Oh how we love her!

We may all be partial to our own grandmas, but I really think my Grandma Ruth is just about the sweetest thing ever. :)

I usually see her every couple of weeks when I clean her house, and I'm always amazed by her health and her ability to get around as well as she does. There are always those days when she may be a bit off with her memory, but she's still very sharp most of the time. Just last month Grandma reached the ripe old age of 94!

I'm grateful for each time that I'm able to see her...especially when I see her on a really good day. Her smiles are contagious, and when she comes to the window or door to wave goodbye to me when I leave...well that just pulls my heart strings every time.

Carrie, Joy, Archer, Ben, Zach, and I all headed up to Brigham City to see Grandma and take her out for lunch the day after her birthday. 

 

It's so easy to forget to take time and appreciate that we're around because of the generations before us...especially when they're far away or have already passed, so for this I'm extremely grateful that Grandma is still here with us, close by, and that we have these opportunities to spend time with her.

Our garden!

TOTAL SLACKER!

Yup...that's me.

Carrie, thanks for nudging me to post...that squirrel offer is still on the table if I start to slack off again.

Onward...

Last month...pretty much to the date is when we put the rest of our garden in, and I'm glad I remembered to take a photo because I'm amazed by how fast everything has been growing so far!

We're already enjoying peas, spinach, lettuce, rhubarb, strawberries, and herbs. I'm looking forward to when it will be time to enjoy all the other goodies as well.

So looking at the photo and moving from left to right we have peas, spinach/lettuce/swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, summer squash, spinach, artichoke, okra, carrots, sweet banana peppers, yellow/red peppers, and purple hull peas. The area towards the front is occupied by tomatoes, and then in the back from left to right is the rhubarb, potatoes, raspberries, and strawberries. And then there's the odd peach tree thrown in....not our doing! :) We also have a little strip just outside of the photo for most of our herbs.

I've been geeking out over gardening, and I love walking through it and seeing how things are coming along. I'm totally one of those loonies who talks to my plants, apologizing when I accidentally rip one up with a weed, and of course I have choice words for all the WEEDS...yikes they loooove our garden. Those big city trash cans...well, after weeding this last round, the weeds filled just about half the can! Can't say I'm a big fan of weeding, but the good news there is that the fingers I was starting to lose feeling in from all that weeding, are now starting to improve....I think. ;)

I'm sure it won't be long before I'm dumping a lot of produce off on people...so get your bellies ready!

March...and April

I'm behind as usual...again.

Rather than a lengthy post I think I'll stick to some photos to recap the highlights. :) Forgive me for taking the lazy approach.

A bunch of us got together for a little bowling to celebrate Joy's birthday.  It was a lot of fun, and we definitely need to do it again soon. 

A birthday morning is as good as Christmas morning for this cow-licked duo. Since we planned to head out to FL on the boys' birthday, we promised them an early start and managed to squeeze a lot into their day. 

We were planning on a birthday party for the boys, so I promised them a big Angry Birds cake for it. I had no intentions of throwing together a cake before we were scheduled to leave, but the look on Ben's face when I told him no cake was enough to make me feel like poo, so this is what he and I came up with. Ben did all the decorating himself. 

Regardless of the sad circumstances for our FL visit, we had absolutely no problem enjoying the beautiful weather and our wonderful friends' company while we were there. I was really grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time with Emma. Her personality is something else, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the time I had with her.

Brandi asked me to make a birthday cake for her mom, Debbie's, surprise party. Debbie is a huge Disney fan, and I was excited for such a fun theme. After returning home and feeling a little down, this was a wonderfully fun distraction. 

We got incredibly lucky this year and have been enjoying pretty mild weather now for a couple of months. It's fun to be in a home where we get seasonal surprises for the first year. I had bulbs to plant in the fall and waited too long and missed my window. I was happy to see the last tenants had some planted some and we were treated to a flower bed of tulips. We also had the most gorgeous (and unfortunately super stinky) blossoms on the tree in our front yard.  

Another Canfield member joined the world. Preston James was born on April 8. I'm so excited to meet him in May. :) Congrats again James, Brooke, Jaydaka and Madison!

I was all excited for clear skies and a reasonable hour to view the lunar eclipse. I was awake but had set my alarm in case I dozed off....good thing I went out early to check if things had started because I had looked at the wrong time zone and nearly missed it.

I was in the worst of moods before I started the boys' birthday party cake and was no mood for making decorations or hosting a party, but after I got started on these figures for it and saw the boys' excitement grow with each one I finished, my spirits lifted tremendously. :)

While D and the boys went on a fishing trip with my dad to Lake Powell, I headed out to MN to spend some time relaxing and talking the ears off of my dear friend Lyndsay. One of these days I'll figure out how not to be such a chatterbox! 

Zach has no problem pooping and peeing wherever, whenever. He layed down some serious stink in a bucket on the boat during their fishing trip, and it was so bad that Ben puked over the side of the boat.

Grief sucks.

I've been putting off this post, hoping that with a little more time I would have a better handle on things, but I don't think I've made much progress, and I don't feel like I can move forward until I've acknowledged the grief I feel about Pop Pop's passing.

I read something a while back that my sister-in-law's mother had told her growing up about our feelings being our feelings. The good, the bad, and the ugly....whatever those feelings may be, it's okay to be feeling them. I've held onto that phrase and try to think of it when I find myself all over the map.

Two weeks ago today I was back in Florida with the boys and was able to attend a life celebration party that the Bacon's threw in honor of Harry. I can't think of a more fitting way that his family could have acknowledged the great man that he was. They know how to throw a hell of a party, and this was no exception. It was a great opportunity for Harry's family to highlight the good times, and I observed far more laughter than tears.

Tears are okay. I knew for me they'd come at a later time...like today, out of the blue, in buckets. There's definitely no rhyme or reason or timetable to how we process our grief. I didn't foresee feeling this way myself, but it seems kind of silly that I wouldn't. I was present to see some dear people that I love go through something awful and lose someone who is a core piece of their family. It sucked. I think at the time, I was just trying to keep it together and do what I could to help in whatever way they needed.

After coming home and moving forward with our own day-to-day stuff, I'm pretty sure that I distanced myself from the reality that was settling in for the Bacon's. I wasn't there any longer to witness first hand how they were dealing, so I wasn't faced with that grief yet myself. It wasn't until today that I recognized I've been in denial the past couple of weeks. I see it now though, and depressed and angry came to the grief party too. I can accept that Pop Pop is gone, but then I'm faced with the thought of his family moving forward without him. It makes me feel incredibly sad and angry over how unfair it all seems, for everything that they will all miss out on doing together. I know Pop Pop is in a good place now, but it's not where I want him to be. I want him with his family.

Time may move us forward and help us to heal, but what I'm struggling with the most right now is knowing how much this grief process sucks, knowing that Pop Pop's family all has to go through it too. We can share with others, lean on our loved ones for support, but ultimately we all have our own muck to work through.

Such is life. Death comes for us all at some point. Life is a huge revolving door, taking us in until it's our time to exit. I may not have known Pop Pop for the majority of his revolutions, but I'm still incredibly grateful for him and his life. It's because of him and his Honey and the family they started that eventually connected their family with mine, and that's a really great thing.

Blessed. 

Team Bacon

I'm sure I've wrote about the Bacon family enough over the years that those of you who come here to read my posts, know them on some level, and a few of you have also had the pleasure of meeting some or all of them.

To me, they are an extension of family and have always treated us as such. They are a fantastic bunch of people; generous, kind, fun-loving, full of life.

After spending this past week with them, I came to see another side to them, which I had hoped not to see for a long time. Faced with the loss of Harry, their Pop Pop/Dad/Husband... I saw them band together, and show a tremendous amount of strength and grace under some very sad and difficult moments.

For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing Harry, I'd like to share with you how I saw (still see) him. Harry was a rock for his family and an unbelievably hard worker, and never once did I hear him complain about anything. He was not your warm and fuzzy type of man (evident in every awkward hug I'd attempt to give him), but you could comfortably sit and have great conversations with him. He listened, asked questions, was genuinely interested in what you were discussing with him. He loved and supported his family and what more can you ask for from a man? He simply was/is the epitome of what a great man should be. He will be so very missed.

When I think of Pop Pop I will remember him winding the cuckoo cuckoo clock in their kitchen, sharing a bowl of chocolate marshmallow ice cream with Emma, his breakfast & lunch things laid out on the kitchen counter the night before an early-morning shift; his half smile and twinkle in his eye when I could see him suppressing a thought he didn't want to share out loud. I will remember the softer side of Harry you often only saw when he played with Emma. My heart hurts at the thought of her growing up without his physical presence in her life, but I can't imagine a better person to look after her and the rest of the family from the other side.

I have seen Team Bacon pull themselves up by their boot straps and muck their way through a rough couple of weeks, and I am confident that despite the gap that Harry has left in their lives, they will continue moving forward a day at a time and come through it all even stronger than before.

I found this quote and immediately thought of Honey and this about sums up how she has been managing the loss of her partner...  "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." ~Epictetus

I have overheard Honey comforting others that are mourning Harry's passing. She may have moments of grief, but I see her embracing the good and choosing to remember the happy memories of Harry and their life together.

I believe that Honey and the rest of the bunch have the right idea in not dwelling in the moments leading up to Pop Pop's passing, but rather focusing on the good man and life he had. I believe that this is by no means the end to their time together, just a long intermission until they meet up again.

Please join me by keeping the Bacon Family in your thoughts and prayers as they find their way and adjust to the absence of Harry, and please raise a glass in memory of him and give thanks to the great family he helped bring into this world...and give thanks for those precious loved ones in your lives.