Grandpa's Girl

This last week was beautiful. Of course we are close to 10 inches behind for rainfall, but I love our February springs! With the good weather, we enjoyed a couple of walks down by the riverfront with Grandpa Jay and Virginia and Katarina. Of course that would turn into dinner invites which Virginia was only too glad to accept. Jayme has been sick for over 1 month and so outings and other adults has been a big plus. Besides that meant that Katarina had time to get to know her Great Grandpa Jay. She is even used to his growling. But she loves his singing!!

Katarina is Grandpa's girl. She loves to work at the computer, or rock and take cat naps in his arms. She knows Grandma is full of kisses. Hey, who can resist those pudgy, kissable cheeks.

Sunny Valentine's Day

Saturday we went to the coast. It was a beautiful day. Jess had come down for the weekend. Jayme and Virginia came out for a Valentine's breakfast of Belgian waffles. YUMMMM! They were topped with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Not fattening at all! Then we headed to the coast. We took Grandpa to Nye Beach where he could walk on the beach. The dog loved and b-lined to the ocean the minute we were on the beach. Who cares how cold the water is, he's a dog!! Then it was lunch at Quimby's. It is on the beach right across from the Newport Performing Arts Center. If you have never been there, the clam chowder is to die for. We went up along Yaquina Bay and got oysters for Oysters Rockafeller for dinner. We even convinced Jace to try an oyster shooter. The lead up was the funniest. But he did it. I never would. Raw, slimmy, GROSSS! Sunday we had leg of lamb for dinner and had Jayme and Virginia out. Jayme is still sick, so they welcomed the dinner that someone else was making!! Katarina had a nice little nap on Grandpa's chest. Isn't that what Grandpa's are for? All in all a great weekend!

Photo Tag

Thanks to Norma who blogged this one and asked us all to do it. You go to where ever you keep your pictures and go to the fourth file and pick picture #4. Post it and explain what it is. It was fun to check and see what I had.

How sweet! This is a picture of Reed taking Keegan kyaking in the ocean back east. What a fun Grandpa! Speaking of Reed - check out his blog, the Dirt Dr. For those who know Reed, it is hilarious. Use the link on the side of my blog. Very funny!

A Tribute to Suzie

My dear sister Suzie is really struggling right now. She is currently trying to recover from an amputation of her left leg about 3+ weeks ago. She was home and seemed to be doing okay, when she suddenly became quite ill. There had been some previous signs of trouble, but nothing you could put your finger on. To make a long story short, she has a miraculous dog who alerted the family that something was wrong. She had become quite ill and was incoherent. She was running a fever and was admitted to the hospital. It was determined she had a systemic infection. The next day a number of tests were run. By day three they had also diagnosed that she had suffered a stroke. She has been given some pretty potent antibiotics to treat the infection and the fever has gone down. Now we will begin to deal with the effects of the stroke. The most major problem is her ability to speak. She is not able to communicate much to us. It is so frustrating to her because you can tell that she is trying to say something, but we don't understand.

Suzie has dealt with so much in her life. She has battled diabetes for more than 25 years, with the last 10 being pretty difficult. We love her so much and want her to know that she has taught all of us so much in our lives. She has taught us about commitment and hanging in there even when the odds are against you. She has been one of the best quilters in spite of being legally blind. She is so dedicated to family. I think Sisters Weekend may have fallen by the wayside with difficulties in getting together without her urging and need for us to gather as sisters.

To Suzie and her entire Family - We Love You and are praying for you!!!

This picture is my mom holding Suzie as a baby with my 2 older sisters, Lee Ann and Rosie!!

Grandpa Jay's Visit

Well, we have had Grandpa now for just over a week. Life is interesting when you are taking care of an older individual. Reed's dad is blind, due to Alzheimer's. The Alzheimer's has now progressed that he has a lot of trouble remembering and gets confused easily. It requires that either Reed or I (or someone) is with him at all times. The first few nights Reed slept upstairs on the living room floor in case he got confused and started wandering. (This has happened before!) Now he seems to have adjusted, somewhat. We keep a monitor in his room so we can hear him downstairs where we are staying. We have also started putting a chair in the hallway outside the room and bathroom so that he doesn't wander the wrong direction. He did that a couple of nights and so we have instituted some safeguards. We worry about him falling. Last night we tried to prepare him for the different schedule of Sunday. Reed has meetings first thing in the morning and so we wanted to get him up and showered (he needs assistance) and ready and then he would come in with me to church. We told him what time we would get him up. Well he woke up last night and thought he was late and that Reed had left without taking care of him. So on his own he got up and took a shower. Small problem, Jackie had bathed the kids last and so the shower curtain was outside the shower. Reed woke up hearing water running and found his dad in the shower at 3AM!! Reed had to mop up the floor (it took 4 towels) and get his dad dressed and back to bed.

Oh well, he keeps up on our toes!! We love him and really are enjoying his time here! He has a great sense of humor and is so humble over the whole thing. It has been a real joy to watch Reed as he is so patient and loving with his Dad. Even when we have cleaned the bathroom for the 5th time in one day. At least Grandpa has enjoyed the books we have put onto an MP3 player we got for him. After going through a ton of Lous L'Amour books, he wanted to change his name to Jay William Sackett!!

Heading For Home

We have had 3 really fun weeks back here on the east coast. We have spent the last few days with Reed's sister in Bethesda. Today as we get ready to leave it is snowing and so pretty outside. Reed has struggled at times feeling like he should be doing more. Of course, there was work he could have done that he never really got around to. We are headed back home and taking Reed's dad with us. He will spend February with us in Oregon and then meet up with his wife in Utah for a week. We are excited to have him with us for a while.

Here are some fun photos of our last little while here!

This is the boardwalk in OC. It was about 26 degrees and blowing about 15-20 miles an hour. They have an amusement park on the pier (closed for the winter)!
This is the boardwalk at Bethany from the beach side. This is the path from the beach to the board walk. Fun, huh?

One of the questions we always discuss is that when you look at these beaches, during the summer there are hundreds to thousands of people who are on the beach. But there is only 1 bathroom. It makes you very thankful we have a private beach. I thought this sign was funny. There was more to the story, but I think it speaks volumes!

Baby It's Cold Outside

We only had a couple of days of the really bitter cold where it got down to about 8-10 at night and warmed up only to about 20. It was really interesting to see the waves freeze on the sand. the wind chill was taking it down to 5 degrees and lower. We have been taking long walks on the beach and walking to town and looking at the damage to the new dune in Bethany. The boardwalk has all these new walkways over the new dune and down to the beach but the erosion has just left a drop off and they have had to close most of them. AHHH taxpayers money at work!!

What does Reed do when he is bored in the winter at the beach? Why get together with Buz and use his new book - Backyard Balistics - and make a potato gun. One problem, with all the cold weather it would not shoot very well. The hairspray would immediatley condense and liquify. So the obvious solution was to stay in the house and open the window and shoot over the dune. Jill and I were the ones sent up on the dune to measure the distance. We were all laughing so hard. We were able to shoot from the house, over the dune and almost to the high water line of the tide! I had the longest shot yet. Of course I have only been allowed to shoot once and the wind was not blowing when I shot!

Sunday night it started snowing. You don't get much snow at the beach, but it was fun to wake up this morning to a dusting and snow ON the beach! Enjoy the pictures!