I'm back!

I know I have been MIA from the blog world for several weeks. It is call being unmotivated. Things happen and I have no desire to type about it. I suppose it could be for the fact that nothing dramatic has happen, and that is a good thing…or at least until this week. But first, I will bring everyone up to speed on the past several weeks.

1.) North Carolina was wonderful! That week away from work, school, family, etc. is exactly what we needed. Jake has a hard time relaxing sometimes, and if we just sat at home for that week, we (and mostly he) would feel guilty for not working on our house.

We slept in late on the huge king size bed (we sleep on a full at home), watched random TV shows (animal planet!), sat by the fire, and ate all our holiday snacks (and probably gained 5 pounds that week). Oh it was great!
We did a little bit of hiking and waterfall viewing, went tubing down the “fake” snow hill (pumped out by a machine), and toured the Biltmore (definitely worth it, thanks Andrea and Amy!).

We also discovered a little town that I am totally infatuated with… Highland, NC. It is a beautiful touristy town at about 4,000 ft above sea level with amazing views of the mountains. It has all the cutesy little shops: boutiques, ice cream shop, art galleries, salons and restaurants. The architecture on some of the buildings was amazing. And best of all it was Christmas time, so the whole time is lighted up with bright lights.
I told Jake that if we were ever to move out of state and retire, Highlands North Carolina it would be.

2.) Jake and I hosted a New Years party at our house for our class at church. It was the first time we really hosted people at our house, for entertainment and not putting them to work. Ha. We had a fairly decent turn out of 18 people.
There were board games on the kitchen table, video games in the living room, food out in the formal dining, and ping-pong plus darts upstairs. It was a blast!

However, before we could have people over, there was a lot of cleaning to do and projects to finish. We painted one of the formal dining room walls red and hung one of my huge paintings up, Jake and my brother-in-law put up shelving in the living room… YAY! Shelving!… I hung up several unique light shades.
Of course there will be pictures to come of all of this, but if I put them all up right now, this post would be too long.

3.) We had a little bit of a freeze here in Arlington on Monday morning. Nothing too big or dramatic… I would not dare compare it to all the snow they’ve been getting back in my good ‘ole home state of Oregon. But, I did want to post a couple pictures and highlight the one of Leo.
Leo is our lime plant. I might have posted about him before. We got him right after we were married because I felt like we needed some kind of greenery. After a year of watching it bloom and waiting for it to produce some limes… we killed it. Or at least almost, because we left it outside during a large freeze. It sat out on our apartment balcony for several months, just a twig with no leaves, until one day we notice green things sprouting out. It was alive! However, since then it has yet to bloom. Which makes me sad because lime blooms, or any citrus plant for that matter, smell so beautiful. Well, Leo had been doing alright since that freeze and we had been bringing him in anytime the weather got too cold… that is until this last Monday, we forgot. Leo turned into one big icicle!
Poor Leo. Bad plant parents.

4.) And the biggest news we have: Monday Jake got a call at about 6am, while I was at work, informing him that his grandfather had passed away. This is his mom’s father, who lives in Fort Worth and who we are pretty close to. His health has slowly but steadily been on the decline, so we knew his passing was coming, but it is still shocking.

This week has been a blur. Monday Jake and I left work early to go be with the family, and spent most of the day with Grand-Mommy. Tuesday night was the viewing and yesterday we had the funeral and burial. Tonight we are going back to Grand-Mommy’s to all have dinner together.

Grand-Daddy’s passing has been hard on the family. He really was the glue holding everyone together. Sitting at his funeral and hearing all the wonderful things said about him was comforting and saddening at the same time. Grand-daddy was an amazing man. He was a great dad and grandfather, wonderful husband who doted on his wife, and a great Christian man. I wish I could have had more time to get to know him better and to learn from him.

I believe that Grand-daddy was the first one of the family to love me… of course other than my husband and possibly my mother in law. I know this because he told me. He told me how much he loved me, how happy he was Jacob married me, and how proud he was of the two of us. I am really going to miss him.

5.) Yesterday afternoon Karen, my mother-in-law, gave me a big long hug (hugs are wonderful things during hard times) and whispered to me that she knows this time is hard on me… thinking of what is to come for my family. It is true.
It is hard for me not to think about the future and my own dad passing away. Oh the tears that I will shed then! Oh the stress we will endure! 3 days off of work? Try weeks!
It is not only the emotional side but also the financial aspect…no life insurance, no savings of any sort, and broke children = not a good situation.

It is interesting the things you learn when someone passes away, for instance when picking out clothes, don’t bother with shoes because they don’t wear any.

Death is an interesting thing.