The Fruit of Her Hands: Family

10 Things I Love About My Family:

1. I love that my family spends quality time with most of my extended family at dinners on Saturday nights or having cookouts and skeet-shoots out at the house. I truly am blessed with such wonderful and beautiful aunts, uncles, and cousins.

2. I love that my dad moves the baby cows around to the pasture behind my window so that when I am home, I can watch the little cows play and run. My dad and mom are very thoughtful in that way. Mom and dad always wants to have the prettiest flowers on the back porch for me and Aubree to wake up to and look at during the day. Even if we are gone for 10 or 11 months out of the year, that is still a top concern for them.

3. I love that my family starts to celebrate the Christmas season the first week in November. It was never an exaggeration or ridiculous thought to us to have it up too early. Walking down stairs to Christmas Wonderland is always so wonderful. Waking up to the the Charlie Brown piano music each morning when mom turns on the tree or when at night the only light is coming from the tree's' and fire place is so special to me and my sisters.

4. I love how my family loves Boston Terrior Bulldogs. Growing up, many of my friends would refer to these dogs not by there specific breed, but by Shroder dogs. Yes, we name every dog the same. We are now on Shroder the 4th. This is normal for us and completley understandable. Our dogs usually have a theme name after the Charlie Brown series: Shroder, The Great Pumpkin, and Linus.

5. I love how my daddy worked so hard to give us the childhood that we had. He would wake up before everyone each day and come home late every day to provide for us. Growing up on the farm was so special. Playing in the ponds, hay, with the 4-wheelers, chickens, cows; fishing for catfish, hunting, or just riding around caused us to have special and memorable lifes. He gave us anything we ever needed. I love that my daddy worked so hard to move my momma from a trailor home with taped up windows and beenie weenies to the beautiful home we have today.

6. I love how we make special trips together to Branson, the Bahamas, or Eureka Springs just so we can create special memories with one another.

7. I love how we know everything about Harry Potter (excluding dad). For a lifetime, we can remember sitting all together not ever wanting mom to stop reading aloud to us from the series. We would 'patiently' wait till the next book or movie would come out and faithfully go and be apart of it. Even if one of us were throwing up in the movie theaters *cough cough Sarah* we would not leave and miss a part of it.

8. I love how my mom collects Disney Collectibles and how when my memaw was alive she would give mom a disney figurine each Christmas and a silver candy cane starting from the first year my parents were married. Mom has continued this tradition with Aubree and me for our new families.

9. I love that we own our own store and how we can go there anytime and get sandwhiches, chips, and drinks.

10. I love how my parents are still married. I love that they were always there for us. I love how close my family is even if we are thousands and thousands of miles away.

I simply love my family.

Top 3 things you didn't know about my family:

Aubree:
1.She hates the movie What Lies Beneath
2. She won Little Miss Greenwood
3. plays the piano, guitar, clarinet, oh and the bongo drums

Sarah:
1. Had Pneumonia when she was in the second grade and could have died
2. Doesn't really know what her natural hair color is (not blonde...anymore)
3. Has toes as long as her fingers

Mom:
1. Drum Major in Highschool
2. Never had a Christmas morning other than with her family
3. Plays the clarinet

Dad:
1. Punched a teacher when he was younger
2. plays the guitar and sing
3. Wrapped my mom's christmas presents in butcher paper when they were first married

Top Ten Family Moments:

I think I am going to try to remember my top 10 family moments right now. I have been missing my family a lot lately so I will try to bring some happiness to everyone within these next 10 memories. They aren't rated in any particular way or fashion, just written down...

1. Family vacations have always brought with them wonderful times and great memories but my absolute favorite vacation is when a lot of my extended family and us went to Galvaston. I remember going for walks along the beach, eating way too many tacos, watching my sisters and cousins ride funny looking bikes, and staying in a really nice condo.

2. For some reason one of my top memories include a tornado and a storm shelter. When we were really young we would always get phone calls from Papa Dunn and see whether or not we would have to go down to his house to stay in his storm cellar. One night we did and we brought old Shroder with us. Everyone down the street had to cram all into that little cellar and I loved smelling the rain and old wood while being really close to my family. Strange, I know but its for true. :)

3. I loved each time my sisters and I would play Rock People out in our front yard. We had hundreds and thousands of huge rocks out in front of our trailor home and we would have our own horses and homes and run really fast over the rocks and pretend we were some nationality of rock people. We would 'cook' and eat the little purple flowers that looked like they had little faced and pull up onion weeds and create meals for one another with pecans or acorns as desert. We were insane back then because we seriously could have been bit by a snake or broken several bones but we never ONCE got hurt.

4. I want everyone to know that I love my Memaw. One of my top ten family memories are of her and me picking up skipping rocks around our house and putting them in a Cool Whip bucket. We drove down the pond in her gray car and she showed me how to skip rocks. I can't wait to spend eternity with her and my papaw. I could probley fill up this entire list with the memories I have of the two of them. I only got to spend 5 years with my Papaw but each time I was with him created a special and perfect memory. They were the most wonderful people in the entire world and they loved Jesus. How wonderful it is for me to get to run into their arms when they greet me at Heaven's Gates.

5. Each Christmas is a wonderful memory. I know I am kinda being vague on this one but you wouldn't understand our Christmas' unless you were apart of our family. My mom tried to make Christmas time around our house a completley different world. Each time you walked through the doors you walked into the North Pole like on the Santa Clause. She would most definatly always have some delicious and non-diet cake, cookies, or candies out on a platter all season long and the whole house would smell like Christmas. She makes Memaw's Dumplings each year and we always spend way too much money on our electricty bill to have beautiful outside lights. I love the time and effort my mom takes to make each present special.I love trying to hear the movies we watch all together while our boston terrior snores in front of the fire place. I love Christmas at our house because its our own little city and the townspeople are my family members. I love the christmas cookies daddy would bring home from the Butcher Block and the way we didn't have school for almost 3 weeks.

6. I loved going to auctions with my dad growing up. Going to cow auctions or buying feed or traveling altogether in his old white or blue truck was a treat. The seats in his old truck were blue and sometimes parts of the seat would stick to your clothes. It had a very distinct smell. He would have Achy Breaky Heart playing or some Garth Brooks-George Straight-or Colin Raye playing, of course. My mom would pack us a lunch of sandwhiches and bagged chips and we would head on out to wherever. In the auction I would watch the cows go through while the men aruond me spit into styrofoam cups and smell all the manure. I LOVED IT. We would have to go really slow because of the trailor behind us and sometimes he would introduce me to people because my dad knows everyone in the Continental United States. He would most def. be wearing a blue shirt with overalls and a John Deer or other tractor/feed hat.

7. I loved the softball games growing up with my family. The only point in a softball game is for the big ice chest to be brought out and for us to pick our our favorite koolaid or sodas and the end of the game. My mom would always have a huge red and white jug filled with ice water that she would hold through the fence for Sarah and I to drink. Sarah looked so funny in her helment and bat because she was just so tiny. Sometimes my meme and tata would come and watch us and we would just end up sitting out in the field picking grass. We would have to always take the truck to the games because we never wanted our car to get stuck along the rutted out dirt rode that led the field we were always stuck playing at. We finally got our own shiny red helments after we got lice from our other team mates :)

8. Wow these memories are going by too fast. I loved going down to the trampoline with my sisters during the summer and watch the lightening bugs float in the pasture. I didn't care for the whole jumping part but just being there with them. I loved growing up on the farm. That within itself contains hundreds of favorite memories. Like the time Natalie Parker let out all of our chickens and we had to catch them before dad got home. Or when I would drive way too fast with my friends on the back of the fourwheeler over a hill just to fill them lift up when we went over bump or watch cow patties fly around when we drove over them. But I loved that trampoline and the nights it brought with it.

9. One memory that comes back to my often enough and might be one of my biggest regrets (well as a fourth grader) was when we had to right our own stories about Pippy Longstockings. I had written my own and was supposed to share it with the class this one day. During class I saw mom park her car outside the window and walk towards our building. School was almost over for the day and mom was NEVER late picking us up. I was up to tell my story when she came in to hear me read it. For some reason I wouldn't let her hear me read it outload and told her to leave. She finally left and I read it. 13 years later I still wished I had let her hear me read that story. But this memory leads me into one of my top ten favorite memories. NORTH MAIN! I loved North Main. Everything about it. I loved how walking down the hallways I would see a piece of my mom's art. I loved seeing all the teachers and the janitors. I loved my friends. I loved the playground. I loved Kickball. I loved school. I loved everything about it. But most of all I loved that one special night of the year when the PTA would put on the Fall Festival. Walking the cakewalk, pieing someone in the face, winning items from various stations, and listening to music in the cafeteria. I loved our Principles. Now that North Main is gone but the one I got to go to was so special

10. Hmmm...one more memory. I guess I am supposed to write down my wedding ceremony but that was so stressful and went by way too fast. Or maybe I am supposed to write down about our new cars, house, new family members, births, or maybe more vacations. But right now I just want to remember everything before life got too big. My last favorite memory (for now) would be the times my momma would sit down to play the piano in our old trailor. My sisters and I would dance in the front room between our gray curduroy couches. My mom would ALWAYS play James Taylor Fire and Rain on the Piano and I loved it. We would play Umpa-Lumpas and just enjoy the evenings.

Hope everyone liked reading about my top 10 favorite memories. I might make another list later but for now I just want to enjoy these memories for awhile longer.

Linus Enjoying a Lolli-Pop :)

Wanted to brag on one of my sisters this morning. I am in love with Aubree's little Linus and she made this little piece of art just the other day and I wanted to share it with everyone! She's so talented.

Lovey Driscoll

Today I wanted to add another picture of one of my closest 'family' members. This is my lovey. I know that many of you will think, "OmyWord, what is that?" Well let me tell you, this little polar bear is the result of 22 years of love. I have spent 1 week and a total of 3 nights without my lovey. Once when I was in the second grade I left him on the backdeck for a week and had to sleep with a black monkey instead. Then when I was in Oklahoma for church camp, I had left him at home and had to have my mother-in-law bring him up to me. Then the last time I was without him was on May 15 when Jake and I had our second wedding ceremony. Some of you might think this is strange. Its not. Its completely healthy. I have had 5 different Psychology classes and they all have covered the issue of attachement issues with loved stuff animals. My sister Sarah had a torn up blanket, Aubree had a puff-puff, and my cousin Dustin had a pillow. When I was younger I had night terrors and would always wake up and hold my lovey. Lovey is home to me so wherever I go, home goes with me. Jake loves lovey and never complains about him. Ok, well here he is! Enjoy!

This is home. This is my Lovey :)

I have been blessed with an amazing family! I wanted to use this page to record some of the memories we Driscoll's tend to create whenever I am able to be with them. My mom and dad just all the way over here for a weekend visit a few weeks ago and I loved every minute of it! I miss my family so much and am looking forward to seeing them in just 3 more weeks! I have two sisters, Aubree and Sarah. Aubree is married to Chase and lives in the most fasinating place in the continental United States: Minot North Dakota. I usually see Chase about twice a year and he has recently just recieved a two thumbs up from me by purchasing a motorcycle! Aubree is the type of sister who will let you know the truth about anything and is no hypocrite! She has the most precious dog named Linus and has a teaching degree in Art. Sarah, who happens to be my twin sister, is engaged to be married this December. Sarah is finishing her degree in English and will be living next door to my parents in a cute little home with a vegetable garden in her backyard. Sarah also has a dog named Bear. Sarah is the type of sister who will comfort anyone and will play the "Angel" song on the piano when your having a bad day.