Family

I’m Here

I’ve been here many times to write a post. I love looking back at these posts and seeing what happened, how I felt, etc. This morning, I decided I wish we were all back in the day of writing. Maybe we should blame some of that on the fact that I have a degree in Technical and Professional WRITING. See that word? That word that is in all caps, bolded, and italicized? It’s the word that says… writing.

Wow, a lot has changed since I started this blog. But I’ll let you in on a little secret… a lot has changed in the past year. And we’re only 5 months into this year. It’s been quite the whirlwind, and I just don’t even think I have the words. I love to write. I love to talk. I am shy (sometimes), but gosh words are eluding me right now. I wish I could get the words out. I wish they would come from somewhere, but right now I am just going day to day, one foot in front of the other.

Talking to a friend yesterday, she pointed out what I kind of already knew and just chose not to think about, and that is the fact that my 40s haven’t been playing nice. Truthfully, if I think back on it, my 30s were a little bit rude when I first started them, but I ended on a fairly high note. (more…)

NCHA Hall of Fame

Oh goodness, this month has flown by! Gosh! We’re already at the end of the month and now I’m going to tell you something that happened the first weekend of this month. That was 20 some days ago… But sometimes I get to play catch up and this is one of those things I want on this blog, so that’s what you get… playing catch up.

My uncle has had a goal his whole cutting horse showing career of making the NCHA Hall of Fame. I’m pleased to announce he finally made his goal come true! Woot woot! One of the criteria is for you to win $ 500,000-lifetime earnings. Let’s just say, he made it! And this year he was inducted into the NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame.

The awards banquet was held in Grapevine, Texas, the first weekend of June during the NCHA Convention. We loaded up first thing Saturday morning and hit the road for a long 6 hour trip to Grapevine which is just outside of Dallas. We pulled in around 3 pm or so because we actually got on the road earlier than we planned on. What? 6 of us and we got on the road earlier than normal. That’s totally unheard of! Especially for my family… not going to lie. Usually, we get on the road later than planned. (more…)

My Own Day of Mourning

Today is 9-11. I know where I was on that fateful day 16 years ago. I’ve mentioned it many times here on the ol blog… But I was yelling at my roommate because her alarm was way too darn loud. We had bunk beds and my bed was on top. I hopped off the bed after yelling at her and went off to the bathroom. We had community bathrooms. As I was walking back to my room to go back to sleep, because I didn’t have class until 11 am, I heard Tom Brokaw’s voice. Not something you typically hear in the morning.

I immediately knew something was up. I wandered down the hallway into Jessie’s room, sat down on one of the beds and watched as the second plane hit the second tower. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked her what movie she was watching. It was so life like. She told me this was really happening.

People all around campus were glued to the tv, and those who weren’t were waiting in line at the gas stations scared to death about what was going to happen.

Okay, What Gives with the Title?

My Own Day of Mourning. That title has nothing to do with the above paragraphs. 9-11-01 has nothing to do with the title. Let me explain!

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Grandma’s Cookbook

Grandma J's Favorite Recipes Cookbook

If you know one thing about me, you probably know 100, but here’s another tidbit of information about yours truly… I love cookbooks. Yes, it is a fact that I absolutely LOVE cookbooks. I swear, I have a cookbook addiction. Some days I think it’s a bad thing and other days I absolutely love it. The funny thing is, you can probably find any and every recipe you want on line these days, yet I want those hard cover cookbooks. It’s just the thing that I need to have. I love the feel of the paper and the weight and having it right there all spelled out for you. I get frustrated when I get flour on my computer or my iPad goes to sleep before I’m done following a recipe.

Why do I bring this up? Well, for Christmas last year my grandma gave me a present I truly cherish. She compiled a bunch of her favorite recipes into a small three ring binder. All the recipes are in protective pages so I can pull them out if I need, but are easily cleanable should I get stuff on them. And best yet, a lot of them are in her handwriting.

Jump forward a couple months and she went into the Church to give pie crust making lessons. I don’t really know all the details, but I just know that a bunch of the ladies in her church wanted her pie crust recipe and wanted to learn the lessons from her. My Christmas present is a copy of one she made herself. When the ladies at the church saw this cookbook, they wanted one too. That’s when, Grandma’s Cookbook was created.

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We Lost Her

If you remember here recently I asked for some prayers for my husband’s grandmother. At that time we weren’t sure if she’d ever leave the hospital, but she did. She pulled through and they released her. It actually got to the point she’d have good days where you knew she knew who you were and then there were days like in the hospital when she’d look at you dazed and confused.

About 6 months ago when she was in the hospital she signed a DNR. That right there was difficult for most of the family to understand, but she knew her place with God and was ready to go home when he called. She didn’t want to stay alive on machines only.

June 29, a few friends came up from Texas. Their first goal was to see Grandma W. Hubby and I ran in to town to see both Gary and Ruthie, but also Grandma W. The whole time we were there she never opened her eyes and she had very difficult shallow breathing. The nurses told the family to prepare for her to not make it through the night. She did.

Hubby’s cousin was coming down from Nebraska the next day. I’ve always heard that when people are preparing to leave this earth that there are people they are expecting/waiting to see. Once they’ve seen them, then they move on. I whole heartedly believe that.

My Grandpa was alive until I made it to Southern Oklahoma to see him. I remember driving down Father’s Day weekend 2008. I stayed with him and talked to him. He didn’t know I was there but they all said he did. My dad went down with me. My mom originally didn’t want me to see him like that because she didn’t want me to remember him like that. I told my mom, just stop me. I don’t usually speak that way, but I was going no matter what. I’m so glad I did and while I remember how he looked, that’s not how I remember him. I left around 7pm that night to make 5 1/2 hour trek back home. My mom called at 2am to say he’d passed away. I believe he was waiting to see me. And while maybe that sounds a little conceited… I still believe that with my whole heart.

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Prayers

My husband’s grandma is in the hospital. I don’t know what to ask for in the way of prayers. Unfortunately I’m not sure she’ll leave the hospital, although they talked like she might today sometime. She went in on Friday. After we got out of the hayfield we went to see her. She didn’t have a clue who we were or really even that we were there. I heard that they have her on morphine and that hospice (who has been at her house) had her on 3x the amount of a person in pain… I guess they’re trying to keep her comfortable?

We were there Saturday evening to check on her and they verified that she had a blood clot in her leg. She was more lucid while we were there and was hitting on the male nurse even. Then when my father-in-law came in and we were telling him she was hitting on the nurse, she blamed me. I took one for the team. Then at one point she said my husband was sitting on a picture. There was a picture on the wall and he was apparently sitting on it. We accused him of being the elf on the shelf. And finally she kept asking us why we didn’t bring our niece (not our daughter….). So she was more lucid, but still not totally with it. I guess she thought we were my sister in law and brother in law?

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Totally Spent

This has been quite the last couple weeks of emotional roller coasters. It started 2 weeks ago this Sunday. Hubby, Abug, and I were at breakfast with my parents when hubby’s sister called. She called him first and then me, that’s an obvious sign something is wrong. So I immediately called her back. We found out that his grandma was headed to the hospital.

Grandma woke up that morning not feeling well but insisted on going to Church. When they got her to church hubby’s cousin is an EMT so she grabbed her stethoscope and listened to grandma’s heart/breathing. Decided she needed to go to the hospital so hubby’s Aunt Robyn loaded grandma up in her car and took off for the hospital.

The hospital is maybe 10 miles from the church if that. They went out the main drag to the highway and from the highway entrance it’s like 5 miles. The hospital is out on the highway. I guess when Aunt Robyn turned on to the highway Grandma had been saying that she was having trouble breathing. AR told her to breathe from her nose (she’s on an oxygen tank) and that’s when her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she quit breathing. AR found out her car will run 110 mph on the highway. She turned on her 4-way flashers and put the pedal to the metal.

By the time we got to the hospital a lot of the family was there in the waiting room, but no one knew anything. They were still trying to get Grandma stable. We sat in the waiting room until about 3pm that day. They finally got her stable, but had her sedated so she didn’t try to pull the trach tube out. We were then able to go back and visit with her.

Now our small town hospital is very lightly staffed so they usually use it as a transfer hospital these days. That being said, they couldn’t get an ICU room over at the bigger hospital for grandma so they kept her there until around 7pm or so that day when finally an ICU room opened and they transferred her.

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Bird Hunter

Oh where to start… No, I’m not referring to duck hunters or anything of the sorts… I’m talking about hunting a bird. Let’s back up….

So the other day we happened to be at the local dive shop we hang out at…

On the side of the shop toward the back there is a big garage door. it leads into the back side of the shop which we had a door open and a bird flew in the door. I was standing in the middle of the shop and screeched that a bird flew in. So we opened all the doors in the shop trying to chase it out. Didn’t work.

So eventually it perched, we tried to catch it, didn’t work. So we went on the hunt again to find the bird. Jared went upstairs, Karen checked the classroom area, someone went in the kitchen, I wandered around the main part of the shop… NOTHING. We thought maybe it flew out the door.

About 5 minutes later hubby found it on the upstairs ledge. So he grabbed some grabbers and tried to get the bird. He actually grabbed the bird and accidentally dropped it. shucks. So we went after the bird again. This time we found it at the front of the store so Hubby went after it with the grabbers again trying to get ahold and got the bird.

We were afraid the bird wouldn’t be able to fly after that, but it so did. It flew away like a bat out of hell. I don’t blame it 🙂