On Sunday our family threw a carnival birthday party for 3 of the littles in our lives. It was 80* degrees outside here in Massachusetts. We were not really prepared for the heat. We did plan for it a bit though, we kept the pool open! It was a fantastic day for the children and the adults alike. The theme was County Fair/Carnival. We had cotton candy, sno-cones, popcorn, games, and fair-like food. It was simple and fun. I do not think a single person, young or old could have left feeling anything but happy. And that is what it is all about. Celebrating your children and your family. This happened to be about birthdays, but we think our family time should always be celebratory, and we strive to make our time together joyful as often as that is possible.

Well, what a day yesterday was! I went to SAVERS for the first time. I love thrifting. I often go to the Salvation Army Store in Saugus, MA and to the Lifebridge Thrift Store in Salem, MA and any others I pass by when I have a little time. Not too much of that going on these days to be honest. Yesterday, I forced Dan, my husband for those who do not know, to come with me after work to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I was looking for quilts for CAMP DIRT. I found one! But nothing else of value for camp. There were some beautiful crystal goblets that reminded me of some my mother – she had taste - had when I was a kid, but those would hardly be useful at a camp called Dirt. I bought the quilt it will go nicely in one of the wall tents or the bedroom in the structure when it is completed. So now I have three quilts, two from Facebook Marketplace and one from the Salvation Army Thrift Store. All of them smelled weird, so they were washed, each twice in lilac laundry detergent and dried on a super, hot setting. I will have to sniff them again in a week and see if they need a third wash! – for now they are in a black plastic tub on hold and waiting for sheets and pillows (those will be NEW, albeit inexpensive) to accompany them, and new mattresses and bed frames to put them on. I will continue the hunt for bedside tables and lamps, small bureaus and big baskets to hold children’s toys and the like and all the other things that make even a wall tent feel cozy, homey and happy.

You came back! I am really happy you decided to get to know our created family. My name is Jane and most of our family is near me in the Northeast. But we do have family in many other places, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, the West Coast and Canada. I think my desire to have a large family around me stems from the fact that I was adopted into a family full of people who had suffered great loss of people they loved. I was raised by a State Trooper who was one of eight. Twins, MY DAD, and then 5 others behind him. His loss began when he was a teenager and his brother, just a year younger than him and his best friend, died in his arms in his family home in Cambridge, MA. He went on to lose two of his sisters in a housefire started by an arsonist when he was in the army and in Europe during WWII. He married my mother who lost her mother when she was just a teenager. They had a son, he had Cystic Fibrosis, and died, also in my father's arms, when he was 5 years old. Because he had CF, they applied to adopt another child instead of conceiving one, when he was about two years old.  A baby girl was placed in their home. At the time a child was placed for 11 months (mandatory) and then the adoption could be finalized. Before that time ran, the agency took her away because they found she was a type 1 diabetic, and they felt my parents could not handle two sick children at the same time. So, within a year they lost them both.

Wow, not sure how to even begin. Obviously, this is my very first BLOG POST!!!! I am not a professional writer, blogger, or anything like that, I am not even all that technologically capable! I am just an almost 60-year-old Grammy who has a fantastic family consisting of biological family and a family we built from those around us who made our lives better.