Rinse and Repeat

This is a repeat of a few posts I did about my mother-in-law.  

One when she passed away in November 2010. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog buddies. May we all be thankful for the wonderful people in our lives! My mother-in-law passed away on Tuesday. She died while in her wheelchair, being taken to play bingo, one of her favorite things to do besides Find-a-word puzzles. Her heart just stopped. She was 92 years old. Here's a picture of her and Rich the last time we saw her. Loved that beautiful smile. For this picture I said,"say cheese".

And for this picture I said, "say screw". 

She had a wonderful sense of humor and she loved to laugh! She was always a very proper and religious woman her whole life, but dementia made her a little sassy sometimes!

 I am thankful I had the privilege of being her daughter-in-law for more than 33 years. She will be missed.

And this was a post I did in October 2012 two years after she died. 

 Coming up this November it will be two years since my mother in law passed away.

On the day of her funeral my sister-in-law  handed me a envelope with a couple of notes in it that my MIL had written to me and to Rich many years ago and wanted us to have them after she was gone.

In one she admitted that she was upset when we got married. That kind of surprised me because she never let on in the least little bit. After having a chance to think about it, though, I could hardly blame her. We were way too young to get married at 21 and 20 years old.  Housekeeping was not my thing back then and it probably showed!

By the time we were married for 5 years we already had Chris and Shauna. We were a go-with-the-flow type of family that didn't worry too much about keeping any kind of schedule. Sometimes we went to the grocery store at 9:00 or later in the evening...taking our babies with us. She wasn't real impressed with that!

A couple of them were just little notes that she had jotted down after a holiday or some other time when we got  together and how glad she was to see how much we loved each other and how loving we were with our kids.

In spite of her earlier misgivings about us, she was always loving and gracious to me.

I'm glad she wrote these little notes for us. They are something that I treasure.

45th Anniversary Dinner

Yesterday was our 45th wedding anniversary and this year we went to Downtown Detroit again for dinner. Not to Andiamo's in the Renaissance Center like last year but to a restaurant called Parc.

It's located right on Campus Marcius Park in the heart of downtown. I didn't get a picture of the outside but this was our view out the window. 

That grey structure you see on the right center behind that guys head is a fountain and a huge Christmas tree sits atop it every Christmas. 

There's also an ice rink. I didn't get a lot of outside pictures because of course it was raining like it usually is when we go out for our anniversary! 

Note: On the day we got married 45 years ago it snowed like crazy, even though it had been in the 60's and 70's for the prior week! That's Michigan for you!

Anyway, I had the chicken, roasted vegetables and red skinned potatoes. 

The presentation wasn't all that great but it tasted fantastic! 

We toasted to our long marriage!   

Cheers to 45 years!

I would have loved to walk around a little but it was raining too much and we got wet just walking the few blocks back to our car! 

It was a fun night though! 

Until the next time stay safe and well, my friends! 

Random Boring Stuff

There is not a lot going on right now. We are finally starting to get some warmer weather and the last few days I have been able to walk outside on clear sidewalks. 

Shauna sent me this picture of Levi showing off his recycle truck that he made from magnetic blocks. 

In this picture I see a glimpse the kind young man he will be when he's grown. Just the way he's standing and the sweet little smile on his face! 

Chris sent me this picture of his Christmas cactus blooming again. 

It blooms every 3 months! Must be the perfect environment for it! 

Speaking of Chris, he is coming into town on the 24th. We haven't seen him since November right before Thanksgiving so it will be nice to see him again! 

Work is going well. I've been working some extra hours which is fine because we are planning a road trip at the beginning of April, and I need the extra money for gas! 

This Friday we are going to dinner at a restaurant called Parc in Downtown Detroit to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. I really would have liked to go on a cruise but I'm not doing any of that kind of travel until after all the mask mandates have been lifted. Having to wear a mask while walking around a cruise ship seems to suck all of the fun out of it for me! 

We had dinner with my brothers and their wives last Friday the 11th to celebrate what would have been my dad's 90th birthday. We'll do the same for my mom in September. It was nice to see my brothers. We don't get together nearly often enough anymore! 

Well that's pretty much it for now. 

Until the next time stay safe and well, my friends! 

P.S I have finally enabled replies on my comments.  If you asked a question in the comments please come back and check. I will answer as soon as I can. 

Back To The Same Old

One thing I want to do is to answer a few questions and address a few comments that were made on my February Photo A Day posts.  I'm just going to mention names but not tag anyone because I am too lazy! I hope that is okay. 

For the post with the photos of mine and Rich's parents. Betty asked if they had long marriages. My parents were married for 48 years before my mom passed away. 

Rich's parents were married for I think about 35 years. His dad was married before and had three kids from his first wife and was about 50 when Rich was born. Rich was only 23 when his dad passed away. 

Andrea was trying to figure out how many cats we have. We have three cats; Smudge, Max and Coco. Smudge is 17 years old and Max and Coco are 15 so they are senior cats. 

Which brings me to why we couldn't let the Husky Kona into our house when she was on our deck. The cats were already freaked out just having her on the porch and Kona was very excited so there was no way we would have let her in! We did however go outside and play with her while we were waiting for her parents to pick her up! It was snowing pretty heavily but not very cold out. She was having a blast running around in all the snow and her heavy coat was keeping her nice and warm! She would run down the street and when I called her name she would run right back to me! It probably took about 15 minutes for her owners to come and get her! She really is a wonderful dog! 

Debby asked if we still have wolves in Michigan.  We have grey wolves, but they are mostly located in the northern part of the state.  I think at the moment it is forbidden to hunt them I'm not sure. It seems to change with every administration! There is a permanent wolf population on Isle Royale, though, to keep the moose population down!  We do have a lot of coyotes around here though and we see and hear them quite often! 

Ginny asked how far we live from Lake Michigan. It's about a 3-hour drive to Lake Michigan. We live much closer to Lake Huron, so we go there more.  We love Lake Michigan for the beautiful sunsets and Lake Huron for the beautiful sunrises! 

Betty asked if my Equinox would be in the shop for long. It was only in the shop for two days. Since the other guy's insurance company was paying for my rental car, they made sure the shop got it repaired pretty fast. I was glad to get rid of the rental car, though.  Yuck!  I mean, it was a rental that had 56 thousand miles on it and all I could think was how many people had driven it. It kind of grossed me out so I hardly wanted to touch anything! I'm weird like that!

I got my car fixed in time to turn it in and lease a new one. 

It's a 2022 Equinox. 

And lastly the results from my mammogram are all good for another year.  

I leave you with a picture of Max and Smudge. 

Laying together on the bed we have by the heat register on the floor! Probably dreaming up new ways to torment their sister!

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!