Christa Allan

My baby of my five is 22-years-old today.
I would post pics, but I’m not home. And I’m just not savvy enough to figure out how to get the photos from there to here …Trust me, though, he’s a cutie.

Apologies for the inconsistent postings. That inconsistency has been the most consistent aspect of my recent life.
School starts for me Wednesday; the students will arrive on Friday. I just found out my teaching schedule yesterday; this morning it changed. I trust my assistant principal, so I’m not even rattled by the shifts.
We are moving back [...]

Mr. and Mrs. Andrae Ramon Cadoree and Pastor Edwards
Saturday, July 28
Andrae and my daughter Erin were first married in January of 2000 by Pastor Edwards, who is Andrae’s uncle and one of the most amazing pastors I’ve ever met. After their son Bailey, my first grandchild, went to heaven a month after God blessed us [...]

The morning before Erin’s wedding, her sisters Shannon and Sarah, Erin’s friend Jenny, and precious Emma and I all went to the nail salon for a girls’ manicure and pedicure extravaganza.
Emma enjoyed every moment of pampering. I enjoyed every moment of being with my girls. Blessings can shower upon us even in the midst [...]

“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. When she speaks, her words are wise, and she gives instructions with kindness.” Proverbs 31:25-26
It’s okay to be a girl.
For reasons I’m too emotionally exhausted and too politically un-astute to discuss, many of us memorized the lyrics to [...]

Ken (aka my husband)  doesn’t read my blog because he has selective computer disabilities. He has figured out how to access MSN weather and get the clouds moving across the South so he can make golf forecasts, how to check out putting together  car options on any number of luxury vehicle pages, and  can plod [...]

I found a new way to torture my children.
Until Lisa Samson sent me an invitation to join Facebook, I didn’t know that random adult-ish people were allowed to join.  So, in the interest of providing a place to advertise my writer-self…you know…online presence and all that, I joined Facebook.
Wow.  My kids think I’m stalking them [...]

I visited Michael and Lesley and my granddaughters yesterday.
Of course, I continue to be smitten with Emma Renee. At the age of two, she is quite the talker (hmm…suppose that’s hereditary?). I really want to record her because just the sound of her voice delights me. When she looks at me through those sea [...]

Michael holding Hannah Grace, Emma’s sister, born on June 12th!

HANNAH GRACE CONTEMPLATING HER NEW UNIVERSE.

Today is my official beginning of teacher-nerd nirvana. I’m off to Daytona, Florida with hundreds of equally dain-bramaged high school and college teachers to score Advanced Placement essays.
For the past two years, I’ve averaged about 1,000 essays. Some read more, some less. The essay part of the exam consists of three essays; we’re assigned the [...]

This is four-year-old Madeleine. She was snatched from her parents’ home in Portugal on May 4. Pray.

can only imagine
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3LUc78vbDk]

Sarah and I are leaving this afternoon for a boomerang Houston trip.
Emma-memma is being baptized on Saturday, and we will follow the blessed event with a celebration of her second birthday. Her mom, Lesley, is expecting Emma’s litttle sis Hannah Grace to be delivered on June 26. 
Grammy’s summer is burgeoning with babies!

Michael & Sarah    Lesley       Emma          Erin & Andrae         Bailey          Shannon

   John

Andrae & Erin on Graduation Day!

Today, instead of blogging, I am looking for my precious daughter’s little body to go bouncing across stage. Erin Cathryn is being awarded a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Political Science and minor in Psychology from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University [...]

Thank you Harvard Medical School. One less reason for mommy-guilt.
They just released a study that breast-fed babies do not necessarily grow up to be thinner adults.  So, I’m now free to practice some revisionist history in my kids’  baby books.
According to the AP article, researchers believed that the women’s recollections of breastfeeding (they’d been sent [...]

Seven years ago, on April 23rd, I became a grandmother, and my life changed beyond measure.
Bailey Ramon. A gift from my past, brought into the present, to change the future. Son of my daughter Erin and her husband Andrae, he arrived on an Easter Sunday.
I drove over twelve straight hours, from Louisiana to Kansas, with [...]