A lot about nothing . . .

Guess who turns four today?   LUKE!  Happy Birthday to my grandson Luke.  He is the youngest son of my oldest son!  It is hard to believe that he is four already.  Another year and he will be starting school.   They are all growing up so quickly!   This photo was taken two summers ago when we were home for our Eileen's wedding.   So he was only two years old here.   Anthony and Anne, I need some more recent photos of the boys, so if you are reading this take note!



This is me when I was four.   It was on Easter Sunday way back when, in 1960.  I was probably more like four and a half.  We were staying at my mother's parents in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia whilst my father was out in Gimli, Manitoba with the Canadian airforce, waiting for a house on the base to come up empty for us to move in to.   My coat was navy blue with white trim and my dress white with navy blue polka dots on it.  I remember it well.  I was holding the little white bible my father had given me for Easter.  I had that Bible my whole life, but it disappeared when I got divorced.  I strongly suspect it was thrown into a fire like a lot of my other cherished belongings.  In any case, I am sitting here this morning trying to remember what I was like as a four year old.

I know that I used to go on errands to the shops for my mom and nan.  It was not too far away from my Grandparents house, just down the road a little bit and across the way.  I would have been given a note and the money.  I can remember once time getting waylaid on the way back and stopping to play with a little boy at his house and getting into big trouble when I finally was discovered.  I am sure my mother must have been frantic.



(My grandmother is the one in the back looking down.  She was a very shy woman.)

I had had really long hair, but my brother was born in March of that year and my mother had it all cut off so that my grandmother would be able to brush it easier when she was in the hospital having the baby.

I loved my grandmother very much.   My brother and sister don't remember her or my grandfather at all.   My Grandmother died of cancer when I was almost six, so that year we spent living with them was very special.   My mother showed me the last letter my gran had written to her before she died the last time I was home and she speaks about me in it and about how much she loved me and how I was the only one of all the grandchildren who would come and tell her I loved her and sit on her lap.



This is a picture of my grandmother when she was a little girl at school.   She is the one in the white dress with the white hat just behind the baby buggy.  I don't know how old she would have been in this, maybe five or six.  It would have been taken at the turn of the century (1900's) up in Inglesville outside the old school up there.  I still have her school reader (which thankfully never made it into the fire.)  It's very old and the pages are quite brittle.   There are little hand written annotations in it here and there of spelling words she was to memorize, etc.  It is hard for me to think of my grandmother as being a little girl, but she was, as were we all.

And then we grew up.

 

This is Luke right after he was born.  It's hard to believe that so much time has passed.  He has that dimple in his chin.  We call it the bum chin.  It comes from my father and we all have it, well most of us do at any rate.  That's always the first question when a new baby is born into the family . . . do they have the bum chin?  It's a type of connection I suppose . . . this unique chin.   Well not so unique I guess, lots of people have clefts in their chin . . . but in our family it is a sign that the Villeneuve in us is being carried on down the line! 


(Doug and Jon and Josh  about 3 or 4 years ago now.   The bum chin is there too.) 

All my Grandchildren are growing up.  It is hard to believe that little Joshie is five now and will be starting school in September and Jon is going to be eight!  How did that happen?  Time passes and I don't even want to think about how old I will be on my next birthday.  It will be my last before I become a sexagenarian, which is not as exciting as it sounds.  It's just a fancy way of saying a person in their sixties!

How did THAT happen.  I don't know, but I've gone from four to almost 60 in just a few paragraphs.  I better quit while I'm ahead!!



A thought to carry with you through today . . .

Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures -
large and small,
for the bright blue sky
and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh, for the touch of a hand
and the whispered "I love you."
~Jonathan Lockwood Hui  

(¯`♥´¯)
`*.¸.*♥  




There is a delicious Hot Jalapeno Pepper Jam Baked Brie cooking over in the English Kitchen today.  Just in time for Valentines day.  This would be a super duper appetizer and so simple to make too!  

I'm invited out for lunch today, which reminds me . . . I have a cake to bake!
Have a wonderful Thursday!