Many of you who read my blog also read my daughter, Sarah's blog, and my sister, Barb's blog, and my Mom's blog - with us it's a family thing. If everyone else stopped reading us, we'd still love reading each other's stuff. Sort of like getting together every day or so for cheesecake and coffee and baring our souls, or telling a good joke, or sharing recipes. Something like that, only in cyber-space.

When Sarah, Barb and I started blogging, we all went out shopping at Susie's place, Bluebird Blogs, and bought ourselves pretty new templates. Some of us who are a little more fickle bought more than one...

Three years ago, Mom couldn't email. She's gradually ventured into the world of cyberspace, and last year tackled having a blog. She's been writing since Barb and I were little girls, usually on Big Chief Tablets, or a manual typewriter. It was a big undertaking, trying to understand even a snippet of what goes on with the internet. She's still tackling it. Having more of a writer's soul than your average person working at Best Buy, some of it is never going to be a quick study. I'm thankful for that. If I were picking a friend, I'm pretty sure I'd pick someone more like her than the average guy working in the repair department of a computer store. Sort of like, every family should have one plumber in it, but he's not necessarily the guy to go shopping with. I'd leave him at home, under the kitchen sink, while Mom, Barb, my daughters and I all went out for some sort of fattening fun.

This past Christmas Barb and I decided the perfect gift for Mom would be a "new dress" for her blog. She's a very aesthetic person, so colors, fonts, the photo, the overall feel of her blog was very, very important to her. Perfect gift. Susie was the perfect person to pull it off.

Momma has her new dress on! It is completely perfect for her. The photo she chose completely captures her heart and soul. Someone standing there, looking at the whole world, wanting to take it all in. The quote is by my sister.

Mom's probably always going to struggle a bit with Mr. Linky, blogrolls, anonymous commenters, and may even make Barb and me a wee bit crazy when we try to "fix" things over the phone or through emails. Her writing makes it worth it - her take on the world she's experienced and how she sees it today is different than those of us in a different generation. Reading her posts often feels like a soft history lesson, in how things were, and how they need to change.

This is unashamedly blog-promoting going on here. I hope you'll check her out, read her now and then, even if she doesn't quite get linking to you, or the whole comment thing.

That's our mom, grandmother. Check her out - the trip will be worth it. Promise. And thank you Susie for doing all the fabric selection, sewing, hemming and alterations....