Weekend in Missouri

Andrea’s Great-Grandmother (my Grandmother) in Columbia, Missouri was diagnosed with ovarian cancer several years ago. She fought it with chemo for years, but in the past few months, they exhausted all the treatment options and her health began deteriorating. Fortunately, we were able to go up and spend Spring Break with her this year before she really got sick. Here’s a picture I love of her and Andrea from that trip.
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

My grandmother passed away last weekend, on November 6th, 2011. So Friday morning, we loaded up the car and drove to Columbia, Missouri to be with my family there for the weekend and attend the funeral on Sunday.

Andrea was terrific this whole weekend – she was on her very best behavior the entire time. We are unbelievably proud of her for being such a big girl through a lot of driving and a couple of busy days. On the way up, she watched a lot of movies and shows on her iPad in the car, and took a nice long nap, so that kept her pretty distracted most of the time. But she still asked over and over again throughout the 13 hour trip, “Are we in Missouri yet?” – starting about 30 minutes from our house. On the way back, we drove overnight, so we didn’t have to stop for meals or anything else, and we made it in just over 10 hours. She slept almost the entire way, and then was happy to be moved from her car seat to her bed for a few more hours of sleep.

She loved seeing all the family and wasn’t shy at all. And she loved playing with all my relative’s dogs, especially playing fetch with my aunt’s dog. My cousin’s dog was a little crazier and kept hanging his mouth open, and Andrea kept laughing and telling him, “I’m not tasty!” I told her he was nice and didn’t want to eat her, but she said, “It looks like he does!” and pointed to her own teeth to show me what she meant. LOL! Saturday night she was totally crazy and in full entertainment mode. She kept jumping off the couch onto the beanbag and saying it was a swimming pool, she “helped” the guys play ping-pong, she got her Uncle Thor to help her with some tumbling (and even try a bit of his own), and she did a whole modern dance performance thing for us.
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

All the activity eventually even inspired my granddad to get up and play some ping-pong. He is pretty reliant on walking with his cane so my cousin Jeffrey was standing by to make sure he stayed on both feet. We were all so impressed that he could still play some serious ping-pong at his age!
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

After bouncing off the walls for so long, Andrea eventually decided she was a little warm… Hahahahahaha!
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

When she calmed down, she got pretty interested in cousin Jeffrey’s baby, Madelynn. Such a pretty girl!
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

Andrea always tells us she doesn’t like babies, because they try to pull her shirt off she says. But I think that’s mostly crawling ones in the church nursery. She’d never really gotten up close with a tiny newborn. She was so tender with her – it was adorable. And she said she would be the babysitter, so she went and got Madelynn’s pacifier for her from the upstairs at one point – so sweet!
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

She even got to hold Madelynn!

She decided Madelynn needed to be all wrapped up in her blanket, then she went in for a kiss on her forehead. Madelynn looks a little bewildered in this one. 😉

 

Sunday was the day of the funeral, and Andrea was mostly just excited to be wearing a fancy black dress with a black sweater and black shiny shoes. She kept telling everyone about her outfit and modeling it for people. But by the time the visitation started, she was tired, and spent part of the time on the couch watching Diego on Daddy’s phone. When she wasn’t sneaking cookies from the refreshments table, that is. 😉
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

She sat quietly in the front pew through the entire funeral service, coloring furiously on a clipboard full of paper and coloring sheets that I thought to grab from a basket nearby as I walked into the sanctuary. So glad I thought to do that! Towards the end of the service when she’d run out of paper, she picked up a hymnal and began singing the ABC’s, but even that was so quiet that it wasn’t disturbing anyone. As we left the church, Andrea picked up a rose that fell from the casket and she was so happy to have a flower. She told everyone it smelled like pink. Then after the graveside service, Andrea got some carnations as well, and started taking her flowers around to everyone asking them to smell how pretty they were. Especially with a lot of older people there, it was nice to have as cheerful young face in the crowd. Andrea didn’t really know why we were there, but somehow she knew she had to be extra good, and she truly went above and beyond what I ever could have expected.

Love you, Grandmother!
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

3 thoughts on “Weekend in Missouri

  1. Susan

    Thank you for the beautiful pictures. Andrea was a great girl all weekend and glad I was her buddy since I was wearing the crown (reading glasses). 🙂

  2. Pingback: Looking Back at 2011 « Andrea Paige

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *