{"id":724,"date":"2010-09-20T00:13:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T06:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=724"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:11","slug":"tara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/tara\/","title":{"rendered":"Tara"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHoney, (My wife sometimes calls me honey..not because I\u2019m so sweet but usually just before asking me to do something) why haven\u2019t you ever blogged about Tara? You\u2019ve written about all of our grandkids and their achievements but nothing about her. You know she might think you\u2019re not as proud of her as the others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, that’s just nonsense.\u00a0 Of course I\u2019m proud of Tara..it\u2019s just that telling her story forces me to open up and share a few things about myself that i’m not very proud of.<\/p>\n

But, as I sit here late on the eve of Tara’s 28th<\/sup> birthday I figure, what the heck…so here goes.<\/p>\n

I had been dating Linda for a couple years when she got the call from her daughter, Brenda, saying she was going to have a baby.<\/p>\n

Now, both Linda and I were parents as teenagers ourselves so we didn\u2019t have a lot of moral high ground on which to stand to be critical. \u00a0But, we wondered, how is she ever going to manage?\u00a0 Well, a few months later, Tara arrived right on schedule. I don\u2019t even remember going up to the hospital to see her. I\u2019m ashamed to admit that I wasn\u2019t all that excited about this new baby or the fact that she made my girlfriend a grandma.<\/p>\n

Now, I love kids..I really do but I didn\u2019t like the idea of this kid horning in on my time with my wife to be. \u00a0I was such a fool and it didn\u2019t take long before God took me aside and shook some sense into my sour soul.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It happened one evening when I stopped at Linda\u2019s over my supper hour from work. She said there\u2019s a little girl in the other room who might like to see you. There sitting on the bed was seven month old Tara playing with a toy. When I sat down next to her, her eyes lit up and she gave me a big dimpled smile then reached her arms out for me to hold her. As I did, a wave of shame washed over me for my selfish attitude toward this precious little one. But that was soon followed by another wave.. one of \u00a0unexplainable unconditional love for this beautiful innocent gift from God who melted my hard heart.<\/p>\n

Linda had been smitten by this kid from the beginning and knew it was only a matter of time before I\u2019d come around too.<\/p>\n

From then on, I\u2019ve cherished every moment we\u2019ve had together\u2026and there have been lots and lots of wonderful ones.<\/p>\n

\"From

From a game of Legos, to a visit with Captain Eleven to just clowning around, Tara and I were like peas in a pod.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Not

Not ALWAYS happy..but usually gullable when my finger bumped her nose in the something spilled on your shirt game.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"From

From Foosball to piano duets to helping with the dishes and modeling a new winter coat we always had fun.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"tara<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"From

From her first bike ride to marching in the band<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Graduation

Graduation Day<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as I learned with my\u00a0own daughters, there comes a time when the training wheels come off and you just hope and pray they\u2019ll be alright without you around to hold them up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I know Tara believes that I still want her to be that same little girl who changed my life so many years ago and feels she\u2019s disappointed me in some\u00a0of the life choices she\u2019s made.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she needn\u2019t worry. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I adore all of my grandchildren, of course, \u00a0but Tare Bear you were the first to steal my heart and you\u2019ll ALWAYS have an extra\u00a0special place there.<\/p>\n

\"Pals

Pals forever<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Now,

Now, Tara and Peter have a litte terror of their own called Ella and she's "Great!"<\/p><\/div>\n

Happy Birthday, Tare Bear!<\/p>\n

Love, Grandpa Doug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHoney, (My wife sometimes calls me honey..not because I\u2019m so sweet but usually just before asking me to do something) why haven\u2019t you ever blogged about Tara? You\u2019ve written about all of our grandkids and their achievements but nothing about her. You know she might think you\u2019re not as proud of her as the others.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lund-at-large","category-60","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11848,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/11848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}