A Happy Thanksgiving

For this thanksgiving, we went to my sister's house.  Just our family nearly doubled the number of people at her house, but it made things all the more fun.  With my father also in attendance, we had quite an age range, we hit nearly every decade for the past 60 years.  We had a great dinner complete with a lot of mashed potatoes, played a fun family football game after and topped it off with yummy desserts.  It was a great day.

a passing

This morning, my grandmother,Alice passed away after a long and full life. She wiil be reunited with all of her siblings, her parents and her husband who passed away 19 years ago almost to the day. I am so happy for her. She was ready to leave this earth and continue her progression elsewhere. I am so grateful that I have lived near her and been able to visit her and become friends with her over the years. Here are some of my favorite places memories if her.

She always sent me a card for my birthday with 5 dollars. When she discovered that I liked bicentennial quarters, she would save all the quarters she came across during the year and send them to me for my birthday.

Some of her favorite phrases were "Oh grab" and "Well,..Mindy!"

She loved to watch the Dodgers play baseball.

She was always reading a book and we would talk about the book that she was reading.

She loved to play games.  Some of the favorites were dominoes and Sorry.

She loved the avocados from her tree in the backyard.  Sometimes she kept a count of how many were on the tree.

She often talked about her twin sister, Alta.  She talked about her so much that I didn't realize that Alta had only lived a few days until I was an adult.  I thought they had been little girls together.

Grandma wrote me letters every week during my freshman year of college.  Her handwriting was so bad, it killed a lot of time to read through them.

Goodbye Grandma, we will miss you.

Cackling at Halloween

This year we cackled and shrieked our way into Halloween sending all in our paths fleeing.  Not really, but that was our intent.  We were the villains.  Jeff portrayed Captain Hook, complete with mustache and long black hair.  I was Malificent, the evil queen from Sleeping Beauty.  Allie was Ursula, the octupus like temptress from the Little Mermaid.  Gabe was the thorn in the side of Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy.  We enjoyed being a little wicked for the evening, even though it was in looks only.