Tuesday, 25 May, 2004

Grandma Andrews and Grandpa Kline visited over the weekend.  Grandma Andrews arrived on Thursday the 20th and Grandpa came on Saturday afternoon.  There was a mix up at the airport and Chris was waiting for Grandma at the gate while she waited for him by baggage claim for about 45 minutes.  She was becoming a little frantic after awhile, as you can well imagine any one would.  Chris had previously made arrangements for someone to bring her to baggage claim from the gate in a wheelchair, so Chris didn’t really need to meet her at the gate.  Oh well.  They finally arrived around 7:30 and sat down for a meal while the girls bounded around them with questions and lots of talking.  Welcome to our world.  Probably pretty noisy for Grandma who isn’t used to little girls.  Grandma Andrews turned 80 last December.  She is moving a little slower than on her previous visits.

Amy loves having visitors, especially if they are coming to see her.  Misha, this year, has matured enough and has gained some courage in talking and opening up to people she isn’t familiar with.  Made it so much more fun for Grandma.  She would sit in the rocking chair with both girls flanking her and would read them stories over and over. 

Chris took half the day off on Friday so that we could go do some fun things together.  We borrowed a wheel chair from Krauses (neighbors) and Grandma was good to go.  We headed towards Flat Irons Crossing and both girls fell asleep on the way.  We continued to drive around until they had both slept a sufficient amount of time (maybe 45 minutes).  Chris drove up past Chattaqua in Boulder into the mountain.  The ride was curvy but beautiful.

We shopped awhile at the mall without really finding many bargains, wants, or needs.  Chris and Grandma went with the girls to play on the toys, and I shopped a little on my own–always a nice treat.  Grandma treated us to ice cream from McDonalds and then the girls were off again to play in the huge sandbox outside the mall.  They weren’t really ready to go when we said it was time to go.

We had promised the girls we would take them to the Artwalk on main street in Longmont.  So after a quick dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches, and with wheelchair in tow, we headed in to town.  There was live music, art projects and dancing.  Just Amy’s thing.  She danced, she glued, she had fun.  Misha even did a little dancing on her own too.  She was content to sit on Grandma’s lap for most of the time though.  I think we pretty much wore Grandma out by the time we headed home and all were glad to drop into bed for the night.

Saturday morning we went to a few garage sales.  Chris scored on some electronic and computer equipment as well as a camp stove at one house and that was the last of our good finds for the day.  Since Grandma wasn’t enjoying herself too much, we went shopping at Target and then Kohls and found some new shirts and shorts and dresses for our vacation to Arizona (or Arizonia as Amy likes to say).

We didn’t expect that Grandpa Kline would arrive until after 3 or 4, but he was able to catch the early flight in and was at our house by the time we arrived around 1:30.  Misha fell asleep on the way home, and I think Grandma and Grandpa both took the chance to catch up on some much needed rest as well.  Grandpa treated us to dinner at Texas Roadhouse that night–good but fairly noisy.
Grandma and Grandpa both came to church with us on Sunday, but only stayed for Sacrament Meeting.  They took off for a park while we attended the rest of our meetings for the day.

Grandma and Grandpa left for the airport Monday morning, but not until stopping to watch the girls in their swim lessons for a couple of minutes.  More picture-taking opportunities.  The rest of our day passed in relative normalcy as I started cleaning and washing later in the day.

Sunday, 16 May, 2004

The good news is that the sprinklers are finally done.  Chris did the final electrical work this past weekend.  We still have the fence, rocks, sod and trees to do, though sod and trees won’t be right away.  It is a slow project with a lot of time and effort involved.  I don’t do a lot with installing, but I do a lot of weeding and keeping things looking nice around the yard.  I expect that trees and shrubs will be a work in progress.  I don’t really profess to have much of a green thumb, though I can keep my house plants alive, so I want to learn and make wise choices.  I have been reading and perusing a lot of gardening books from the library lately to get a better idea of what I should and shouldn’t do.

My parents visited last weekend.  They drove all day Friday-the 7th-and arrived around 8:30 pm.  It was quite a long day for them as they left about 5:30 am.  On Saturday morning, Dad was great to help Chris finish up the outside sprinkler work and raked the dirt back into the trenches that had been dug.  Mom and I and the girls went to some garage sales.  I was lucky enough to find two metal bed frames for the girls’ bed - FOR FREE!  What a blessing.  I had just been thinking that I needed to get a frame at least for Amy’s bed so that the air vent wasn’t covered up by her bed.  We just happened onto both of them and I felt so lucky.  When we got back, I made lunch and we got ready to go to Estes park and Rocky Mountain National Park for the afternoon.

The weather was wonderful, though we did get rained on a bit.  We drove up into the National Park and saw dozens and dozens of elk grazing.  There is still plenty of snow in the high country, so we didn’t go too far.  Amy was good about all the driving because we said that if she would be patient doing our stuff, we would stop and do some fun stuff for her.  As we headed into the mountains, she spied a huge-really huge-slide that she wanted to go on.  She didn’t let us forget about it either on the way back.  Chris bought her three rides and went with her down the slide the first time.  After catching a bit of air and coming back down hard on his tail bone, Chris opted to let Amy go by herself the next two times.  She wasn’t a bit scared and begged to go again after her third turn.

We wanted to take Mom and Dad out for dinner for Mother’s Day, but ended up back in Loveland because there was nothing in Estes that they were interested in. I think that they thought that most of it was just way too much $$.  Mom likes to shop and shop and shop, but they don’t spend a lot of money on food.

We stopped for some groceries at Walmart after dinner and it was a madhouse.  Everybody was running around trying to get meals and gifts for Mother’s Day.  We got what we needed and hurried to get out as quickly as possible.

Sunday, to be honest, wasn’t much of a Mother’s Day for me.  I did all the meals for everybody, Chris was getting better from having a cold AND had preparations to make for his last University of Phoenix class, and this is the second year in a row that he has made Mother’s Day unmemorable for me.  Kind of disheartening.

Monday morning the girls had swimming lessons.  Grandma and Grandpa came with us.  The girls are doing super in their class.  Amy is so brave in the water.  When she has her life jacket on, she is comfortable going pretty much anywhere on her own.  Misha is still pretty tentative.  I don’t know if that is just her personality or age.  We’ll see.

After swimming lessons, we headed over to the library to return books and to check out some more.  I also signed the girls up for their summer reading program.  It starts the first week in June while we are still in Arizona.

Tuesday morning we received a call that Grandma Great (my dad’s mom) had finally died.  It has been a long hard struggle for her the past couple years.  Her body and especially her mind had deteriorated to such a point that quality of life was fairly non-existent.  Maureen and Gayle have done a tremendous service in caring for Grandma Great, though I think it has been a hard struggle to let her go.  They had her revived from near death a number of times.  It was more a relief and a feeling of “finally” when we heard the news.  I am sure that Dad was sad to see her leave this world, but was grateful that she no longer has to suffer.  Plus, I can imagine that the family reunion she was having with her husband, brothers, sisters, and parents far surpassed any earthly family reunion we have ever had.  Her funeral will be this coming Wednesday.  Since Mom and Dad had already driven down here to spend time with family, Dad’s family was kind enough to let him enjoy his time here without having to rush right back for a funeral service.

The other night I was talking to the girls about strangers and warning them about never talking to them if they were to drive up to our house and tempt them with candy or seeing kitties or puppies.  I could tell it really registered with Amy as she said, “We put an X on the stranger and a circle on mommy.”  School has definitely had a positive impact on her.

Speaking of school, we attended her preschool graduation this past week.  All of the students from the morning and afternoon classes along with their parents and families attended.  Amy had a cute little felt mortar board hat to wear.  The exercise consisted of them singing a song, showing the “zoophonics” that they had learned and receiving their certificate of graduation.  Amy did great, and Misha was pretty entranced through the whole thing.  That’s big since she’s not usually one for sitting still.

Sunday, May 2, 2004

The girls are sick, though Misha is on the tail end of it.  They kindly woke up at 6 am this morning which wasn’t so happy of a moment for me.  And that was after a week of Misha sleeping in until 7 or later.  Nice treat for me since I can have some time for myself in the morning without a little one wanting juice and her shows and whatever else.

Chris has been trying to fit in every possible spare moment on the back yard.  Either the weather doesn’t cooperate or he has some meeting or activity that he needs to be too.  Yesterday he was able to work most of the morning in the yard, but that was after a couple days of rain, so it wasn’t exactly dry.  He spent the afternoon at the temple helping with baptisms.  Enjoyable yes, but I know that he is feeling pulled in a million different directions.  He has been spending a lot of time on his University of Phoenix class.  I think that he is glad that he did it, but not so happy about the time crunch in his life.  He has two more nights of classes and then it is over and then he teaches another class in August.

The girls started swimming lessons last Monday.  I am not sure if they will be able to go tomorrow with their colds, I’ll have to decide in the morning to see if they are feeling any better.