Maybe this post should be in multiple parts...I think I will stop there with all the pictures. So...as you can see, I am FINALLY getting our California pictures up! WAHOO and YAY ME!

What an amazing trip! We were so blessed the entire week we were there! We flew in and the weather was perfect. 80 degrees + when we stepped off of the plane. Beautiful, blue sky and not even any smog to damper the experience. We surprised Scott's cousin by showing up a half an hour early which was fine by us to sit under the palm tree and enjoy the beauty and warmth of southern California! She found us happily soaking in the sun and big hugs were shared all around. What a wonderful blessing to see her beautiful, smiling face again! We made our way back to her house, with of course a quick stop at....In N Out burgers! One of Scotty's favorite spots. After a late lunch, we hit the pre-warmed pool and hot tub for a little down time after a busy day of travel. It was luxurious. We were already being spoiled. After some fun in the sun, Gina and I headed to the grocery store to gather some provisions for the week. Fun little store kind of like Trader Joes, called Sprouts.

Monday we made our way over to Scott's grampas house...it is always a wonderful treat going back there. It remains the same and is filled with wonderful memories, even for me who came along much later! Scott enjoyed taking his kids around and showing them the house, photos and sharing memories. Gramps, of course, was the HIGHLIGHT of this day! So great to see him and get to spend some time with him. Jordan enjoyed asking him questions about his life and memories...my history buff...found another history buff and they were both quite content! We had a lovely visit and then headed back to Ginas for a little down time.

Tuesday and Wednesday were our Disneyland days....I won't give all the details here, but save those for the next post. We had a wonderful time and it was a memorable as well as exhausting couple of days. I would do them over again in a second!

The rest of our trip consisted of wonderful family time, a dinner and gathering at Curt and Maureens house. Wow! It was incredible to see everyone! New families have been created since our last visit as well as a new baby! So sweet and precious! Gina and Rito's daughter celebrated her birthday while we were there (thank you so much for the early celebration so we could participate!) and we had the blessed opportunity to see so many more people. It was a fun and crazy several days!

Well..I am leaving off there for now. I am hoping to be back on here very soon for more updates. Please check back, you will NOT want to miss the story of the Darth Vadar and Atira! (Oh and we have a good one on Jordan and the Stormtroopers too!)

DISNEYLAND!!

WE WERE THERE! Can you believe it? I am finally blogging about our trip. For today this is a short update and later this week I am "planning" on getting back on here and writing out the whole story! We had a wonderful time, the trip was fabulous and memorable and we feel so blessed to have had this opportunity and time with family.

Things have been so busy around here I feel like everything is getting neglected a bit. I see hope of some down time coming in the near future and I am so thankful for it!

Be watching for a further update later this week....hopefully there are some of you still reading these! Much love to you all! ♥

Dinner moments

This was a fun memory, making california rolls together. Lately we have been in the kitchen creating wonderful things to eat and its been a blast! We each had our own unique style putting these rolls together, and they all came out delicious! I'm looking forward to our next family cooking adventure.

Gramma moments

Isn't she so cute?! Grandma Shirley Anderson, what a hoot...silly, funny and sweet.


Gramma's nurse today, she gave him a nickname.."Hubba Hubba"!
Gramma would spend time just looking at Grampa, smiling, so sweet!
Gramma still spending her time looking at Grampa...Mom on Grammas other side visiting her today.

Well, what a couple of days this has been. Several months ago, or maybe even a year or more now, my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimers. She has been progressing over time more or less as expected (what can you expect with a disease like this?), but a couple of days ago things took a dramatic turn. Due to dehydration, and an infection gramma experienced a dramatic change in her health. She was taken to the hospital and is there currently. Today was a wonderful day, filled with laughter and joy. What a blessing! Although gramma doesn't really remember me, she sure remembers grampa! "My husband" is what she says, where is my husband? So sweet! Grampa and mom had to leave the room for a while so I stayed in to visit with her, we chatted a bit then I thought it would be fun to get some pictures of her and I together. I asked her if I could take our picture and she was delighted! After I took it, I showed it to her and it had her in stitches! She could not stop laughing when she would see the pictures of us together! Gramma had a new nurse, I would like to share with you his real name, but gramma just called him "hubba hubba", what a hoot. Everytime she would see him walk by her area she would start saying hubba hubba. We even took to calling him hubba for short! Today gramma also enjoyed some of her breakfast, she drank some chocolate milk and loved looking at pictures of the beach in a magazine. Mom, Sheryl, Grampa (of course) and myself had a wonderful morning/afternoon with gramma. What a blessing today was!

I am learning that with dementia type diseases, you really have to live in the moment. One moment things could look pretty bad, and the very next those memories could be fading away through the laughter.....and I suppose the next moment could include tears of sadness as well.....I do know this, the Lord has her safely in His hand and there is no greater place she could be.

Sunset to Snowy Days

Unbelievable! We have had more snow this week than we have had in many, many years. We started out last week with that amazing sunset...before the snow. This week has been quite a change! Colder temperatures and snow, snow and more snow! The kids have been out in it everyday, sledding, building and we have all gone on several walks. Thankfully, yesterday was pretty clear on the main roads so Scott and I headed out and reloaded the house with groceries. By nightfall, the snow had been coming down so hard that the roads were again completely covered and continue to be so today. Our yard is covered in about 12" of snow at this point and it has been snowing off and on all day long. It is beautiful and quiet and we are blessed to have heat and power. It will be nice to get Scott back to work as it takes a pretty hard hit on our budget, but time as a family has a dollar value so high it cannot be measured. We have decided to just enjoy this time and make wonderful memories, soon we will return to life as usual.

Yellow to Blue

Well....Jordan is certainly growing up. So much faster than I could have imagined! He has now moved up to the adults class and to help make it affordable for us he volunteers in the children's class twice a week for a discount. What an amazing young man he is! With this move up also comes a promotion in rank. His second adults class consisted of an hour and a half of sparring....switching partners every 10 minutes, so they were fresh while he was busy getting whipped! It was GREAT! He had a wonderful evening, met lots of good guys and earned his blue belt. The best part is, when he returned to the children's class a couple of days later, his teachers in there had missed his belt ceremony and decided he would need a pummeling from them too if he were to officially move up! So, he spent that class getting whooped too! FABULOUS! Love this place! Congratulations Jordan!

Family

My grandma Shirley is my moms mom. We went to visit her and my Grandpa Larry a couple of weeks ago. My grandma has Alzheimer's, so these visits are quite special. While there I decided to pull out these pictures she has in her living room. One of them is of her, her mother Sylvie, her grandmother Thyra and her son, my uncle Larry. It's amazing how the brain works, although my grandma can no longer remember who I am, she could tell me about the people in these photos.

The wedding photo is of William and Sylvie Laine, my great great grandparents. And the two little girls are Sylvie and Her sister Aura, although I'm not sure who is who.

I have never met my fathers parents as they passed before I was born. The rest of his family does not live around here and although I've met many of them, we really don't communicate, which is sad to me. I treasure these pictures and bits of information about my family. I hope I get to learn more soon!

Hanukkah and stuff

Neato bandito! My touch now has a blogger app! So I can blog a pic as soon as I want without uploading. This is fabulous!

The pictures i am posting are shots from during the week of Hanukkah that were taken on my touch. We enjoyed an evening of making paper snowflakes, you will see the picture of Scott and the kids bent down working. This was a fun night, we found a template for Star Wars themed snowflakes!

Enjoy the pics!