NINETY

Celebrating 🎉 Grandma Gigi's 90th #birthday 🎁🎂! You've never met a lady with a funnier sense of humor 😂👵🏻. Facts about Gigi you should know: her first name is actually Carol (my mom was named after her 😜), she was dear friends with Louis Armstrong 🎺 and family (my mom @cccarol626 used to babysit their kids), she had 5 babies in 5 years 👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻👶🏻 and then she had two more 👶🏻👶🏻 #yep , NOBODY on this planet is a better "waker-upper" of people (she had this song she used to sing to me--her voice was the perfect pitch, never too demanding, and was always just the right amount of HAPPY for the #morning ☀️), she used to have the most beautiful jet black hair (and now it's perfectly silver) and blue eyes 💙👀 (this was something Frank Sinatra liked about her, but we'll get to that later), her red Ford Fairlane car 🚗 is always where I picture her in my mind when I think of her as a young #mom , she broke her shoulder on the #GreatWallofChina 🏯⛩ right after we alpine slid down it 😂, she likes to golf 🏌️‍♀️⛳️ more than bowl 🎳, but she'll whip you in both, even at 90, and once Frank Sinatra 🎹 hit on her in front of her hubby 🙊, while she was sitting next to Al Collins#truestory (she's also met Sophia Lauren, Count Bassie, Benny Goodman, Janis Joplin--she didn't like her much 😂, Ella Fitzgerald, and Jimmy Durantee). In an interview I did with her on my #blog eight years ago, she gave me the best advice I've ever heard: BE HONEST. HAPPY 90th BDAY 🎁🎈🎉Grandma Gigi!!! I love you 💕 SO much, and am so #grateful for all of the things you have taught me about #life !!!

knowing what it feels like {Olympic Park}

-friday october 18th, 2013-

you know the movie 

"a league of their own"

where they go to the baseball museum at the end,

and all of the ladies are there with their kids and grandkids,

and they're looking at the old baseball pictures of themselves and their teams,

and all of the memorabilia from their heyday of playing women's baseball during the war?

well that's what it was like walking through the 2002 salt lake city olympic 

memorabilia museum with my mom and my kids.

because when i saw the skiers in the black and white pictures on the wall,

i was scanning the pictures for my mom.

i just wouldn't have been surprised to see her in one of them.

and then she was like,

"Emily!!!"

and i thought to myself,

welp, there she is. i bet she found herself in one of those old pictures.

but then when i got over to her i realized that she wasn't in the picture,

but that she should have been.

because she was all,

"i was there! i did that! 

my senior year of high school! 

1963 and 64!"

and i was like,

"no way!"

and she was all,

"yes!!! and back then

we bought these punch passes to ski,

and your card had 10 punches,

and to do Thaynes Shaft one time 

it took TWO punches,

but it was so totally worth it,

so you did it because it was awesome,

and you went up in these mining cars,

and then up an elevator,

and you'd come out on top of the mountain, 

and then you got to ski down,

and i did this!

{pointing at the picture with a big, huge happy smile on her face, beaming so proud.}

can you believe i did this?!"

and i was just so happy to be there with her.

watching her hold chase in her arms.

telling us about a part of her life that i had never heard about before.

you know,

like one of those moments when you remember that your mom is a real person,

who had a real life before she was your mom,

and then you realize that your kids won't see you like that for a really really long time.

and it was just one of those great life moments.

2 minutes. 

tops:)

the kids were fascinated by the zip liners that would swoop down on cables right across the long jump.

i'm pretty sure they thought the green jump slopes were giant slides.

my favorite place to stand at the bottom of anything,

is right there at the bottom of those jumping slopes.

they make you feel so small.

but in a good way.

and for a minute i try to pretend what it might feel like to be Olympian.

walking in front of these massive slopes for the first time.

and how amazing it must be to stand at the bottom of them.

and then i think about how it's too bad i never wanted to be an Olympian

because that really must feel amazing.

but then this time,

i stood there staring at my kids stare at those slopes,

and it hit me.

i already know what it feels like:)

s-a-t-u-r-d-a-y-s

{max draws on her face a lot. arms and fingers too.}

...

our saturdays usually 

look like this.

missing: brennan {in the tv room for sure} 

sean {at work during the morning}

and me in pajamas on the fainting couch.

i usually call my grandma joy.

and we chat about life and sometimes some good gossip.

for an hour or so she tells me about when she and grandpa were young bucks,

i particularly love to hear her talk about when grandpa was away in the war,

and their struggles as a young married couple with their two little girls. the things she was afraid of as a young mother, and the lessons life has taught her along the way.

i also REALLY adore her story about how when they didn't have any money, 

she would buy herself a lipstick to cheer herself up and make her feel like new. 

she always makes me feel like a million bucks when i call.

i tell her about the kids, what we did during the week, 

about everyone's level of health,

the weather,

and my deep thoughts about life, living, and the pursuit of happiness.

we talk about politics, religion, the whole gamete.

nothing is off limits.

grandpa sometimes gets on the phone.

i love to ask him about his life as a young boy.

no electricity and no running water.

and no toilet inside their house.

{and then i think about his angel mother who had to potty train two children without a toilet inside her house. and then i think potty training isn't really that hard for us women these days at all.}

he tells me about life on the farm,

his one room school house, and the wonderful teacher that educated up to high school,

and how his family migrated west to oakland, california by train.

{his dad planned to stop in salt lake city to settle, but a fellow traveler convinced him that was a waste of his time and talents, and that he should get on his merry way to oakland. 

and so he did, and the rest was history.}

it's my favorite weekly routine.

{i hope no one ever wants to do soccer in our family. please don't let anyone want to do soccer.}

finger's crossed.

:):):)