years things have eased up allowing me to do things I haven’t done in so long.  Like go shopping and buy things for the kids, treat a friend to dinner, lend my sister money, etc.  I know this is temporary so I am soaking it up while it lasts.  Yesterday when Aimee came home, we went shopping.   Little Leah is growing by leaps and bounds and desperately needed some new clothes.  I was going to buy her new stuff for Christmas but it really couldn’t wait.  Makayla needed a new coat and a hat and gloves.  Aimee also needed a new coat.  So Leah got a ton of stuff that will hopefully last her through the winter, and Aimee and Makayla got a new coat.  This was all part of their Christmas presents.  And that’s another thing, for the firt time in forever I will not have to stress over Christmas presents.  Don’t get me wrong, I can’t go crazy, but I will be able to buy some nice gifts for all my girls and some little things for a few other people.  So after winterizing my little family, we went to Red Lobster for dinner.  They still  have the endless shrimp special going on and shrimp is my favorite food.  Best of all it wasn’t chicken! LOL

Now before I tell you the rest of the story, I need to tell you two things. 

The first is that there are few things in this world I love better than giving presents to people I love.  I am like a little kid and when I find something I know the person will love, it is VERY hard for me to wait until their birthday or Christmas or whatever the gift is for.   And there have been many times when I couldn’t wait and ended up giving them their present(s) early.  My darling daughter has inherited this trait .  So last night when we got home, she decided she could wait no longer to give me my birthday gifts.  I could have made her wait but hey I also love receiving gifts!

She got me two awesome presents.  Probably two of the best presents I have ever received because they were both so thoughtful and touched me deeply.  The first one was a mother’s ring!  It is simple and beautiful.  It’s sterling silver and has 5 little birthstones in it, one each for my mother (I really love that she included her!), me, Aimee, Makayla and Leah.   Here is a picture of it (This is not my ring but it is the exact one she got me).  Isn’t it beautiful?  I love love love it!

Now before I go on to the second present, let me tell you one more thing.  Ever since I became a grandmother, I knew that one day I wanted my grandchildren to be able to read my diary.  As some of you know, I even have a personal chapter titled "letters to my granddaughters" where I have been writing letters to Makayla, and now Leah, since they were born.  But I also wanted them to read my whole diary because it is the story of my life.  Not just for the 10 years I’ve had it but it also includes lots of memories and pictures from my whole life.  I know many of you would never want your family to read your diary and I totally understand that.  But I do want them to read it and I’ve even gone so far as to go through the whole thing and privatize anything I wouldn’t want them to see (surprisingly there wasn’t that much).  I’ve spent a lot of time fretting about getting it printed out and I always pictured that I would store it in a 3 ring binder and use page protectors to preserve it.

So onto my second present from Aimee.  She got me the absolute coolest gift I have ever received!  She took a bunch of my diary entries and made them into a book, complete with pictures.  Not a homemade book, an actual book!  She got the idea from a website called http://www.bookemon.com.  And it’s beautiful.  The cover is pink with my picture on it and the title "My Life in Words and Pictures" by Ann McCaleb. The first page is my diary description and inside are pages and pages of my entries, all dated, and many of them have pictures to go along with the entry.  The quality is excellent and very professional looking.  It took her hours and hours to do and I am just so happy and pleased with the results.   Now this is by no means all my diary entries but the great thing is I can do more books, maybe one for each year I’ve had my diary.  And I can pick and choose what I want to put in them so I don’t have to worry about anyone seeing something I don’t want them to.  I will try to post a few pics of the book in tomorrow’s entry.

I am just over the moon thrilled with my gifts!    ((((((((((((((HUGS))))))))))))))))