Up coming Trip

 We are going to be visiting the US again and I must say I am super excited!  Firstly, we haven't seen my son and family (except for his daughter, who came for a very short visit recently) for over 3 years.  Besides, one of my nephews is getting married and we will be attending the wedding.  So that gives me an opportunity to see family who I have not seen for even longer than 3 years.  I am really looking forward to the trip.  

My suitcases will shortly be retrieved from storage and I will start packing slowly, although we leave only towards the end of September.  Packing for the trip is part of the fun.

Looking forward to our trip and hoping all will go well.

 My grandchildren, now teenagers, occasionally come to stay, usually with their parents, but once in a while on their own.  

In the past 4 or 5 months I have had my older grandson, now 17 come and stay for a few days, and last weekend, he and his sister had come to stay.

Yes, the food they want is different, yes old grandpa and grandma's normal routine gets changed.  But, when they leave I'm "bluer than blue" .  Suddenly the house seems full and brings back so many memories of when my children were growing up.

I hope my grandkids will always feel welcome here and will enjoy coming by, even later on, as they grow away from their own homes and sttike out on their own.

 And so it has been 9 years since my eldest passed away.  Yesterday was his 9th death anniversary.  In the Orthodox Christian tradition prayers are said at the grave.  

Time has flown and life goes on.  My other children and I discuss how, if he was still here during this pandemic, he would have been so fearful for his family and would have been handing out instructions left right and centre on the best ways to protect oneself etc (he was paranoid about illness).  He always worried for everyone else.  But his humour kept him sane.

Missing a person who has passed never quite goes away.  It hurts physically less.  But sometimes, unexpectedly, I find myself missing him intensely.

Golden Anniversary

 It was our 50th wedding anniversary early this month.  My husband and I had decided on having a quiet anniversary with just daughters and daughter-in-law and kids.

But two of my husband's siblings decided otherwise and held a surprise dinner party for us.  Covid added a spoiler in changing the venue, but thankfully caused no other problems.

As my husband has/had 7 siblings, just his siblings and their families means a lot of people.  There was just my husband's family and my eldest brother, who spends half the year here.  But that added up to around 50 people, which included all the grandkinds ranging in age from a 1 year old to an 18 year old.  Many out-of-towner nieces and nephews very sweetly adjusted their schedules and stayed on specially for the event.  Unfortunately my youngest son and family were not able to make it from Chicago, because of the surge of Covid cases at the end of last year and the beginning of this year in the US.  We really missed them.

I had guessed that something had been planned but it was a total surprise to my husband and he was very touched by all the preparation.  There were some speeches and some singing [in our family there is no event sans some singing] and good food.  The weather was pleasant too.  So a good time was had by all.   Luckily it did not turn out to be a pandemic super spreader, for which we are truly grateful.