Perfect Timing

My family was due for some good news after the recent passing of our dear Grandpa Conrad. Overdue even.

My cousin and his wife were expecting a baby due sometime this November. And actually, my cousin's wife was not able to attend the funeral because she was overdue and it was not a good idea for her to be traveling 300 miles to be with her husband and the rest of us. The night of the funeral she went to the hospital to be induced but after 4 tries to try and coax her body into labor and nothing happening, the doctor sent her home and said they could try again in a few days.

The whole family was on pins and needles, checking Facebook daily for any news on the baby, and finally, last Thursday on what would have been our grandfather's 93rd birthday, little (or should I say not so little since she was a whopping 9lbs, 3 oz) Baby B was born! The news spread quickly and with each communication came an overwhelmingly emotional response. Mine was "Hell Yeah" followed by a few happy tears.

No one was happier than Grandma Dee. An emotional day for her since it was the first time in over 60 years that she wasn't able to wish her husband a happy birthday, or make his favorite chocolate cake, but she was able to go and visit her newest great-grandbaby.

Thanks to some great timing on behalf of baby B (and her mom!), November 18 will continue to be a special day for our family.

Saying Goodbye

It's been 6 days since I was here last, and in a month that I pledged to post everyday, no less. Let's just say that November has been a rough one. Rough like the toilet paper in a public bathroom.

So, once again on Thursday I found myself in the backseat of my brother's Subaru on our way back to North Dakota for the second time in a month's worth of days. This time it was to say goodbye to my dear, sweet Grandpa Conrad. Although I feel that last month when we said goodbye in person (not knowing it would be our last), sealed with one last hug and saw the tears in his 92 year old, still as blue as the day he was born, eyes, that it was really goodbye. A goodbye I will never forget.

I had all last week to prepare myself for the funeral. I thought that perhaps I had dealt with it all so well that tears and sad thoughts were completely unnecessary. All last week, family members and friends seemed a little shocked that I had no tears when they offered crackly voice condolences to me. I thanked them and wondered what everyone was so weepy about. He had 92 years of life, and love, and banjo pickin', for crying out loud! Why should I be sad?

About 10 minutes before the service started, I was standing with the Gardener in the gathering area of the church where family and friends were milling around, when all of a sudden I was overcome with emotion. I'm not even sure of the initial trigger since everyone was fairly upbeat yet. Perhaps it was seeing the flowers our good friends had sent for the service, or seeing the hundreds of pictures assembled on large poster size foam boards on easels on either side of my grandfather's jacket from back when he was in the Army during World War II, or just the reality of it all. I found myself weeping in the bathroom, blowing my nose into a wad of toilet paper, finally letting the sad out.


The service was beautiful, though more religious than I ever remember my grandfather. Although I couldn't entirely appreciate the religious portion of it, I do appreciate that so much attention to detail was shown by the pastor. He included and recited the words of the song that Grandpa sang first at my wedding then at the weddings of 2 of my cousins and again at my grandmother's birthday party last summer. My cousin Kevan gave the most fitting eulogy for our grandfather, including some of our 90 favorite things from 2 years ago when my grandfather turned 90. Nobody was left out, just the way Grandpa would have wanted it. He had so much love for us all that it was hard to cry even if my body wouldn't listen and did it anyway, because I know he would have said to all of us, "Don't cry, Grandpa loves you."

After the church service, we all gathered outside for the military service complete with a 21 gun salute and flag presentation. Since my grandfather so generously donated his body to the University of North Dakota medical school, there was no flag draped coffin, but other than that, the funeral was quite traditional. Very emotional too. I don't think there was one dry eye in the whole crowd while the bugler played Taps.





After the service, my brother mentioned that the day before (Veteran's Day) he heard a statistic that WWII veterans are dying at a rate of 1000 per day. I just did a quick Internet check to verify that figure, and found that:

According to statistics released by the Veteran’s Administration, our World War II vets are dying at a rate of 900 a day (previous studies listed 1,200 but the number has declined due to a decrease in the total number of World War II veterans). This means that there were approximately 16,000,000 veterans at the end of the war and there are just under 2,000,000 still with us today.

Soon they will all be gone, but never forgotten.

Grandpa Playing The Wii!

First off, I want to thank everyone who has offered their condolences to our family since my grandfather's passing. It means the world to us to have such supportive family and friends. Even those of you who never met him in person, but could see his kind and gentle soul through photos and stories. Thank you.

As I was going through some pictures on my computer (you thought my kitchen drawer was a mess, my hard drive is MUCH worse), I found these from 2 years ago when my grandparents came for a visit right after Mae was released from the hospital.


Since I heard the news of Grandpa's passing, I've been feeling a bit nostalgic, going through old photos and such, and couldn't resist posting this youtube video once again. It's hard to cry when I'm smiling from ear to ear at his contagious laugh.

Grandpa's obituary was in today's Grand Forks Herald and available online here. If you personally knew my grandparents, I ask that you please sign the online guestbook on the funeral home's site. I plan to print them all out for my grandmother.

Grandpa Conrad 1917-2010

Just 2 weeks shy of his 93rd birthday, my dear grandfather Conrad passed away yesterday. I called my grandparents yesterday afternoon for a quick hello before the girls arrived home from school and was surprised to hear my cousin answer the phone instead of my grandmother. Quickly, I learned what had happened just minutes before. I spoke with my grandmother briefly who was accompanied by my cousin and the pastor from her church. She was crying and quite understandably heartbroken over the loss of her husband of 60 years.


My grandfather was many things. He was a proud Norwegian, a World War II veteran, a devoted husband, a loving father, an unbelievably talented musician, a fisherman, a handy man, as sharp as a tack, and the most wonderful grandfather anyone could ever ask for.




I love him and I'll miss him dearly. At this time of loss, it is most comforting to know he loved me (and all of us), and that he knew that I (and all of us) loved him. We ended almost every conversation with the exchange of I love you and it means a great deal to me now that he's gone.

I miss you already Gramps!

Peaches Winner And Why I Didn't Post This Before Now

I accidentally hit publish on this post earlier, way before I was finished with it, so disregard the earlier version in your blog reader. Oopsies!

First the winner of the peaches! So I went to Random.org to pick a winner of the quart of peaches, BUT since I once again couldn't figure out how to save the little box that shows the result, you'll have to take my word for it. And after I explain it, you'll know I'm telling the truth. I had 16 comments on last week's post and the random number generator chose 7. Now, quick open the comments window from last week's post and look who #7 is. Ali's mom. I'm Ali. My mom won. Sorry, Mom, but you're disqualified. I know it must have taken you the better part of an evening to figure out how to leave a comment on my blog, and bravo for that, but I can't let you win. Or at least you can't be the ONLY winner. (You can pick up a jar of peaches on your next visit.) So, I did it again and this time #5, True Blue Texan was the winner. Congrats, True Blue! I'm hoping to mail the peaches out to you this week.

Now on to the excuse of why I didn't get to this yesterday and why I'm still so incredibly tired today yet.
A big, flat, treeless excuse called North Dakota. As soon as the bus picked up the girls for school Friday morning, my brothers and I climbed into the car and started the 10 hour drive to visit our grandparents in Grand Forks, North Dakota. My grandparents are pretty much the only people I will sit in the car that long for... especially with these two chuckle-heads as company.


The drive was gorgeous but the stupid temperature display kept taunting us the whole way reading at or above 80 degrees for most of the day while we were stuck inside the car. And apparently farting in the car and refusing to open a window while your sister is gagging in the seat next to you never gets old. That's alright, I made my other brother take pictures of our younger brother while he was sleeping, with the sole intention of putting them on the Internet. I tried to get him to bust out a sharpie and draw on younger bro, or stick something in his mouth, but he wouldn't do it, predicting it would make the weekend even more miserable for the rest of us since younger brother is a bit cranky to begin with.

More driving...And junk food...Finally around 7pm Friday evening, just as the sun was starting to set, we arrived in GF. Not a moment too soon either. Our bodies were so sore from sitting so long that when we finally opened the car doors and got out, it took a lot of stretching and mumbling, 'holy fuck, my ass hurts' in order to stand upright.

We checked into our hotel (The only room available in the whole Grand Forks area. Not until I went online last week to book a room, did any of us realize that we were going on the same weekend as the University of North Dakota's homecoming, and a Brad Paisley concert. We actually couldn't even get a room anywhere for Saturday night.) and look what was in my room! The boys got a 2 bed room but since the hotel was so booked up, they upgraded me to a whirlpool suite. Too bad I didn't have time to use the giant tub. I did however, take advantage of the large bathroom mirror and took a self portrait, after I showered off 660 miles of road trip funk and ran a curling iron through my hair. I had big plans to spend every moment in my very own hotel room watching trashy cable reality shows, but as soon as I located TLC and MTV on my TV, the boys invaded my room with pizza and beer to watch a baseball game in my big room. After dinner, younger bro and I went out for a few drinks with our cousin and some of his friends. Big bro passed the hell out fell asleep on the sofa in my room so we let him sleep and went out for the evening. We had a good time and the weather was perfect for a drunken night out in a college town. Don't freak out, Mom. We took a cab home.

The next morning I woke up early to indulge in a Teen Mom marathon on MTV while I ate my complimentary hotel breakfast of frosted flakes and strong coffee. I had a raging headache so I didn't feel like listening to the whirlpool tub fill for an hour, otherwise I would have climbed in. I considered it the night before but changed my mind when I thought about the possible news headline:

Intoxicated Wisconsin woman drowns in Grand Forks hotel room. Details on page 8A.

After we checked out of the hotel, we went to see our grandparents.
After being hospitalized twice and spending 3 weeks in a nursing home this summer, Grandpa Conrad is doing great, especially for a guy who turns 93 next month! My brothers and I decided that since he doesn't have any of his musical instruments in North Dakota and probably won't get much of their stuff from their Arizona home until next summer (they recently moved back to ND to be closer to family), we wanted to get him a new keyboard to keep him busy. Off to Target...
After some assembly... Grandpa was back in business and playing songs for us.
We spent the rest of the afternoon outside enjoying the beautiful fall weather.
The boys played hackey sack (sp?) in the front yard...I took off my shoes...
And Grandpa drank a beer.
After we said a tearful goodbye to my grandparents, we headed out across the border into Minnesota (since there were no hotels available) to stay the night at my brother-in-law's house. Uncle B and his girlfriend were out of town for the weekend anyway, so we had the whole place to ourselves. The boys had never been and had a good old time checking out all of Uncle B's junk toys.Later that evening, younger Bro solidified his status (once again) as a crabby son of a bitch. I'm not going to elaborate too much but I will say that he wanted to watch some (stupid) baseball game and didn't feel like asking the guy behind the bar at the restaurant I chose to change the channel. I was so hungry and confused at the whole situation at that point that if our older brother hadn't been along, I may have strangled younger bro. We then found a bar that was airing the game and they actually had a decent menu beyond typical bar food. I'm still a little pissed though that he insisted on being such a big baby. No wonder he's still single!

The next morning we got up and headed for home. Another long day of driving...
It's good to finally be home, but visiting our grandparents was well worth the trip. We may even do it again...

Random Tuesday Thoughts

Wow, has it really been 2 months since I last participated in Random Tuesday Thoughts? Well, according to my archive it is! Goodness, where do I start?

It's rainy and cool here today. Not a good day to get any outdoor gardening done but maybe a good opportunity to continue some Spring cleaning inside the house. Last weekend we rearranged (and cleaned!) the whole upstairs to find a home for a sofa that some friends were getting rid of during their recent move. (The sofa happens to be an exact match to our living room furniture and with kids and dogs in the house I thought a couple of extra cushions would come in handy.) We managed to get the giant sofa up the stairs and around the turn of death and finally situated it up in the sitting room after relocating some other furniture including moving most of the houseplants into Mae's room in front of her south facing window. Hopefully she will remind me to water them...

Binny brought home a bunch of Easter projects from school (public school) yesterday including this Easter egg craft. She beamed as she told me about the Ts in the middle. Ts huh? I asked her why Ts and she said that the teacher's helper laid down the glue in the shape of a T and she glittered it. Ts huh? For Easter??? It's not the crosses that bother me, it's the lack of respect for any religion other than Christianity, or no religion at all (from our experiences with this school district, at least) and the thought that all kids must know that Easter equals Jesus died on a cross for us.

Baseball officially started yesterday! I listened to the Brewer's lose their first regular season game of the year. Go brewers!

I talked with my grandparents last night. Grandpa was in the hospital again last week but is home now and regaining his strength once again after a nasty bout of bronchitis. They called to tell me they are sending me a 'VCR' (I swear that's what they call a VHS tape. Don't even try to convince them otherwise.) from their Anniversary party last month. There is even footage of me waltzing with a sweaty old man they all call Shorty. Now I need to dig out that old VCR that we no longer use to watch the tape...

I started a new blog! I know crazy right since I barely have time for this one. The new blog is all photos and very few (if any) words. I figured that if I am going to seriously pursue photography in an effort to make a little money, I should really have a website with sample photos that has nothing to do with this little rantbox. Check out the new blog here. I still have some tweaking to do, but it's up and running!

That's it for me today. Be sure to stop by Keely's blog for the whole Random Tuesday line up.

The Big Finish

This is the last set of photos from my visit with my grandparents, and if I do say so myself, I think I saved the best for last.

Yeah yeah, Bingo dabber bottles are pretty and all, but this here is the real deal. The day after the big anniversary party, one of my grandparents' dear friends from Minnesota (I think???) was in town, and believe it or not (and of course you believe it) one of her first stops was to my grandparents' place for a Sunday afternoon (living room) jam session.

She brought her accordion, her son borrowed one of my grandfather's guitars and Grandpa Conrad rocked out on his banjo. He wanted someone to play the keyboard too, but besides a one-fingered version of Mary Had a Little Lamb, I'm totally useless.

They all played together for the good part of the afternoon while I sat on the floor with my camera, taking it all in and tapping my feet to the beat. My favorite part had to be when they would get to the end of an upbeat song. Grandpa has always been a fan of the big finish!

And people wonder why I refer to him as a Rockstar!