My Journal

I’ve told you all that the blog is much like a diary or journal to me.  It really is.  Growing up I always tried to keep a diary or journal and never made the leap and actually did it.  I can’t tell you how many times I tried.  I think my first time ever was when I was in 4th grade and my mom bought me a five-year diary.  Remember the ones with the mini keys.  I had one.  Mine was brown.  I made about 30 entries in it over the five years.

I never did find a way to truly write a journal until I started blogging.

When I did start blogging I was told that I should keep it “professional”.  I should only write about quilting.  I was told it should be for business only.  I hated that idea.

The person in me wanting to write a journal thought blogging would be a great way to get me to actually keep a journal.  Besides, separating business and personal was never my thing.  My family is such a huge part of everything I do.

One day long ago, Kelli and I were having a sewing day.  We were still living at the farmhouse.  Kelli got it in her head that we should make FOUR Perkimon Daydreams quilts…one for Kayla, one for Buck, one for me, and one for her.

The quilt is a monster and to make four of them would be crazy…in fact, making them all did make us a little crazy.  Kelli went around and tied headbands of 1 1/2″ strips on our heads.

Then she tied them on the dogs.  At the time, I had Gracie and she had Puppycat.

There is no way to write a blog post and make any of that look professional.  We weren’t one drop professional that day.  We were goofy and crazy and had so much fun.

I’d rather you all see me and our family how we really are…goofy and crazy…raw but sometimes put together.  That’s how we really are.

I’m so glad I made our family part of the blog from the very beginning.  It’s lead me to blog about so many personal things that I might not have a memory of or saved a photo of had I not added personal stuff to the blog.

The other day I was doing a search looking for a recipe and I came across a post I had done after we had a party after Carver was born.  My family had come and we had a cheesecake bake-off party.  It was a way to get lots of desserts to my house so I didn’t have to make them.  It was fun too.

I found a picture of Kramer…not a good one but it was him…

We really don’t have lots of pictures of him so any pictures were great.  The picture that really caught my eye…this one…
In the pictures are the cheesecake bakeoff winners…my sister in law Wendy, our daughter Kayla, and my niece Jody.

For those of you who are newer here, Jody is my niece.  She’s four years younger than me.  We were really close.  She’s was actually more of a sister to me than my own sister as Jody and I were closer in age.  Jody died of breast cancer in September of 2019.  It was hard.  I lost her and my husband Kramer in a matter of three months.

If you look in the picture, you can see that Jody is holding Carver.  He was a newborn.  So sweet.  Jody loved babies and was always the first to grab them up.  At the time she was dealing with her cancer and holding little ones, means even more when you have cancer.

We have talked a lot to Carver about Kramer.  Carver remembers him.  I made a book about him and Carver can almost recite it…but from time to time he’ll say to me, “remember Jody died too.” Yep, buddy, I do remember.

The only thing…I don’t think he can put a name and face together with Jody.  We didn’t take a lot of pictures together.  We were always too busy chatting and hanging out…playing show and tell with the latest projects we were making so photos didn’t get taken.

So when I saw the picture of Jody holding Carver I messaged that picture and the picture below to Kalissa and asked her to show them to Carver.  You see, this is the toy that Jody crocheted him for a baby present.

Carver still has the toy and immediately, unprompted, he ran and got it.  He started hugging it and Kalissa said he snuggled up on the couch with it like a teddy bear.

Some people are remiss about talking to little ones about people after they die.  We are not that family.  We talk about our missing loved ones often.  We want to keep Kramer and Jody a part of us.  We want to honor them and give them credit for the difference they made in our lives.  We regularly shed a tear in front of the kids and it’s entirely okay.  The kids then know, we really loved them, and should something ever happen to them, we will cry about missing them too.  That’s how kids see deep love.  That’s how they see we are human.

Carver has seen me shed a tear or two over missing Jody.  I’m glad that now he can connect the face, the toy, and the name.

For this reason, among others, that I am so thankful that I made the decision to open the blog to include my family and not keep it strictly a professional blog. It gave Carver a chance to put a name with a face.  It prevents me from having to type out recipes for my kids all the time.  I can just say the recipe is on the blog.  It lets me keep my goal of having a journal along with showing you all my quilts too.  Besides, I think the blog is a whole lot more interesting with the joys and sorrows as well as the antics of my family included.  So that is the latest from Jo’s Journal.