Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers and grandmothers who are raising or have raised your children. We admire you for the love, care, and devotion you have given in your important role as mother.

It’s such a grand thing to be a mother of a mother—that’s why the world calls her grandmother. ~Anonymous

Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you’re just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric. -Pam Brown

Previous posts about Mother’s Day and Grandmothers:

• Happy Mother’s Day 2010
• Grammy Tanda’s lessons she has learned from her Grandmothers
• Grandmother—the original Grammy Award

Happy Mother’s Day!

- Grandpa Shayne & Grammy Tanda

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Loving mothers and grandmothers give of themselves unselfishly. However, in the back of their minds they may sometimes wonder, “Have I taught them enough? Do they know this or that?” Sometimes on a discouraging day they may think, “Oh, I haven’t really made any impact on the world. I’m just a mom. I’m just a grandma.”

All I really need to know I learned from my Grandmother. ~Charles E. Smoot

One of the favorite gifts I have received from my adult children took me be surprise. The gift was a journal titled “Lessons I Have Learned.” They pointed out the kind of impact I had had upon them. They had filled in the first few pages — each of them writing about lessons they had learned from me that have been valuable to them — with the idea that I would finish filling in the journal with lessons I’ve learned. You know, preserving some of that hard earned wisdom we adults are always claiming we have.

Even though of my own grandmother died when I was young, I remember visiting her. I remember feeling her love for me. She always made me feel accepted for who I was and made me feel welcome and wanted in her home.

This year, I encourage you to take a few moments and write down some of those gems of wisdom you have learned from your grandmother. If she is still alive, you will surprise and delight her. Or share them with the special people in your life: your grandchildren, children, or parents.

By sharing the lessons that you have learned from your grandmother, you will not only validate her, but you’ll also let her know of ways she has helped you that she may never have realized. This can be a more personal and touching gift than a dozen roses or another knickknack.

What are some of the valuable lessons you have learned from your grandmother? We look forward to reading your comments.

Wishing a happy Mother’s Day to each of our dear readers, mothers, and grandmothers.

- Grammy Tanda

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It’s 3 months until Mothers Day, and 7 months until Grandparents Day. So we figure it’s time to have a celebration to highlight Grammies. Here is your chance to nominate your Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Grammy, Grandma, Nana, Grannie, Oma, Tutu, or Abuela for the original Grammy Award! Just for fun.

Rules for making your nomination

• The nominee must be a real person, a grandmother; and someone who is your own grandmother, or “adopted” grandmother, mother, or wife; who you know personally. (Either still living, or passed on.)
• One entry per comment. If you want to nominate more than one of your grandmothers, create separate comments for each.
• No men allowed! Sorry, this time it’s just for grandmas.
• You must tell why your grandmother deserves to win your Grammy Award. And don’t just say because you love her or she’s nice. Come on. Be specific. Give us details. Use as many tautologically long-winded ramblings as you like. Hey, no need to be brief here. Superfluously interminable wordiness is fine. Go ahead and write with pleonastically redundant verbosity.
• Be gushy and mushy if you want, but be real and tell the truth. Your grandma may seem like Superwoman to you, but can she really fly?

Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete. ~Marcy DeMaree

Get a free certificate for your Grammy

Here’s the deal. We will email you a certificate that you can print or email to your grammy. (Don’t worry. The email you enter in the comment form below will not visible on the page.) When you write your nomination in a comment below, be sure to include her title and name as you want it printed. (Example “Grammy Tanda Packer”).

So nominate your grandma now. Have fun! Comments are now closed.

- Grandpa Shayne

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Do you like surfing the web to find articles and tips about grandparenting? There’s a lot of useful information on the WWW. Grandpa Shayne and I are always looking for fun way to connect with the grandkids. We’ve collected some of our favorite Halloween web pages for grandparents.

Halloween is a wonderful time to share with the family. It’s especially fun to see the grandkids all dressed up in their favorite costumes. Here’s a photo of our 6 month old grandbaby in the cute costume I bought at 60% off. Hey, I’m like my mom, always looking for a bargain!

A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween. ~Erma Bombeck

I teach family and consumer science, I’ve always admired Erma Bombeck. She was such a practical homemaker.

Shayne is a Cub Master, and one of his Weblos is a budding artist named Zac Willberg. He draws comics and publishes them on Zac’s Cartoon Cave blog. Shayne commissioned Zac to draw a special comic strip for today’s Halloween post. Boo is the main character (a ghost). Ancient is his girlfriend (a mummy). Today, there’s a special guest appearance by Boo’s Grandma.

Halloweenies by Zac Willberg

One of our favorite cartoons by Zac is his Charlie Brown Halloween.

Before you leave, be sure to subscribe to our Grandparents TLC feed.

Favorite family-friendly web pages with ideas for grandparents

Nana’s Corner – Halloween recipes and poems

Nana Finds – Special halloween books for grandchildren and Ideas for homemade Halloween costumes

Joan Adams – collection of fun Halloween songs and lyrics. (Joan says “I hope you all have as much fun with this site as I have! We love to sing with the grandchildren! Our two are 5 and 6 years old, so they are the perfect age for learning all the fun Halloween favorites! Enjoy!”)

Grandma Ideas – Halloween ideas for grandchildren

Grandmother Wren - Family Alternatives to Halloween

SandwichINK – Sharing God’s Love on Halloween

LoveMyGrandchild – Halloween ideas

FamilyCorner – Lots of Halloween ideas

ParentHacks – Best Parent Hacks (tips and ideas that work for grandparents too)

GroupCard – Free Halloween ecards (the whole family can sign an ecard)

Bluemountain – Free Halloween ecards (free month trial)

DLTK’s Crafts for Kids – Halloween Activities for Children (halloween coloring pages, printables, worksheets, craft projects, games and puzzles, online games, pumpkin carving patterns, recipes)

Babble – Just in Time for Halloween: How to Make Your Own Slime

Radiant Ideas – Tips for going green this Halloween

What are some of your favorite Halloween web pages? You are welcome to add your family-friendly link in your comment.

Have a fun Halloween! – Grammy Tanda

Hey, I’m on twitter now!

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My wife, Grammy Tanda, is back home after playing Grammy for a couple of weeks! She’s a high school teacher, and loves to go spend time with our grandkids for a few weeks at a time each summer On this trip, she went to see two of our young grandsons, 3 and 6 years old.

If you’ve read our About Shayne & Tanda page, you’ll remember that 7 of our 8 grandchildren live in 3 different areas of the country. Since it’s too far to drive, this means lots of flying. But Grammy Tanda doesn’t mind because it’s so fun being with the grandkids. (Oh, and I think she might like seeing our daughters and their hubbies too, but this blog is about grandparenting.) We enjoy going together whenever possible. But when only one of us can get away, we feel that it’s important enough, so we don’t let that stop us. Sometimes one of us is traveling on business somewhere close to where some of our grandchildren live. So we try to schedule in a little detour for even a day or two. If you plan it right, it doesn’t cost that much more to add an extra city to your flight plans.

Our grandchildren love Grammy! She is so fun and has so much enthusiasm in her role as a grandmother. Grammy is very creative, and is always prepared with fun ideas to do with the grandkids. She is aware of their short attention spans, so she watches for their queues, and is ready to shift directions when they start to get bored or distracted.

Now let’s see, on this trip, Grammy and the 2 grandsons went on nature hikes, swimming, fishing, crafts, cooking together, reading, playing fun games, just to mention a few things. She also also enjoyed helping with meals.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children. ~Alex Haley

I miss her while she’s gone, but we chat on the phone a few times each day. Sometimes she’ll call after being worn out or emotionally spent. Maybe you’ve noticed that young’uns can do that to you.

Tanda teaches Family and Consumer Science (what used to be Home Ec, but it’s so much more now days). So she is very good at connecting with high schoolers, and kids of all ages. And after helping me raise after raising five children (with my help), she’s had lots of experience communicating with children of all ages.

Now that she’s back home, she’ll keep the memories fresh by calling them on the phone often, and by video chatting using iChat on our Macintosh or with our VoIP videophone.

We’re interested to know what fun things you enjoy doing when you spend time with your grandchildren. We welcome your comments.

Thanks, Shayne