Texas Trip

My trip to Texas was very refreshing, despite the circumstances. It was great to spend so much quality time with my family. Friday morning we went to the funeral home - mom, Uncle Don, Beth, Beau, and Don's girlfriend. It was a disaster. My mom and uncle had gone in a year prior to pre-arrange the funeral and pay for it. They thought it was a done-deal. Nope! Still several more decisions to make and lots more to pay for. Plus the people there could not get ANYthing right. It was frustrating. My mom had been doing really well, but this kind of multiplied everything and she wasn't doing so good that night. My dad and I sat with her for a couple of hours that night going through all the papers to determine what else they had done wrong. We had to go back Saturday morning to fix more things. For instance, the PINK casket they were going to put my grandma in. My mom had said she wanted her in the same type of casket as my grandpa and we KNOW he wasn't buried in PINK and my mom said Grammy would NEVER choose pink for herself either. My mom was pretty irate when she noticed the papers said pink. And that was just one of many mistakes they made. A lot of my family, including all 4 grandparents are buried at this place - Restland- and my family still has 6 more plots there. After this weekend, we're seriously contemplating selling the plots, taking a vacation, and getting cremated when we die!

The weekend wasn't all bad though. The service - a simple graveside service- on Sunday turned out very nice. The casket was silver, not pink! The weather could not have been better. There were lots of family and friends there. My mom, sister and I each had friends come and that was very much appreciated. There were also old friends of my grandma's there - some of them looked fantastic! My dad spoke and did a great job and really got the old ladies riled up when he talked about how competitive she was - she REALLY was and those ladies had experienced it first-hand being in bridge club together for so many years. One old lady, whose husband had worked with my grandpa, informed me that her tall, dark, handsome, and timid grandson lives in NYC and she and my mom had already arranged to get him my number. Ha! Brian's (my bro-in-law) dad did the pastoral part of the service. He kept calling my uncle, Don, Ray. My mom's name is Kay, so throughout the service, he kept saying "Kay and Ray". It was hysterical. People tried to correct him at first, but he wasn't listening, so we just let it go. My uncle will forever be "Ray", now. Afterwards, some family came over to my mom's house for light snacks, the Cowboys game, and catching-up. It was nice. Ryder and I had fun playing outside.

Other things we did over the weekend:
-2 meals at Chik-fil-a, where else?
-Friday night was a celebration night for my dad's 60TH, which was on Monday. So glad I could be there to celebrate. We went to a seafood place for dinner (name is escaping me right now) and then over to Beth's for this delicious cake she'd bought him. This was just a little celebration in pre-view of the real celebration to take place in January in Whistler, CA!
-A trip up to the nursing home to gather some of my grammy's belongings. We left most of her things there - they can maybe use it for other people who don't have much. The ladies who work up there were so sweet to my mom. One nurse was especially saddened about Grammy passing away. Nice to know she was in a place where people really cared about her!
-A trip to the Plano Junior League Christmas Bazaar with mom and Beth. We love these things! Lots of fun things to look at, food samples, etc... We each bought a little something for gifts.
-Mani/Pedi with mom. We went to a great place I found last time I was home and thoroughly enjoyed our treatments!
-Went to see the movie, Bella , with mom. Beth had recommended it. We did not like it. Too slow moving, not enough of a plot! Beth said we should support it because it has good life-lessons (it's pro-life). My mom said we certainly did our part!
-Found and drove by the plot of land that is widely suspected to be where Bush is going to build his post-presidency home....it's just a few houses down from where Cheney lived before heading to DC.
-Lunch in Snyder Plaza followed by delicious cookies from JD's Chippery!

It was a great weekend!