The bad thing about having a better camera on your phone than your real camera is that I didn't want to blog because I didn't want to go through all the work of getting the pics off my phone and onto the blog. Just discovered that I can upload them all through google+ and there we go! Yay! So I suppose I will start at the beginning of last year.
My grandma died. Great way to start the New Year huh? And Kara's birthday, since she died 3 days before Kara turned 5. On the bright side I had both my parents here for Kara's birthday. And a funeral. Anyway, so a little about my Grandma Andrew. Now that I am an adult with children of my own I have come to realize that Grandma Andrew is my hero, but when I was a kid I did not feel that way. I didn't enjoy going to grandma Andrew's. I'm not sure how it is for other kids, but I imagine that most kids have the grandparents they love to visit and the grandparents they dread visiting. For me that was always Grandma Andrew. She lived alone in the middle of nowhere (Trenton, Ut) and only had a few toys for kids to play with. The house smelled funny. There were Box Elder bugs everywhere. I dreaded going to the bathroom there because I was so afraid a Box Elder bug was going to fly up my-- well, you get the picture. There were a few bright spots however. One of those was the GIANT chalkboard that hung in the hallway. I loved to play on that thing. The other bright spot was that my uncle Mike lived next door and he had a son my age and sometimes we got to play together. Jed and I would go exploring and he would show me all the cool things that living in the middle of nowhere in podunk America had to offer. Sometimes I could even convince my cousin Darci to come along with me and she'd begrudgingly take the long drive with us out to Grandma's. When I was a teenager I enjoyed sitting and watching baseball with Grandma. Especially when the Yankees were on! Now the reason my grandma is my hero. She and my grandpa had 12 children. When my dad, the youngest, was 3 my Grandpa died leaving grandma with those 12ish (I think the oldest was around 18, so not sure how much longer she lived with Grandma) children to care for all by herself. She was a proud woman-- even on her deathbed she was a proud woman-- and refused to accept any kind of help. She did not take food stamps, medicaid, help from our church, etc... She raised those children on her own. I simply can not imagine what she went through. She had to bury her husband and probably didn't even have time to grieve for him because time does not stop when you have so many children to care for. I used to think she was a scary, mean, cantankerous old woman, but now I realize that she had to be that way. She had to be strong for her children. She had to become the breadwinner and be both mother and father to her children. And she did it all on her own. My dad tells lots of stories of his childhood, but the one that is most fitting for this story is the one where my dad learned the importance of paying your tithing. When my dad was in high school (or junior high?) he decided that he would be the one to take care of the family finances, so he gathered all the bills and the checkbook and the ledger and started the overwhelming task. He finally turned to my grandma and said, "mom, how do you do it? There is not enough to pay all the bills. We don't even have enough to live on!" and grandma said, "I know son. I know we have no money. But I always pay my tithing first and it always works out." What an example!
When Grandma died she had been alone for almost 50 years, and I know that she and Grandpa are together again and catching up on every lost moment. I am sad to admit that I didn't appreciate all that my grandma was until she had passed on. I suppose as a child I was just to selfish and self-absorbed to get to know her, and now as an adult I wish I had done more of that. I don't really mourn the loss of my grandma because I know that she is in a better place and I know she has waited a long time to get there. So here's to you Grandma. Say hi to Grandpa for me, and I'll see you someday.
