excited
Karen is my grandson, Chris Petersen’s fiancé, and they are having my first great grandchild, a baby girl, just about any time. Since she was just a little girl, Karen has wanted to be a mommy, so this baby is a dream come true. I have seen Karen with her friends’ babies, and it’s plain to see that Karen is totally in her element with babies. She is going to be an amazing mom. Her sweet disposition and her caring ways really shine when she is caring for and playing with a baby. Her little girl is due on my daughter, Amy Royce’s birthday, but you just never know when these babies will decide to make their appearance. Early or late, we don’t have very long to wait, that’s for sure.
Karen has a great sense of humor, and loves to pull of a good joke or prank, and since she has been around my grandsons, Chris and Josh, her pranks, like theirs, tend to be aimed at the grandma…me. Of course, they are all in good fun, and so nothing to get upset about, but it is plain to see that those boys have corrupted that sweet girl already!! Hahaha!! It’s a good thing for her that Karens/Caryns have to stick together (as she puts it), because if that weren’t the case, I might have to retaliate on some of the pranks she has pulled on me.
Karen has been such a great blessing to my daughter, Corrie Petersen, and her husband, Kevin, who always wanted a daughter, and consider Karen to be the daughter they never had. And to top it off, she is giving them a granddaughter, which they really never expected to have. For Corrie and Kevin, this is a twofold dream come true and they are excited beyond words. For them and for me, we love Karen because of the happiness she has brought to Chris’ life. I have never seen my grandson so happy and fulfilled. For him, there is nothing he wants more that to have a family. He is so ready to be a husband and daddy, and I have been so impressed with him as he prepares for the birth of his little girl, and I attribute much of that to Karen. They have been stashing away a savings for after the baby’s birth, and buying diapers so that when she arrives, Karen can stay home with her for a few months. I am so excited for all the wonderful things that are coming in their future…many good things ahead. Today is Karen’s birthday. Happy birthday Karen!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My husband, Bob doesn’t often give the past a lot of thought. He is one of those here and now types of people. It isn’t that he doesn’t remember the past, or even that he doesn’t think about it once in a while, but if he does, he doesn’t mention too many things that he is thinking about. Nevertheless, he made an exception while we were on our cruise.
As is the case with most cruises, you see a variety of people…many of them children. And, you get a variety of behaviors from these children. Obviously, you will see the well behaved children, and the misbehaving children…and everything in between. But, it was neither of these types of children that caught Bob’s eye, but rather a little blonde girl skipping along with her family on their way to breakfast.
After they passed us, Bob turned to me and said, “Did you see that little girl?” When I said 
that I didn’t, he told me that she reminded him of our Amy when she was little. Amy never walked anywhere. She either skipped, ran, or at home, it was far more often somersaulting down the hallway. I mean, why walk when you can somersault…right? Amy just couldn’t stand to waste a perfectly good hallway, or any other carpeted area, on simple walking. Carpets were much like a tumbling map, and that was all it took to get Amy tumbling merrily on her way from room to room. We always laughed about that, because it was so cute to see her rolling down the hallway and then getting up to go into her room and play.
As we thought about the little girl he had just seen, it was easy to imagine that she was a girl who was excited about life, and just couldn’t stand to simply walk. That was exactly what Amy was like as a little girl. If she wasn’t swinging on the table like only a tiny girl could, then she was somersaulting down the hall, or swinging from the bars on the swing set. She could easily have been Tarzan’s baby…swinging from the trees. Or you 
might just as likely find her up on the bumper of Bob’s truck, helping her daddy. Amy was always excited about the next thing coming her way.
Amy and her family recently took a cruise too, and she was so excited about going. I know she is a grown woman now, but I have a feeling that it was all she could do not to go skipping along on the deck of the ship heading to breakfast with her family, or anywhere else that she went for that matter. Those old habits die hard, and when you are a skipper, you find that it’s really hard to contain all that excitement…just like that little girl Bob had seen.
A few days ago, I got a message on Facebook that would bring full circle another chapter in my family’s past. My cousin Pam, who is my Uncle Bill’s daughter, and her husband, Mike were planning a spontaneous vacation, and wanted to come to Casper to visit us. We were beyond excited!! We quickly contacted all the local family so they could plan to attend, and then sat back to wait with great anticipation on Thursday’s arrival. It felt like a long wait. We had been in contact through Facebook, and we were thankful for that, because of it we had been given the chance to get reacquainted with Pam already. The visit here would be a face to face continuation of our Facebook conversations.
Finally, the moment arrived. It felt almost like we had never been apart, except that there was so much to catch up on. We talked about the usual things, like family, lost loved ones, our sadness over Uncle Bill’s Alzheimer’s Disease and his struggles to figure out what happened to his sisters and brother, who have all passed away. And we talked of the old days, when we were all kids. They funny things her brothers used to do, and all the trips we got to go on together. Very quickly he years just melted away like ice cubes on a hot day. It was wonderful to be back in touch, and especially wonderful to see Pam again and meet her husband, Mike.
The evening went by far too fast, and before it hardly got started it was 11:00 and time for 
everyone to get some sleep, so we said good bye to Pam and Mike, and they headed back to their hotel room. Our time was over…the precious moments had slipped by so fast, and we knew that it might be a while before we will see each other again. It makes me sad to think of that, but we are going to try to make plans to head out there sometime soon, to see Pam and Mike again, and hopefully many other family members that we haven’t seen in far too long a time. Sometimes it takes a spontaneous visit to remind you that precious moments are just far too important to miss out on.
Kids make all kinds of faces. Of course, they cry and pout, and they are serious and silly. Their little looks make our world a little bit more interesting. Oh I know our children can annoy us. They can scream loud enough to break eardrums. Still, through it all, we love them, no matter what their look is today.
Josh has always been a smiley boy, who loves to make goofy faces, and they always make me laugh. One of the cutest faces is the one you see when a child is filled with excitement, like Christmas day or their birthday. The smiles are the biggest ones you have ever seen. Kids have such a hard time containing their excitement and joy. I find it sad that we tend to lose that as we get older. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have that same innocence and happiness in our lives.
A baby trying not to fall asleep, or one who has just awakened from sleep, can be some of the funniest faces out there. The face Caalab made trying to stay awake when he was little, was just so funny. His head kept dropping and then he would jerk it back up. He finally lost the battle, and sleep took over. Christopher on the other hand was just waking up, and the funny look on his face makes you wonder what exactly is in that cup he has, but since I know his parents well, I know it is just juice, and Christopher is just goofy.
Learning to wink is one of the things that can produce so of the funniest looks. First both eyes blink, 
then the nose crinkles up and the mouth opens, and finally after lots of work a wink appears. Shai worked so hard to be able to wink. She really wanted it, and she was so proud when she got it. She would wink on demand, and it was precious.
Kids have many moods and many faces. They are precious lights in our lives. They bring joy and…well, life into an otherwise dull day. What a wonderful blessing from God they are.
