Summer Visits to our Grandparents

San Joaquin Valley
courtesy Photobucket.com

 

I can’t remember a summer or a Christmas that did not include a visit to our grandparents.  Both sets of Grandparents lived in the San Joaquin valley.

Mother and we kids would stay with her mom and dad for a week, and Grandpa would drive us to visit our other grandparents and Uncle Jim.

Uncle Jim, was my favorite uncle, because he would reach in his pocket and give the three of us children each a dime. Isn’t that enough to cause me to call him my favorite Uncle?

Grandpa would drive us out to Uncle Jim’s ranch where Jim and his wife Ruby lived with her parents.  We would wade in the irrigation ditch and I remember finding ugly salamanders under the rocks.

Uncle Jim also had pigs, and they would butcher one (but not while we were there) and make sausage and cure the meat.

 

They also had a cow, and Aunt Ruby would skim off the cream from the milk and slip it into a large churn that she turned until it made butter.  She allowed me to turn the wheel, but I soon got tired and let her complete the butter process.

Uncle Jim took good care of my Grandma and Grandpa Stanton. The house they lived in belonged to my Uncle Jim and he would bring them fresh butter and eggs from his ranch and make sure they were okay.  On our visits Grandma would give me a piece of white bread with real butter on it, and that was a special treat, because we always had wheat bread at home with margarine for a spread.

My mother’s mom, Grandma Onwiler would bake homemade biscuits for our breakfast, and I would tell her how much I liked them.   Every time she baked her biscuits, she would say, “I baked these biscuits special for Hazel.”  Saying this in front of my siblings was not wise, and I was resented by my sister as being a favorite. 

Thinking back, I probably was the favorite, because when you brag on someone’s cooking or the nice things they do for you, it does make you dear to them.

God is the same way; he loves to hear us brag on him, and praise him from a grateful heart for all his blessings to us.  We are all special to Him.

The amazing things is that WE are each and every one HIS favorite.

This post is Linked with Jen’s Soli Deo Gloria

Also shared at Hazel’s Tell Me a Story