Family Illness

For whatever reason, the passing of my grandmother has brought on some sort of illness in my family. I have some sinus infection going on, Makenna has a cold, my brother Josh was sick, his girls were sick, my brother Jared got sick and now his kids are sick, and even my mom was not feeling well.

It didn’t stop us from getting together, especially since my brother Jake was in town. We weren’t going to pass up an opportunity to visit with him. The timing was pretty good as we gave him a surprise birthday party (his birthday is in the beginning of April). We showered him with our illness, kids and some gifts.

Jake’s visit was short, (Friday to Sunday) but you can see that the kids loved being with him. We wish that he lived closer but maybe one day when he’s done with school and obligations, he’ll move back to the area.

On Sunday, I took the opportunity to talk to Makenna and her cousin Eli some more about great grandma and how she was a spirit with God before she came here to earth and how she received a body (the whole hand in the glove story…some will know what I’m talking about). Then I said how she’s now left her body to be back with Heavenly Father. I had them draw a picture of Jesus and Makenna also drew a picture of great grandma next to Jesus. I hope this helps her to processes it some more. I know she seems back to “normal”…translation…talking back, giving me a hard time, and being cute as ever. But there are times she still says how grandma is coming back again or thinks that we’ll be going to visit her.

I realized with grandma’s passing, that she was my last grandparent alive. It was kind of weird to think of it that way. I also realized that she was in her 60’s when I was born, which is something I had never thought of…ever…I don’t know why. She always seemed to be full of energy and never slowed down. Not that I think that if you’re in your 60’s you all of a sudden seem slow but this woman really just kept going and going until her body wouldn’t let her go any more. I think it was in her late 80’s that she finally slowed down.

Even though her short-term memory was pretty poor, she was still as funny as ever and caring about the great grand-kids and their well-being. On Sunday’s she’d constantly worry about Abbie (my Brother Jared’s little girl) and that she wasn’t getting any food. Even though she’s just over one and couldn’t always eat what food we had for the older kids and ourselves.

The day after she passed away, Chris and myself, and his parents went to Smucker’s Stars on Ice that was held locally at the Arena. I do like watching ice-skating and it was really neat to see some big named stars (even the Men’s Gold Medalist Evan Lysacek ). There was also Kurt Browning, Todd Eldredge, Sasha Cohen, Michael Weiss, and others. I loved it! Chris was not too thrilled but I think he secretly liked it.

Unfortunately, my camera’s battery was not charged and I was only able to get one decent picture and a video that’s choppy before it died. So I am only posting the picture of Kurt Browning as it was the only picture that came out decent.