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About Parenting Pride & Happy 2015!
This photo is from Keystone Mountain in Keystone, Colorado: December 2014. I am Haven, the dad with the toboggan hat!
My name is Haven Caylor. I have an Educational Doctorate. I am happily married with two wonderful children.
When I started writing several years ago, an editor for an international magazine commented that she liked the way I write because it is a “slice of life”. I love to weave nostalgia, family, pets, parenting, spirituality, and travel intricately together. Carter and Ammon, my son and daughter, have recently started baking with me, so we have some cooking recipes to share as well.
Ammon and Carter have begun Kindergarten Homeschooling, and we have a ton of things to discuss and share: curriculum, Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, Bloom's Taxonomy, Guided Reading, and so much more.I have a doctorate degree in Education, and I have taught all age levels from Pre-Kindergarten to Graduate courses in universities. In total, I have 25 years of teaching experience.
Enough for now...posts coming up to get to know us better! Listen, 2015 is going to our and YOUR best year ever!
Recent
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Winter Watercolors
Categories: Art Projects
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General Tso's Chicken for a Chinese New Year Family Meal
Categories: Family Kitchen Time
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Mardi Gras Monkey Bread Baking with the Family
Categories: Family Kitchen Time
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Valentine Cookies with Family in Less Than an Hour
Categories: Family Kitchen Time
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Granddaddy Caylor and His (& MY) Grandmaw Stone= Family Heroes
My paternal grandfather was Troy Dewitt
Caylor. He was born on September 10, 1917 in Varnell, Georgia, and he died on March 29, 1979. He
was one of those grandfathers that could almost be an ideal cliché: He smoked a
pipe, he could do carpentry, was an excellent farmer, loved yard work, could
fix anything that had an engine, could make crafts and holiday sceneries, and
most of all, he loved his family. I am so proud that he was a World War II Veteran. I was almost 13 when he died, but I have so
many cherished memories of that man. I loved him dearly, and he loved me. As I
have said before, he showed all of his grandchildren so much love.
Grandmaw Stone was my grandfather’s maternal step grandmother, but she was 100% family!
not enter my grandfather’s house for fear of catching the dreaded disease. They
would bring food and supplies to the house, but simply leave it all on the
porch and return home. Grandmaw Stone did not live in Varnell. She lived in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was Granddaddy’s step-grandmother. My great-grandmother Mattie Stone Caylor’s mother had died when she was a young girl, and her father remarried the woman of whom I am writing, Grandmaw Stone. Well, the family was “falling by the way-side”: They were all sick, and Billie had died.
Enter Grandmaw Stone: A woman of faith, courage, and love of family.
She had other children and grandchildren to worry about, but she left her “disease-free” home in Chattanooga, took the train to Varnell, and walked right through the front door of my Granddaddy’s house. She took over! She nursed my great-grandparents and Granddaddy’s three
surviving, older siblings, cooked food, cleaned the house, and started the
laundry. When everything had calmed down, she found my Granddaddy who had been “tucked away and forgotten” basically resting peacefully in his crib without, praise be to God, the flu. She picked him up, changed his soiled clothes, and fed that
boy. She told my Nanny Caylor years later, “That boy was just about starved to death!”
Grandmaw Stone was still alive then. My Nanny loved her! Nanny said she was so
kind, loving, and had lots of pep for a lady her age. Nanny said one thing
Grandmaw Stone always said for the years left that she knew her was that when
she saw Granddaddy, she said, “There’s my boy!” She had several other grandsons
and nephews, but no one else was “her boy” but Granddaddy because of that bond
they shared. So, thank you, God, again, for Granddaddy, and thank you for Grandmaw
Stone . She and I are kindred spirits. She had her Troy, and I have my Carter: Family is from the heart not from body parts.
Oh, my, the admiration and love I have for Grandmaw Stone, and she died
many, many years before I was born.
I'm honored that you made it to the end! Thanks. Please do me a favor and 1)Make a comment of several sentences (more if you wish) regarding a "Family Hero" of yours, and 2)Share this post with others and ask them to comment on their "Family heroes" as well. -Haven
Categories: Family History & Nostalgia