This week end my closest co worker got married in Duluth, Minnesota. So my husband and kids and I drove up, stopped in some small towns along the way, went to her wedding, and her traditional church-basement luncheon afterwards. We then drove to downtown Duluth with some other co workers and hit a bar and grill. It was so fun, I gave the kids a bunch of quarters for games, and we all just ate and talked . We don't get to go out like that very often.

We all stayed in the same hotel, my kids swam for what felt like about an hour, that night, in the hotel pool. Then we played The Worst Case Scenario board game and slept great, my daughter and I in one double bed, and my son and husband in the other.

The next morning we had hotel breakfast including Belgian waffles, and drove back to downtown Duluth for more gift-shop tourism, before we drove home. The weather was great, although it was windy in Duluth. We paid the neighbor girl to feed our dog and let her out in the yard a few times. We were only gone about 30 hours, but it felt like longer. It felt so great to get out of town away from everything and just spend time with each other. We almost never even put on our hotel room tv, except we watched a cartoon as we were getting dressed in the morning.

My son has already asked me if we can go back and do the same thing again, and we just got back yesterday!

2 more of my co workers have given 2 weeks' notice. That leaves 4 of us to get the phone. I can remember when there were 8 of us. In fact I can remember when there were 12 of us. I told my manager, great, now I'm the "team lead" of almost no one!

About 2 weeks ago my husband and I planned a party at our house. We scheduled it for Friday, May 5. We called and emailed our friends, told our co workers, and told everyone to invite their friends.

That Saturday we drove the 5 hour trip along Highway 29 to my in-laws' in Green Bay. They wanted to take my husband and his brother, and us wives, to a play. That allowed us to visit my husband's 90 year old grandmother and 99 1/2 year old grandfather in the nursing home. They'd been married 71 years. The nursing home was making an exception and allowing them to share a room. We'd been told Grandma had not been well, but when we arrived, my children were each trying to prove that they were taller than each other, and she was laughing at them, from her bed.

Then just 3 days later, back at home, we got a phone call saying Grandma had died. Her funeral would be Saturday, May 6. We decided not to cancel our Friday, May 5 party, because by now we had no idea who knew about it, and couldn't call guests to cancel it. So we spent all that week cleaning house. Friday night 9 adults came, mostly my co workers and our old friends from college. We invited 6 sets of neighbors, but only 1 came. Another neighbor family sent 4 of their kids ages 4 through 9 to our house, but the adults didn’t' come, themselves. The party itself went really well, we had some really good chili and got to talk to our friends. Unexpectedly, toward the end, the last two guests and our whole family ended up spending the rest of the party in my 12 year old daughter's bedroom so the guests could take turns sitting on the edge of her bed and playing her guitar! She loved that ! The last guest left around 11 pm.

My alarm woke me at 4:30 Saturday morning. We all dressed in our funeral clothes, Left the house at about 5:15 am. Drove straight, got Burger King breakfast food in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and ate it in the car, on the way. We probably passed about 20 dead deer along Highway 29, and had a total of 5 lives ones cross our path on the way there. We arrived in Green Bay just minutes before the funeral was scheduled to start.We drove past my husband's parents so we could put our dog in their garage. Then we drove straight to the church and pulled in to the parking lot just 15 minutes before the funeral.

She was laid out, at the front of the church, in an open casket. Her 99 1/2 year old husband had to sit in his wheel chair next to her all morning, what a chore! She really didn't look like herself. My 7 year old son wanted to know why her dead body was wearing her glasses. I didn't have a good explanation for that. They had a traditional Catholic mass, and a traditional midwestern post-funeral buffet luncheon in their church hall, complete with baked beans and orange jello.

Then everyone drove to the local small Catholic cemetary. We were their to bury my husband's grandma, but everyone ran around the cemetary looking for their other friends' and relatives' graves. In some ways the luncheon and the graveside service was more like a family reunion than a funeral. But I think in a lot of people's minds, Grandma's funeral may have been today, but in their minds she really died 13 years ago when she had her stroke that paralized her and made her mute. As is so often the case, they just left the casket above ground, next to her plot , and everyone just drove away.

That evening , my husband and I were able to show my in-laws, his siblings and spouses, a video taped interview we did with Grandma and Grandpa, a little over 13 years ago. Everyone laughed every time the video showed how skinny we both were back then! But it showed a younger, healthier Grandma and Grandpa, telling their life stories, in good health, laughing and telling jokes. My father in law kept the video tape for now, and he's going to take it somplace to have it converted to DVD's he can give to relatives. I'm sorry we didn’t show this to everyone sooner.

Sunday noon, we drove to visit my husband's 99 1/2 year old Grandpa in the nursing home. He lived in his own home with his other adult son, up until only about 2 months ago, but he fell and shattered his hip abaout 2 months ago and has been in a wheel chair ever since then. He shared his nursing home room with his own wife until last week. We sat around a table with him and he was very alert and asking about our jobs and clearly had a very good memory. I got a really bad feeling on my way out that I might never see him again. Of course I've thought that before, and been wrong.

We drove 5 hours home, made it home around 7 pm. We arrived home to a very clean house, because we'd really scrubbed it down, for the party . Why can't we keep it that way all the time? And we came home to a house full of party food! We gave the kids their baths, and each took a bath ourselves. It just seeems like so long since we weren't rushing to do something.