Birthdays~Letter to our Grandchildren

Dear Grandchildren,

One of the most exciting days of the year for you is your birthday, right? Each one of you looks forward to your birthday and a party with a cake and balloons and presents and friends and lots of fun!  We love your birthday parties.   We love to celebrate with you...we love to celebrate you!

My mother, your Greatgrandmother, Tina Sawatzky also loved to celebrate.  Let me tell you something that I remember about her birthday.

Your Greatgrandmother, we'll just call her GG now, loved to celebrate her birthday every January by inviting those of her family who lived nearby to come over for "Faspa" and enjoy a good cup of coffee with special goodies to go with it.  I remember these times with great excitement even now, because my sisters and I hurried home after school knowing it was a special day.  It was my Mother's birthday and it came right in the middle of the month, January 15. That was a wonderful diversion in the middle of a long, cold Prairie winter.  I thought you might like to see a picture of GG when she was just twenty years old.  She wasn't  even married at this time.

  Here she is!  Isn't she beautiful?

                   

I think GG gave this picture to your Great Grandfather, my Daddy, in 1934 when she was twenty years old.  They married the following year, 1935.  That's many, many years ago.  So GG's children, she had eight of them including me, still like to get together in her honour to have a little party.  Some of us were able to do that again this year.  But we didn't have "Faspa".  We had a brunch out in a restaurant - an unheard of thing to do when GG was your age.  In fact the word "brunch" hadn't even been invented, I'm sure!

Sometime I'll tell you of how things were when GG was a little girl.  Her life was very different from yours, from mine.  She lived in a different country and spoke a different language than ours.  She also experienced a lot of sad things. 

But we'll save that for another  time.

_______________________________________________

So it seems that it's my mother, whose birthday on January 15 

begins the drum-roll...........
for all those who follow in our family.

Who follows next?

It's Dana - who celebrates her birthday on January 23 each year.  The year this picture was taken-2008- Grandpa and I were visiting Dana and Andrew, Eva and Micah  in Mexico where they lived for four years. (Joshua hadn't been born yet).  We had made an apple crisp for her and I think she looks very happy and beautiful.  We only needed one little candle, 
to light up our celebration.
Then on January 24th, oh let me see...

It's Jared,  sweet Jared... happy as can be,
with some blue candles on his chocolate cupcakes, 
...one, two,...right....
six is two times three!

It's hard to believe that Jared's 6, 
a boy who likes fun and in less than a year will be in Grade 1!

Next.... 

January 27, oh my, oh my, 
Nathan chose for his "birthday cake" a pumpkin pie!!

We celebrated Nathan's birthday a few days later,
with his sister Megan so proud of her big brother!  
Twelve years old...almost a teen-ager!   Congratulations, Nathan!

So Grandpa and I once more say,
Happy Birthday to each one of you!
You've filled our lives with happiness and adventure and love.
Each one of you is remarkable, special and so gifted with beauty inside and out! We always thank God for you... we love you very, very much 
and celebrate you throughout the year! 
God bless you.
Now we wait for February,
then for March...
We'll march right into March and there we'll see
More wondrous birthdays...one, two three!


"Children's children are a crown to the aged..."  Proverbs 17:6