Thank You for all the wonderful phone calls and cards for Mother's Day it was wonderful to talk to you. There is nothing a grandmother or mother likes better than to hear from her family! Thank you for remembering! As I sat in Church Sunday with my beautiful white rose corsage,(thank you jean and jeff) I thought of this custom we have in the south of honoring our mothers by wearing white if they have passed on or red if they are still here on this earth, and I thought how much I love that custom, for as a child I did so, we could not afford florist flowers, so we found one in the yard,(usually a red rose!) And sometimes as my grandfather would pin it on me, he would tell how grateful he was that his mom was still alive(she was 94 when she died)and how thankful he was for her and her courage to go forth and raise her family of 10 when his father had died in a swimming accident when he was only 10. It made him proud to wear a little rose in his lapel to honor his Mom! Just a simple thing, but so much meaning behind it. today that custom is almost gone, and it makes me sad for I love it; as I wore the rose, my memory of my mother was with me throughout the day and I felt close to her and it helped me think of all the courage it took her to rear me as a single parent, and of her mother, Mama Kees as she stood in the fields by Daddy Kees and helped work the farm to rear their children and their mothers and of Nina and all the women in my life that have helped me know and understand what it is to be a mother by their great example!

This week I want to say Happy Birthday to Laurel and Patti! What a special day May 12th is to have 2 birthdays! Hope you had fun at the beach Patti and I hope Charleston was wonderful for you Laurel! May you both have a wonderful year and have lots of love and joy throughout the year!

And I want to tell Katie that we miss her and love her and will be glad when she gets her feet back on this good ole USA soil!!

And to my 3 daughters, I am grateful to you for being wonderful mothers in Zion! thank you for being such a great example to yuor children so that they understood what being a Mom is-for they are and will be great mothers, how blest I am to have all of you! I love you!