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.
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.
Continue reading →
