Category: family

This is my grandma. She requested that her funeral procession not go around town and not take back roads. She wanted her funeral procession to drive straight down Main Street honking! When the priest read her request at her funeral mass, he said it was one of the funniest requests he'd ever had.

Her family and friends were more than happy to make sure she didn't go out quietly! We drove straight down Main Street blaring our horns for Grandma! (And we made quite a racket. Grandma left behind 11 kids, 21 grandkids, 23 great-grandkids, their spouses, a sister, cousins, and lots of lifelong friends and neighbors. The kids especially enjoyed honking the horns – Grandma would have appreciated that. Tickled her pink is what she would have said.)

My grandma was an awesome woman. While everyone had their stories to share, I think three main qualities come to mind:

1. Learning. Grandma loved to learn. She did her first years in this one room school house. She then talked her father into letting her attend not just high school but college. For a women born in 1917, that's quite a feat. She never stopped learning. She read a lot and she asked lots of questions. She was always interested in other people and not afraid to ask about topics most people would shy away from. She asked me if I felt guilty for not going to church. (She wasn't trying to pressure me at all. She shared that she felt terribly guilty if she missed mass, even if it was to help out preparing food for a family after a funeral mass.) She asked Frank about raising a kid as a single dad. (That was after she said she couldn't understand how people who had kids could get a divorce. Frank said "I think I should probably tell you then that I'm divorced and have a kid." Grandma just said "I sure stuck my foot in my mouth on that one." and then proceeded to ask him lots of questions.)

2. Enjoying life, playing games and fishing. My first memories of grandma are of sitting around her dining room table eating chocolate chip cookies and playing cards for days at a time. She always had time to play with the grandkids. Later, as her eye sight started to go too, we had to spend our time doing her other favorite things like going for drives and fishing. Or watching people fish. She was always disgusted that Frank would release the fish – he was throwing away a perfectly good dinner! (Although she lived through the Great Depression, Dad said it didn't affect her or her family much. They were very frugal to start with. They grew everything they ate, saved everything, spent very little. Their main entertainment was always things like fishing and playing cards.)

3. I'm not sure what to call this one. Good negotiator, good at making friends, good caregiver? Although she appeared extremely indecisive, over the years, I realized that Grandma always got what she wanted and nobody ever got mad at her for long. She consulted with the whole world on every decision – a characteristic that often drove her kids nuts – but she usually had a strong opinion and went with it. Like driving down Main Street with your horns blaring! 

There is lots, lots more to say about Grandma but I think I'll sum it up by saying she will be missed very, very much.

We got our Christmas tree last weekend.

 

We all had a great time playing in the snow.

We let Frank do all the real work like pulling sleds, cutting trees and lifting kids out of snowbanks when they got stuck.

And for those that are worried that we are cutting down a live tree. Agreed that cutting down a live tree is not the best thing in the world to do, but in this case it’s a highly regulated activity by the US Forest Service who says where you can cut, when and what size. When they don’t have a bunch of amateurs out there, they cut the trees down themselves to keep a healthy forest.

It makes the US Forest Service money, and for us it provides a great family tradition. This is our fifth year cutting a tree together as a family.

• The first year I had to carry Jacob.
• The second year he inexplicably got terrified that we were lost.
• The third year I almost dumped Caleb on his head trying to get him in the baby bjorn. And then six year old Jacob very gallantly held my hand so I wouldn’t trip and squish his little brother.
• Last year Jacob hit one year old Caleb in the face with a snowball. (He misunderstood my directions to *not* aim at his face.) 

This year we all had a great time! Even the dog!

 

My cousin Travis is now officially 1000 miles into his 2650 mile hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific North Crest Trail. He sounds pretty excited:

Let me tell you, the Sierras were absolutely some of the most amazing
hiking that I’ve ever done.  For those of you who don’t really know
what I’m talking about, the High Sierras are the mountain range in
California that contains Mt. Whitney (the highest mountain in the lower
48 states), and the John Muir Wilderness.  This is the area where Ansel
Adams took all of his pretty pictures.  Is everyone with me now?  It’s
just amazing, everywhere you turn there are mountains, lakes, streams,
flowers, it just has everything.  There were days when I was looking
around thinking, "wow, I can’t believe I’m here", "Wow, I can’t believe
how beautiful this is", "Wow, I can’t believe I get to hike through
this for 2 more weeks",

He had some nervous moments as well, trying to find the trail in a bunch of snow.

Then, I hit my first snowfield that actually covered the trail and so
began a little game that I liked to call… "Ummmmm…. soooooo….
where’s the trail?"  Because, as you can imagine, it becomes a bit
difficult to follow a hiking trail when it’s covered in snow,
especially when you’re above treeline and it’s just snow and boulders
everywhere you turn.  So the object of the game is simple – if you win,
you find the trail, and get to happily hike along for a few minutes
until you hit the next patch of snow.  If you lose?  Well, there are a
few options, you either have a nervous breakdown and collapse into a
puddle of worthlessness right there, or if you’re on some sort of steep
slope, you’ll likely fall and end your thru-hike in a dramatic blaze of
glory.  When I hit the snow, I frantically bounced around looking for
the trail, I’d find it, hike along, lose it again, and so on.  At this
point I had the brilliant idea to just read my map, find the pass, and
hike over it without actually following the trail.  This plan probably
would’ve worked if I could actually read a map, but I soon discovered
that my map reading skills are about on par with my dancing abilities,
in other words, they’re both hilariously bad.

Needless to say, he made it through and found a computer on the internet.

I’m pretty proud of him. He stayed with us the week before he started and he spent each day hiking around town with his backpack on. He said our neighbors thought he was crazy … but our dog loves him! Walks all day long, every day!