GGMa ~ better known to me as "Mom"

Once upon a time there was a girl named Dorothy. She was also known as Dot, Dort, Aunt Dot, Dotty.....then there was Mom (or "Ma" said with exasperation) and (oh, happy day) then there was Grandma. Not once, not twice...but fourteen times! There's Eric, Ronnie, Kevin, Joe, Jason, Katie (yea ~ a girl!), Tim, Valerie, Amanda (all three born in the same year!), Matt, Dan, Mike, Nick and Greg. She was one happy grandma!

Five of these children are mine (Ronnie is with Jesus~maybe I'll write about him someday) and because I've been married twice, and had children in both marriages, there are a lot of grandparents involved with these kids and each of them needed a name. Actually, there's only one grandpa, and they call him Grandpa! Clever of us, right?

But there were a lot of grandmas....I don't know about you but we had to go with more than just grandma in order to know who we were talking about. Now we didn't get into the Nana, Memaw, Grammy names...I don't know why, we just decided we wanted to stick with Grandma something.

So my ex-husband's mother and grandmother became Grandma "insert last name here" and Grandma "insert last name here". Good thing they had different last names. Kevin and Joe were four and two when Bill and I got married and right away they realized there was something different about this new grandma...there was a grandpa too! So, being the brilliant little guys that they were, they decided Bill's mom would be called Grandma with Grandpa! Genius!

Now back to my mom. She was just plain Grandma from the start. Until, my children realized that she was the only grandma with just one name. We couldn't have that. But what to do? Don't ask me how it happened - I don't remember - I may never even have known - but my children decided that since my mom had a dog, and the dog's name was Buffy, she would, henceforth, be known as Grandma with Buffy. Since Grandma with Grandpa lived in another state (with Grandpa of course) and we didn't see the two grandmas with the last names very often I regularly heard about Grandma with Buffy. "Can we go to Grandma with Buffy's house?" "Is Grandma with Buffy coming to our house?" "Will Grandma with Buffy be bringing Buffy with her?" (Are you dizzy yet - I know I am).

It was silly, it was sweet...and it worked. Until...........Buffy died.

My children, in their infinite wisdom, were ready for this. My mom became Grandma without Buffy! I kid you not. That's what they called her. Until as teenagers they realized it was a lot less talking to do if they simply switched her back to just plain Grandma.

Great story right...nice ending too! But of course it's not the end. I still have to explain the title of this post! When we visit my mom (she lives in Michigan, we don't) we like to play games. Especially Scrabble and Yahtzee. You need to keep score for both those games and when I kept score I would write the names like this:

ME~KATIE~BILL~JOE~MANDY~KEVIN~Gma

Gma ~ mostly because there wasn't room for Grandma.....but it stuck. My mom became Gma forevermore. The kids actually call her THE Gma because there is no one else like her! So it stands to reason that when my children had children they decided that my mom would be the GGma (great grandma). I know, this is too cute for words, isn't it? But I have a few more.....

So just for The GGma here are some new pictures of your GG Kids.

To you...with lots of love!

ELIJAH

AND

CHARLOTTE