Satisfied.

I love this hymn. It is so simplistically beautiful and powerful all at the same time. And I have searched iTunes high and low for a version of it. Everytime we sing it at church I try again to find a well arranged version of it and never have any luck. Today we sang it at church and I came home humming it and wishing I had a copy of it. I searched iTunes and to my joy found a version by Red Mountain Church. Which ironically enough I had heard about days earlier when hanging out with some of our college students in Krannert. So here are the lyrics and if you need a copy of it check out iTunes.

Satisfied

All my life I had a longing
For a drink from some clear spring,
That I hoped would quench the burning
Of the thirst I felt within.

Refrain

Hallelujah! He has found me.
The one my soul so long has craved!
Jesus satisfies my longings,
Through His blood I now am saved.

Feeding on the filth around me,
Till my strength was almost gone,
Longed my soul for something better,
Only still to hunger on.

Refrain

Poor I was, and sought for riches,
Something that would satisfy,
But the dust I gathered round me
Only mocked my soul’s sad cry.

Refrain

Well of water, ever springing,
Bread of life so rich and free,
Untold wealth that never faileth,
My Redeemer is to me.

Refrain

A few Words for Wednesday...

Bear and Murphy were in their crate and AG decided to go for a visit...Murphy is larger by a couple pounds and yet he's completely on top of Bear.

Apparently, my child finds this amusing.

Granddaddy-isms and telling stories...

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love history. (My husband lovingly-teased me on our last visit to Colonial Williamsburg that it was "my DisneyWorld".) But aside from the rich history of our country I want my kids to know the rich history and stories that make them who they are. I've been reminded this a lot in the last few days. Last week my sister totaled her car and called to ask if she could borrow our 3rd vehicle. Now our 3rd vehicle is nothing spectacular but it's special. I bought the car from my Grandfather's estate shortly after he passed away. I paid it off before I left home for college. I lovingly called it the Go-Go Saturn because it was a small little car but had some pep to it. The Go-Go Saturn saw me thru college and into the first few years of our marriage. When I got my Acadia a year and a half ago we held on to it because of the sky-rocketing cost of gas and we weren't ready to replace the Jeep. Since then we've replaced the Jeep and sent it on to greener pastures down at the farm. We've kept my little car because the reality is I'm not ready to let it go. It's one of the few things that I have that was my Grandfather's. However, in the last few weeks I had begun to think about maybe parting with it because the car is not my Grandfather. It's just a machine that holds dear memories. So when my sister called to borrow it I said yes without thinking twice about it. It was surreal to drive it home this last weekend and hand over the keys...it was even more surreal when we returned to Rome and it was not parked in it's little spot on the driveway. The Go-Go Saturn won't live forever and that's okay. What's important is to tell the adventures of the Go-Go Saturn to AG and his future siblings. Like:

--Great Granddaddy Gettis bought it as a second car to use to get around town...this came in handy when G-Daddy (my father) was borrowing Great Grandddaddy Gettis' truck and would run out of gas while driving said truck and need a little help. :) This would also be a great time to share how G-Daddy is prone to running out of gas...

--That somehow I managed to not hit a deer at Berry College, deer Mecca of the world, until spring semester my senior year. Not only did I hit a baby deer and start crying I couldn't seem to get my father or fiance at the time to answer my calls at 7:30 in the morning. Thus making me late for Student Teaching and even more upset. They both called back later and both laughed at me and the silliness of the whole situation.

--The Go-Go Saturn is not afraid of taking down an armadillo...it was either him on his hind legs staring at me or me hitting on coming traffic or landing in the bay two miles from the beach house. My Berry College license plate hit the sucker dead on.

--Or shortly after we were married when Andy scratched the side of the car while being cozy with the retaining wall at our first house...that was a tough lesson on forgiveness for me.

--When packed correctly the Go-Go Saturn can haul just about anything.

While trivial to some those are things that make me smile and laugh about my little car. I really could keep going on but I won't. Here's another example of why it is important to pass down our stories...

Two nights ago as we got AG ready for bed we all ended up on the twin bed in AG's room. Andy fed AG while I read aloud. (I was done after two short stories because by the end I could barely talk thanks to losing my voice...but that is neither here nor there.) After I finished reading AG began to fuss and Andy without missing a beat looked at AG and said, "Little man as your Granddaddy Edwards use to say, put a lid on it!" And AG stopped and looked at Andy very intently for several seconds and then continued to eat away without making another peep. And in that moment my thoughts drifted and I could see Ron saying that to the active little boy I'm told my husband was. It brought a smile to my face. It also was a quick reminder that AG will never know his Granddaddy Edwards here on this earth and how important it is for us to write down and tell the Granddaddy-isms of our lives.

So I guess if you are still reading my jumble of thoughts my conclusion after all this pondering is that we need to share and record our stories in addition to making simple Granddaddy-isms part of our daily lives so that our children know who they are and where the come from. Life would be so boring without stories like the time G-Daddy ran out of gas in the middle of the intersection on Christmas Eve or sayings like 'put a lid on it.' So in the future I'll post other "-isms"...whenever the situation calls for it. Happy Wednesday.

Update on life these last few weeks...

Hmmm, well in my last big update I stated that the coming weeks would fly by as we head towards the holidays. It's true because I have not given a real update in almost a month. So here's an update on all that we have been up to these last few weeks:

--AG is doing great and growing like a weed. I swear he is heavier everytime I pick him up. He had an ear infection a couple of weeks ago but seems to have recovered nicely. He was 22lbs and 15oz that day at the doctor. We go Monday for his next well baby check up and I'm curious to see where he is on the growth chart. Now that he has teeth he is starting to learn the whole "chewing" process. It's funny to hear him make little crunching noises as he eats his MumMum Bars.

--Speaking of teeth it looks like the top two are coming in. We were up twice last night with him because of it. I'm also already seeing signs of the next two on the bottom and top. At this rate the tooth fairy will be visiting us before kindergarten. (For those of you who don't live in Rome AG's future kindergarten teacher, Mary Niedrach, is the tooth fairy. She pulls all the teeth at Berry Elementary and ask any child in any grade who the tooth fairy is and they will tell you Mrs. Niedrach with out batting an eye. Guess it's a good thing she lives just up the street.)

--AG is cruising like a pro these days. We got him a lion push toy that he can practice walking behind it this week. He is starting to figure it out. He already knows how make it play music and is starting to "dance" to the music. It's fun to watch. As for crawling he has mastered it but doesn't do it for kicks it has to be purposeful. He crawls to a location so he can pull himself up and cruise. He would rather be up right than on his hands and knees.

--We've had visits from GiGi, GrandNan, Uncle Tommy, Aunt Caroline, Cousin Ronnie, and Nanny in the last two weeks. We are looking forward to spending time together with all of them this holiday season. Now that AG and Ronnie can "play" it is humorous to watch their interactions together. I have a feeling Christmas is going to be much louder this year than it was last year. Ha.

--College students...at the end of September we celebrated Viraj's birthday with a dinner party.

Complete with a scrumptious cake from Honeymoon Bakery. AG is still not a fan of birthday candles. Ha. Seems to be the only thing that really and truly upsets the little man. We have some hysterical pictures from the party to prove it. I guess they'll be fun to show off 20 years from now. :) Hopefully, we'll be able to celebrate Viraj's LSAT score in the coming weeks. Our Thursdays are in full swing with our college girls. We still do dinner at Moe's and then everyone heads over here for Grey's and Private Practice. I've really enjoyed the new girls that we are getting to know this year. It amazes me that even now that we've been gone for several years we have a whole new group of students to love on simply by word of mouth. All the students that we work with now were still in middle/high school when Andy and I were at Berry.

--This past weekend we took AG to his first wedding. He did great! He even fell asleep on our friend Chris late in the evening. We enjoyed showing him off to some of our Berry friends that we haven't seen lately. Noel was simply gorgeous and we were honored to be apart of her and Michael's special day. We love you guys and look forward to seeing you soon!

--This weekend we are headed to Gwinnett. Andy has to coach and it happens to work out that we can celebrate birthdays while we are at it. (We have four family birthdays next week.) Also, Friday we are going to the Buford vs. Thomson game to support my brother-in-law. Costello coaches for Thomson and we are looking forward to all being together to support the Bulldogs. It'll be AG's first football game. So far he's seen a couple of baseball games and we are planning to take him to see a (Mighty) Ducks game when we are on the West Coast in March. Andy was hoping that maybe the Thrashers would be playing them then but they aren't. No worries it should still be fun. More about that trip in the coming weeks.

We are blessed. Life is great. I'm hoping the weather will cooperate next week so that we can take AG's 9month pictures in the leaves on campus. We've had at least 5 inches of rain in the last few days with more on the way. The rivers are already experiencing mild flooding...good thing we live on such a high hill. Rome is the city of 3 rivers and 7 hills. Anyways, hope everyone has a great rest of the week.

Side note--I wrote this on Wednesday and didn't get around to posting it due to my desire to put a slideshow with it. However, we've been dealing with a very cranky, teething child and it hasn't happened. Look for a long slideshow with my next post. Last night we were up two and half hours Andy ended up strapping him into his carseat and taking him on a ride. Apparently, he crashed out near the soccer fields. We are going to give the local remedy, Dr. Star's Teething Lotion, a try...I'm swinging by the only local pharmacy that still compounds it on our way out of town. If it works expect a post all about it. AG's friend, Emma, got her bottle of it yesterday...at this point Ginny and I will try anything. Here's to the weekend and I hope that we may get some sleep. And Ginny too! :)

Wordless Wednesday...

Growing up with Tonka Trucks and Ghostbusters...

One might assume from the title of this post that I am referring to AG growing up with Tonka Trucks and Ghostbusters. And while this is true this title is really a reference to my own childhood. Yesterday, I ran to Cartersville to grocery shop at Publix. (We don't have one in Rome and this week's deals were worth the 25min drive...but my grocery shopping/bargain hunting is a whole post by itself.) Since Publix is in the same shopping center as Target I ran in to see if they had anything good. While in the little boys section I came across two simple t-shirts. Now these two shirts remind me of three very important men in my life. My husband, my father, and my best friend David. This post focuses on David...

What can I say about David? He has been my best friend since before I can remember. (Along with Laura!) My childhood would not have been the same without him in my life. Our adventures are too numerous to count and I'm grateful that we are still friends to this day. David lived across the street from me growing up and Laura was down and around the corner. I learned a lot from David and was introduced to a wide variety of toys/games growing up because of him. For those of you who don't know I have all sisters...David was the brother that I never had growing up. So, when playing at David's we would tend to play more "boy-ish" games. This would include but was not limited to building forts in the woods behind David's house (this would include my only case of poison ivy to date!), learning how to climb with David's trusty rope (that he took everywhere...because you just never know when you might need to scale the brick wall of the front entrance, right?!), playing with David's various action figures like Ninja Turtles, the Fisher Price Air Port when we were really little along with Hungry, Hungry Hippos, watching great movies like Earnest Goes to Camp and Harry and the Hendersons, Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, and this list could go on and on. However, there are two things that we enjoyed like no other...Tonka Trucks and Ghostbusters.

Really, it could be said that we enjoyed ANY cartoon. David and I watched them all Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smurfs, Gummi Bears, Flintstones, Jetsons, Ducktales, Alvin and the Chipmunks, etc. David came over every morning before school so that we could ride the bus together. Even though his Mom, Miss La-La, worked at our school and could have easily have taken David in the mornings. (I still call his Mom that to this day...) While waiting on the bus every morning we would watch any of the afore mentioned cartoons. We loved watching 'em and let's face it they don't make 'em like they use to.

In order to make your Tonka experience a success one needs to have a nice supply of dirt. (And mothers that are okay with having a filthy child at the end of the day.) Since we grew up in GA our dirt is red and that meant we had clothes specifically to play in...because if it ended up caked in red GA clay it was not the end of the world. Especially in our house because with all girls we had distinct "sets of clothing". David's house was a gold mine in our eyes growing up for multiple reasons. Besides having plenty of space inside and out, great toys, and the best grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks Miss La-La!) David's house had a finished basement. But not just any finished basement. This basement was a great place to play in the winter because it had a wood burning stove in it. It was always warm and cozy. The basement also had lots of rooms and nooks that provided places to play. One such room was the perfect place to play with Tonka Trucks. Now, this room was like Narnia in the sense that from the outside it was just another door to any other room. But, when the door was opened it revealed an unfinished room with a large, and I mean LARGE, solid GA clay rock. It took us awhile to figure out a way to climb up to the top of the rock but once we did we hauled ALL of David's trucks to the top. Once on top the rock was a great place to play. Now to give you an idea of how big this rock was we couldn't sit straight up when on the top because our heads would hit the 1st floor above us. Instead, we army crawled around and pushed the trucks to and fro. This was an incredible place to play in the winter because we could play in the dirt and never go outside. Ha. I'm sure our mothers didn't enjoy it but we sure did. Many hours were spent up there over the years.

So, back to yesterday and me buying two t-shirts for AG. I couldn't pick which one I liked best because they both evoked strong memories of my childhood and my best friend. Lucky for me the price was right and I got both. Here's AG modeling his new shirts:

The following cracks me up because he was trying to figure out what Samson was doing...

To end I did say in the beginning that the shirts also reminded me of Andy and my Dad. Andy had a collection of Tonka trucks that he played with growing up, too. He also was an avid cartoon watcher...so much so that he was Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man for Halloween one year. (If that's not a true Ghostbusters fan I don't know what is...) As for my dad, my grandfather use to drive large machinery at construction sites and my dad would go to work and learn how to operate the equipment from my grandfather. He also had a collection of trucks that he use to haul dirt around his yard growing up. As a mom to a little boy I look forward to Tonka Trucks and Ghostbusters. Who knew two little t-shirts would evoke such wonderful memories from my own childhood?