Charles Spurgeon in his autobiography tells a heart-warming story of his grandmother making treats for him with leftover pastry. A kneading trough was located in the kitchen, and in it was a little shelf. Charles knew if he came into the kitchen, he would likely find a pastry treat waiting for him, shaped into an animal with currants for eyes.
One of my grandmas got up very early on Thanksgiving mornings to cook and bake. She had extra pie crust dough after her pies were all made so she rolled it out thin, brushed it with melted butter, and topped it with cinnamon and sugar. She cut the dough into rectangles, baked it until golden brown, and served it to her grandchildren. To this day, my family loves pie crust made just like that.
My other grandma welcomed my sister and me for visits by putting our Raggedy Ann dolls on our beds along with a little Tupperware container of her homemade fudge so we each had our own portion, along with a love note. When we arrived at her house, we hugged her and Pampie, and then ran straight to our beds!
My children recall with fondness our read-aloud time. When we started homeschooling, I read a chapter from a book right after lunch. Eventually our read-aloud time moved to late in the afternoon.
They also greatly loved the season when they found an encouraging note under their pillow when they went to bed. Each week, I wrote one of those notes to a child, snuck into their bedroom during the day, and slipped the note under the pillow. I kept track of who had received the last note and worked through the children in age order so each would receive an equal number of notes.
Simple things create life-long memories. They don’t have to be time consuming, burdensome, or expensive. They express love!
You probably have some of those memories, too, and are building them for your children. Want to share them?
Trusting in Jesus,
Teri
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7).
My dad played night time hide and seek with me, my brother, and neighborhood kids. He always won because we played “base”, so finding him up a tree did no good when I couldn’t tag him! He worked hard labor all day, so giving us his evening was a treasure.
What a special dad and what special memories. That blesses my heart hearing how a tired dad invested himself in spending time and energy he didn’t have with his children.
One of my girls’ favorite memories is from the “Tooth Daddy”. Since we don’t “do” the Tooth Fairy, the Tooth Daddy would slip a special treat under their pillows whenever they lost a tooth. Of course they knew who the Tooth Daddy was, but they never knew what kind of treat he would leave them, so it was always a surprise. It could be a candy treat or money or a handwritten note or whatever. If they lost a tooth while he was out of town for work, I would save the tooth until he got home because that was his special thing with them.
That’s great! Thank you.
One of your best posts EVAH! :). I just absolutely love this.
So glad.
Aw, I love this post! My mom also did that with leftover pie crust – so tasty!!
I’ve been thinking about what traditions we will make with our little one. Right now we sing songs before naptime and bedtime and it is one of my favorite parts of the day.
Yes, that quiet time before sleep is very special. I am sure the singing is making special memories for all of you!
My husband and I try to have a “date night” every Friday night while the children stay home and eat all the leftovers from the week. We usually have coffee at a coffee shop or run errands, but mostly just enjoy the time together to talk. Once a year we rotate through the children – youngest to oldest – and have them join us on date night for some one-on-one time with Dad and Mom. They love it, look forward to it, and I think it will be a lasting memory for them all!
Great was to make those special memories!
This post touched my heart! My grandfather recently passed and I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents home in Florida. They’d take us to church and then to a vintage soda shop nearby for root bear floats and a cone if we’d been well behaved at church! I used to love sitting there and asking him about his life as the youngest child in a family of 16 kids! Thank you for this post, your grandchildren will cherish the time you spend with them for many years.
I can almost picture those grandparents treating their children to root beer floats or ice cream cones on the way home from church when they visited. You grew those memories even deeper by being interested in your grandfather’s childhood and wanting to hear his stories.
I really enjoyed this! Something I’ve done is write special memories, thoughts, encouragements, Bible verses, and anything else I felt they should know in journals for each of my sons since they were born. I plan to give the journals as a gift to each of them on their wedding days. Another motive for doing this was that if anything should have happened to me during their youth,I wanted them to have these special messages from me that I otherwise may not have gotten to share. I loved the process and look forward to that special day when I get to turn them over! Being 18 and 16 now, it’ll be here before I know it!
What a priceless treasure you have created for your sons! It takes much self discipline to do what you have done. Others might have that idea. They might even put a couple things in the journal, but never finish it. You have been faithful to the vision.
Thank you so much for sharing that beautiful post! Would you please share your recipes for the pie crust dough and homemade fudge? Thank you.
If we share the recipes, we’d like to have photos to go with them so I will pass the request on to Sarah for her “blog post idea” file, and we will see what we can do. I might not think I had the fudge recipe, but I was just going through my recipe box recently. I saw that recipe handwritten in my grandma’s handwriting. Of course, we never made it as well as she did!
Thank you so much for passing on the request to Sarah. That would be lovely with pictures! How special to still have the recipe written in your grandma’s handwriting. Maybe, but your grandchildren will surely enjoy them and the memories will be special as well!
I was delighted when I found that fudge recipe in my recipe box in Meme’s handwriting. My grandchildren will have other memories of me, but it won’t be of fudge. I hardly ever make it, and when I do if it is the “cook-to-softball-stage” kind like Meme’s, it usually doesn’t come out right. It will either be too soft or too hard. I am actually looking forward to trying it again, guessing it will take at least two tries! But even the failures are usually delicious.
Good memories my grandma made pie crust too
That’s sweet!
Whenever I went to visit my Mee Maw, she would have ongoing lessons teaching me to crochet as well as memorizing scripture. When I could say, for example, Psalm 23 or Psalm 100 from memory, she would give me a special treat that she baked. My mom and I used to go walking together and talk. We would end up at a local small shop where she would buy me a candy bar. As I grew up, we always walked and talked. My dad used to run with me outside. He was fast and I always looked forward to the day when I would beat him running from one side of the yard to the other. For my own family, my husband has one on one time with each of our six children each week, and then rotates taking them out to eat. For birthdays, we always have a birthday blessing where we each say a prayer out loud for the birthday person. We have done that since our children were born. We have lots of traditions and fun things. I have enjoyed reading all of these.
Lucy, thank you for taking time to put that down for us. What a rich spiritual heritage you have with your grandma and her encouragement for you to memorize Scripture and then the relationship building time your parents invested in you. Now you are doing those kinds of things with your own children.
I live this post. So cute. One special thing my mom and me do together and sometimes joyanna too is we go off together like shopping or whatever and we make what we call “iced tofees” (pronounced taw-Fay). It’s made with a mixture of caramel tea and coffee as flavoring. And one of my memories with my dad is he used to play “pool baseball” with me. Like baseball but jumping in the pool was home plate. 🙂
Those are sweet memories, Alanna!