Adventures in Big Family Vacation Planning (part 9)

So, we traveled to Walt Disney World with 23 people over 10 days. And survived! Lots of planning went into this trip and we had an amazing time.

What did we end up doing? Well, it was a lot and we never got bored! Here is a brief overview (more for me than anyone else) walking through the trip, day by day.

 

We are here! Gotta take a picture at our resort, this time is All Star Sports.

 A bit cold and rainy this time around, but still really fun. We watched the Fantasy in the Sky fireworks show on the 30th from Tomorrowland, which is our traditional spot. Ponchos came out that night but that's ok! 

 This was the night that we got stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean ride with all 18 of Husband's family -all in our own boat! Something was definitely wrong with the ride, because we got stuck multiple times. Then, they had to evacuate us from the ride RIGHT before the drop. Who knew those ropes on the other side of the boat from this guy were practical? They had to tie our boat down and then help us out, one by one. We got a great shot of this guy from our boat while stuck, so that's a positive!

Late that night, on the 30th, during Extra Magic Hours, the line for Anna and Elsa were crazy short. So I convinced Husband to hop in line and wait for this awesome meet and greet! 

 The next day was Epcot, and we managed to get a big family picture with the Big Cheese.

 Aww, c'mon! Nephew giving Mickey a kiss just stole the show.

 It was the nuttiest time at Epcot I have ever seen.

 We were told later that it was an estimated 92,000 people in the park that day.

 So we went to get pizza in Italy.

The four cheese pizza is "forget your husband's name" good. Oh my.

 We were there when Italy celebrated the New Year in the old country, so there was a huge celebration at the restaurant, with singing and ringing of bells. So much fun!

 Test Track from back stage.

 We ended up taking a bypass out of the park once the 6 pm fireworks went off, because there were just too many people to have any fun. Especially when walking around with 18 people. We decided to head for the resort.

 Nephew enjoyed the hat and the noisemaker first, though!

Happy 2015, everyone!

Adventures in Colorado

In May, Mom and I traveled to Colorado for a few celebrations with my cousin's family. We had such a good time seeing family members and hanging out for a birthday and then a First Communion.

Since we didn't let the family know that we were staying through Monday for some strange reason, we were left with a Monday without family and without plans (since they had to work).

So Mom and I decided to take a trip up into the mountains and see some fun tourist-y stuff. Without a lot of time and since both of us wanted to see the scenery, we bought a package tour on Grey Line for the morning. It worked out great!

 

The first stop on the tour was up in the mountains, to Red Rocks. This is an amphitheater from the 1930s that has hosted concerts and other presentations since then. In the mornings, lots of locals come to work on the rows and rows that have been built into the side of the mountain.

It was such a beautiful morning to be outside, I can totally understand why these locals wanted to work out in the sunshine!

 

After we spent a bit of time enjoying Red Rocks, it was time to set off for the next stop.

This is postcard point, or something like that. All the postcards in the Denver area that have the mountain range on them were supposedly taken from this overpass on the way out of town. Not sure how true that is but my goodness, it is pretty!

The next stop on the trip was Buffalo's Bill grave.

Buffalo Bill had a simply amazing life story. He had such grand adventures! There's a museum at this site that documents everything he had accomplished and then some. His grave is on Lookout Mountain along with his wife, in Golden, CO. It's a gorgeous view.

It's awesome to note that there is also a fake buffalo on the grounds, but like the signs says, we couldn't get on it. :(

You can see all of Denver and the suburbs from up there.

That was the last of the big stops on the Grey Line tour, so they took us back to the mall where we had started. Since Mom and I had a few more hours to kill before our flight left Denver, we did some quick googling of other fun things to do in the area.

We found out that Hammonds Candy Factory gives free tours frequently! Done and done.

 This is a family-owned candy company (until very recently) that's been making candy canes and other yummy things since the early 1920s.

They make everything by hand in this factory and it shows. They give samples at the end of the tour and it is quite good!

Of course, you finish the tour by entering a gift shop. There were so many sweets to try it was almost impossible to choose! We ended up with some truffles for the flight home, and of course some of their famous candy canes for the family we were going home to.

I love trying out little local gems when we travel. Going around Denver with my mom for the day was so much fun - I hope I can vacation with her again sometime soon!

“The Blessing of the Lord Be Upon You”

May you always feel as close to Jesus as you do today,

May you always count on Him to gently guide your way,

May you always trust in God to answer every prayer,

May you always feel Him blessing you with His loving care.

 

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Last month, Mom and I were in Denver for a long weekend to see my cousin’s oldest daughter take her First Communion. She’s such a sweetie and was so happy to have the family there for the celebration. I also got to celebrate the birthday of her younger sister and my goddaughter. Mom and I also took a tour around Denver on Monday because we had a late flight. It was a lovely weekend away with family!

Adventures in Finding Family Treasures

 

Spring cleaning is all over my blog reader. Everyone is opening up the windows, tossing out old prescriptions and redoing their filing after tax season. I did some spring cleaning of another type this weekend. My grandmother passed away a few years ago and now that my step-grandfather has moved to be closer to his children, the house that my mom grew up in is needs of cleaning out and getting ready to sell.

We spent three days going through each of the three bedrooms, the large living area with the dining room table/kitchen cabinets/curio cabinet that takes up a whole wall and has an amazing treasure trove of finds, plus the living room with the huge pottery pieces, and the extremely large RV garage in the backyard that had humpback trunks and shelves stacked to the rafters.

Needless to say, it was a long weekend.

It was me, my husband, my mom and my cousin (the only child of my only aunt). Lots of stories were told when certain things were brought out of boxes and we took each space piece by piece. There were three options – sell, keep or trash. Most of the things were pretty easy to figure out if they were trash or keep. One of us would make a sound or look longingly at the crystal from the dining room or a particular book, and that was that. We put all of our particular treasures into a pile in the living room to keep them separate from the rest of the house where the sold items stayed. Then at the end of the weekend, we edited our keep pile. I ended up with so much crystal, I put a few pieces back. One only needs a crystal serving bowl, a decorate blue crystal bowl, a celery server, a deviled egg plate and a vase. Any more than that would be silly, right?

Some of the only “fights,” if you could even call them that, were over a few of the humpback trucks in the garage and of course, those darn deviled egg plates. Grandma only had two and of course all three of us wanted them! It seemed like I ended up with a lot of things because “we entertain more often” – like the 40 cup silver coffee percolator that will come home with us the next time we’re in Kansas City. So now we definitely need to have a dinner party to use all of those things!

But the best part of the weekend was finding all of Grandma’s correspondence. She and Grandpa traveled a great deal in their time, from Grandpa going to Korea in the service and then all over the country and Mexico in the RVs they restored. Grandma kept all kinds of letters and notes and papers from 60 years. We found her “G” of her letter jacket. She was organized with paperwork from her collectibles and antiques she gathered  - Native American pottery, turquoise and artifacts. Amazing things, really.

The family bible was of course going to Mom. In it, Grandma has listed all her siblings birth and death dates, and moving forward to her children and grandchildren. I love that it’s in her handwriting. Bits of paper from a lifetime of accumulation had to be gone through, and stories resulted. Mom asked if I remembered that person or that story, and sometimes I had to hear the story again for old time’s sake.

I’m tasked with calling auctioneers to get a quote on what they think we can get for those items that we decided to sell. I’m not sure I’ll want to be at the sale or not, or have my cousin be there instead. Even though it wasn’t as hard as I had anticipated in going through all the things in the house, when I went to go load them into my car to drive home, I started to cry. By taking the things out of Grandma’s house, it meant that it was truly final and she really was gone. It’s been three years in September, and sometimes I forget that she really is gone. Taking some of her things that I can remember her having since my childhood, like the small wooden stepstool that was always in the kitchen because she was shorter than me, things like that, it’s hard to take them out of their home. We shall see if I can be there for the auction.

What pieces of your family have you inherited? How did you handle the emotions that come with inheriting things like that?

Merry Christmas!

Husband and I (and Santa, of course!) wish each and every one of you a very, merry and joy-filled Christmas.

When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things - not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.  ~Bob Hope

A Crazy Fortnight

Today begins a bit of a crazy fortnight.

Tomorrow is the internment of Husband's grandpa and grandma who passed 7 years ago and 3 years ago respectively. They were cremated and never interned. My MIL secured a site for them at Jefferson Barracks in South County, as Peepaw served in the military for many years. The Husband's cousins are coming in for Thanksgiving and it was a good time to have the ceremony when most everyone is here.

We have a luncheon scheduled afterwards so we can spend some time with his extended family since we won't be here for the holiday.

Because after the luncheon, we head to the airport for a flight to DFW! I am so excited to see my family for Thanksgiving even if we may end up eating out instead of cooking a big fancy dinner. I still want to stuff my face with desserts when I get the opportunity.

Not sure about the Black Friday shopping - lounging on the couch in my PJs with a hot cider and shopping via my iPad sounds like it might be more my speed this year for some reason. {Side note: who AM I that I'm not psyched for shopping?! I am getting old.}

We come back home on Sunday evening and spend three days doing laundry, cleaning my house, setting up Christmas decorations (I hope) and then head to Walt Disney World on Thursday morning!

Yup, it's another trip to the House of the Mouse with only me and Husband. We're staying in one of our favorite resorts, Port Orleans French Quarter and have tickets for the Christmas party and the Candlelight Processional, neither of which we've done before. It's five days and four nights of a vacation that we've been looking forward to since April - he passed the bar and we decided this would be our celebration.

So for those keeping score, that's December 10 when we are finally back in town and ready for Christmas. We are hosting our first holiday in the house - with my mom and brother and his family - and there's some major decorating, tree buying and setting up, plus menu planning and executing to do.

How's your next fortnight shaping up?

Adventures in Normalcy

Getting back to normal is hard.

But is there ever really a normal?

We've had a hard weekend. Saying goodbye is never easy.

Flowers sometimes make it easier. We spent at least an hour at the florist's shop on Wednesday choosing the right blooms to have at the funeral. Mom picked the purple gladiolas and the florist added the eucalyptus around the base of the vase that really showed it off well. My cousin and his wife had the purple and white arrangement in the upper left corner and with their selections of flowers it was just perfect. I picked the lower left arrangement with some lilies that were also in the casket spray.

We ended up taking the casket arrangement's flowers up to the internment the next day. Just like for my grandmother's funeral, we placed flowers on top of the urn as it was placed in the ground. We each took a handful of dirt and tossed it in along with the flowers. My aunt had done just that same thing at her mother's internment so there was symmetry there.

We did have some fun looking through family photos in preparation for the funeral. This might be one of my favorites. That's my aunt on the left, my brother is the little one in front (probably not older than 6), my cousin behind him. My dad is the one with the gun (which is hysterical because he was so not a gun toter), then my mom and a 12 year old me. My brother was very unhappy with the whole picture taking operation, so that scowl is not just for the character of the picture! It's him being really annoyed with us.

What I love about my family is our roots. Both of my mom's parents are from northern Missouri, from very small towns. Our family cemetery is up there, about three hours north of Kansas City. There's something soothing about going to the same place where my ancestors are buried. My grandma's family actually homesteaded the county back in the 1880s. There are members of that family going back to that time, all buried here. It's very neat.

We talked about purchasing more plots near our family plot, because they're only $20 a piece! Can you believe that? We might end up doing it sometime. Because the idea of all my family being in this one place, so peaceful, so quiet, up on a hill in northern Missouri, surrounded by farm land, just seems right.

Adventures in Having a Small Family

 

This is my family. My mom's mom is seated in the middle of the photo and her husband (my step-grandfather) is seated next to her. Then in the back row, from the left, is Husband, me, my little brother peeking out from behind me. Then my only cousin (on this side of the family), his wife, then his mom (my aunt and mom's only sister). My dad and mom are on the end on the right.

We've had a lot happen since this photo was taken in Kansas City for my grandma's 75 birthday in 2008. 

The house that the picture was taken in is still there, and has been since my mom and aunt were raised in that kitchen. The booth around the kitchen table is gone (wasn't in this picture actually) but the clock is still on the wall and booms on the hour and wakes me up, since I'm not used to it when I stay there.

But the people in this picture have changed. We've now lost three of them - my dad in 2010, my grandma in 2011 and now my aunt.

Families ebb and flow - we lose parts of our family and gain others. My cousin's wife has been with us through a lot and my husband is as much a part of the family as I am. But with such a small and tight knit family, the loss of any part is felt keenly.

                                           

On Monday afternoon, around the exact time she had the stroke four years before, my dear aunt passed into the fullness of Eternal Life. The chaplain of the nursing home was there, praying with her, and read her a verse from Revelations about the New Jerusalem.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

The chaplain told her, "These are your promises, Nancy..." She took another two breaths, and then was gone. It was as peaceful in the end as we had hoped it would be. 

We grieve not for her, but for ourselves. I tell my cousin this, but it doesn't ease the pain of losing your parent. Nothing really can, except for time. I can be there for him, I can drive to Kansas City this afternoon to be with the family, and I can make arrangements for the funeral music and for the reception afterwards. Those are the things I'm good with and that's what I can do at this time. 

When we were on hospice watch a few weeks ago, I was sitting in her room with my cousin and we debated which was harder - losing a parent quickly to an embolism (like I did with my dad) or watching a parent slowly fade away (like he was experiencing with his mom). 

We decided that both really suck.

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Thank you for all your prayers and kind words. More of the same is always appreciated. Hug your loved ones tight and tell them you care. Because that means the world to them.

Adventures in Surprise Wedding Showers

Warning: the people you are about to see are professionals. Don't try this at home.

I would NEVER suggest that anyone do what I'm about to tell you I did last month. Seriously, only highly trained professionals should attempt this particular feat.

I'm an event planner. I work on non-profit events for my day job and weddings for my side job. I do LOTS of events each year. And I love them! Give me some time to create a timeline, set up some decor items, and I'm a happy camper. It's fun!

However, what I don't love is the last minute nature of events. I've learned over 6.5 years to go more with the flow, because you have to be flexible in my line of work.

When my mother-in-law told me her longtime friend asked her and me to plan a last-minute wedding shower for her future daughter-in-law when the couple was in St. Louis over Memorial Day weekend, and oh by the way, it’s a surprise, I was a little worried. Well, a LOT worried. I had lots going on… like another celebration I could mention here.

But an evite sent out, a timeline created, cover story concocted, and supplies purchased the day after the graduation party, and we were set. A surprise wedding shower with Cardinal touches was a go. 

Baseball cookies from a local grocery store. So much easier to pick these up instead of making them ourselves!

Gus’ Pretzels makes fabulous pretzels in crazy shapes – including the Cardinals’ logo!

Popcorn in individual containers.

What’s a wedding shower without mimosas? Strawberries just completed the red look.

The sister of the groom made chocolate covered strawberries which were yummy!

The dessert table.

The mantel was decorated for the occasion.

Baseballs and peanuts!

Cracker Jacks and centerpieces.

The bride-to-be was VERY surprised. She thought she was coming to my MIL’s house for beer and pie.

The couple with their gifts. He left pretty quickly after this picture to hang out with my husband while we had the party.

The bride-to-be with her adorable flower girl.

The planner and the bride-to-be!

Other guests…

And with her maid of honor.

 

While she was very surprised, I think she truly enjoyed herself once she was handed an adult beverage! She received some beautiful gifts and we had a lovely time hanging out before the wedding this past weekend. It was a great celebration.