Birthdays

My grandma turned 90 last week and we went back to Iowa for her birthday shindig. This was kind of a big deal.  Grandma has been talking about turning 90 since the day she turned 89.  In each conversation she would have she would manage to slip in an "I'm going to be 90 you know" no less than three times.  I'm pretty sure she was even bragging it up that she was going to turn 90 to all of her friends and family at her brother's 99th birthday party...yes I said 99th, I don't think grandma quite had the grasp of the irony of that. So to Iowa we went. Before we went to Grandma's party we took a trip to Carroll's Pumpkin Farm with my aunts, cousins and their kids. Growing up we went to the pumpkin farm every year and it was so fun to bring Ollie there for the first time.

 Big boy is sitting up on his own now.

So Saturday was the birthday party.  It was wonderful to catch up with family that we haven't seen in a while.  When we were kids we would go to my grandma and grandpa's house every Sunday for dinner.  Dinner being lunch, not supper. All of the grandkids would play outside while grandma and the aunts would finish up the roast or whatever was being prepared that day.  We would gather at the table and say the Lord's Prayer and then eat.  After the meal was cleaned up and the dishes were done we would move to the living room where the adults would sit while the kids passed around the crystal candy dishes that grandma had filled especially for this day.  My sisters and I would always fight about who got to pass around the candy dishes, there were two dishes and four of us. I hope that someday we can live closer to family so that my kids can see their cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents every week.

We finally got a picture with all of us girls together.  For those of you that don't know my sister Karley (second from the left) she is Kiley's twin and has special needs.  She lives in a home with three other ladies in Adel, IA and is doing so great.  It had been about three months since I had seen her and even longer since she had seen some of my other sisters so she was ecstatic to see all of us, made quite evident by her shrieks of laughter upon seeing us.  She did the same when she saw Grandma, pretty sure that made Grandma's day.

Now it's always hard going back home and being with family because it is so piercingly evident that my mom is gone.  When I'm at home in Indiana I can go about my life, I still think of her everyday and I still want to pick up the phone and call her but I'm not reminded of her at every moment.  At home in Iowa is a constant reminder of her; going to the grocery store, visiting our favorite ice cream spot, seeing so much of her in the faces of her sisters.  Each trip home it gets a little bit easier but just when you think it's getting to be bearable the holidays are right around the corner.  The first Thanksgiving without her, the first Christmas morning waking up without her in the kitchen, making baked french toast and listening to Mannheim Steamroller. I want Oliver to have those memories with her and perhaps that is what makes me the saddest of all.  I know that my mom would have been such an awesome grandma and made such great memories with him.  She would be the grandma that would catch frogs with him, go on nature walks with him,  read books to him, bake him cookies, and teach him to skip rocks.  Ollie still has a couple awesome grandmas, Grandma Rosie and Grandma Stacey. They will have their own things that they will do with him and they will be so special.   There is also my aunt Fonda, who is already an awesome grandma and already treats Ollie like one of her own grandkids and for that I am so very grateful.

During Grandma's party an impromptu leaf fight broke out.  The woody scent of crispy leaves transported me back 17 years to our own giant leaf pile.  But alas there was no tire swing to jump off of into the pile so they had to make their own leaf magic.

Grandma wasn't the only one that had a birthday this week.

Who else had a birthday you ask?

Aunt Edie that's who! She turned 26.

Ollie and I tacked on a trip to Chicago to visit Edie at the beginning and end of our trip to Iowa.  We saw her new apartment with this great view...

We went to the park...

We played a little...

We ate cupcakes and pizza, drank Autumn Blend coffee, we walked everywhere, it was lovely.

And this wouldn't be a blog post without a little craftiness sprinkled in so here is the wreath I made for my grandma's birthday. A styrofoam ring from the craft store, some yarn, a sprig of berries and some felt rosettes.

I hope she loves it.

So now rainy day activities beckon, coffee and a little cleaning.  Who am I kidding? Replace the cleaning with a whole lot of playing on the floor and reading books.  Happy Thursday all!