Let it snow!

Madison and me 

 Here we go again! Another trip to Missouri Valley, IA to visit my family. This time I got to go with my cousin, Jonathan. We got picked up from the Omaha airport by our cousin, Sarah, and her adorable daughter, Madison. It's the first time I've been back since my grandma, June, passed away, and the first time Jonathan has ever gone, so the feel was a smidge different than past times I've been.

Jonathan and me

It was great, as always, to see my uncle Bruce, aunt Janice, cousin Sarah, her husband Nate, their daughter Madison, and Lyle McIntosh, the man who sponsored my dad when he first came to the states, but the main person who brings me back year after year is my grandpa Don. I'd heard some warnings before I arrived that he sometimes didn't remember that Grandma had passed away or that he knew she'd passed but thought he missed the funeral, or that she'd been gone for years. So I was ready for anything, but mostly really stoked to have to opportunity to visit my grandpa again.

Notice how deep the walkway snow is.....yikes!

Beautiful sunrise.....so. much. snow.

We spent our first day there at the Omaha Zoo with Sarah and Madison and had loads of fun making weird faces....oh, and seeing the animals and exhibits. In the days to come we had some great meals with everyone and had some good quality time with the fam. Then came Saturday. It snowed on Saturday. The weather forecasts were giving us mixed messages: 1-3", 3-6", 3-9"......it was really unclear as to what we were gonna get. It was kinda weird when it started snowing because there was nothing sticking downtown in the valley, but up on the hill, where the nursing home is, almost the whole ground was white. So I went to sleep that night thinking that I might wake up to a little snow on the ground. Boy was I in for a big surprise!! It looked like the whole world had turned white....like the clouds had just dumped and dumped and dumped and dumped snow alllllll night long. That might actually be what happened. Anyways, there were supposed to be ~40mph winds, and it was sssooooo cold outside. Aunt Janice and I wanted to build a snowman so we spent a good 30 minutes getting all bundled up and probably spent a total of......4 minutes outside. The snow was all powdery and wouldn't pack together anyways. But mostly it was just cold. It was actually super nice to have a day when we couldn't go anywhere though. We just relaxed, hung out, ate some yummy foods. Great day. Except for that whole super bowl thing, but whatever. Ancient history.
Monday we still had to work around the snow, but it cleared up a little bit so it wasn't the worst ever. We got lunch again with Lyle and he took us to the DeSoto Bend (a wildlife reserve) Museum. Great place. You should go if you're ever there. We were supposed to spend the evening with my friend Matt in Omaha (I met him in Guatemala and now he's in med school at Creighton, so it's pretty awesome that I get to hang out with him when I go back to visit family), but we were still a little worried about the snow/ice so we postponed until Tuesday right before the airport. Instead we had a great dinner with Bruce, Janice, Nate, Sarah, and Madison.

Grandma's favorite Bible verse found in Grandpa's Bible

Tuesday was a whirlwind of things. We got all packed up and headed down to the valley to drop Bruce off at the shop (so that we could leave his truck there when we left for the airport) and headed up to the nursing home to spend our last couple hours with Grandpa. Spending time with him is a lot different now that Grandma is gone. He got a Christmas tree ornament from Hospice (I think) with Grandma's picture in it and it says "In Memory Of...." He pulls it out quite often to tell us about it and where he got it from. At first, he was saying that she went on a trip to Nebraska and next thing he know, she was gone and didn't even get to say goodbye. That was heartbreaking, But most of the time after that, he seemed to know that she was there when she died and that it wasn't a really sudden thing. Sometimes he would say things like, "Yeah, I was saving those Christmas cards so that Mama could see them..............but I guess she's not around to see them anymore." Like he forgot for a minute. Mostly though, he would just get stuck on one topic and have the same 5-minute conversation with us over and over again. That was pretty normal. My favorite thing was leafing through his preaching Bible to see old sermon notes and various underlined verses and thoughts. While his memory is definitely getting worse, I think his physical health is pretty good. He's still the most generous person I know and still has the most insatiable sweet tooth I've ever seen. I remember when I was little, thinking that he and my grandma were so old, but my grandpa is going to be 83 next Monday and he's still crackin' the best jokes in town. Leaving him (and Grandma, in previous years) is always the hardest part. They were probably (aside from my parents) the most influential people in my life, so it's always hard to leave knowing that I might not see them again. This time Grandma was gone and Grandpa spends his days without the woman he met in grade school and spent his life with ever since (crazy, right?!). I think that made it harder to leave. I recently finished reading a book called A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and there was this old couple and the wife died and the husband refused to let the wife be buried without him because they were always going to be buried next to each other. The husband made everyone agree to wait 10 days to bury his wife, in order to give him time to die too. He died on day 9. Reading that made me think of my grandparents. The way the husband in the book was lost without his wife of so many years. I can't imagine living so closely with one person for so many years and then being without them. So, all things considered, I think my grandpa is doing pretty well.

Selfie with Grandpa!

After a bit of a teary farewell, we headed to Omaha with Lyle. He took us to meet up with Matt for lunch and there was another farewell. We spent a nice afternoon with Matt, got some super delicious ice cream, and saw his super sweet house, then he took us to the airport and we were off. Our friend Brandyn picked us up when we arrived and then it was back to home sweet home.
The week went by way too fast, as usual, but (also as usual) I feel so blessed to have had to chance to make another trip out there. I have the best family on the planet. But we definitely agreed that next time we have to go when it's not winter.

Apparently Runza is a big deal in Nebraska...it's not my fave

In other news, if you'd like to send a birthday card to my grandpa, I'm sure he'd love it! He's turning 83 on Monday the 16th. His address is:
                             1010 Longview Rd
                            Mo. Valley, IA 51555

Me and Madison

Me and Jonathan with Lyle McIntosh and his mom, Helen