McDaniel Musings: November 2012

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

My Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa, did you know that you are my hero? The fact that you're gone doesn't change that. You will always be my hero. You were the type of man that men wanted to be like, because you had the important things in life: family, a wife who loved you dearly, children, grand-children, and great-grand children who adored you. You had integrity. You worked hard, played hard, and loved fiercely.

I am so blessed to have so many wonderful memories of you. I traveled thousands and thousands of miles with you and Grandma between Caldwell and Stanley, and Caldwell and Oklahoma/Texas. I wish I knew the exact number of miles we covered, windows rolled down in your old truck, pulling the old trailer behind. We spent countless nights in a camping trailer - I remember seeing my first shooting star in the old big camping trailer up on the top bunk. I thought it was an alien spaceship. :)

Grandpa, thank you for always teaching me to be a good person. You always encouraged me to be a lady, even when I was a tiny little girl and I would sit with my knees up with a skirt on. You gently reminded me to always sit with my ankles crossed.  All my life I was your little lady bug and little darlin.

Thank you for always being so kind and so sweet. You were everything a sweet old Grandpa should be, with a little bit of orneriness mixed in. You liked guns and four-letter words, swimming in freezing cold creeks in the mountains and gutting dead animals in the forests. There never has been and never will be anyone else in the whole world like you.

I remember you spending hours underneath car hoods, tinkering with engines and changing oil. I tried so hard to be a little tom-boy so I could help you fix the cars and "run with the boys". I did my best until I was a teenage girl and met Matt. All (well, most) of my tom-boyishness went downhill from there.

Remember the time we were out camping, and I came up behind you to ask you a question and you turned around and sneezed all over me? It was so gross and so hilarious at the same time! You turned so you wouldn't sneeze on whoever you were talking to, and you didn't know I was behind you!

Remember when I used to sit on the couch behind you, brushing your hair and checking it for bugs? I never found any.

Remember the time we were driving down the road, and you were gazing off to the side looking at the scenery and a deer started across the road?   Grandma and I started screaming but neither of us could get any real words out, and you couldn't figure out what was going on because you just though we were playing some sort of game. We had been listening to a lot of Dwight Yokum (sp?) and I think you thought we were singing one of his songs!

Remember all the hikes we went on? All the mountain walks we took? Each and every one is so precious to me. As Winnie the Pooh said, how lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard. You have always held and will forever hold such a special place in my heart.

When we sat around you in your room that early, early morning, the last time I ever got to see you and the last time I ever will say get to say good-bye, it was hard to believe that you were actually leaving us forever (well, on this Earth anyway). You had been so sick, in so much pain. It was heart-breaking to watch you suffer so much over the last several months. I always believed nothing could bring you down. Thank God for prayer, thank God for mercy - no one should have to endure what you endured. I prayed every night that you would find relief, whether through God's healing hand or our sweet Lord calling you home.

November 16th was the night that you became a great angel. I can only smile when I think of the beautiful reunion with your family, with Christian, your parents, your siblings. None of us know for sure what comes after this life. We will never know until we cross that veil into the unknown. But what I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that I will see you again, and that you are rejoicing with friends and family who have passed on before you. Having you there makes my time, the time when I am called home (hopefully many, many, many years from now, God willing), seem a little less scary.

Kissing you good-bye was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my 29 years. I've experienced pain and sorrow, loss and hopelessness, but that last kiss was harder than anything I could have ever imagined.

Thank you for being someone who made it so hard to say goodbye. You are my hero, and I don't know what we will do without you for the rest of our time on this earth. My goal is to make you proud, every single moment.

Grandpa, I know you will be watching over us, watching us make mistakes and celebrate successes and happy times. You won't get to hug my children on their birthdays and enjoy a piece of birthday cake, but I know you will be watching them grow up from the heavens.

You are so dear and sweet to me. Living the rest of our lives without you seems like an eternity, but it is but the briefest of moments in heaven. Go now to your happy hunting grounds. Rest peacefully knowing that we will be okay, that your sweet bride will be okay. She is surrounded by people who love her and support her and wouldn't ever let her be alone in her grief. I know how hard it was for you to leave here, to leave her, but we are okay, and I know that you are better now - no more pain, no more illness. I love you so, so much, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will see you again some day.

Until then, stake out a piece of property for me in heaven. Be happy and rest easy. Enjoy the family and friends who passed on long ago. I will see you again. Vaya con Dios, Grandpa.

Your loving granddaughter,

Kristina

Grandma Grandpa and Audrey Halloween 2009

Grandpa and Audrey right after she was born - she was just a few days old.

Audrey's blessing day.

My college graduation party.

Looking grumpy. :)


I think I sneaked this picture of him and he wasn't happy about it.

Their 60th! I told them to give me the "birdie"...this is what I got.

Great-grandparents and some of their great-grandchildren.

Grandma and Grandpa with 3 of their 4 kids.

60th wedding anniversary party.

Grandpa on Easter 2012.

Audrey's first birthday!

A family photo...I think 2007.

Grandpa is the one on the far left.

50th Wedding Anniversary!

50th Anniversary.

60th Anniversary.

Grandpa and Kellen working on his trike.

Grandpa and Shaydynn.

Family photo in the mountains. Oh the conversations about this photo.

Grandpa, Marie, Cale and Jared.

Grandpa with Shaydynn.

Grandpa and Shaydynn.

Family trip to Yellowstone.

Grandpa and Cale.

Grandpa in his element!

Living in Inglewood!

Moving to Boise.


Karlin, Grandma holding Jared I think, Grandpa, Miranda	, Cale, Brandon, me

Grandpa holding me while getting poked with a stick by Greg. :)

Giving Mom away at her wedding to my Dad.

50th Anniversary.

50th. They were so in love.

Grandpa and Kellen, May of this year.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Hocus Pocus

I know a lot of adults that really hate Halloween for one reason or another. While I do agree with some of their reasons (such as Halloween being an excuse for women to dress in skimpy skanky little costumes and get plastered), I tend to think of Halloween as a children's holiday - a time for them to get dressed up and sugared up and have fun. While I understand that this is not the original intent of Halloween, this is what it has turned in to, and I feel it is a right of passage for little kids to enjoy Halloween. I really don't mind it that much as long as I don't have teenagers showing up to my door asking for candy. Matt and I always joke that we need to have job applications ready to hand out to any kid that looks over the age of 14. Haha!

I have very fond memories of Halloween from when I was a kid. I remember the anticipation of arriving home from school and getting all dressed up and ready to go trick-or-treating, even though I still had to wait 3 or 4 hours from the time I was ready because it wasn't dark enough to go out yet. I remember my friends and I walking all around our neighborhood trick-or-treating, filling our baskets to the max with as much candy as we could stuff into them, then skipping home about 8 or 8:30 to check out our loot before crashing from our sugar high.

Here are a couple of very specific things I remember from Halloweens past: I remember the year my Mom dressed my "friend" (I say friend because she is actually my niece by marriage but since we are the same age it was always much easier to call her my friend, or cousin) Charyl and I up as punk rockers. When we went out trick-or-treating that night, I remember these teenage girls laughing at us and remarking that it was funny that were dressed up as hookers. Charyl and I had no idea what a hooker was, and I can't remember if my mom told us or not.

I remember one house in particular in our neighborhood: the Yee's house. They always went all out with music and spooky sounds and tunnels and often one of them would dress like a grim reaper (or something as equally scary) to spook all the little kids that were brave enough to walk up to their house to trick-or- treat. I was always a scardy-cat - I think I only trick-or-treated there once or twice. By the time I wasn't scared anymore I was too old to be trick-or-treating.

Once I was a teenager, some friends talked me into going to a local Haunted Corn maze near Halloween. I hate scary things. I don't watch scary movies, I don't listen to ghost stories, I don't read scary books - I avoid all things creepy. Stupidly, I agreed to go. It was one of the freakiest nights of my life. Ghouls chased me with chain saws, dead people hung from trees and swayed in the wind. A guy that was with us ran screaming away from the girl he was with as we were chased by something scary. I just about peed my pants at every turn. It's a fun memory now, but I will probably never go again. It was THAT scary.

I think the earliest memory I have of Halloween is when I dressed up as a black panther (this may have been in Texas). My mom was a mime and Karlin was a punk rocker, I think. I don't remember trick-or-treating that year (though we probably did) - I just remember our costumes.

It's hard to believe that so many Halloweens have passed by. Now I have little trick-or-treaters of my own to get all dressed up and take out into the cold fall night to fill their baskets with all sorts of goodies. All day long yesterday, Audrey asked me "Is it time to go trick-or-treating yet? Is it time? Is it dark yet? Can we go now?" She must have asked me 100 times! I love the pure innocent excitement and thrill of little children on holidays such as Halloween.

The day started with taking Audrey to preschool. The first part of the day was a normal school day, but the last half hour of school was reserved for their Halloween party. The previous evening I baked up some spooky skeleton cookies for her class (a recipe I found in a "kids foods" cookbook I got for Christmas several years ago). I loaded up the kids, cookies, and Halloween costumes, dropped Audrey off at school, then about 10:30 Kellen and I joined Audrey and her classmates for a little Halloween party. Audrey's class recited some holiday songs they had been working on (all about pumpkins and apples and worms, etc), we listened to a story about a witch who made a witches brew (which Audrey's teacher proceeded to make as a snack for the kids, which included things like pretzel sticks, raisins, sunflower seeds, licorice rope, etc), and then the kids got to enjoy their Halloween treats! It was a pretty cute little Halloween party.

After a long afternoon of Audrey asking if it was time to go trick-or-treating, Matt finally made it home from work about 4, we had dinner, then I put the finishing touches on a few more skeleton cookies. At 5:30 we set out to visit different friends and family members.

You're probably wondering what my children dressed up as for Halloween! Audrey went as a monarch butterfly, and Kellen was Elmo!

After stopping by Matt's parent's house and my mom's house, we headed home to do a little trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. About 7:45 we called it a night and trekked home. The kids each got to pick out one piece of candy from their buckets before bed (they both ate a nutrigrain bar that someone handed out), and then headed for bed. After a good tooth-brushing and putting on warm footy pajamas they climbed into bed, exhausted and ready to go to sleep. I'm sure they dreamed of all sorts of strangely-dressed creatures, candy, and fog machines.