Occasionally I receive an email from one of my Dear Readers.
Sometimes it is a word of encouragement that comes at just the right time, as this Inchie from May 4 reminds me.
Sometimes it's a question, like the one I received about this Inchie for April 18, asking if I am going to tell the story behind it.
(Probably not. It was impossible for me to find an image for the Inchie, and I am equaly unable to put the experience I had that Sunday into words.)
Sometimes a Dear Reader will make comments about an Inchie which really make me think.
This Inchie for April 28, for instance...
...generated some remarks about large families.
The Dear Reader in this case was an only child.
She made the remark that playing board games is something that seems to happen frequently in big families.
That is certainly true in our family.
We play a lot of board games.
It is one of the benefits of a big family that there are usually enough players on hand for most games.
There are times, however, when it is impossible to do anything as orderly as play a game.
Times like Mother's Day this year, when the swell of people who were able to come for lunch (potluck!) reached epic porportions, even for us.
Sisters and brothers, moms and dads, nieces and nephews, grandkids and great grandkids, inlaws and outlaws, and many, many cousins.
Forty-four in all.
It was a crowd, even for our big house.
But it got really crowded on the Inchie.
And today, one of the people represented on this Inchie gave birth to Me Darlin' Mithers' twenty-eighth great grandchild.
And before I went to the hospital this evening to see her, I got out some of the things I had stitched up the last time I was on a sewing tear.
Some little taggie-toys.
Some cute little shoes.
And a few gussied-up burp cloths.
I'm glad I had all of this...
...and a bag to put it in.
I only had to make a tag.
I thought, briefly, about giving them an A+.
But, in the end, I stuck with a simple A.
Because it will be about five years...
...before Miss Anastasia goes to school.
By then there will be even more cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, grandchildren, great grandchildren and, very possibly, the first great, great grandchild, in our big family.
Let the games go on.