Catch Up #2 - Grandma Great

 On February 1st, this lovely lady passed away at the age of 100 years old.

Dorothy May Romans was born May 11, 1912 in rural Nebraska.  My kids sometimes marvel to think about all of the things that she saw in her lifetime. (I mean she was born just after the Titanic sank for goodness sake.) Dorothy grew up on a farm with her eight brothers and sisters.  It wasn't an easy life.  The family was very poor and most of Dorothy's sisters died in early adulthood due to complications in childbirth.

Dorothy met James Duane Woods at a dance sometime near the beginning of the Great Depression.  They soon became engaged, but decided that they didn't want to get married until they could support themselves and afford a home of their own. Many young couples of the day could not find good jobs and had to move in with relatives.  Dorothy and Duane were determined not to have to do that.  They finally married after a five year engagement.

Here is a picture of my grandparents on their wedding day.

Dorothy and Duane had four children - Julia, Jim, Marilyn and Len.  They lived on a farm for much of my mom's growing up years but eventually moved to Alma, Nebraska where my grandpa worked at the post office and my grandma worked as a secretary at the school.

Left to Right - Len, Jim, Dorothy & Marilyn (Mom)

Left to Right- Duane, Jim, Dorothy holding Marilyn, Julia

My mom always wished she lived closer to her family.  We lived about 12 hours away from the Woods relatives and we got to see the Hurst relatives a lot more often.  But we did have some good times anyway.  This is one of my favorite memories with Mom's family.  Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jim and Aunt Yvonne came out for Christmas when I was six years old.  Uncle Jim even dressed up as Santa Clause and came to surprise us because we'd been such good kids.
Left to Right -Aunt Julie, Jane, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Yvonne holding Matt, Dad, Mom holding me

Some of my best childhood memories took place in Alma, Nebraska visiting my grandparents.  Grandma and Grandpa lived in a three story house with a pitch roofed attic room and a huge basement.  They even had a tornado cellar that absolutely fascinated me.  Grandma kept all of her old jewelry and fancy dresses (plus Aunt Julie's and Mom's old prom dresses) for us to play with.  The first thing we did when we got to Grandma's house was run up to the closet in the attic to play dress-up.  After we finished with that, we spent most of our time at the Alma pool and the Harlan County Reservoir.  We also loved shopping at the Ben Franklin and listening to Grandma's Lawrence Whelk and Debbie Boone records.  Grandma made sure that we always had enough peanut butter crispies, ice cream and grape soda to last us until we went home. 

Grandma and Grandpa had a great life together until Grandpa died in 1984.  Grandma was a widow for almost 30 years.  I know she always missed Grandpa.

Grandma lived alone until she was in her nineties when she moved to Albuquerque to be closer to her daughters. Mom and Aunt Julie were the best caretakers ever.  As Grandma got older, she had a hard time hearing and seeing but she still was able to enjoy her great grand-children.  Here she is with Bethany and Amber.

Goodbye Grandma Great.  You were a great lady and we will miss you.

Day 1 Catch Up

Well, it has been a long and very busy semester and as you can tell, my blogging has seriously suffered as a result.  My anatomy class was a lot of fun but also a ton of work.  I was in the same lecture class as  my friend Kellie and it was awesome.  We both pulled off "A"'s.  And as Kellie said, we showed those young whippersnappers how it's done. But between memorizing hundreds of bones, muscles and epithelial slides and running the La Cueva baseball concessions stands, I'm plumb tuckered out. I told myself that as soon as my anatomy class and Chad's baseball season were over, I would totally catch up.  Well, the time has finally come and now catching up seems just totally overwhelming. But, I think I'll just do a post a week until I'm back on schedule.  Hopefully I will not forget any seriously major events that have occurred in the Smith family this spring. :)  So, thank you big Amber for taking pictures of  youth activities.  These are my proof  positive that my cranky teenage boys do occasionally go to Young Mens.  Stinkers!  I am happy to report that Sam talked them into attending high adventure this year, so I'm sure that will be a subject of a future post.  And also, drum roll please...Bethany is now twelve years old and officially a beehive.  And not just a beehive but an extremely enthusiastic beehive.  She's even a church choir attending beehive.  Who knew that could happen to any Smith child?  I'm almost more surprised about that than I was at the baseball banquet to find out that Chad made all-district academic. Ha!

 So here are a bunch of cute La Cueva ward kids plus a couple of Chad's friends from school at the La Cueva Potato car derby.  How fun is this?

Even Aaron looks like he's getting into the whole thing.  Of course this was before he felt that he had to spend every free moment with his girlfriend Carissa.  Perhaps we should get Carissa to go to mutual with him.  That would certainly solve a problem or two.

Here are three of my favorite boys in the whole world - Chad and his friends Justin and Chris.  Chad also got these cuties and some of his other friends to come to the young men's basketball tournaments.  Most of them quit basketball for baseball many moons ago but I must say that they still held their own quite respectably.

 It doesn't look like Chad's car won.

 And I'm not sure what potato car disaster was occurring here.

 Chad & Kendra cutting a rug at the swing dancing activity.

 Aaron and Ellie seeing if they can do better than Chad & Kendra.

He doesn't look like dancing is too painful, does he?  He even went to prom of  his own volition this year. (More on that subject in next week's post).

 Twirl, baby, twirl!

Aaron apologizing to Kendra for the fact that Chad stepped all over her feet.  No, just kidding.  I think everybody just switched partners.  I was out of town at a funeral (more on that in a future post, also) so I didn't get to see this activity.  Luckily, Amber also took some video.  Good times!