This week in town they are celebrating Seniors Week. There’s been lots of activities for the older members of the community and each school, preschool, day care has had an event on for them to attend also. Muddy Hubby’s Grandma is well and truly ensconced in the social activities in town, she’s a member of several community groups, and attends church every Sunday and is always one of the first to sign up for trips away to different parts of Australia. In other words, for 84 she’s a real goer!

Muddy Great Grandma has 26 great grandchildren, lots of whom live away, but for her my Muddy Organiser is the first one to go to school in the town where she lives, the first one where she can actually go to events that are held at school, with minimal effort, just a 2 min drive down the street.

So I rang last week and left a message with the details for Grandparents day, she was away on a trip, so I called the night before to make sure she got the message. I was informed that she wouldn’t be coming because ‘I want to stay home and clean my house’. This is the first grandparents day she has ever been invited to and her response to me was a little blunt and a little disheartening.

I know I probably got my hopes up expecting her to say yes to her first grandparents day as a great grandma, but I know if I was in her position I’d jump at the chance. Am I expecting too much, should I have not invited her, because it’s not fair if she comes to my Muddy Organiser’s events but doesn’t make it to the other great grandkids? Maybe it’s that she’s over the grandkid thing, she was grandma to 19 grandkids and now for the great grandkids she’s more interested in doing some things for herself?

Muddy Hubby tells me to ‘get over it’ and my Muddy Mother-in-law’s response was ‘she didn’t have to be so blunt about it’. Given I don’t have any grandparents left I have kids of adopted her as my Grandma, so I thought she’d be as keen as my grandparents would have been. I think maybe next time I have to lower my expectations, at least then Muddy Hubby won’t have to listen to me whinge if my expectations aren’t met!

Anyway, now that I’ve had my whinge, I did take a couple of photos, but my Muddy Organiser was concentrating so hard on her teacher’s instructions to ‘stand up straight and keep you hands behind your back’ that she did not smile once during their concert, only after they had finished.

I was a very proud Mum as My Muddy Organiser led the whole school out in single file