Goodbye Grandpa

My Grandpa Karl passed away this morning at 94 years of age. We've been expecting to get the type of call we got this morning for quite some time because he has been fairly feeble for the past couple of years. Liz wrote about him a few months ago. Even anticipating that news, though, it's still a shock.

This is my Grandpa Karl at Sarah's baptism, July 2006. It's not the best picture, but it is the only one I can find right now.

Here are some of the things I love best about Grandpa:

• He always had the best garden with all sorts of fruit trees and vegetables. It was my favorite part of his home in Castro Valley. His yummy oranges saved me from a bout of severe morning sickness with Anna.



• My second favorite part of his home was his art studio. He has painted for as long as I have known him (since I was 5), and I used to love to see his pictures, and although now I realize that they weren't usually very good, he painted a few that I love! Anna, my little artist, always loved to see his pictures and talk to him about painting, too.



• He loved wildlife and loved to fish and catch crawdads at the farm (my mom's family farm). I always thought it was so gross that he would eat crawdads. He would also hold his fishing bait, big red salmon eggs, in his cheek for easy access.



• He taught us how to eat a whole apple, including the core and seeds (not that I ever do that anymore). You have to start from the bottom.



• When I stayed with him and Grandma for a couple of weeks when I was 5, he took me golfing (that was boring) and taught me how to eat an artichoke.



• Just a year ago, he still remembered the kindergarten song about Sammie that I used to sing to him. I don't even remember the song. He didn't remember me as an adult and would always ask me who I was whenever he saw me. But he always remembered the 5 year old me after I told him who I was, and he was always so happy to see me.



• He and his first wife never had any children of their own. When he married Grandma, he happily took on her 5 children and several grandchildren just as if they were his own, and except for one recent incident involving Zach, he's always been sweet and patient with the whole huge crew. He's especially loved having all the babies around the past couple of years, to the point that he even wanted Grandma (who's 81) to have a baby, too.

Grandpa, we love you and will miss you so much.

Yeah, I Could Get Used To This

Lots of pictures this post because words can't do it justice. Pictures can't really do it justice either, but they get closer.

Today is my birthday, and I've had a long week of pampering. Last weekend, my sister-in-law put together an all girls trip to Mexico. This wasn't for my birthday, but it happened so close to it, that I'm considering it a birthday trip. It included Mary and her three girls, Sheryl, Sarah and Carrie; Carol and her two girls, Kate and Emma; fun sister-in-law, Betty; and me and my two oldest girls, Anna and Sarah. It was so much fun. We left freezing cold, snow covered Utah and went to this:

The gate into the property

This is the upper level where I slept

And these are the three little slobs that I slept with. It's a good thing that I like them.

This is the pool where Sarah finally learned to swim (one of the major highlights of the trip!). It's also where I layed in the sun and got warm all the way through for the first time in a couple of months.

We ran around on little golf carts to get food and to go down to the beach.

For some reason (to be discussed later) I kept waking up at 5:00 every morning and couldn't sleep anymore. But that was okay, because I got to see this right outside my bedroom every morning.

Anna even cheerfully let me drag her out of bed before dawn to see the sunrise.

Sheryl brought fun Sunday crafts for us.

We all enjoyed walking on the beach and collecting lots of coral. The water was too cold to swim in, but we saw lots of wildlife, pelicans and sea urchins among them.

Another major highlight was the special spa treatment we got.

Massages out on the sunny deck. I'm the skinny one on the left ;-).

Anna got her first massage, too, but thought it was kind of weird. I'm sure she'll appreciate it more when her body's old and tired someday.

Sarah enjoyed her first pedicure. She got to pick out little flowers to go on her big toes.

Anna got beautiful toes, too. My pedicure was so overdue that it took two hours, but my feet are so soft and pretty now.

We also loved our catamaran cruise. At first, Sarah didn't want to go because she'd just learned to swim and wanted to stay at the pool to practice. But I made her go, and she was so glad. It turned out to be a really fun trip with all the soda she could drink and lots of guacamole and ceviche. Her favorite part was all the animals we saw.

We traveled out to the arch which took about two hours and saw a lot of whales and manna rays jumping out of the water along the way. There were also a lot of seals right by the arch. You can see them piled all over each other on the rock behind me and Sarah.

You can just see the whale's black hump peeking out of the water.

We had a beautiful full moon on the way back that lit a path for us to follow.

Thank you, Mary, for putting together such a wonderful trip. We enjoyed the trip, but especially enjoyed getting to spend four days with family we don't get to see nearly enough of! We got home last Tuesday night, and it was very painful to return to the snow and cold. But Steve made it easier by taking me on a little overnight trip last night for some more pampering, this time for both of our birthdays. I'm getting very spoiled. But that'll be my next post.

Who Me? Gullible?

I've always had a bit of a reputation for being gullible, although I prefer to call it trusting. Steve likes to take advantage of this personality trait as often as he can.

We just got some new business management software and have spent a lot of time learning it and getting it set up to streamline our business. I'm so excited about it because it looks like it's going to cut my work load in half! While I was gone the other day, Steve messed around with the program and learned how to set up some automatic email templates. When I got back, he showed me how to send automatic emails to our customers. I was really excited about this, too, because it seems I retype the same old email over and over and over with very few differences.

He clicked on one of our orders and chose the option to send the customer an email. Then he chose an email template he'd created which read:

Subject: Don't Tick Me Off

Dude (or Dudette, depending upon your sex and I'm talking gender, not orientation), what gives? Can't you read? Super Saver Shipping (note emphasis on 'saver' meaning it is the cheapie way to get stuff mailed) is shipped only twice a week. And here you are the next day asking me when you're going to get it?

I WILL NOW CANCEL YOUR ORDER.

Then he hit SEND!!! Needless to say, I freaked. What I hadn't noticed is that he'd changed the customer's email address to his own, so he got the nasty email instead of them. And he played it perfectly, like he'd hit the button on accident.

I was pretty impressed with his little joke; it took some forethought and planning. And I'm always happy to give him a good laugh.

Here's the Proof

Shoveling snow may not seem like such a big deal to many people, but it was a once in a lifetime moment for me (I hope).

We got 10 inches of snow last night. Nerd that I am, I got out a ruler and measured it. I wanted to know how deep it was because I got stuck shoveling it. We have a big driveway so it took me 1 1/2 hours, even with the neighbor helping for the last half with his snow blower. I can't really complain, though. That's the first time I've shoveled snow in the 6+ years we've lived here. I had Matthew take a picture as proof (he was home sick, which is the only reason he wasn't the one shoveling). I think we need a snowblower.