Grandpa's Birthday....

Last weekend I went to my Grandpa's Birthday party.

He turned 100!♥

My Mom and my Grandpa at his 100th Birthday Party☺♥



The kiddos just love him and his heart just melts when they are around♥

Last Thursday morning I picked Mom up early and headed to the airport.

We flew into SeaTac and hung out for a couple of hours

waiting for my sister to fly in from Montana, then it was off to the car rental.

You take a shuttle bus a few blocks away to the building that houses all of the car rental companies.

We discussed it ahead of time and decided that I would be the one to drive.

My sister lives in rural Montana and has never driven in that type of a traffic situation,

and my mother... well,  let's just say... um ...it would be a cold day in hell...over and out!

So I bit the bullet☺

(My Honey programmed our GPS with all of the addresses

I knew we would be going to)

We got the rental car, got loaded, we had a bit of a line once we started to leave

so we were going to pull off the road and get organized once we got out of the garage.

HA!!  Um....nope.

The rental car garage SPITS you out onto the highway.

So here we are merging onto the highway

(I think it was Washington 5?)

still trying to turn on the GPS, it was raining (who knew) so I was trying to figure

out how to turn on the wipers in a rental car I have never driven before

and as I tried to look in the side view mirror in order to find a "hole"

 to merge into, I find myself looking directly at the pavement.

 SWEET!

The good news is... we didn't die☺

After that kind of start the rest of the weekend was a breeze in the driving department☺

I will tell you that at one point,  I did have to mention the fact that in Alaska,

we have 4, count them .... 4 ... 'major' highways

 in the ENTIRE state and during one of our outings

I had just changed highways five times in a five minute period.

It was a little weird.

The weekend was a bit of a whirlwind,

we only had about two days to spend visiting family we

hadn't seen in YEARS (too many years).

We got to spend quite a bit of time with Grandpa both days that we were there,

he tired easily, of course, but he was in good spirits☺

He was fully aware that he was celebrating his 100th!

Grandpa chatting with my brother Michael ~ his daughter Natalia
standing behind him☺

I have to say that my younger cousins, (none of us are that young anymore☺)

Jami and Dianna,  have become two of the most awesome

people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing!♥

All that they and their wonderful husbands do to make Grandpa

(and their Dad) 

 feel loved and cared for, while the rest of us are so far away,

 is just amazing♥

And I am so glad we were able to have some time together. 

And I hope that we all have the opportunity to actually

get together more often in the future.

(A lot more pics were taken, my cameras (yes two) sucked,

(maybe it was the operator?)

but everybody in the family had a camera and we have all pledged to share,

so hopefully I will share more pics in a later post☺)



Can't take a decent pic of a person from a few feet away,
 but put me on a plane and look out!