The good, the bad, and the fun of 2021

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The good, the bad, and the fun of 2021

It’s New Year’s Eve as I write this final post of 2021. With mere hours left before we collectively not only flip the calendar page to a new month but begin an entirely brand new calendar, I want to reflect on the good, bad, and fun of this past year.

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Safe entertaining tips for grandparents in a COVID-19 world

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Safe entertaining tips for grandparents in a COVID-19 world

Depending on where you live, restrictions on social gatherings may become less strict in the coming weeks and months. However, many experts caution that care should still be exercised when groups of people gather.

After an extended period without social contact, it’s only natural to crave some interaction …

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Summer break 2021

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Summer break 2021

Summer is (unofficially) here!

Considering all Covid stole from us during Summer 2020 and every minute and month since, I plan to take full advantage of loosening restrictions and the more peaceful, easy feeling surrounding being out and about—whether alone or with friends or family—for Summer 2021. Meaning, I will spend as little time as possible at the computer, as little time as possible publishing posts on Grandma’s Briefs.

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Grandma's heroes: Where the boys are

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Grandma's heroes: Where the boys are

Kids across the country—and their parents and teachers, too—are celebrating the end of the most challenging school year ever. From pre-K to college age, students have survived a school experience not a single adult alive has ever had to muddle their way through, thanks to Covid.

Sure, parents and teachers had it rough (often beyond rough) making the schooling work somehow, some way. Yet no one over the age of 30 can fully comprehend how it felt and what it meant—and continues to mean—being a kid of any age enduring the wacked out way the 2020-2021 school year went.

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Take me to church: Small steps toward normalcy plus baby Robert’s baptism

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Take me to church: Small steps toward normalcy plus baby Robert’s baptism

Jim and I have attended Holy Cross Lutheran Church for about 35 years. Not every single Sunday during that time but certainly more often than not.

That all changed in March of 2020. For exactly one year we didn’t walk through the doors of church one single Sunday. Or any other day, including my pre-Covid monthly volunteer shift in the food pantry.

Thanks to Covid—and my immunocompromised status thanks to my MS medication—our church attendance was restricted to …

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2020 Christmas

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2020 Christmas

I hope everyone managed at least a smidgen of comfort and joy during their holiday festivities. As with most families, Jim and I drastically limited our time gathering with our …

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Brayden, T1D, and a warning for grandmas

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Brayden, T1D, and a warning for grandmas

It’s taken me more than a month to figure out how to share this news. It’s serious and breaks my heart, yet I don’t want to come across as despaired. I hope to warn others but wish to not seem alarmist. And I want to share the challenge confronting my oldest grandson and his parents every single day forever going forward without suggesting I have any doubt they’re up to it.

My daughter, Megan, is so up to it, in fact, that she provided me the perfect tool by which I can share the news without racking my brain for the right words, right sentiment. That tool being the video below.

See, my grandson Brayden, the active and healthy 12 year old who first made me a grandma, who …

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