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Posts Tagged ‘grandchildren’

Great-Granddaughter Cora

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged on August 22, 2018| 4 Comments »

Road Trip: Austin to San Antonio

“Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It’s the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps.” — Sharon Draper

Cora is now a month old. And she still has adorable fat cheeks.

 

My great-granddaughter Cora was born in San Antonio while I was attending the Stories from the Heart writing conference in Austin. I got the news from my daughter and Cora’s grandmother T.C., and it came with the information that the baby had gotten stuck in the birth canal and was born with a broken shoulder, and perhaps some other problems.

Cora, Ben, Heidi and Marshall. One happy family, which warms this Nana’s heart. 

I was worried and heartbroken.

So, when I walked into my granddaughter Heidi’s home four days later and heard Cora crying as her dad, Ben, changed a poopy diaper, the sound was as grand as any musical concert I had ever attended.

It was a normal baby’s cry, and my heart was full to overflowing with joy when Cora was transferred to my arms, and curiously looked up into my face. Her shoulder, Heidi said, hadn’t been broken only dislocated, and everything else was fine.

I held her for most of the rest of the afternoon, constantly amazed at this tiny bit of new life with fat loveable cheeks.  Cora alternated between looking around at her new world, eating, and sleeping. I felt like the luckiest great-grandmother in the world.

While Cora will have to get reacquainted with me the next time I see her, which might be this Christmas, the afternoon I spent with her is a precious memory that pushed my happiness meter to the exploding point.

It was the perfect ending for my three-week road trip.

Bean Pat: Even if the umbrella is not big enough https://yadadarcyyada.com/2018/08/22/umbrella/?wref=pil An upbeat blog that put a big smile on my face.

Now available on Amazon

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

 

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Posted in Journeys, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , on January 26, 2013| 8 Comments »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

            “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

My first great-grandchild is just one of the many forms of love that fill my life. -- Photo by Baron Marsh

My first great-grandchild is just one of the many forms of love that fill my life. — Photo by Baron Marsh

I hungered 

            I grew up feeling unloved, not that I actually was, I now realize. It was just that my father was never around, and my mother was overburdened with taking care of my three younger brothers and her own mother while fretting over finances because her husband gambled away his pay checks.

I married young because I thought I had found the first person who ever loved me — and I was convinced no one else ever would. The love proved false, but I hung on far too many years because I still thought no one else would ever love me.  I left when even that alternative was better than what I had.

What happened after that is that I did find love. While not exactly the ever-lasting romantic love I had longed for, I discovered love had many forms. Family, friends, colleagues and love for my job and my life was love.

I consider my passion for writing, for birds, for life a fulfilling kind of love. Seeing my grandchildren grow up and have children of their own is love. The neighbor, like the one I have now who is keeping watch over me while I recuperate from a broken ankle, is an expression of love.

Love fills my world. I’m so glad I finally recognized it.

Bean’s Pat: An Elephant Can’t  http://anelephantcant.me/   This one’s for those who lived through the ‘60s. This is a fun blog I recently came across. Go back a bit and look for the cats.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Big

Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , on October 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big  difference. — Winston Churchill

That’s one big hat my grandson J.J. is wearing. But this young rodeo man has the attitude to carry it off. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Grandchildren are the reward for having children.” — Nana

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Excuses, Xmas Shopping and an Important Announcement

Posted in Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , on December 7, 2011| 10 Comments »

Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon

Travels With Maggie

 

Rocky considers himself a family member, too, and wonders what's beneath the tree for him. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I didn’t post a blog yesterday. And I didn’t add a 1,000 words to the travel book that I’m rewriting.

So what, you may be asking, did I do?

I walked Maggie, of course, and cleaned her ears, a daily chore because of her proneness to chronic cocker spaniel ear infection – and I went Christmas shopping.

It is that time of year you know. And because of that I’m not beating myself up too badly for what I didn’t do. You see, I’m a traitor to my gender. I HATE SHOPPING!

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I LOVE CHRISTMAS, and giving gifts to my loved ones. The challenge for me is finding something I think each person in my growing family will like within my limited budget of $20 or less per person.

We break into this blog for an Important Announcement: Believe it or not just as I was mentioning my large family, I got a text message saying one more has been added. My granddaughter in Orlando, Florida, just delivered a beautiful (I know he is even though I haven’t seen him yet), healthy 6-pound-9-ounce boy to it.

 

Maggie and I passed this tree on our morning walk in the park across from son's home. I thought it as festive as any Christmas tree. -- Photo by Pat Bean

We now take you back to our regular program:

Anyway, I try to pick up things in my travels that I think will appeal to one loved one or another, but this year I didn’t do much of that. It left me with a hard day of shopping, but with only two presents yet to buy.

That’s actually way ahead of schedule for me. I’ve been known to frantically be shopping the stores at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shout the news of my new great-grandchild to the world.

And then hopefully tackle my travel book.

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