OK, Where Have I Been?

That's probably the question that you have all been asking yourselves over the last couple of weeks....or at least that's what I imagine my meager "following" to be wondering. :)

The Friday before last we got a call that my grandmother was not doing well. She had just collapsed at home after a morning of running errands with my aunt (which means that she sat in the car because she had a hard time getting around - except for her hair-do of course!) and ended up being taken to the hospital by ambulance where she was put on life support until some final decisions about her could be made. On Saturday morning she was taken off life support and never took another breath. It was definitely hard for my mom and our family. She has been through so much over the last couple of years with so much time in the hospital in intensive care for this and that with her emphazema being a major problem. She fought her way back to us numerous times when we thought the end was near. I think the hardest part was that we expected some major hospital visit with another stroke or pneumonia to take her slowly and painfully. There was also a recent diagnosis of unconfirmed lung cancer. So we thought that would take her. We thought she still had some time, some fight left in her. Her last words were, "I just can't do it anymore."

Rose was a beautiful, wonderful, feisty woman who everyone loved. She will be dearly missed by numerous friends and family.

Some of my fondest memories of my time with grandma were the times we got to spend alone together. She always wanted to play cards or "shake the dice", or have her nails done but my favorite time was the afternoon we spent together canning tomatoes, just on a whim that they were out there and had to be taken car of or they would have gone to waste. We thought we would get a couple of courts but ended up with 10 or so. I wish those times with her could have been more. Most of them were when I was living near her while I was going to college. I didn't grow up with her because we lived so far away and wish I could have known her better.

I took the kids and left after church on Sunday with my mom for the 4 hour trip to MI. I spent the next few days helping out with laundry and dishes, and such around my aunts house (the aunt who was taking care of grandma for the last couple of years) while family came in and out and brought tons of delicious food. The funeral was beautiful and hard. The church was packed. We left on Thursday afternoon to head back home.

Friday we spent running around finishing some last minute details for a Christian music festival that we volunteered for that ran all day Saturday. It was unfortunately a pretty big flop (I'm not even saying the name on purpose...I don't want someone leaving me nasty or rude comments!). They were expecting something like 5000 people - it was at our local fair grounds - and probably only had about 500. To make matters worse the big name bands that were supposed to play didn't because 1 didn't show up until the last minute and didn't end up playing because of severe thunderstorms that came through in the afternoon. There was a lot of hard work put into it but unfortunately it was poorly coordinated and advertised for and probably too much money for the little known bands that we had there. Then the 2 big ones that we did have didn't get to play anyway.

We are exhausted and still recovering from our lack of sleep over the last week. Even the kids worked hard (but probably played harder!) for the music festival. I was pretty proud of them. :)

My little brother Levi and my wonderful SIL Jaclyn are coming to visit us this weekend and we were thinking of going to C*hic*ago on Saturday but I found out today that the h*m*s*x*a* pride thing (I was intentionally vague for obvious reasons! This is a family blog!) is this weekend so I'm not sure I really want to take my kids to the "big city" - as they call it - only to have to keep their eyes covered and content some how or another censored for a majority of it... grrr... we may just end up going to Mich*igan Cit*y for a little town festival they are having with music and food and a community garage sale! Plus they have an outlet mall there....very promising!!! Community garage sale and outlet mall all in one weekend...How will I ever handle all of the excitement?! LOL Either way I am going to figure out how to get her to that outlet mall....we will have 3 days!

Becca...what is C*i*ago Summer*fe*t in Lin*oln Pa*k like? Will there be any residual from the you-know-what there? Is it good for kids? Or do you know? Email me! :)