Happy Birthday Grandmother!

This is my wonderful grandmother and today is her 96th birthday!!! She has been a very special person in my life and I love her very much. We don't get to see each other very much these days since she lives several states away but I think of her almost every day.

• Grandma was and is my knitting influence. If it could be knit then she could knit it. She had this amazing cabled white wool coat with an awesome red lining that she knit. She always wore it in the winter and I was fascinated by it. She taught me to knit when I was an early teenager but I am sorry to say that there was a LOOOOOONG gap between learning to knit and picking up my pointy sticks again in 2006. She knit "Continental" or "German" method which made her wickedly fast. She could knit and talk or watch TV and not look at her hands and things came out beautifully. Evidently her sister, Margaret, could do the same thing. That is still amazing to me. I am so not there yet.
  
• Grandma knew that I loved lettuce (still do for that matter) and many times when we came to visit she would have an entire head of lettuce all washed and ready for me. I could eat as much as I wanted. I can still remember eating the crisp, sweet leaves. Sorry, I know some people cringe at the thought of plain old iceberg lettuce but that stuff is like candy to me.
• There were several years when I would spend a couple of weeks with Grandma and Grandpa in the summer time. They lived in Wisconsin at the time (Grandpa was a minister in a TINY church). I loved those times. We picked strawberries, we read books, we played in the lake at my aunt's cottage. It was great to lay in bed at night, with the window open and listen to the sounds of the country, especially the wind in the fields across the road.
• my grandparent's house always smelled the same, no matter what house it was it always smelled the same. In fact, I have several pieces of furniture that belonged to Grandma and Grandpa and I can open them up, take a whiff and remember.
• Grandma was always one for proper etiquette. I don't remember ever eating off of paper plates around her house, although we may have. In fact, when she would have me set the table I had to make sure that the pattern on the Blue Willow dishes was turned just so. I still do that when I set my table with my own set of Blue Willow. You see, when I got married that is the pattern that I had to have. Blue Willow was the only one for me.
• I have so many memories that it would take too long to list them all here and you would get bored, stop reading my blog and go to something constructive for a change. We wouldn't want THAT to happen now would we. Someday I think I will just do a huge journal entry about all my Grandma memories but it won't be here. Sorry.
  

Grandma lives in assisted living these days but she is still pretty sharp! She has shrunk a tad, now being shorter that I (which the DH would say isn't too difficult) and walks slowly and with difficulty but she still gets dressed every day, still does some of her own laundry, still goes to church on Sundays and is a prayer warrior. I know that she misses Grandpa a lot and is ready to go home to the Lord. I will miss her so much when that happens but I have the assurance that I will see her again and that makes all the difference. Happy Birthday Grandma. I love you.