Early Valentines with the Great Grannies by Jamin

Happy Valentine's Dinner!

A happy greeting for guests and a gentle chide for the spouse that didn't help until the guests were there. Carefully planned seating arangements with personalized valentine cards and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. The conversation-seasoned evening was great! The coupe-de-graugh came after the hot fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies with gormet hazel-nut coffee was served: The final item unveiled was buttter-pecan and turtle-fudge brownie ice creams. Excelent and luxurious for the pallet. As we drove the ~90 year olds to their assisted-living arangements, promises to hook up for impromptu day-time scabble games were exchanged.

Seeing through the eyes of those that grew up before the great depression for an evening as they told various stories is still sparking our imaginations. Stories of the weird things they were told by health practioners on how to care for their infants, and the foolishness that most of those things have become now that we know better, and even one story of a thief that broke in while the kids were home alone, and how it turned out to be the neighbor two doors down, with the money eventually being returned.

All the cute things Zaria keeps doing has been very entertaining for her gaggle of grandmas. Sara keeps enjoying the butt-out stretching she does after a car-ride and Jamin the weird circus-seal honking she does while feeding. We're sure the day will come when her antics will stop being so cute, we just are glad it won't be for a while.

Great Grandmas

Zaria has the privilege of having several great grandparents--two of my grandparents, Grandma Victoria and Grandma Alpha (just before her 97th b-day!) are pictured below. We visited with Grandpa Ellwyn and Grandma Victoria this afternoon, which was a lot of fun. G'ma Victoria absolutely loved listening to all of Zaria's adorable baby noises. She's already doing a lot of "talking" and is a pretty noisy eater. I have to leave our room at night when she eats, because she often wakes up Jamin. This morning she woke up to eat 2 minutes before his alarm went off though, so I went ahead and stayed in our room.

I wish I could've known my great grandparents. All of them were gone by the time I was born, which sort of makes sense since I was the youngest (until a couple of younger stepsiblings came along). I think my older sister only met one great grandma, and she probably doesn't remember her since she was very small, but I've seen a picture. My great grandparents sound like they would've been fascinating people to talk to. I'm pretty sketchy on the details, but I believe it was Alpha's mom that emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden as a 16-year-old and hired herself out as a maid to make a living. I love how interesting and diverse the ancestors of Americans are. So many crazy, adventurous spirits going to make a better life, traveling across country in covered wagons, or even making a hasty exit from a country that would persecute them for their beliefs or ethnicity. I really look forward to meeting some of those people in heaven.