Thanksgiving Fun - Part 2

After figuring out everyone's names, we settled into the house(s). The first couple days, we mostly helped Grandma and Aunt Laura with thier new house. We helped Chris put up light fixtures, fans, went to the hardware store for picture hangers for Grandma's room, and so on.

I hadn't known my grandma and Aunt Laura to be so Catholic. As we started helping them put knicknacks on shelves and pictures on walls, I realized we were handling a lot of Jesus figurines. Both of them have Jesus statues that are about 2 feet tall. There are pictures, crucifixes, and wall hangings. There are also Marys, but not as many as there were Jesuses.

Aunt Laura said she realizes that some people thinks she worships the figurines, but she doesn't; she just likes looking at Jesus. He brings her comfort and she likes the constant reminders of her Savior.

It was fun to hang Grandma's family pictures. There were some of us, her other daughters, and her son, Raymond, who died of leukemia in 1980/81. There was also one of my grandfather, who died around 1985. It was a picture of him when he was in the service for WW2. My sister looked at it, and said, "Put curly hair on him and that's Jackie!" So we went to find my sister Jackie, and sure enough, she's the spitting image of Grandpa.

The only things I remember about my grandfather are that he gave us sips of his beer (which was gross, but we kept sipping anyway) and he drove us around in his baby blue Volkswagon beetle. But my grandma still talks about him.