out and about on a snow day....

Icy roads, never mind, I went slow. The main roads weren't too bad. Our steps and driveway were treacherous, though. Anyway, Abigail, Jonathan and I made a quick stop in the CVS before our appointment, and found 75% off the Christmas stuff. I couldn't resist these giant chocolate Santas for $1.49, 6packs of Hershey's santas for .87, and the little snowman mugs for twentyfive cents.....this whole chair full of chocolate for $14.81. It was worth it just to see the boys' faces when I brought it in and unpacked the bags. They really like the Merlin's chocolate, which is what the big santas are. I kind of wanted to hide them and put them in their Easter Baskets, but I don't have a good enough hiding place. Which is probably a good thing.....so, what did they say when they saw it all? "You should have bought more!" Well, two years ago today was when my dad died. He was 70 years old. It doesn't seem possible that it has been that long. I have written things on here before about my parents, but I am going to write a little bit about my dad. He had a heart of gold, but it was hidden by gruffness. I remember I would still kiss him goodnight, when I got older and he pretended to be so bothered by it. He would be sitting there with the newspaper, or watching tv, and I would come up and kiss his stubbly cheek, and he would be like, "go on, get out of here"....and I somehow knew he really did like it. Maybe he didn't, and it was just my wishful thinking......He was a giver, and a worrier. He had to have his things just so. It didn't become so apparent that he was obsessive about things until he had leukemia, and he was afraid of germs. Then after my mother died, he became almost unbearable. He had his medicines all lined up just so, and he washed his hands so much they were raw. He was controlling what he could control. He was so lonely, and all he did was worry. He worried about germs, and getting sick. He worried about my brothers. He worried about money. He worried about gas prices. Before he got to paranoid to go to the grocery store, he stockpiled so many groceries in his living room, you couldn't see the couch. We would go visit him, and he would get all upset about the stacks of Kleenex falling down. The goal of his shopping: to bless us. Me, and my brothers and sister. We would leave his house with bags and bags of grocreries. He had been doing this for years, but with my mother gone, he really went to town. Seriously, we didn't buy laundry detergent for years. Or soap. Or canned vegetables, or boxed mashed potatoes. Or toothpaste. I would come home from a visit with him, with bags and bags of stuff, and usually he would give me money for gas, too. It made me almost feel guilty to visit him. Then when he couldn't go anymore, he would give me a list and some money, then send most of the stuff home with me......anyway, in his last days, he started bleeding under his skin. His arms were almost black, the undersides of them. Then one Saturday morning, January 6, 2007, started having stroke symptoms. He tried to get up and fell to the floor. My brother called 911, and my dad was still conscious when the ambulance people got there, he was upset that they were messing up the stuff on his table.....short story: he suffered a severe brain bleed, and didn't survive. My sister and I were there all night with him, hugging him and talking to him, and praying for him, as he took his last breath. I am certain that he turned to God in his last days....he would start getting upset about someone or something, and he would stop himself.....so I have to believe he is with God. But sometimes I think of my parents, both together in the cemetary in town, up on the hill, he worried his life away, and where did it get him? My mother trusted God, and didn't get ruffled about anything. Anyway, they are both gone, and I miss them terribly.

Sorry for another downer post. My parents were the kind of parents who knew what was going on with all of us all of the time. (I have 5 brothers and one sister)....They called everyday, remembered every birthday, and basically did not have lives of their own. So they are very very missed.

Well, my kids are playing the pull-each-other-across-the-tile in the kitchen game, how you play is this: one child gets on the blanket, all the others kids grab the edges, and pull the child across the tile. Very simple. And practically injury-free. Ha. They abandoned the jump-off-the-little-pink-chair-onto-the-pile-o-blankets-game to play this. These poor kids, did they not get anything for Christmas?