I’m alive, I swear. I know it’s been ages since I’ve had a real post, and I apologize. There’s just a lot going on in my world, and not all of it I can talk about here. So I’ve been keeping to myself a bit.

 Last month my parents, sister, and I all went to Ohio for my grandpa’s memorial service. It was the worst day of my whole life. It didn’t help that we took a red eye on Thursday night, where I couldn’t sleep on the plane, and I got almost no sleep Friday night either. So by Saturday morning I looked like a zombie. The memorial was nice, and awful all at the same time. I felt like someone had punched me in the gut the entire time I sat there. Grandpa left behind a wife, 4 of 5 kids (his eldest daughter passed away in 2001), 8 grandkids, and two great-grandkids. Most of us went up and said a little something about him. A memory, or a poem, or just a few words about the kind of man he was. It was so very hard to listen to. It’s almost a month later, and I still can’t write about it without tearing up. The worst part, for me, was not my own speech, but watching my dad read his. I’ve never seen him cry. Ever. He got choked up at my wedding during his speech, but I don’t recall him crying. He’s a very mellow man, and not at all prone to emotion. But Saturday was understandably different. He cried. A lot. And that hurt me more than anything else.

After the service, we headed out to my aunt’s house for a family get together. That was of higher spirits, as it was a family reunion of sorts. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, grandkids, moms, and dads milled around the huge property. It was actually really great to see. My dad got to visit with a lot of the relatives he hasn’t seen in a long while; some in more than 30 years. I got to hear a whole bunch of really great stories about my dad as a teen/young adult. He was quite the character! My aunt and her husband breed mastiffs, and they had a 5 week old litter that they brought out for us to play with. All of them were bigger than Mia is now, and she’s almost 5 years old! They were so cuddly and cute, I wanted to take them all home. That is, of course, until I saw how monstrous they become as full grown adults. They’re huge!

That’s my cousin’s dog Rufus. The top picture was him as a baby (about the same age as the puppies we played with), and the bottom is him full grown. He’s 3 now and weighs about 200 pounds. He’s a total doll, but I think I’ll stick with my 16 pound pug.

 How do you say no to that face?