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| Allan, Katie, and Abbie with my parents |
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| Allan, Katie, and Abbie with Katie's dad and brother |
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| Here are a lot of people who came to the blessing, but a lot of people had already left at this point too. |
We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. Originally we had planned to spend it in California with all of Nate's siblings, but then a number of them canceled and we found out that my family was doing a special 90th birthday lunch for my grandpa the day after Thanksgiving. Plus, Nate sang with Utah Voices Saturday in the Tabernacle to open the Christmas season of concerts there. It was an excellent concert and helped me feel like the Christmas season was actually starting.
For my grandpa's 90th birthday, we had a nice lunch in a private room of the Lion House. It was a really nice meal, and it was fun to be all together. We enjoyed seeing old pictures and listening to some old memories.
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| Ben holding Abbie - it was difficult to get Ben to do this |
After the lunch, we stopped by the Macy's candy windows on the way back to our car.
It is kind of crazy to think that my grandpa, who we call Gramp, is ninety years old. Gramp has always been a special part of my life. I think that perhaps I have become closer to my maternal grandparents in many respects than many people become to their grandparents due to the fact that me and my brothers were their only grandchildren.
As a kid, I always looked forward to seeing Gramp. He perplexed me with tricks like pulling coins out from behind my ear, and he persistently teased me and my brothers. Of course, we did our best to tease him back. We used to comb his hair for him, trying to make it look as wonky as we possibly could. And when it came time to hide Easter eggs, we worked hard to hide eggs for Gram, Gramp, our parents, and our aunts in the most impossible-to-find places we could think of. When Gram and Gramp were staying at our house, they would sleep on the sofa bed in our front room. Every morning, we would get up early and go crawl in bed with them. We were full of energy and hardly just laid still once in bed with them. Eventually Gramp would turn on the TV so we could watch a few cartoons before breakfast. At the time, I never appreciated how patient they were with us, but now I appreciate it much more.
Gramp loved to take pictures of us and video us. He is the reason why we now have hours of home video from when I was a kid. He took a bunch of pictures that my grandparents then put in nice photo/scrape books that they gave me and my brothers one year. These books also contained pictures and articles about other relatives, like great grandparents and great-great grandparents. In any case, he seemed to nearly always be holding his camera or video camera, or at least he would have it nearby. Sometimes he would even let us try recording video. I remember how heavy his old video camera was, and how cool we thought it was to see ourselves on video. As I got older though, I grew camera shy and often went to a lot of effort to avoid Gramp's cameras.
When I turned eight and was ready to get baptized, I had a hard time deciding for sure who should baptize me. I was torn between having my dad do it, or Gramp. Ultimately I decided on having Gramp baptize me and my dad confirm me.
As I have grown, Gramp has continued to be an important part of my life. He is almost always there at family events and other important things - birthdays, graduations, baby blessings, holiday celebrations, concerts, etc. It is nice to live closer to my grandparents now than when I was growing up so that we can see them more often. I have been so blessed to have a grandpa like Gramp!
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| Gramp with his great grandchildren |
