Sad Sad Day

Today Grandpa left.  :-(  sniff,  He has been so fun to have around and so helpful.  He loved to hold and rock Katie, and was almost sad when Brent was home to do that job.  He would take her and distract her while I made dinners/lunches, and would put her in her chair when she wanted to eat, open doors for her, and hold her and squeeze her and call her "lil punkin".  There were several times when she would reach out to him and call him "grampup".   Tori love having him here to play with too.  Grandpa will sit down and actually watch a movie with you, and even though you have to turn the volume up to drown out the snoring, it is worth it to have him there.  Alex finally got to play with someone who sees things his way!  He and my dad seem to think alike and so all of the toys that Alex got for Christmas were a hit with Grandpa too.  Grandpa helped Alex navigate his new Scooby Doo X Box game, they also played with Alex's magnets for quite some time.  They did a lot of figuring stuff out together.  I think Liza enjoyed just having another person around to talk to, and grandpa was better at acting interested then Brent and I are.  She loves to talk, I don't know where on earth she got that from.  Alex asked me the other day "Why does Grandpa give such shaky hugs?" ( A few years back my dad started shaking, I don't know why, just when he hugs you though, not while he is trying to do anything else.  ? )  We really enjoyed having him here, and he enjoyed being here.  Last night as we were getting ready for bed I said"Well dad, thanks for coming, we sure have enjoyed having you here."  He responded with  "Thank you for having me, I sure have liked being here, "  Then his eyes filled with tears as he said "I don't want to go home, it is so quiet there."  I said "yes, but you'll only be there for 2 days and then you'll go to Traceys (my sisters) House. "  "yeah, but then I still have to go home."  How sad.....  He enjoyed having chinook around too (my dad is a total dog person), I wish that he could have a dog, but he travels and works too much so it wouldn't be kind to the dog to have it.  The kids have missed him already   as have I.  I am so glad that he has come at Christmas for the past 2 years, he is nice to have around, and i know that he is much happier here then at home.  His mom is getting so bad with Alzheimers that when I talked to her on Christmas morning when I asked her how she was she said "I don't know how I am doing, I can't remember, Oh, the kids are here, so I must be good."  Then she asked me what we were going to do for Christmas, and asked if we were staying home or if we were coming to see her. This is sad for me, but really sad for my dad.  My dad only has one brother, and his father passed away about 14 years ago, that makes it even more difficult to go through what he has been going through with his mom and everything else.   On a happy note, my kids know him, and have good memories of this weekend, he took some awesome video for us, and we took a couple pictures of him with the kids.  Here is one that he took of Chinook,  from this point on we called Chinook snoopy.  :-)