The Amazing Joy of..

Here they are- all eight of them, my grandkids.  I never knew how much I would love having these kids in my life. They are ever changing. The twins are walking now, the oldest grandson has finished his second year in a really great college, the little ones are losing their baby teeth. The middle ones are doing well.

This is not one of those holiday newsletters in which everyone is described as stellar. We are a regular family, and we have our problems as all families do.

The grandparents - we!  have wrestled with the problems of retirement and seem to be managing.

We are in a kind of "re-nesting" period in which we have devoted a lot of time and energy to making our beautiful property even more lovely. We devote a lot of time to the extensive gardens and pastures, and we are paying attention to all those delayed maintenance things around the house.  And we have the time and energy to have many guests here.

Mostly, we are still in love, and have an intense friendship full of talk and sharing.

This spring we had our mile long driveway repaved with smooth lime rock. We had several rooms painted, and lots of little issues from the usual Florida rot repaired. Our vegetable garden requires lots of attention and it is still productive with vegetables every day.

This is the 'generative' age in which we take care of the life outside. We are deeply embedded in volunteering in our community.

Life is good! But it requires constant attention. Here you see one of our of our middle grandsons who had some trouble in his adolescence, but now is getting on top of this, working on being that best that we all know he can be.

We often say to each other that we have so much to be grateful for, so much good fortune in our lives.  Certainly, having those grandchildren has been a wonderful part of this.  We did not expect this. Who does?