Grandpa...Heaven just got closer

On Jan 17th, I posted about Grandpa, and how he had suddenly taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Over the past months, I've posted updates about him (here, here, here, here, and here). Since he was released from the nursing home on May 29th, he'd been living at our home. We have a downstairs bedroom that had been a schoolroom, but we stuck a bed and a chair and so forth in it and he lived there. Starting this past Monday evening, he started not doing very well. Tuesday (yep, Christmas Day), he slept for a very long time in the morning, which is not typical...usually he'd be up by 7:30 or 8. But he slept til almost noon, didn't feel like eating, and was generally out of it. He got worse that way until Friday afternoon, we finally got a nurse to come and she recommended he go to a hospital. An ambulance came (actually, 3...and one got stuck in the snow in our yard) and took him to Brooks Memorial. They found that he had pneumonia and a urinary tract infection and began treating him for that. However, Sunday afternoon around 1 pm, he left us for bigger and better things. No longer is he hampered by arthritis...I imagine he's quite happy about that. I also like to imagine that Grandma Snell (his wife who died some 25 or 30 years ago) met him with a chainsaw for him to play with.

My uncle Bill was with him when he passed away. (He called my dad, but by the time my dad got there, Grandpa had already died.) Uncle Bill said that Grandpa had been struggling to breathe, but then he relaxed, started breathing easier, and then stopped.

I have so many memories of him...
-Him reading to Jess and me as we sat on his lap...him reading to the younger ones as they sat on his lap (that Dr Seuss book about the guy who could put spots on anything...that other book about Mack and the truck and the girl who could hammer anything)...
-that awkward memory of him coming up to babysit Jess and me. I was just little and went to the bathroom but couldn't wipe myself, so I went out to the living room where he was sitting and asked him to wipe me...he said he would if I brought him tissue, so I did and he wiped my lil butt for me (man...now THAT'S awkward...I'm cringing just thinking about it! I must have been like 3 or 4).
-Doing chores with him...he bought calves one year, but he was too crippled up to do all the chores himself, so he would drive up in his red, very loud and un-muffled car and Jess and I took turns every morning going up and feeding calves with him. Sometimes in the winter his hands got so cold he'd go into the milkhouse and take off his gloves and cup them around the lightbulb. Running a chainsaw I guess destroys your circulation.
-In the fall he'd get apples from his old schoolteacher who had an apple orchard and he'd make the best apple crisp. Sometimes he made cookies, and I mean no disrespect, but his pies and crisps were a whole lot better. He always had ice cream...Snells always love ice cream...so if one found his cake or cookies or whatever to be dubious looking, there was ice cream to munch on instead :)
-Up until this past year, he'd hop on his tractor and go out back and cut wood or cut down brush. And he'd make hay every year. Up until a couple years ago, anyone who got stuck in snow in the wintertime near our house could count on him helping to pull them out. And even when Grandpa was hallucinating this past year, he'd see people stuck in the ditch and want us to go help them.
-Within the past couple years, when he'd be out back cutting brush and whatnot, I'd conveniently take walks out back and double around and check on him and chat a bit I don't really know what we talked about, but I'm glad we did. Once he had me move the tractor, and I awkwardly couldn't figure out how to turn it off or put it in park, so I was sitting there holding the clutch down frantically pushing and pulling buttons. I uh figured it out finally. Red button. Pull it. Yeah.
-Once I was helping him him hay in the field behind our house, and that was when the local bee guy had beehives back there, and the honey bees didn't like the tractor noise, so they came zooming over. A couple of them got stuck in my hair, and I was a little scared and went over to Grandpa on the tractor and asked him to get the bee. He just squished it with his thumb. It probably stung him, cause it didn't sting me.
-oh yeah...this last one's going to make me cry. It made a really big impression on me at the time...I forget if I blogged about it when it happened...I don't think so. Anyhow...Grandpa baled the Old Home field in round bales, and then wanted me to help him gather the bales up and transport them to behind our house so we could use them. I drove the red International with the hay wagon attached behind, and he drove the John Deere loader. He'd poke a round bale, stick it on my wagon, repeat a bunch of times, and then we'd drive over to where we were unloading them and he'd unload. Repeat many times. The International is an old tractor with a tendency to spew oil...actually, it gushed oil, and i mean that in the most literal sense. It was kinda scary to drive...I was scared the duct tape would fall off and it would fall apart :P To make it worse, he informed me that this tractor also had a tendency to stall when going up steep hills while pulling large loads. Cough. The field we were in does indeed have a very steep hill...and haybales make for a heavy load. Nervous? Me? Haha. We gathered up all the bales at the top of the hill, and then moved downwards. Typically, Grandpa would load my wagon and then drive off in front of me to the unloading place. However, when we got to the bales at the bottom-ish of the hill and we were ready to drive off to unload, I suddenly noticed like halfway up the hill that he wasn't in front of me, or beside. I glanced over my shoulder, and he was driving behind me. We had a couple more loads at the bottom of the hill, and every time I had to drive up the hill with a full load, he drove behind me. Now, I have no idea what he thought he could do if I started stalling and rolling backwards...but it made me think quite a bit...just seeing him on his little tractor behind my huge load, ready to protect me if there had been any problems.

Well anyhow. Visitation is at the Morse Funeral Home in Brocton from 4 to 7 this Thursday. There's a funeral service in the Family Life Center at 10 am Friday morning, followed by the actual burying thing in the cemetery, and then lunch at church.

 I have a great new game idea. It's called Guess the Blog Post, and I just post pictures and you try to guess what they are!! Just kidding ;) I thought I'd post about the past couple of days/week in our house. For starters, last week was finals week at SUNY Fredonia, meaning Jordan and I have successfully completed our first entire on-campus semester of college work. This plugs me at something like 36 credits, which means I'm a sophomore. I think the cut off typically is 30 credits per year, depending where you go...most colleges have the cut-off between sophomore and junior being 60 credit hours, so I'm over a quarter of the way done with the credits for a normal bachelor's degree. Yay.

Moving on. Last weekend (as in...the 15th), Jess and Kevin drove up for Christmas break, and we went to see the Hobbit in theater with them and a bunch of friends (happy birthday to Annetta!). It was a great movie that involved a lot of violence, a lot of bashing and hacking and goriness, plus a very nice moose for a few seconds at the beginning. I hope the moose reappears in the next one too...

Wedding planning has also been being done. Things like a guest list, decorations ideas, type of reception...et cetera. Also, dress shopping! Which is where we get to the picture part of this post. last...Saturday (I think?), a lot of us went to the Erie mall and went bridesmaid dress shopping.

 Well, first we went to David's Bridal to look at the dress Jess discovered. And yes there are pics and no you may not see them unless you have special permission from Jessica herself :)

 Anyhow, we then went to Macy's (where the van proceeded to die...oh well...thankfully we just got Triple A for the Texas Trip, so we called them and then shopped for umpteen hours waiting for them to come) and tried on bridesmaid dresses. Lovely, eh? Two have been purchased, and the rest will be purchased very shortly. There may have been a small fiasco later that night/the next day involving discovering that the dress is not made in certain sizes needed by some members of the party, but with the sewing expertise of certain others, a crisis was avoided and life as we know it cruises smoothly onward.

 Ah right...the jewelry! Charming Charlie's is a charming little jewelry store (women's boutique I think is the correct terminology). Annetta, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Rachel, and I had a lot of fun picking out and trying on jewelry and hair things while Jess and Kevin talked to people at David's Bridal. We photographed it so we could show it to Jess later and then come back and possibly purchase some after getting the dresses (yes...the pics are out of order...David's Bridal, then Charming Charlie's...then we met up at Macy's...).

 (I like how the chandelier makes Elizabeth look like she's wearing a tiara...)

 Above, Rachel and Elizabeth have a very technical and complicated conversation about earrings and making the earrings that come with the necklaces clip ons instead of the um...poky kind. I lost track of their convo about 3 sentences in (ok...2), but they got it figured out.

 Okay...so then we went to Macy's...found the dresses...and Jenn and Rachel bought theirs. And since the tow truck still wasn't here, we went back to Charming Charlie's and selected and purchased the bridesmaid jewelry.

 Then we had supper...it was delicious.

 And the tow truck came! He towed our van all the way to our mechanic, and then our neighbor came and picked us up from there.

 So that was a fun, adventuresome, productive day!

Moving on to Christmas: It is truly a Christmas miracle...my Christmas cactus bloomed for the first time since I got it several years ago.

 And my Texas Cactus has a cute lil "baby bump" on the very top...it's alive and growing!

 And we have these owl decorations on our tree. They're slightly disturbing.

 My dad got our cats a Christmas present too...they loved it very much.

I hope you all are having a lovely Christmas vacation!