Thanksgiving Weekend

Our Thanksgiving started at Eme & Jon's for dinner on Thanksgiving. What a great meal and time to spend with my daughters and their husbands and Jon's mom and dad. We ate, talked, and played a little Wii. What fun we had laughing as we tried to get the hang of the different games. Then Friday, Gary and I made a trip to North Branch to the outlet. After buying several little sleepers for Baby Bon, a winter coat for Danya, and several Christmas presents, we headed home to an amazingly relaxing afternoon. Saturday we headed on over to have lunch with Jeremy and Michelle and Jeremy's parents. Again a wonderful time spent with family. Then it was home to receive Little Man O for a sleep over at Mormor's. He is such a joy to have come to the house and spend time with. He runs all over, chases the dog or Morfar whichever is willing to run around the kitchen, dining room and living room with him; climbs on Mormor on the couch and laughs uproariously. Tonight I told him that he was a "little mimic" and he repeated it as he giggled and thought he was so funny. But when he is tired, he goes right off to bed. What a great weekend. Thanks everyone for sharing time with Dad and I.

Trip to Nebraska in October

Gary and I decided that because the church junior high trip to Chicago was canceled this year over MEA that we would make a trip to Nebraska to visit with Dad and see his new "digs". We got up on Friday, October 16 and headed first to breakfast with the pastor and his wife. After breakfast Gary had a couple of jobs to do (which was a good thing since he has finally begun to get back to work after breaking his leg) and I decided to have the car washed. I found out it pays to read all of the information before you tell the carwash people to go ahead. About an hour after we had said we were going to leave we headed out on our trip.


We had decided that we would make a little side trip to Lafayette to visit my brother, Rick's grave. It had begun to rain as we pulled up but it didn't matter -- I had a rose to place on his grave and it could have been pouring cats and dogs or turtles and rabbits for all I cared. The cemetary is a Swedish Methodist cemetary and sits out away from town in a field. A beautiful small cemetary but was a time of reflection and remembering all of the wonderful times had with my brother. It has been 30 years this year since he died.

Then it was on to Connie's, my big sister, to visit with them and a place to stay. We had a great time of talking and sharing while we were there. On Saturday, Connie and I headed out on a wonderful drive to Plainview to visit my mom's grave and place some carnations on her grave. It was a beautiful fall day and was fun to be able to walk around and locate my grandparents graves, a couple of aunt and uncles graves and my aunt and uncles children's graves. Mom is buried in a Danish cemetary that was established in 1880. It's always fun to walk around and I always get to chuckling as I read all the Nielsen, Nelson, Petersen, Johnson, Johanssen names and then find the ones that in some way don't sound like they belong like Lee, Davids, Walton, and so on. It was a great time spent with Connie and being able to talk about lots of different things.



Then it was off to Norfolk and a visit with Dad. He is currently living at the Meadows and seemed to be fitting in quite nicely. He mentioned several times that he was feeling better and was enjoying being in a comfortable location. It's always fun to be able to sit and chat with dad and learn things that I never knew before. What a treasure to have a dad that still remembers so much and loves to share the stories with us.