Goodbye, Grandpa

My husband's grandfather passed away yesterday.  He was 96 years old.  He came close to losing his life quite a few times in his 96 years but miraculously made it through.  He was quite a fighter!  He loved life and loved trying new things.  He became very skilled in a lot of the things he did...oil painting, gardening, fishing, and much more.  He served in the Navy and the Marines.

Here's a photo of them at their 70th wedding anniversary celebration.  Grandma wanted so badly to make it to their 75th in September.  But, 74 is an incredible accomplishment and very rare. 

He fought as long as he possibly could but the last week was tough.  He was taken home from the hospital last Friday and put on hospice care.  They hired a 24 hour nurse to care for him.  That was wonderful!  He had many visitors in his last days....an example of what a great guy he was.

He had rough night on Monday and was scared and agitated.  Grandma climbed into his hospital bed that was in their living room and calmed him.  She stayed with him the entire night. Early yesterday morning, the nurse saw a sign that he was about to pass and woke grandma and her two daughters (my mother-in-law and my husband's aunt) who were staying with her.  They were by his side in his final moments.  I got there shortly after and more family had arrived.  Grandma sat for a couple of hours holding his hand.  It was so hard for her to let him go.  It's so sad to see how heartbroken grandma is but so beautiful to see how much they loved one another and how close they were.

We'll miss grandpa very much and will continue to cherish every moment we have with grandma.  She'll need extra doses of love, hugs, and support in the days ahead.  But, that won't be hard to do as she is one of the sweetest people you could ever meet!  

Busy, Happy Life!

Life has been full and busy and wonderful around here!  I'd love to blog more about it but much of what's been going on has been busy-ness and preparations.  That's not always blog worthy.

However, some of the things we've been working on are definitely blog worthy.

One of those things occurred last weekend...my daughter's junior harp recital.

She's been working for over a year on some of the pieces she performed.

And, we've been working for months on the details.

It took place on Saturday evening in a recital hall of the university she attends.

She did a spectacular job!  Her many, many hours of hard work and practice made her shine.

I was so happy for her about how it turned out and so proud of her.

She's never performed better or looked more beautiful!

The event was recorded and she's hoping to post it on YouTube

for everyone to see who wasn't able to attend.  I'll be sure to post a link when it's up.

I've been keeping up on my minimum five days per week workouts of running.

It gets tough sometimes and I've thought about figuring out another short term incentive

but my pace time improved this week and that feels really good.

I'm trying to keep with regular weight workouts too of at least once or twice a week.

And, whenever possible, I like to break it up with something different and extra fun like a hike or

bike ride.  Hubby and I went mountain biking on Valentine's Day morning.  :-)

Speaking of Valentine's Day....look what my sweet hubby gave me....

I was so excited when I opened the box!  I fell in love with this belt at Boot Barn last November.

Hubby and I were doing some boot shopping there a few weeks ago and I showed it to him and oogled over it.  He went back a couple days later and got the very last one...

which happened to be my size.  I'm normally not a glitzy type of person but I love this!

I think it's so pretty!  Hubby and I go line dancing sometimes and I think it'll be perfect for that.

I can't wait to wear it out on the town!  :-D

For those of you who've been following my blog and wondering how my husband's grandparents are doing....they're doing great!  Grandpa was moved to a place that could assist in his care around the clock.  He celebrated his 94th birthday while he was there.  He told us that he had a gift for all of us...that he was going to walk.  And, he did!  Here he is walking down the hall to his party...

He had lost so much weight that his pants weren't staying up.

So, my father-in-law held them up for him and stayed close by in case he needed assistance.

Amazing!  He hadn't walked in at least a month and we almost lost him weeks earlier.

He hadn't been eating much for weeks and weeks.  It was amazing that he survived that!

He literally lived off very little bits of juice and "Muscle Milk".  He had refused to eat.

But, just before his party, he had started eating a little bit of real food.

Some of his favorite foods were brought to the party and he couldn't wait to dig in.

He had a piece of shrimp cocktail in his hand before he was completely scooted up to the table!

He had some of my mother-in-law/his daughter's famous marinated mushrooms too.

And, of course, he had to have a beer!  He was one happy Grandpa!

Here's Grandpa and Grandma together that day.

Such an inspiring couple.  Married about 72 years and still very much in love.

They decided they needed to move closer to the family and bought a house here.

We got grandma moved in and that inspired grandpa so much that within a week he improved enough to go home!  Since then, he's gained over 20 pounds back and is feeling better and better.

I accomplished something this week that's been on my to-do list for a while.

I studied the California handgun safety booklet on Monday and took the test.

I got every single answer right...100%...and now have my handgun safety certificate!  Woot!

I've shot rifles before...even did some biathlons years ago.  That was SO much fun!

They weren't the cross country skiing type...they were run, shoot, run shoot, run.

We live in Southern California and there's not a lot of snow around here.

I wish they still had those races!  Anyway, I've been thinking it's time to get a handgun.

So, now I'm legal to buy one.  I plan to learn a lot about it and start going to a local shooting range.

I've been doing more knitting and crocheting lately.  Yay!  I finally found some patterns that I like.

I posted the mohair shawl last week.  I started knitting a hat too.  I'll post more about it when it's big enough to get a good look at it (it's made with sock yarn and size 2 needles...so, it takes a while).

I've been working on some other exciting stuff and I'll post about it when I can.

Just one more week to enter my Grow Your Blog Party give-away.  How's the party been going for you?  My blog following grew a lot last year from the party but has hardly grown at all this year.

But, it's been fun to visit lots of blogs and hear from lots of new people.  :-)  The give-away is still on...every comment posted on my blog (comments left on Facebook don't count) for the month of February and every follower will be entered to win.  There's about a week left.

I'll pick a winner on March first!  :-)