December 2010
Dear Friends and Family-
I initially wrote this letter in November when the weather was fair, the holidays were just around the corner and all things seemed bright and shiny. Since then we’ve had about 2 feet of snow (seriously, it’s a little ridiculous at this point) and the holidays are upon us. Also, and most importantly, we lost my Dad, the kids’ beloved PopPop, to complications following a sudden heart attack. Its difficult to even write about this since the loss is so recent. It would be easy to spend the letter talking about all the things that we are going to miss and how hard this holiday season will be. However, that would not be true to my Dad’s never-flagging good spirits or to his love of Christmas. So, here is our Christmas letter, filled with things that I wish I could share with my Dad. He would have liked this wrap up of the year very much.
Daniel, who is 8 this year, is in 2nd grade. He played baseball this summer/spring and continued with fall baseball after school started. He loves the game and we get a real kick out of watching him play. All of his Minnesota relatives made it to at least one game this fall and he loved having his very own cheering section made up of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Of course, his little brother is his biggest fan…Josh would stand right there behind home plate, his face squished into the chain link fence and watch Daniel’s every at-bat. Daniel is really into Harry Potter (he’s working on book #2 right now), Legos and Wii. As you can imagine, with the Harry Potter Lego Wii game we hit the trifecta. Daniel will had his First Reconciliation last month and will have his First Communion next spring. Helping your child prepare for these milestone events really makes you examine your own commitment to your spiritual and community life, something that it is all too easy to ignore as we sprint our way through our crazy, busy days.
Speaking of crazy and busy, Jason has had a really fun year! Our wonderful nanny Brenda decided to try something new and we had a major lifestyle overhaul when she left. Jason changed his work schedule so that in addition to being home with the kids on Mondays, he gets them off to school and coordinates their afterschool care every day. As a member of the Lakeville Planning Commission he is actively participating in and helping guide the future of our community through bi-monthly meetings and other activities. He is the Treasurer for the PTO at the kids’ school, a position that has brought him more than a little heartburn and me more than a little amusement…I am pretty sure he would agree that he had no idea what he was getting into when he volunteered! Jason was also a Head Election Monitor and was an Election Judge in the Minnesota governor’s race recount (yeah, yeah, we know…what the heck is going on up here with the election recounts? ) As you may know, Jason celebrated his 40th Birthday this year (thank you for all your birthday wishes!!) and is working on the next phase of his company’s life cycle. Every time I wonder why it’s taking so long I remind myself of all the things that Jason does for me, for our family and for our community and I marvel that the business is able to move forward at all! We are hoping that 2011 will bring concrete, tangible results so we can help everyone answer the question “what exactly is his business again?” by just pointing to it and saying “it's THIS!”
Macey lost her first two teeth a few weeks ago and had fun completing the “Tooth Fairy” worksheets to share with her kindergarten class. She turned 6 in October and played spring and fall soccer-she is a little superstar (not to brag, of course, but that’s what these letters are all about, isn’t it?). At one game this fall some of our team parents heard some of the other team’s parents talking about the “little one that we need to watch out for” referring to our Macey. While she played with her fellow kindergarteners this fall, we’re going to “play her up” next spring and let her play with the first graders in order to give her a slightly more challenging season. It’s too easy to get complacent when you score multiple goals in every game! Macey loves her longer hair (she’s been growing it out since the spring…we’ll see how long it gets!) and hates corduroys. She loves riding the bus, eating lunch at school and doing projects at Kinderzone…she still thinks her big brother hung the moon, though she is less and less inclined to let him know that as time goes by. As I suppose was inevitable, Macey discovered her dramatic side this year and is prone to acting on the extremes of her emotions, whether they be excitement, fear, delight, anger or exuberance. It’s been a challenge on our part to figure out how to respond to some of these demonstrations!
I have had a quiet year…which, I might add, is a good thing! I am still at Green Tree as the Tax Director and enjoying my work (well, as much as you can enjoy taxes…you know what I mean). Fun things I did this year include a trip to the beach with Macey, Josh and my parents last spring, buying a Nook and reading Gabaldon’s entire Outlander series (thanks for the recommendation Cathy…I honestly can’t point to WHY I was so obsessed with this series but I could not put it down until I read the last word of the last book…I will even admit to looking at the author’s website to see when the next book comes out!), our annual family Beach Trip where we spread 28 family and friends between two houses and a fun trip to Chicago with another mom and her two kids who are Macey and Daniel’s age. Also, if you have been following my blog (ok, so I blogged this year too!!) you know that we put in a garden and I had adventure after adventure out there in the dirt. We ate and shared tons of cucumbers and tomatoes this summer, we made one of our pumpkins (ok, our only pumpkin-but it was a good one!) into a Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween, and we were still harvesting carrots in November and ate the last of them for Thanksgiving dinner. We’re JUST LIKE the pilgrims!
Josh will be two in January and is in that fun stage between baby and boy. He is (finally!) starting to talk-he calls his brother “Danel” just like Macey did, he calls his sister “Mamie” and refers to himself as either “Bubba” or “Joshie”. Very cute. Josh loves to watch Curious George, to dance, and to get showers ( and who doesn’t love a good shower?). He is enrolled at a day care on the weekdays when Jason does not have him at home and he loves “school”. He has very distinct opinions about how things should be and will express his displeasure on occasion by holding his breath until he falls down. Talk about a conflict as a parent…on the one hand its appalling to watch your one year old do the silent scream and then fall down because he won’t take a breath…on the other hand, you know very well reacting to this behavior only makes it more likely that he will repeat it, so what to do? Lucky for us, these spells are few and far between so we just ignore them and offer them as anecdotes on being the parent of a toddler! Josh has a funny sense of humor and can be counted on to kiss anyone who is crying. He is very generous with the hugs and kisses and loves to snuggle with his daddy in the mornings before the day really gets started.
We are hopeful that our 2010 Holiday Letter finds you enjoying your Holiday Season.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love,Cindy, Jason, Daniel, Macey and Josh
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Flashback to 2006: Christmas Holiday at the Beach
In going through some old pictures recently I came upon this series from our 2006 Winter Beach trip. I remember this trip well because it was the year we had a 10:30 Christmas morning direct flight from MSP to RDU. The idea was to hit the ground in Raliegh by 2:00 and be at the NC beach by 5:00 Christmas evening. Instead, we had the Trip from Beyond where over the course of the 30 hours following our original departure time we flew on 4 different planes through 4 different airports and spent Christmas night locked down in the Norfolk airport with only a water fountain to sustain us and a plane full of other passengers. Macey was 2 and Daniel was 4. It was "delightful" as you can imagine. Anyway, once we arrived at the beach the evening of the day after Christmas we managed to have a really great time. This was all pre-blog so these pictures have not been posted before. Here are some from that week. Its hard to believe that our big kids were ever this little!!! Enjoy!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
December 2010
On December 9, 2010 I received a phone call from my sister Carey telling me that my Dad had had a really bad night and I might need to come down there to NC. A few hours later she told me that yes, I should get on a plane. Luckily I listened to her and flew out a few hours later. Turns out he had had a massive heart attack resulting in damage to 69% of his heart. I spent that evening at the hospital with my mom, my brother and my sisters and then spent the night at the hospital with my Dad. From when my mom left in the late evening until 2:30 in the morning I was in my dad’s room in CICU and worked with the nurses there to keep him comfortable. He was uncomfortable and agitated and occasionally in pain but was fully himself in terms of communicating. He was talking and laughing all night long. I told him all the stories I could think of about my kids and work and recent goings on in Minnesota. Some of the time I just sat there and read my book while he tried to rest. It was a long night and my sister Kim took over at 3:00 am. I am so thankful I made the trip to NC and that I had those few hours with my Dad. He died the next morning from complications related to a massive heart attack. Right up until the end I had no thought that he was going to die. Though hooked up to machines and ivs and monitors he did not look pale or sick to me. He looked and acted just a vital as he always was and I to this day still have a hard time reconciling my experience that night with his death the next morning. My mom and all five of his children were there and were hanging out with him in the days and hours before he died and I know that he enjoyed having all of us around.
The day before the funeral I drove from Kilmarnock, VA to Richmond to pick up my husband Jason and our kids from the airport. They had flown in from Minnesota, just missing the bitter winter storm that shut down the airport 2 hours after their flight took off. On the drive to Richmond I could hardly see the road, not because of the wet weather but because of the tears that would not stop flowing. During that drive I wrote my Dad’s eulogy on a notepad from a hotel in Las Vegas. There were two or three scribbled lines on each page and I even used the back of the pages. Not being able to see what I was writing since I was driving, I was not sure I’d actually be able to read my notes by the time I got to Richmond and lo and behold I was just about right. However, those few hours on the road were enough to put together the outline of what I wanted to say. We spent that night at my Uncle Booper's house and I lay awake most of the night going over the speech in my head and refining it. I did all the crying I could stand that night while my kids slept peacefully around me. Every time I thought of them growing up without their PopPop I'd get started again. I don’t think I slept at all that night.
I don’t think that I did my dad justice but we can only do what we can do. Here is the gist of the Eulogy as I remember it. I am sure it’s not quite right but it’s the best I can do a few days later. If it’s not what I said exactly, it’s what I meant to say and so it will work.
There are so many things to think about. They keep coming up. When Uncle Frankie mentioned the Eulogy and asked who should do it I thought: Oh no, one more thing to think about. I thought about what we should do and as I do when I am confused and don’t know what to do, I called Jason and asked him what he thought. We talked about different people and some different ideas. Before we could decide anything someone needed something and we had to go. After we hung up I decided I would give the Eulogy. So here we are. I’m going to give this for myself, and for my kids a little bit too. I can’t believe he is gone. Even here today when Josh was being antsy and making noise I thought “where’s Dad? Give Josh to him and he’ll keep him occupied”. Then I remembered oh yeah, Dad’s over there, he can’t take Josh.
When thinking about getting up here to talk, I panicked a little bit, because he was my dad and I did not know how everyone else saw him. How could I talk about him? He was a great dad, but that does not tell the whole story.
He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of husband he was. But then I remembered that my mom told me a few days ago that she could not be too sad, because she had 43 good years with him, and what was sad about that? So maybe I have some idea of what kind of husband he was. And then I look at my husband, and my sisters’ husbands. And my Dad was our first and best example of what a husband should be. And I look at these guys and I think I know exactly what kind of husband he was.
He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of brother he was. But I know that his brother and sisters and his brothers and sisters in law are here, so shouldn’t I be able to talk about him as a brother? Then I thought about my uncle Wayne and my aunt Brenda and my aunt Mary Kay and they loved him so much they did not even call him Billy but gave him his own special name, Bibbie. And you all know how much he loved babies. Aunt Brenda and Aunt Mary Kay were his first babies. So maybe we know what kind of brother he was. And then I look at my brother and my sisters and I think about the kind of relationship he fostered in us. And I think about how he made sure we all got together and went to the beach together every summer. And I think about how he would make about 600 trips up and down the stairs of the beach house unpacking that car every time and I think that was a sign of how important family was. And I think I know what kind of brother he was.
He was my father so I don’t know what kind of son he was. But I know what kind of father he was to his own son, so I think that tells us something. And I only saw my dad cry twice in my life, and one of those times was at my grandmom’s funeral. So that tells us a little about what kind of son he was. My dad was always positive and he never felt sorry for himself. No matter what he was going through he looked at it the best way possible. Through all his health issues I never once heard him say anything negative or heard him be upset by what he was going through. The only thing I ever heard him say was with respect to his dad. When he lost his leg, he was so adamant that PopPop, his father, never find out because he knew how upset his dad would be. I think there was a wedding and a funeral and through it all he made sure that his dad never found out that he had lost his leg. I told my sisters the other night that I hope he has his leg back in heaven otherwise he’ll be ducking and dodging his dad for all eternity so he never has to find out about his leg. So maybe we do know what kind of a son he was.
He was my father so I don’t know what kind of a friend he was. But there are friends here, and I think that tells us something. About 5 years ago my dad called me and told me he ran into a friend of mine at the grocery store. This woman approached him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you remember me?” Now, this was a girl that I was friends with in elementary school so he did not recognize her. “I’m Beth Kelly” she said. “I used to come to your house for sleepovers all the time.” Those were the kinds of relationships that he fostered in us, an open house and a welcoming home where kids would remember such things 25 years later. So maybe we do know what kind of a friend he was.
Now I want to tell a couple of other things about my dad. Dad loved to fish. He'd pack those fishing poles up in the car, they'd be hanging out the back window as they drove down the hiway. Even if they were only going for the weekend and my mom would say "we don't need those fishing rods" he'd pack them anyway just in case. He taught me how to cast and reel and reel that pole in-I don't know all the right words but he taught me to fish. He taught me and all my siblings and probably some of you how to fish. And to this day, as old as I am, he never once gave me a hard time about not wanting to touch the bait. To this day, as recently as last summer, he would stop whatever he was doing, even if it was reeling in the biggest fish in the world, and bait my hook for me. That’s the kind of Dad he was.
My Dad used to carry a big wad of keys on a leather strap on his belt buckle. To this day, and I am sure for the rest of my life, whenever someone walks by and I hear keys jingling, I look up and think “Is that my Dad walking by?”
I have one final story to tell. And this is a true story from the other night. I don’t think any of my family even knows this story. The other night when I was in Dad’s room in the middle of the night he sat up and scooted to the end of the bed, trying to get comfortable. I called the nurse in to help me get him situated back in the bed the right way. His nurse was on a break so it was a different nurse who came in to help. We got him moved back up to the top of the bed and got his bedclothes straightened out and the tubes and wires back in place and he was still tossing and turning. The nurse looked right at him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you know why you are here?” Dad said “Yes.” “Mr. Jefferson,” she said, “you are here to get better. Your body and your heart need to rest and you can’t get rest if you are moving around like this all the time. You need to lay here and be still and let your body heal.” Dad, being Dad, could not just let that go. “This bed is so uncomfortable.” He says. “ And I am an active person. I am used to being up and around. I can’t stand just laying here and doing nothing.” “Mr. Jefferson” she says, “do you believe in the Lord?” Dad responds “Yes.” She told him:“Even the Lord rested on the seventh day. Now be like the Lord and get some rest.”
Well, Dad, this is your seventh day. This is your day of rest. May you rest in peace.
The day before the funeral I drove from Kilmarnock, VA to Richmond to pick up my husband Jason and our kids from the airport. They had flown in from Minnesota, just missing the bitter winter storm that shut down the airport 2 hours after their flight took off. On the drive to Richmond I could hardly see the road, not because of the wet weather but because of the tears that would not stop flowing. During that drive I wrote my Dad’s eulogy on a notepad from a hotel in Las Vegas. There were two or three scribbled lines on each page and I even used the back of the pages. Not being able to see what I was writing since I was driving, I was not sure I’d actually be able to read my notes by the time I got to Richmond and lo and behold I was just about right. However, those few hours on the road were enough to put together the outline of what I wanted to say. We spent that night at my Uncle Booper's house and I lay awake most of the night going over the speech in my head and refining it. I did all the crying I could stand that night while my kids slept peacefully around me. Every time I thought of them growing up without their PopPop I'd get started again. I don’t think I slept at all that night.
I don’t think that I did my dad justice but we can only do what we can do. Here is the gist of the Eulogy as I remember it. I am sure it’s not quite right but it’s the best I can do a few days later. If it’s not what I said exactly, it’s what I meant to say and so it will work.
There are so many things to think about. They keep coming up. When Uncle Frankie mentioned the Eulogy and asked who should do it I thought: Oh no, one more thing to think about. I thought about what we should do and as I do when I am confused and don’t know what to do, I called Jason and asked him what he thought. We talked about different people and some different ideas. Before we could decide anything someone needed something and we had to go. After we hung up I decided I would give the Eulogy. So here we are. I’m going to give this for myself, and for my kids a little bit too. I can’t believe he is gone. Even here today when Josh was being antsy and making noise I thought “where’s Dad? Give Josh to him and he’ll keep him occupied”. Then I remembered oh yeah, Dad’s over there, he can’t take Josh.
When thinking about getting up here to talk, I panicked a little bit, because he was my dad and I did not know how everyone else saw him. How could I talk about him? He was a great dad, but that does not tell the whole story.
He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of husband he was. But then I remembered that my mom told me a few days ago that she could not be too sad, because she had 43 good years with him, and what was sad about that? So maybe I have some idea of what kind of husband he was. And then I look at my husband, and my sisters’ husbands. And my Dad was our first and best example of what a husband should be. And I look at these guys and I think I know exactly what kind of husband he was.
He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of brother he was. But I know that his brother and sisters and his brothers and sisters in law are here, so shouldn’t I be able to talk about him as a brother? Then I thought about my uncle Wayne and my aunt Brenda and my aunt Mary Kay and they loved him so much they did not even call him Billy but gave him his own special name, Bibbie. And you all know how much he loved babies. Aunt Brenda and Aunt Mary Kay were his first babies. So maybe we know what kind of brother he was. And then I look at my brother and my sisters and I think about the kind of relationship he fostered in us. And I think about how he made sure we all got together and went to the beach together every summer. And I think about how he would make about 600 trips up and down the stairs of the beach house unpacking that car every time and I think that was a sign of how important family was. And I think I know what kind of brother he was.
He was my father so I don’t know what kind of son he was. But I know what kind of father he was to his own son, so I think that tells us something. And I only saw my dad cry twice in my life, and one of those times was at my grandmom’s funeral. So that tells us a little about what kind of son he was. My dad was always positive and he never felt sorry for himself. No matter what he was going through he looked at it the best way possible. Through all his health issues I never once heard him say anything negative or heard him be upset by what he was going through. The only thing I ever heard him say was with respect to his dad. When he lost his leg, he was so adamant that PopPop, his father, never find out because he knew how upset his dad would be. I think there was a wedding and a funeral and through it all he made sure that his dad never found out that he had lost his leg. I told my sisters the other night that I hope he has his leg back in heaven otherwise he’ll be ducking and dodging his dad for all eternity so he never has to find out about his leg. So maybe we do know what kind of a son he was.
He was my father so I don’t know what kind of a friend he was. But there are friends here, and I think that tells us something. About 5 years ago my dad called me and told me he ran into a friend of mine at the grocery store. This woman approached him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you remember me?” Now, this was a girl that I was friends with in elementary school so he did not recognize her. “I’m Beth Kelly” she said. “I used to come to your house for sleepovers all the time.” Those were the kinds of relationships that he fostered in us, an open house and a welcoming home where kids would remember such things 25 years later. So maybe we do know what kind of a friend he was.
Now I want to tell a couple of other things about my dad. Dad loved to fish. He'd pack those fishing poles up in the car, they'd be hanging out the back window as they drove down the hiway. Even if they were only going for the weekend and my mom would say "we don't need those fishing rods" he'd pack them anyway just in case. He taught me how to cast and reel and reel that pole in-I don't know all the right words but he taught me to fish. He taught me and all my siblings and probably some of you how to fish. And to this day, as old as I am, he never once gave me a hard time about not wanting to touch the bait. To this day, as recently as last summer, he would stop whatever he was doing, even if it was reeling in the biggest fish in the world, and bait my hook for me. That’s the kind of Dad he was.
My Dad used to carry a big wad of keys on a leather strap on his belt buckle. To this day, and I am sure for the rest of my life, whenever someone walks by and I hear keys jingling, I look up and think “Is that my Dad walking by?”
I have one final story to tell. And this is a true story from the other night. I don’t think any of my family even knows this story. The other night when I was in Dad’s room in the middle of the night he sat up and scooted to the end of the bed, trying to get comfortable. I called the nurse in to help me get him situated back in the bed the right way. His nurse was on a break so it was a different nurse who came in to help. We got him moved back up to the top of the bed and got his bedclothes straightened out and the tubes and wires back in place and he was still tossing and turning. The nurse looked right at him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you know why you are here?” Dad said “Yes.” “Mr. Jefferson,” she said, “you are here to get better. Your body and your heart need to rest and you can’t get rest if you are moving around like this all the time. You need to lay here and be still and let your body heal.” Dad, being Dad, could not just let that go. “This bed is so uncomfortable.” He says. “ And I am an active person. I am used to being up and around. I can’t stand just laying here and doing nothing.” “Mr. Jefferson” she says, “do you believe in the Lord?” Dad responds “Yes.” She told him:“Even the Lord rested on the seventh day. Now be like the Lord and get some rest.”
Well, Dad, this is your seventh day. This is your day of rest. May you rest in peace.
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