Grandpa Jim

Brynlee is starting to get to the age/point where she understands relationships...sort of. She understands that Uncle Bubba (Kyle), Aunt Ashley, and Aunt Shelby are Mommy's brother and sisters. She also seems to get that Uncle Eric and Aunt Lacey are Daddy's brother and sister. She still refers to Baby Laynea (cousin) as her little sister though. One thing she can't quite grasp is that Noni is Mommy's Mommy and NawNaw is Daddy's Mommy. Nope, she hasn't figured that out yet. If I try to explain it to her, she kind of gets mad and says, "NO NONI IS MY NONI!!!"

One thing I find funny is that she LOVES her grandpas. She calls my step-dad Paw Paw, Joey's Dad Grandpa, Joey's step-dad Poppy, and Joey's grandpa Papa. She will tell me, "Paw Paw is my favorite" and then the next day, "Grandpa is my favorite" and then "Poppy is my favorite". Basically, whichever grandpa she is around at the moment is her favorite grandpa EVERRRR. She is definitely "Paw Paw's/Grandpa's/Poppy's/PaPa's girl". She runs to them. To be honest, I love when we do family gatherings because Brynlee clings to them, LOL. 

Grandpa and BB feeding the ducks

Brynlee, Paw Paw, and Noni

Poppy, Brynlee, and Ainsley

Recently, my Auntie Edna (dad's sister) came to Texas for her college graduation. We met up for dinner and she showed us a picture of my mom, dad, and brother when my brother was a baby. We showed the picture to Brynlee and I choked up not knowing how to explain to her who my dad was. She'll never meet him and I don't really have that many pictures of him to share with her. I am not sure if my mom caught my hesitation to explain or if she took the opportunity to get to talk about him, but she was quick to save the situation. She pointed to him and said, "That's your Grandpa Jim!" Brynlee just asked who the other two people were and then kept repeating, "That's my Bubba! That's my Noni!" So it didn't phase her to see her Grandpa Jim, but it did phase me. I will tell her about him someday, but right now she just won't get it.

It does make me sad that I will not have pictures of them together. It makes me sad that she won't get to go out on his boat, get chased along the dock until she jumps or falls in the lake (been there, done that), or go fishing with him. She won't get to eat his homemade deer jerky, ride in his pickup belting out "Sweet Home Alabama", or watch him dance like an idiot. It does hurt my heart that he won't meet my awesome little girl. I mean, she's pretty funny and super cute.

I am sure this is many years away, but someday she will be curious about him. Someday she will want to know what happened to him. Someday she will want to hear stories and I will have plenty to tell her about her Grandpa Jim. For now, I will just cherish the fact that she has 4 grandpas who are very involved in her life. And each one is her favorite.

Littering

There are a lot of things I hate. You know the usual sucky things like child abuse and neglect, sex offenders, stepping in poop, etc. But I hate littering! I hate to see people throw shit out of their windows. I hate to see people open a wrapper, a package, whatever and just throw the trash on the ground. People are lazy and lazy pisses me off, too.

I work at a community college and as I was leaving after a long day of dealing with crap, I see this...

Some idiot must have thought he was being SO FUNNY to put his slurpee cup on the ground beside the trash can. First of all, not funny. Stupid actually. Secondly, how lazy! That means that someone else (me) had to pick up that cup and throw it away. I couldn't just let it sit there.

I also hate going to the local parks because there's trash everywhere. I understand that trash gets blown in the wind and things like that. Last year, most of our local parks were PACKED on the weekend for Memorial Day BBQs. We went to one of the the parks on Memorial Day and it was disgusting. Trash and food were everywhere from the weekend festivities. Plates, hot dogs, sausage, cups, candy, balloons, firecrackers, everything. The city does a great job of cleaning up, but their job wouldn't be so difficult if people weren't so disgusting and lazy. There's trash cans all throughout the parks yet people will just toss their stuff everywhere. If I plan to have a celebration at a park, I bring my own trash bags so that the trash cans at the park don't overflow. You would think other people would do the same thing.

Cigarettes. I hate them in general, but I hate when people toss them out the window and throw them on the ground. They are ugly and they are gross. I do not want my child picking up someone's used cigarettes! Our pups (mostly the little one) keeps getting under our deck and dragging out stuff from under there. I kept wondering why I kept seeing Coors Light cans in our backyard. I talked to Joey about it and he said that the guy who owned the house before us drank Coors Light (he was drinking it every time we met him) and he must have been throwing the cans under the deck. There's also tons of beer bottle caps under there! Who does that?? We have a trash can on the deck so when we have people over, we can throw our trash in the trash can instead of...under the deck.

If you do any of these things, STOP IT! Take pride in your environment! Be respectful of our land and stop making it ugly. When I see people litter, I rarely keep my mouth shut even if I am just mouthing them from my car because they are too far away to hear me. I'm like a yapping Chihuahua.