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.
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