Oh dear. After my New Year’s post I had such great intentions of picking things back up on the blog. I’d planned to spend the month of January doing catch up posts to re-cap fun projects and events fun and not-so-fun from 2023. And then January disappeared. As did February and March. Most days I’m just baffled as to where the time goes.

It’s been very busy here this winter and we’ve been working a lot on the house. As soon as the holidays were over, we dove right in – moving furniture, painting rooms, cleaning closets, changing flooring and cleaning out a storage unit. Most of the hard work is done, but there are still closets and bins of papers and things to go through. There was a little knitting and sewing, but in general, working on the house has been better to keep me occupied. Just like these sentences that I keep typing, I didn’t want to get to the point.

Which is this.  In November, we lost our darling Mummy.

I’ve hardly been able to even say it.  I love this cute picture of her — I’m not sure the rest of the family likes it as much, but I think it’s just so … her. Sweet, pretty and funny.  I don’t even know where to start.  Her absence has left such a hole in our hearts.  She (along with BigDaddy) was the center of our little extended family.  They were the glue that held us all together.  We were SO lucky – we had many years of fun – birthdays, trips, holidays and just happy everyday memories.

Wasn’t she a cute little girl?  This is one of the only pictures we have of her when she was young.  She had asthma when she was a little girl, so, it’s not surprising that she didn’t speak fondly of her childhood. But, luckily for us, she met Dad when she was young, and she grew up to be the happy, fun mother that we remember.

And she, along with BigDaddy, gave MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I the happiest of childhoods. The two of them together were a great team. I never remember them arguing when I was a child — that seems impossible, but it was true.  She was the most even tempered person I’ve ever met. I never remember her yelling. Family was everything to Mummy and it showed in everything she did for us.

She adored her grandchildren, and more recently, her three little great-granddaughters. I loved watching her face light up when they came to visit. And even though there were a lot of day-to-day things she couldn’t remember, she never forgot how to be fun.  Oh, how she would tease those little girls — and they didn’t always like it LOL.

I always thought Dad was the funny one of the two of them, but she definitely held her own.  After she passed away, a friend of the boys’ told us a story from just a few years ago:  “My favorite memory was when we were at her house and she was telling me that the only difference between her and Jessica Simpson was her face.  She said her face showed age, but her body was just as good as Jessica Simpson’s.  She proceeded to go into the kitchen, grab a grocery bag, cut eye holes in it, write “Jessica Simpson’ on the bag, put it over her head, and walked back into the room.  She said ‘See … same thing!'”  Classic Mummy!

I feel like these pictures just don’t do her justice.  They definitely don’t reflect how I remember her.

And, I haven’t even discussed everything else about her — she was so smart (more than one of her friends told me she was the smartest person they knew), she was an amazing cook, a loyal friend, and her quilting skills deserve a post of their own.

When BigDaddy left us, I posted this picture of the two of them. I took it on their 60th anniversary. There were serious, more beautiful pictures taken on that day, but this one is, by far, my favorite. It’s. Just. Them.

Oh, how I wish they were still here.

We’ll miss and love them forever.

XOXO,
Anna