not your astronaut: life and death

i have been putting off blogging for awhile now. memorial day weekend, last week, and the two short weeks in between were very eventful. most people who know me already know that my paternal grandmother grams passed away last week. it was neither unexpected nor premature - she had been very ill for quite some time and was just 2 days shy of her 95th birthday. still it has been a very difficult time for the whole family and incredibly sad for everyone who knew her.

starting with memorial day weekend ... we drove down to louisville primarily to visit grams because we knew she wasn't doing well and wouldn't have many (any) more chances to spend time with her. before we went to see grams, everyone warned us repeatedly how poorly she was feeling and that we might not be able to have any "quality" time with her. but grams was amazing and managed to put on a smile for us and talk to us for long stretches at a time. we overwhelmed her with kids (erik plus my three nieces all at once) and love and tears, and she responded with 1000 times more love right back. she was truly amazing and we are so grateful that we had that time with her, reminiscing, holding hands, and sharing hugs. this was the first and last time that erik got to spend with her while she was alive (which i truly regret), but i think it meant a lot to both of them. when we got to her room, erik climbed right up on her bed to hug her without any prompting. as usual, i was very emotional and didn't take many photos of our visits with her (which i also regret), but here are a few from that weekend:

erik with her pennsylvania great-grandkids:

my mom and grams (this one breaks my heart):

grams with my mom and morgan:

the whole weekend was pretty much non-stop family visiting. aside from spending time with grams, we also visited the tinchers in waddy, ky, the schumakers in corydon, in, and the laemmles in louisville, ky.

i wasn't much in the mood for photography, but did take some pictures of our visits (look back to one of my earlier posts for some of my photos of flowers at the tincher's house in waddy).

it just happened to be anja's birthday:

mmm ... frisch's

erik and maggie watching yo gabba gabba (most psychedelic kids show ever):

during the short time between that visit to kentucky and our return for the funeral, there was a lot going on here in pittsburgh. i got to go out with some of my girlfriends for a yummy chinese dinner at chen's in cranberry. we had an awesome time gabbing and being VERY silly, which i really needed. i'm lucky to have these girls!

i love this one of jamie in the bamboo. i told her to look confused and she was very convincing!

there was a big event that i think was largely for the kickoff of the carnegie library's summer reading program down in oakland. we took erik down and got to see my mom there too since she was working. it was a really nice time ... there were lots of neat things to see and do, and free stuff too!