Great Grandma Florence

My Great Grandma passed away late monday night tuesday morning (11th) at the age of 95.

 She had been sick with possibly pneumonia and went very peacefully in her sleep after visiting with my Uncle, Grandma, Mom and Sister earlier in the day, I honestly thought it would be one of those long drawn out processes that I have seen so many times in the nursing home and was glad we and she didnt have to go through that.

My Grandma and Grandpa had a nice service for her on thursday.

It was the smallest funeral Id been to, but when you out live everyone that's expected! :) 

It was nice to meet one of her long time fiends and she mentioned that grandma and her had many good times and sometimes Flo would call into work "sick" :) heheee

despite how this may sound I was extremely sad but  I just keep thinking how lucky my family was to have her in such good health - mind and body- until her last day.

the below picture was from christmas this year

wish I could find the paramedics who volunteered that day to drive the ambulance that brought her over because Id let them know how much it meant to us to have her there

The last couple christmas' we went to the nursing home to have christmas with her. 

and this picture is from this summer, we celebrated her 95th birthday!

I guess I feel more blessed then sad!

Chasen had lots of questions but I was really happy with the way he handled it.

I explained to him before hand that everyone would be sad and he would see a lot of people crying that he normally wouldn't, but that it's ok to be sad and to cry because we will all miss her lots.

and that really seemed to help with him asking me about "why is so and so crying"

Chasen also did the sweetest thing EVER.

on valentine's day (the day after the funeral) we all wanted to go to the cemetery to see her so we loaded up in 3 cars and went down. It was really cold and windy but we stood out there for a bit and showed Ean and Chasen some of the other family (there isn't much, my last funeral {on my mom's side} was 13 years ago)

the flower's had froze perfectly and felt like plastic, we each picked a few and decided to head back to the car when Chasen said wait!

and he went to his car seat and pulled a bunch of petals out of his cup holder

{each great great grand kid got a white rose and dash destroyed his, but unbeknownst to me Chasen picked up all the petals}

and he started placing petals on her grave....(still makes me cry) and he walked around and handed each of us a few petals to lay down. So we all did with tears streaming down our faces. 

I really wish I had taken a picture of him laying the petals down but that image is forever in my mind!

Valentine's Day

We were in nebraska on valentines day and actually had planned to be there friday for my mom to watch the boys because we got a hotel room downtown and went to dinner and had planned to go out to some live music or something but watched the olympics at the hotel bar instead :)

Friday morning we gave the boys their gifts, a book and superhero water bottle with candy necklace

we also planted candy hearts thursday night with Lily and they grew into heart shaped suckers by morning ;)

Ean (who seriously has never ordered and had flowers delivered to me) ordered flowers on monday to be delivered on thursday.....

well, my great great grandma passed away and we had to leave on wednesday and he tried to change the address or shipping date but UPS was being awful so when we all got home on sunday I had beautiful frozen red roses :) 

the chocolate was still good though.

Proflowers did give him a full refund or said they would resend them. 

poor chasen has missed every school party this year

no christmas party because of weather 

and actually he was supposed to get to hand out his valentines today...but NO SCHOOL 6 inches of snow

so he will take them tomorrow.

Level 4 swim

Chasen passed his level 4 swim lesson!!

and starts level 5 tonight.

he is able to tred water, back float, back crawl- these are pretty rough for him

front crawl and front float are good though!!

It was really nice he was in a class with just 3 kids.

this little thing never sits still while we are watching!

Worlds Toughest Rodeo

Before the rodeo they had an hour long, free pre-show and the kids got to ride ponies 

sit on a bull

sign the rodeo clowns barrel; which had chasen star struck because just earlier that week he told me 

"mom when i grow up im gonna be a rodeo clown"

hungry cow poke

our seats were awesome front row with lots of leg room and room for the kids to stand

they had ostrich races which were funny to watch

what i thought was dashtyn's first cotton candy, but my mom gave him some at solon beef days a year ago!

either way he was a mess

whiplash, the dog riding, sheep herding, monkey

barrel racing, I told chasen I used to do that and he didnt believe me!

at one point things got a little crazy and dash grabbed chasen's hand

it was a long friday that started in des moines at 8am and ended in cedar rapids at 10pm

Science Center

after swimming on Friday morning we checked out and headed to the des moines science center

the boys loved it and had a lot of fun!

Chasen checking out different sizes of poo

if you pulled the lever the screen moved and made it look like you were going up in the hot air balloon, it made me sick

chasen building a rocket

i was not expecting snakes and almost screamed s

we were there for a couple hours then went to spaghetti works for lunch before the drive home, 

we picked up kevin around 4pm at  the kennel then went home to change so we could go to the rodeo, it was a fun filled Friday!!

Ramada Tropics in Des Moines

Britton had the week off from residency so we decided to meet up in Des Moines on Thursday afternoon at a water park!

we got there around 2 and swam until 5 when we got pizza for the boys then Britton and I had a dinner date!

then we just played in our rooms till bed time

Dashtyn loved "baby" Molly

The next morning we went down for breakfast at eh restaurant and it took over an hour to get our food and i was NOT busy, I can say this is the first time I never tipped.

we got the food to go so she didnt have to  clean up after us....but it was rediculious!!

dashtyn had syrup all the way down to his elbow

we swam for an hour and half before saying good bye to our BFF's 

and going ot the science center

Chasen and Ean raced down the big slide and dash loved watching them telling them "one more time"

getting warm in the hot tub

this was dashtyn last weekend at grand harbor in dubuque

and here is this weekend ean and chasen racing