In loving memory of my Grandma

Mary Corinne Casey Moravec

November 22, 1932 ~ May 24, 2011

I've often wondered how I would handle a death in our family, because, up until now, I haven't had anyone close to me pass away. I have to say, it feels a little surreal, and has been difficult to completely wrap my mind around. My grandparents live in Wisconsin, so while I mentally understand that my grandma is no longer here, I know that there's part of me that feels like everything should be the same as the last time I visited. I think I'll still expect to see her the next time I'm at their house. It's like I can't quite make the connection yet.

The funeral is today, and since I couldn't be there, I decided to post a few of my memories of this lovely woman. Will you join me for a minute as I walk down memory lane?

Grandma grew up in Dubuque, Iowa. Her father died when she was three, so her mother raised her and her 3 brothers, but I remember Grandma saying that they had a very strong community and that there were many people who stepped in to help take care of them and raise them. I can remember sitting at the breakfast table listening to her tell stories of growing up. She had these paintings of Dubuque hanging in the dining room, and she would point to them and tell us about a particular memory she had of that location of the city. She really loved that city, and thankfully, I've had many trips there to visit it with her and try to see some of those places through her eyes.

Grandma was 100% Irish, and very proud of it! She had lots of clovers around the house, along with various Irish poems and prayers. She and Grandpa used to decorate the tree in their front yard with faces that matched the holidays, and every St. Paddy's day there would be a green leprechaun face smiling down at people as they passed by.

Probably the funniest memory I have with Grandma, is of the time we stole my Grandpa's slippers and snuck them out the the curb on trash day. These slippers were far past their glory days- very thread-bare, and a bit ridiculous for Grandpa to still be wearing. So all morning on trash day, Grandma, my brother and sister and I were coming up with ways to sneak them out to the curb so Grandpa would finally have to get a new pair. It went back and forth between us hiding them in the trash, and Grandpa finding them and hiding them somewhere else. But the final move was ours, and I remember laughing with Grandma when we realized our victory as the trash truck drove away.

Grandma had a very strong sense of family. She and Grandpa were married for 57 years and even though her friends told her it would never last, they were still in love all those years. I used to laugh watching them tease each other. Grandpa would tease Grandma or say something that would get her all riled up, and then come over and kiss her hand. They were pretty cute. Grandma and Grandpa also raised five children, one of which is my daddy- and he's a very good man. I'm thankful to Grandma for all the funny stories of when Daddy was little.

Grandma was a lover of literature and writing. You could always find her with a book and she wrote all the time. I loved reading her poems.

She had a very good heart. She felt things very deeply and was a very compassionate person. She loved her family, her husband, and God very much.

Grandma was a very lovely woman. She really had an amazing impact on the lives of the people who were blessed to know her. We'll miss her very much.

~Jasmine

Washing windows in the rain

This afternoon made me smile. It rained like crazy which always makes for a good time as far as I'm concerned. But it was what I got to do in the rain that made my afternoon sweet.

I'm working as a personal assistant right now, and today I picked my boss's little girl, Ellie up from school. Ellie Claire is such a character. She's very dramatic, a little fashionista, and very much has a mind of her own. Basically there's never a dull moment when she's around.

We talked about how fun it is to listen to the sound of the rain. We laughed as we both ran to the car with our hands over our heads trying to stay dry-ish (I don't own an umbrella because it rains here... pretty much never). We decided that the ultimate way to spend the afternoon would have been to stay outside and dance.

When we stopped off at the gas station, Ellie Claire decided that it was a good time to wash the windows of my car. That's right. It's raining cats and dogs, but we stood there outside the gas station squeegeeing off my windows just because it's so fun to use that little tool. I'm sure the attendant inside thought we were crazy, but we didn't care. It didn't matter that the windows were going to be dotted with raindrops again in two minutes- we scrubbed, squeegeed, and even dried off the windows- just because it was fun!

I only put $10 worth of gas in my car today, but I feel like I got more out of that trip to the gas station than I have in a long time. Just a random part of my day that made me s.m.i.l.e. Hope it does the same for you!

~Jazzy

Ho-hum...

So for the past week and a half I have been anxiously hoping that something noteworthy would happen to me, so I could write it down and share it with you, dear reader.

Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that life has been rather routine as of late, and nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. Is it just me, or is routine a bit frustrating? When things have been predictable for a while, I find that I start to dislike my day-to-day activities. I start looking at them as tasks, and not gifts. It's quite a bad habit, really.

So today, I am choosing see the blessings of my routine, rather than overlooking them in anticipation for the next big adventure.

1. I don't have to be at work early, so I can take my time getting ready for the day.


2. I have at least an hour of driving time every day- time for a phone call on the way home, time to listen to an entire CD, time to clear my head with my sunroof open. 


3. I'm home for dinner with my family every night.


4. Lately, my routine has included flip-flops every day, which makes me and my feet veeeeeerrrrry happy.


Join me, won't you? Let's celebrate the "humdrum". What are some of the nice parts of your day that you often overlook?

Here's to viewing each day as a gift from God!

~Jasmine

And here is a somewhat unrelated photo, because I hate to post without one!

Starting the summer off right

When I turned 21, which was my golden birthday, I decided that not only would the day be golden, the entire year would be. So, since my last birthday, life has been grand, and I have been doing lots of sweet, amazing things, one of which was a Kenny Chesney concert on Sunday. It was rather epic. Kenny Chesney, Uncle Kracker, and Billy Currington all in one night. Yessssssssssssss!!! I'm just a little bit of a fan. Kenny Chesney is the king of summer music, with songs about flip-flops, suntans, key lime pie, and lazy days by the beach: all things that I absolutely love!

So I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was for this day. I've been stalking the tour website for months, waiting to find out when Mr. Chesney would be close by. I have to say, an 8 hour drive to Phoenix wasn't quite as close as I had been hoping, but I figured if ever there was a time to be making crazy decisions like driving all day for a concert, it was while I'm still young. 

So off I was, headed to Phoenix at 6 in the morning with a friend. We were stocked with snacks, loaded up on country music CD's, and my new cowgirl hat was in the back seat just waiting to be worn. I bought this hat last fall specifically for a Kenny Chesney concert, and it's been sitting in my closet with the tags on, in anticipation of just this night, so I was just a tiny bit excited to finally get to put it on. 

Warm weather, new hat, one of my favorite singers, songs about summer... does it get any better? All in all, it was a fantastic day. Here are a few of the highlights. 

We got to Phoenix a few hours before the concert, and had some time to wander around, soak up the sunshine, and stop off at this lovely little frozen yogurt shop. after tasting their yogurt, I am absolutely sure that we need one of these stores in my hometown.

While waiting for the gates to open, we happened to see a very official-looking limo. I'm pretty sure it was Kenny's. I waved at the darkly tinted window, and I'm very certain that he waved back. 

If you look close- you can see him giving me the thumbs up. 

I'm also pretty convinced that Mr. Chesney was about to come walking out of this bus when a random security guard told us that we weren't allowed to keep peering down into the loading dock. 

I was so excited, I just had to be the first person in line!

After much hunting, we were finally able to catch up with Mr. Chesney, and he was kind enough to strike a pose for a quick picture. 

This was the biggest stadium I've ever been in. I think it holds about 20,000 people and it was almost completely full!

There's something kind of mind-blowing about that many people all singing the same songs together. Singing about warm weather, beaches, and vacations- it's kind of hard not to love it! 

The perfect way to kick off a summer

So if you like country music- then call me up! Let's go to a concert! 

If you don't like country music- well I'm sorry. And if you're one of those people in my life- I wish we could share this fun pastime together, but you're a good sport for putting up with me. 

~Jazzy

Signs of Spring, Egg dyeing, and Easter egg hunt of epic proportions...

 *Deep breath* The smell of flowers in the air. The warm sunshine on my face. The beautiful bright green I'm starting to see everywhere... yes, it's spring!

The other day, my family continued our annual tradition of dyeing Easter eggs. In years past, there have been various fiascos surrounding this tradition, including one year in which not only the eggs got dyed, but the carpet as well! This year, the fiasco didn't involve the eggs, but it did happen while we were dyeing... Our plumbing decided to start moving backwards. Not cool! I'll spare you the dirty details and share with you this photo instead. I'd just like to take a moment to say that my father is amazing. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty, (very, very, very dirty in this case!) and he's pretty much just awesome! All in all, he handled this disastrous situation quite well I thought. 

                 

Enough with the not-so-nice part of that day. Back to egg dyeing. I must say, I'm pretty serious when it comes to my Easter eggs. I think I took at least twice as long as everyone else in my family. I study each one of my eggs carefully before submerging them in the brightly colored dye. I rarely just dip and dunk and see what happens. Oh no. There is almost always a carefully thought out strategy as to which color needs to be applied first, the proper way to hold each egg, and for how long the egg should spend in each bowl of color. I also have to say, I think I'm a little bit of an egg-dyeing "purist". As in, I think that the true talent is getting the egg to be beautiful without lots of extra help e.g. stencils, stickers, glitter etc. Now remember, I did say I'm just a little bit of a purist- I did break down and use foil on some of my eggs this year, but I think I'm always most proud when my egg is beautiful simply because of my mastery of the dye. I was rather pleased with how mine turned out this year, and lest you be tempted to think that they look like everyone else's eggs at Easter, just remember that there was thought, and design for each and every egg!

These are my brother, Ian's eggs. He went on and on about what a beast he was at egg-dyeing, and how his were the best. I have to politely disagree, but they are quite lovely!

And these are mine!!!! My striped eggs seriously made my day!



After the egg dyeing, my amazingly cool mother did something awesome...
She prepared an egg hunt for her 4 adult children! Awesome!!! (Ok, we're not all adults, but the youngest of us is 13 which I think is still way too old for egg hunts). You have no idea how exciting this was for me! There we were with our baskets, tense and ready to bound from the house at the sound of "Ready, set, GO!"
Oh the thrill of the hunt! Oh the joy of finding one of those brightly colored treasures peeking out from behind a fence post! Oh the excitement of hearing the rattle of little jelly beans just waiting to be eaten! (Can you tell, there's a part of me that's very definitely stuck in 1st grade?)

Oh my goodness! I'm so excited!

Don't be scared. That's my excited face, not my "I'm going to eat you" face.

Cute little Sagey

Of course, it wouldn't be a real egg hunt without us losing track of one of the eggs. As hard as we tried, we could not locate the final egg. You wouldn't think that neon would blend in very well but...

And then it rained. A lot.

I'd like to say we were hard core, and continued the search until the egg was found... but we didn't. We retreated to the house with our buckets over our heads and contented ourselves with chocolates and jelly beans. So somewhere out there, tucked away in just the right hiding place, there's a lime green Easter egg that didn't want to be found. 

Wherever you are little egg- be free!

~Jazzy

The Son has risen!

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth... For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

It is finished.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. 

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. 

Through the blood of Jesus... 

you were washed

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old had gone, the new has come!

The Lamb will be our shepherd;

He will lead us to springs of living water. 

Death has been defeated! 

The Son has risen!

Love's redeeming work is done, 

fought the fight, the battle won!

Alleluia! 

The Son has risen!

Lives again our glorious King!

Where, oh death, is now thy sting? 

Once He died, our souls to save, 

Where thy victory, oh grave? 

Soar we now where Christ hath lead, 

following our exalted Head.

Made like Him, like Him we rise.

Ours the cross, the grave, the skies!

Alleluia!

The Son has risen!

What is truth?

I was going through some old journals when I stumbled on this excerpt from 3 years ago. I thought I would share because it seems fitting as we are preparing for Easter tomorrow. 

"Jesus answered, '... for this reason I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.' 

'What is truth?' Pilate asked." 

I wonder, when Pilate asked Jesus that question, was it sarcastic? I don't think so. I think he really wanted to know. I read these words and picture someone who, more than anything wanted to know what was true. I wonder, did he pause before asking? Did he turn and look hard into Jesus' eyes, searching for an answer in them before he voiced his question? What is truth? Was it strong, or did it come out more like a whisper? Did he query like a governor, or when he asked did it come out like the question of a boy? Did his defensive front fall away for an instant as he looked into the eyes of Christ? Was it an exasperated question, one asked after years of searching? Did he believe for a second that Jesus held the answer? Was there something in him that desperately cried out to believe that Jesus was the truth? What is truth? Was it a question that Pilate wrestled with often? Was it always on his mind? Did it nag him not to be sure? I wonder, was Pilate half-heartedly listening until Jesus mentioned truth? Did it spark that longing in him again to know? What is truth?

Do you, dear reader also wonder, "What is truth?" In our world of shifting standards, and wavering morals, it seems sometimes that nothing is absolute. But be encouraged. If you want to know the truth, it is not hiding. If you long for certainty, it is not obscure. Jesus said of Himself, 

               "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

If you're looking for truth, I would encourage you to examine the claims of this carpenter from Nazareth. I promise you, He can back up everything He says. 

~Jasmine