Gams Family est. 1995 - ala 2015

Dale Greg Gams family - established in 1995

Almost 20 years later.... 2014

To end this chapter in our lives before we start a new one, I wanted to write some of my thoughts and feelings about my family.  I am one lucky lady to be surrounded by 5 amazing men. 


To Greg, my companion and love of over 20 years, thank you for your support and compassion.  You have been a wonderful father and provider and we are fortunate that work has been steady these past 20 years.  Your office has bounced us around but it has provided opportunities of growth.  I have seen how you have matured as your talents have been put to the test.  You succeed by staying optimistic during times of trial at work and at home.   You have created lasting friendships with people around the world but your greatest success are the relationships you have at home with your family.  Your 4 sons look up to you with respect and admiration.  Your parents are truly proud of you.  Your wife is honored to be working at your side as you unwarily seek to please her.  Know you have her praises.  I see your Christ-like attributes of loyalty, persistence, resilience, charm, patience and fatherhood -being light-hearted, fun, compassionate and humble.   Thank you for your love. 

How do I sum up our last 20 years?  With honor and gratitude.  Being a wife and mother, surrounded by boys who can take me for granted at times has not always been easy, yet I am so grateful for them.  At times I have resented being the sole cook/ homemaker since this job is never ending and unappreciated.  However, I have stuck with it and balanced it out by creating other "funner projects"  for myself when my current job gets tedious.   I have learned that being a wife and mother (in the end) has blessed me to be the person I and God have wanted me to be (and I am not done yet).  However I know I can give myself credit - because credit is due.  I am adaptable, talented, faithful, thoughtful, forgiving, appreciative and humbled.   Wifehood and motherhood is a complex job that evolves as the teacher opens her heart to be taught.  My relationship with Greg and our boys develops as we group  up together.  It is heart-braking at times, but it is so worth it!  It is not easy to create a charitable and comfortable environment in our home 100 percent of the time.  I have taken my job as wife and mother too seriously at times.  Mistakes happen and forgiveness is key.  As I have held onto the Savior, truly believed in the atonement, forgiven myself, my family, etc.  endured by doing the best I can today, looked at the good of today, then little by little, I have learned to do better.  Being a mother is truly being the heart of a home.  (Yes, sometimes, I have been a mother to my own husband- as unromantic as that sounds- I am sure other wives know what I am talking about. However, I see also, how he- my sweet husband- has helped create me to be the woman I am today.) Also, God's grace helps me / us to move forward with faith and try, try again until now I can see a better future.  I can honestly appreciate each day together as a joyful thing.  It has been a long road to get where I am today and I know there will still be changes ahead.  However, I see now that my choice to be a full time wife & mother/ a homemaker has been helped create the me I want to be.  I can see now that it is a divine calling that is both wonderful and glamorous.  Mother Eve is wise.  Of all the relationships I have had over the years from outside the home: as daughter, sister, and friend - the experiences that have brought me to who I am today; I cherish my relationships with my husband and sons as the true loves of my life. 

Of all the "roles" Greg and I have had over the past 20 years, working together as parents has been our #1 challenge and success.  Our 4 sons have seen us at our worst and our best and I hope they have or will forgive their parents for the difficult, stressful, negative times and really focus on our positive, playful, agreeable, supportive and courageous moments.  That is why I have created this blog and book.   So you, Gray, Owen, Noah and Payton will remember the good times and remember the honest truth - "opposition in all things makes life interesting and truly a wonderful blessing".  Do not sacrifice the joys of today and tomorrow by thinking only of the regrets of yesterday.  Forgiveness is key and it comes from choosing to know Jesus Christ.  Let go of your sorry, sadness, pain, fear, jealousy, resentment, and all that negative bad stuff. 

Gray, Owen, Noah and Payton- no matter what, we love you!  
All that we do, we do for you, even if we have made mistakes along the way.  
We cherish each one of you. 
Our life is better because you are the best part of it. 
We are who we are today because of the experiences we have shared together, past, present and future.  You are a forever family because we choose to be and because of the covenants we choose to keep.  

With eternal love from your parents who can truly understand and because of the grace of Jesus Christ. 

Your mom- Beverly Annett Fuller Gams
Your dad - Dale Gregory Gams

Summer 2014 - Canoeing, Camping, and Creating Memories with Sergio

 Our neighbor friends: Destin, Shawnee & Dominique spent a night with us while their grandmother went to the hospital to be with their mom who was having baby 4, a girl- Jada!  I attended Shannon & Jon's shower about a month before she delivered.   I love this family! 

 Pool fun at Destin's.  Hayden Hebert, Jayden (below) with Payton and brothers.  (June 2014)

 I have missed many BSA campouts because I'm a girl.  But heck, I'm the mom!  So finally I invited myself to their campout and brought tinfoil dinners!  It was much better than their hotdogs and marshmallow menu.  I rounded up my new bff, Lockey Kreiger, to join me since she also has 4 boys.  She brought yummy oranges & chocolate cake mix.  I will have to try that again.

Bro. / Bishop Haroldsen has helped all our boys w/ scouts, when they are deacons. Thanks David!

 Owen was able to attend a tournament in Lancaster, PA at the biggest indoor sports facility in USA, called Spooky Nook.  I think they won in their age group, again!

 Canoe trip 2014, June 24-28.  Greg and Owen's first time.  Gray's second.  They survived!!  I drove up and helped them move their vehicles to their final destination, which was in NY along Delaware River.  I drove back with Sister Jae Haroldsen and another guy from Mat Candlands ward in PA.  We had some good conversations.  These boys had quite the adventure.  It is always interesting!   Next year, I think I will go on the recon trip.

 I tried to get a view of the river but from inside of car it is not such a good view. 

 

 

On June 30, 2014, we had the privilege of beginning a month of hosting a new brother from Spain, Sergio Martinez.  We had 4 weeks together.  Some events we couldn't join him on, like his D.C. trip (7/2/14) because we were packing to leave to NY - to see Greg's folks.  Sergio stayed with the Global Friendship coordinator, Patricia Bruning and her family.  However, we did do other things together as you will see below. 

We quickly learned how special Sergio is:  kind, understanding, talented, caring, helpful, polite, humorous, mature, educated - he likes to learn!!  He is a lovable boy!  Even Patricia who had him for 3 days said he is amazing and her favorite after 7 years of working in this program.  So, we truly were lucky to have him! His English was very good, considering how young he is.  At 15 years, I think he knows more words than I did when I was learning Spanish at that age. 

 

 I think this is a day the students all went to Hershey park but my family couldn't go with them because my boys had a basketball camp.  7/15/14    Sergio is in the middle, hand over eyes.

 Sometimes we saw Owen's Thursday night basketball games.  7/3/14 &  7/24/14

                                                        Orioles baseball game night!!  Gray and I joined this night.  7/10/14  Payton and Noah were at Boy Scout camp and Greg was at Owen's was at his basketball game.  

 We had one day at Piney Run Park with other classmates.  Sergio was old enough to take a few friends on the paddle boats.  (probably 7/11/14)  This is a beautiful park.  Sergio went jogging with Fiona and I one morning.   

 We had fun several days playing soccer in our backyard.  Once we were at the South Carroll High school for a tour and soccer game (7/8/14).   Sergio also joined us to go to church on Sundays and Wednesday night activities.  We ate out a few times and went shopping as well.  We went to the Winfield Carnival on 7/8/14, also.   Ooops!  No pictures of that.   We obviously didn't take pictures of every little thing we did.  7/20/14 We had a big bbq with friends from church and we played some fun games outside.  (Families: Hebert, Martinsen, and Goold, and sister missionaries.)

 A couple times our boys did their own thing with Sergio.  Once they went to the movies.  I think they saw Transformers; once they went to the Hebert's to play games in their fun basement; & once they went miniature golfing.  Below: Ocean City!! 7/22/14

 Thanks Sheila for saving Sergio's neck;)

 Sergio, if you ever wanted to know what you look like from the back - here it is;)

 Taking a break, snack time!

 Fun in the sand!  

 We went to Ocean City, MD for a day with our friends Sheila Martinsen & her children, Katrina Hebert and her children, and Amy Jenkins and her children, plus their neighbor Travis.  It was the perfect weather and the sand was not too hot!  Thanks ladies! 

In each season of my life, I am blessed with fantastic BFF's like Sheila, Katrina, and Amy.  Lucky me!  (Sorry, I missed clicking a pic of you Amy.) 

 7/23/14 Wednesday we went to NYC with Sergio and his comrades. It was a fun experience.  Only our 2nd time. We are not city folk anymore, we prefer the country.  Even suburbs are crowded.

 We did 3 new things in NY city this time, that we haven't done before.   1. We took the ferry from New Jersey to Manhattan.  We got a closer view of the Statue of Liberty.

 2, We went to the 9/11 Memorial and passed a couple beautiful churches.

3.  We saw all of NY city from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.   On top of the world!!

 Thanks Maria for taking this picture of my family. 

 NY City Top of the Rock was great!  Lots to see!   Sergio is a handsome boy, no?!
I am lucky to be surrounded by many cute boys;)
 Below at the Lego store.  Can you see that Payton was getting tired?  It was a hot day. 

 Cooling off at the South Carroll Pool.  (7/24/14)  Only Payton, Hayden and I joined Sergio and his classmates to swim at this pool.  My big boys chose to miss this opportunity.  Why?  I have no idea!  I fell in love with this pool.  I think we will have to get membership next summer.   I hope insurance can pay for part of the fee.   I'm sure not, but I wish.  I will have to ask them. Bummer I didn't get a pic of Sergio or his group.  I hope he took some pictures of this day.   I swam 10 laps and didn't hurt afterwards!  Great exercise!!  Running hurts my joints too much these days.  See Payton on diving board, above?!!  It is so pretty here and the pool isn't shaded by trees to it is a nice temperature. 

 Below, date night with Greg.  Our boys went mini-golfing w/ Sergio and we shared a bucket of balls.  Unfortunately, we were at separate locations because Greg and I had other things to do and Gray chose to go too far from where we wanted to go.  (7/25/14)

 7/27/14

 Parting gifts. He likes American football so we gave him one plus a couple other things that will fit in his suitcase.  He throws it pretty good.  Funny story.  Sunday when he was packing out, we weighed his suitcase on my scale that was on the carpet in his room.  It was 10 pounds over!  Oh no!  What should we do?  He started unloading it and leaving things behind.  Then, I realized I needed to move the scale to our wooden floor. (I forgot my mom taught me that;)  Sure enough, the suitcase measured at 10 pounds under!  So, then Sergio put back most of the items he took out.  He did leave Owen a couple shirts and a sports jacket.  Owen shared his room with Sergio for the whole month.  So, that was a nice trade. 

 Our last day together at home.  We will miss Sergio.  He is a special young man.  I'm sure we will meet him again.  Hopefully in his hometown of Malaga. 

 Last goodbyes

 Aren't they cute;)  Sergio w/ Maria

 Some new friends we met (Maria, Andrea, Jaime). 

 

 The blonde at the bottom, Patti, I think Sergio liked her.  She is from north of Madrid.  She is a good swimmer. 

I heard from all the parents that they were all very pleased with these students.  They all had wonderful experiences and most, like ourselves, will do this again in the future, if the timing is right.

 Saying goodbye, at the Library where they had classes.  Mialing is their chaperone from Andorra Spain.  She is a newlywed- I can't believe she came! 

Goodbye, Monday, 7/28/2014   All the students had a day in Philadelphia before flying out from there.  Only Ida and her baby tagged along.  I'm sure Sergio had a fun last day with friends.  They all live north of him and I am sure he will miss them.  This will be an experience he will never forget; and we won't forget him.  Thanks for the memories, Sergio.  Also, I appreciate his trusting parents who made it possible for him.   I hope to meet them someday.   

Friends of mine that read this, you should consider hosting a foreign student, especially if you have never left the U.S. A.  It is a great cultural experience.  After living in the US for 7 years I felt my boys were getting too selfish.  I am glad we did this so they could get out of their comfort zone and easy life and learn to share their life with someone new.  Yes, it was a little uneasy, uncomfortable and strange at first but when I asked my boys to write a postcard farewell message to Sergio they all said how grateful they were that they had this opportunity to get to know him and they hope to see him again someday.  He has truly become a brother to them.