Saturday, June 14, 2008

Introducing Grandma and Grandpa

Growing up my own Grandparents played such a huge role in my life. We walked to visit them almost daily and their home was as familiar to me as my own. Certain things bring instant memories of our time there (frozen pizza, spaghetti o's, those orange push-up ice cream things, rubarb with big cups of sugar - I think that last one was a Grandpa thing; I am assuming now that Grandma never knew that we dipped our rubarb in the sugar until we were done and then dumped the sugar back into her big sugar container).

We had been talking about different types of rocks in science class with the bigger kids and that of course led to talks about how Grandpa found, cut and polished rocks. We named our dog Jasper because of my favorite stone and the kids love hearing about how I never could remember the name and would ask Grandpa, "What was the stone that I like best?" and he would tell me the name. How he died just shortly before I got married but I opened up a jasper necklace he had made for me at my wedding shower. Still brings tears.

Well, the other day I was talking about Grandma (because although she has been gone for so long now, so many things about her come to my mind; especially when we are playing cards or I am baking) with Joshua and Jonathan as they were going to bed. I told Joshua that I thought he looked like Grandma and they were full of questions about her. Jonathan wanted to know if Grandma went to heaven when she died and I told them that she had I thought. Then Jonathan and Joshua were a bit worried because they had never met her (which they think is extremely unfair...I agree with them!)...how would they recognize her when they got to heaven?

So, today we got out a dvd that mom had copied for me that Aunt Joyce and Uncle Bob had taken over 20 years ago...right before I went off to college actually and there is a lot of pictures of Grandma and Grandpa on it. Isn't it funny that after so long Grandma's house is still as familiar as my own?

Joshua and Jonathan were very happy to see the pictures and were very happy to know that now they would recognize Grandma and Grandpa in heaven. According to Anna it doesn't matter anyways, because I will be going to heaven first and will of course introduce everybody.

After we watched the DVD I got out my excercise dvd (I haven't used this particular dvd since we lived in Brazil) and attached to the inside cover was an UNO card with Draw 4 written all over it! The last thing that Grandma gave me was a deck of UNO cards and of course she included a bunch of the extra draw 4's to make the game more fun. I am so happy to find that I still have one of those cards.

Maybe in heaven that is how the kids can recognize Grandma...look for the loud room with all the people playing UNO!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great memories - Remember the time we were throwing apples at the cars? And that lady stopped and we ran around the back of the house and Grandma was annoyed and Grandpa just laughed..... and Strawberry Quick on toast and getting beat at Wheel of Fortune.

kris

Anonymous said...

What a sweet post. It made me cry since my own mother passed away in January and I feel cheated my kiddos won't know her really. The older two will remember her, but the younger ones won't. So, I've planned on showing photos over and over again and telling stories, like you're doing, to help them 'know' her. I think it's endearing they wanted to be able to recognize her in heaven. What a great family you have.

in Him,
GfG

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Darcy, I'm so glad you have those memories

Anonymous said...

I have a lot of nice memories of your grandparents too - they not only seemed like such fun grandparenst but they never seemed to mind lots of neighbor kids visiting too :) Everyone was welcome!
Angela