How do you spell: "HUGE sigh.... and collapse" ???

Well well. I think my crazy October has finally come to a close. We do have trick or treating in 2 more days, but I'm all ready already. Yay. After all the running around, I need a vacation, pedicure, massage, you name it. Or all of the above! (We have a tiny sense of entitlement now, don't we? Hey, I'm working on it.)

FIRST, and the reason why I had to miss our ward's Trunk-or-Treat, was that we had a surprise party for my Dad's 60th birthday. My sisters and I have been working on this almost non-stop for the last 2 months. We were able to get my brother's family and my grandma (Dad's mom) to drive down from Utah at the last minute. It was so wonderful to have every single person together. My dad walked in, saw them all standing there, and the tears just started to well up. And this was before he even knew about a party. We got together a few hours early to show him our gift - a DVD slideshow of the "best of" his slides from his own wedding to all of his children leaving the nest. More tears. It turned out beautifully, thank you Angie.











After we viewed this, the sisters had to scramble and get everything set up for guests to arrive. Even the husbands were dashing around being helpful - we were BUSY! (You may admire our beautiful spreads of food and dessert, pictured above.) Amidst all of this chaos, my grandma started to feel really terrible, and a few people were attending to her in a back bedroom. Not too much later, my sister-in-law decided it was best to take her to a doctor right away. Thank goodness for Leslie and her medical wisdom... she missed the party and got Nana to the ER where it was determined that she was indeed having a heart attack. My Dad put on a brave face and greeted his guests, but when it seems like things were dying down, my parents grabbed their keys and got straight to the hospital. Once we had cleaned up the worst of the mess, my siblings and I did the same. It was like something out of a sweet movie, the original 6 of us just sitting there in the waiting room, glad to be together, but a little numb.



They took Nana in for a small surgery where they put a stent to open one of her arteries and found it to be 99% blocked. Eeek. Except to have 3 babies, this woman has never had a hospitalization in her life. She's 84 years old and exceptionally healthy, considering. I guess in some ways I revert back to a small child and think of her as immortal. She's just always there, and with her is my favorite place to be. She's the reason I know how to sew (sorry, Mom!) At one point in my life, I almost could have called her my best friend. I love and respect her more than I can explain here with words. I waited my whole life to name a daughter after her. In fact, not getting that chance was one of the big reasons why accepting I will never have a girl was so hard.

Here we are the next day (after the party) where we needed to spend some time together as a family before my brother and his family left, and frankly, I was still a little reeling from the whole thing. Thank you SO much, Donna, for giving me guilt-free permission to miss church to do this.

We are quite a huge group these days! And with 10 kids, quite noisy too!

Nana is at my parent's home now and recovering nicely. Her trip to Arizona will be a little longer than she had anticipated :) but we are taking good care of her. Which brings me to another cute little story! Nana has never washed or styled her own hair in DECADES. She has a standing appointment at the beauty salon once a week. She sleeps on it at night, re-poofs it in the morning, bathes from the neck down, nearly panics when it rains or snows and she has to go outside, and just survives until the next appointment. Well her little trip to the ER, surgery, and a few days in the hospital wreaked some havoc on that little old lady hairdo. Plus, she's not allowed to take a bath for a few more days. So today she showered, and shampoo'd! I came over to style her hair into that traditional little "poof!" It was so cute to see her with wet, limp hair (which I've rarely seen in all of my memory.) So I got out the ol' curling iron, curled it all over, teased the crap out of it, and - VOILA! - coaxed it into one nifty little old lady hairdo, if I don't say so myself! This chance to do that for her will be added to my sweet memories of my grandma, and one I will never forget!