Lawrence William Yoder

My Grandpa passed away yesterday.

This was the last time I saw him, about 5 years ago, when Grandma passed.

When the kids got up this morning, I told them that their Great-Grandpa died yesterday and I shared with them some of my memories of him.

I remember going to visit Grandma and Grandpa in this house:

In the front of the house sat the living room, with two reclining chairs and an end table in between.  Grandma would rock grand babies to sleep in her chair and Grandpa would sit back in his and watch, very loudly, the Tonight Show.  And sitting on that end table, he always had a dish of candy oranges.  I never liked those things, but felt like I should because they were always sitting there.

 I told the kids that today, instead of school, we were going to do some things to remember grandpa.  When I told them the plan, Eli asked, "So we're going to celebrate?". I guess it did sound a little like a party, but I told him that we were going to celebrate the life grandpa lived and celebrate the gift of family.

I remembered seeing candy oranges at the nut store we went to right before Christmas, so our first stop was there.  Grandpa also had bowls of nuts to crack, and that sounded a little too labor intensive, so we opted for some chocolate covered peanuts and a few other fun treats.

Then we went to the library to get some movies and spent the afternoon eating candy, watching movies really loudly and playing games.  I did take a bite of an orange and they are just as disgusting as I remember, but Eli loved them.  Maybe the love for them skips a few generations.  When Ben got home from work, we sat and talked a little more about memories of Grandpa.  I love that Ben has memories of him too.  He remembered hunting one time with just Grandpa and my dad.  Hunting was a last minute decision and Ben didn't have any gear, so my Grandpa let him wear his clothes and even shoot his gun, which was a pretty big deal. 

It's funny how death makes you think about life.  It actually bothers me how much it makes me think about myself, but grandpa's death has me mulling over some things.  My mom said that the last day he was able to talk, he said, "I've lived a good life."

I've lived a good life.

What an amazing thing to be able to say.

I pray that I will be able to say the same thing one day.

Family Pictures

Thank you Kent for another year of amazing family pictures!

 Eli did not want to take pictures, and after much discussion, I told him that we are a team and this is our team picture...if he frowns, it ruins our whole team picture.  We agreed that we would take a smiling picture for me and a frown picture for him.  So, we all got ready to do our Eli face and the picture that resulted will forever crack me up.  He thought it was so funny that we were all frowning, but was trying not to smile.

 Eli will still ask me to pick him up and this is what is the result; his feet barely come off the ground so he'll wrap them around my legs.

Nana and Grandaddy's visit

We had a great visit with Elizabeth and Kent this past week; non of us were ready for it to end.

Grandaddy graciously enters into the kids world and plays Minecraft with them.  They were just a little excited to snuggle on the couch with him.

You know people love you when they come to the dessert in July to see you.  I am so glad they didn't melt away!  I think our coolest day was 106°.

 

We were curious how the Fourth would be here in Yuma and were pleasantly surprised to find it really quiet.  Ben bought a couple of fun things for the kids to do, but we didn't see anyone else out and only heard a few big booms late at night.

At first, the boys were pretty timid of the little fireworks,

but slowly warmed up and by the end of our stash, they were begging for more.

We ate a TON of yummy food.  

We made a stop for donuts and burritos one morning.

We went to our favorite taco truck, but maybe chose the wrong night.  It was 115°!  We've been before when it was above 100, but this night was different.  I was crazy sweaty, but the food was still so yummy.

 

I pretty much spent the entire time misting the boys and eventually took the kids to "cool off" in the car.

We also tried a new restaurant recommended to us by the lady who did Elizabeth and I's pedicure.  It did not disappoint!  They made the best fish tacos I've ever had and Ben was thrilled with his red snapper.

 

The kids were so intrigued by the fish right there on the plate.  I thought they would be freaked out, but they wanted to touch it.  Eli said, "Next time we come, I'M getting a fish."

 

 

Nana and Grandaddy got to see Alison and Eli play basketball.  The kids were excited to show off their skills.

We also stopped by the Colorado River one night and the kids swam in the river some and played at the park.  Maya got in the water a little for the first time, but mostly sat right by the edge, keeping a close eye on her pack.

Apparently we had just enough fun, because we wore this little boy out.

 

We had a great week and look forward to a future visit when we can really enjoy the outdoors.

Mom's 60th Birthday

 I invited mom to Arizona for her birthday and then schemed with Beth to surprise her.  Beth and Katherine flew in just a few hours before mom and we surprised her at the airport...I also got a good surprise when I found her talking with the dentist that I had a horrible experience with and thus cancelled all our appointments with...awkward.

So we had three days together to have some fun in the Arizona sun.

We took them to Arizona donuts for brunch (aka so we can get both burritos and donuts).

 

The kids had a tea party:

And we tried out the public pool:

The pools here make no sense, whatsoever.  The pools are only open a couple of hours, a couple of days a week.  

 Even weirder, is the kids are freezing after 10 minutes. 

Of course they came to visit on our first week of triple digit temperatures.  I was just praying that they didn't melt away!

We left the kiddos and my mom in the air conditioning and took Beth to our favorite taco truck.  We asked Ben to take our picture and he started snapping lots of pictures and I was saying, "Wait, I have cilantro in my teeth!" and we were laughing at how ridiculous this picture was going to be.

And if you don't believe we're sisters, we both have the one squinty eye thing when we smile...

We had an abundance of Mexican food and took mom out the next day for lunch.

We had a little party for mom after lunch, complete with brownies that the candles melted into!

 

This sweet little boy.  He sat quietly during the party and when things died down, he asked if Grandma was done opening presents.  I thought he just wanted to be excused to go play, but he grabbed a card he made and had hidden in the kitchen cabinet and gave it to Grandma.  His card said, "Happy Birthday Grandma, love Eli.  I hope you like your birthday."

He has just started trying to write independently, so his words are spelled how they sound in his head and it's a hoot to see.  I love it.

Just to leave you laughing and keep things real...

Ben was taking pictures and apparently his new thing is snapping a bazzillion pictures in a row and this was my reaction: