Sad farewell

Anyone want to share a fun memory of LinDee. We pray for all the Hokansons at this time!

Dad and I went to McGrath's for seafood in memory of Mom on February 25th. We enjoyed sharing memories about her and I enjoyed a Raspberry lemonade in her honor!!! I hope you can write a few memories about her here or email them to me!!

Sunday Memories

I wanted to share some of the thoughts Dad shared with me after Sunday dinner. We started talking about his Dad, Grandpa Asplund. He died before I was born (Becky was the last grandchild in our family, although I don't think she has any memories of him). He died at age 58.

I have always been very curious about his personality. So I asked. "What was he like?" Dad was reflective in his answer. "My dad was surprising, He could ride a horse and herd cattle and while on the back of a horse he could recite "Lady on the Lake". I always had the impression he was a very formal man. Dad said this was not the case, although he was strict (more so than Grandmother) but he reinforced his rules by showing deep dissappointment when his children misbehaved. Dad has a very vivid memory of his father crying when he felt that his children had not lived up to the standards he had hoped. "This was very effective," dad said, "because we loved him and that caught our attention".

"I know Grandma loved to read, Did your dad read?". I asked. "Both my parents loved to read, but they read differently. My mother read like a school teacher, she liked to extract the social conversation that would come from a good read. My father read like a professor of literature. He loved the deeper meanings of novels and history and liked profound truths. He was not much interested in social conversations that would come about from literature."

I had always thought my grandparents were very social people. Dad clarified this. "My mother was very social and always wanted to be at the heart of a social circle (Happy hunters, book clubs or Bridge clubs). While Grandpa Asplund was very polite and participated in all the activities, he was also notorious for finding a quite corner and reading a book (WHO ELSE DO we know that is like that--now I know where Dad gets it from!!)

Some fun tidbits!!!

LinDee

For those of you who don't know, LinDee was given terrible news at his last Dr. appointment. The cancer is so aggressive and treatment will only buy him a little time. They have given him 4-6 months to live. We love him. It is hard to imagine a day with out some sort of email communication from LinDee (almost always funny). Try to think of anything you can do for Annette and LinDee as they face the next few months together. WE LOVE YOU LINDEE!!!!!!! It is times like this when I wish I owned a billboard to shout out to all the people that drive by, oblivious to hardships that have fallen on people and say..."HEY, this great guy is having a tough time" or this person died and you missed knowing him/her....Wouldn't it be great to slow the world down a bit and be able to celebrate and help each life...ESPECIALLY today LinDee, we want to slow the world down for you!!! Our thoughts and prayers are with you!!

Concerning the discovery Q and a friend made of a stinky caterpillar last summer

A: Are you sure it wasn't you who was stinky?

Q: Well, it didn't smell like armpits.

invitation....

We would love to have you/some/all come to dinner at our home. Please respond back here and we can make plans for a Sunday to share some food fun and memories with Grandpa. Let me know what is good for you guys.

Liz

A Christmas Story I Told My Kids This Week

Once upon a time, a long time ago, before the Internet, there were things called "catalogs." There were three amazing stores that sometimes sent these "catalogs" to people's home, named JC Penney, Sears/Roebuck, and Montgomery/Wards (aka. Monkey Wards). When I was a little girl, these "catalogs" had special editions known as "Christmas catalogs" that were filled with wonders. My sisters and I would sit and stare at the pages and pages of everything from matching robe and pajama sets to sparkly holiday dresses to canopy beds to spiral staircases to Easy Bake Ovens to train sets to outdoor pools to indoor pool tables, and our heads were NOT filled with sugar plums, but rather with unabated covetous consumerist hunger. We WANTED these things, in fact, were were pretty sure that we needed a lot of them. We would circle the pictures, and make stars by the truly awesome stuff, and show our mom, and show our mom, and show our mom. Usually, at some point or other, she would say something about "choices" or "limits" or possibly "self-restraint" (when we got old enough to understand that, sort of). At some point, we'd make a list, and it wouldn't usually include everything we'd circled... usually. And we knew that, come Christmas morning, not everything we circled would be there, under the tree, or on the chair, or the couch. But we hoped; deep down, we hoped.