My Grandmother

Yesterday I spent the day with my grandmother. I had gone over to her apartment to help her try to get her phone to ring (as opposed to just vibrating). But I even though I was able to figure out that it was in Silent Mode, I couldn't figure out how to get it out of the Silent Mode! So we decided to come over to my house. Maybe James will show up and help us figure it out. We stopped and picked up Taco Bueno for lunch and then came home to eat it.

Nannie particularly likes the dogs and thinks they are very smart. Of course, they are! And she was most impressed with them going and getting in their kennel whenever I said we had to go and that I wanted them to go get in their bed! They are always very much in favor of going to bed (because they get to have a treat!).

Next we drove over to Wyndell (my uncle, Nannie's youngest son)'s house to see if he could fix the phone. He couldn't do it either. After a short visit with Frieda (my aunt, Nannie's daughter-in-law, we left and stopped by the phone store to get it fixed and sure enough when I took it in the girl I asked just punched a couple of buttons and oila! it was fixed!

So then before I took her back to her home, we stopped in Minyards to get some table salt, and some biscuits that she needed to make the dressing that she's planning to bring to my house next week for Thanksgiving. She was able to really move quickly as long as she had the walker in front of her. As we checked out she managed to get them to try to guess how old she is and when they found out she was 105 they could not believe it! Of course then they have the usual question: "what have you done to keep yourself looking so good?"

Her answer is that she has worked hard all of her life. She enjoyed the attention that they gave her and then we left again and went back to her apartment. I thought she did pretty well considering that she wasn't really planning to leave for the day. Hopefully she didn't get too tired from all of that getting up and going out anf about.

I think that we may do it again sometime soon. We'll see!

Closer and closer...

This morning finds the actual day of our embarkation sneaking up on us and we have about a week and a half before it will be off to Barcelona where we will get on board the Norwegian Jade. There we will find our "mini-suite" that will be our home away from home for the next 3 weeks as we travel first to the Eastern Mediterranean and then to the Western Mediterranean (actually North western Africa (Morocco) and islands beyond that).

While I'm very excited about our trip the most important thing right now is that my mom is having out-patient surgery on Wednesday of this week. I will be her care giver or as I think of it her "watcher outer" and will be staying over at her house at least until the weekend and until she can move around better on her own. She will have the carcinoma that they found from the spot on her right leg (between her knee and her ankle) removed and a small skin graft will be made over it. So she will then be sent home with instructions to not move that leg and it will be in a splint in order to remind her of that!

I'm planning to take our dogs, Buffy and Willow over to her house with me because Jim will be in Washington, DC, during that time. Rather than make James be responsible for the dogs all that time we're gone plus this week and, because I know that Mother will enjoy the two of them sitting in her lap, etc., they are going with me. I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday (just a check up to make sure my stimulators are doing what they should be and will be for the rest of the year while I'm off on the other side of the world).

My brother, Scott, lives with my mom, but works odd hours--from about 3:30 in the am until 2:00 or so in the afternoon. So he's really not a lot of help when it comes to her getting some help. My brother Clay will be there at the hospital too so he can help a little bit that day as much as he can because he, just as Scott does, has to go to work. So, it fell to the "retired" family member (that would be me) to be there the most.

That reminds me of my grandmother with whom I spent the day yesterday. But that's another story...:)

Keep us on your prayer list, please!

Just 26 days until we depart for the Mediterranean!

We are so excited! We got a call from the travel agency and they said that the cruise line was happy to offer us an upgrade free of charge! And so we accepted...of course! Instead of an inside stateroom on deck 5, we will be dwelling in a mini-suite with a balcony on deck 11! That's incredible!

We've never even been inside a room with a balcony so as you can imagine...we are looking forward to it! They had tried to upgrade us earlier last month but said they couldn't give us the same room for both cruises --our 21 day cruise is actually two cruises---the first is a 12 day trip to the eastern Mediterranean. Jim is probably most excited about this part of the trip...When we land in Alexandria, Egypt, we will be there for two days--so we'll be taking a private small group tour (12 couples) from there to Cairo with an overnight in a 4star hotel in Cairo. We can't wait to see those great pyramids and the sphinx!

And then at the end of the 12 days we go back to Barcelona but this time we head west and go to Morocco--Casablanca and Agdir, and then the Canary Islands, a Portuguese island and then to Malaga, Spain before the 9 days bring us back again to Barcelona--- and then we will spend two nights in Paris, France before coming home to Arlington!

We will arrive here on Dec. 23, hopefully ready as we can be for a very happy and merry Christmas!

Then Jim will still be on vacation when we get back---I think he'll have to be back at the office on about the 6th or 7th of January!