Life goes on: Prayer Service Day & Family Time

The next day had a to do list.

Take my nephews out for breakfast
Shop for Minnesota Vikings apparel
Help Jamie pick out an appropriate outfit/suite for the funeral
Help make sandwiches and food for family and friends with my aunts and grandma for after the Prayer Service for my Great Grandma

In the morning we or at least I was a little slow moving. I am not used to staying up so late. Thank goodness I didn't have to get up with my kids and slept in until around 8am. Jamie, Jess, and I headed out of their house to Perkins to meet my nephews for breakfast, my treat. After waiting awhile for them to actually arrive it went fairly smoothly. After we sat and had some coffee and started wondering where they were I started thinking about it - a 16 year old boy getting his 3 year old and 1 year old brothers ready in the morning and loading them into the van and driving them to breakfast - ya - that might take a little while when you don't have Mommy Mode! Breakfast went really good and it was fun to see my nephews and spend a little quality time with them, which I rarely ever get to do. Next we headed over to Target to find the Vikings clothes. I figured that I could get some cheaper stuff at Target or Walmart while I was in town and it would save me from ordering on-line and paying a bundle. Shopping is never an easy task with my relatives or at least with Jamie for that matter. We walked through Target and I found the rack with the Vikings apparel and picked out some matching shirts for me and Katelynn and found something for Junior (and a few extra for each of us). I was pretty happy and was walking up to the registers and pay and move on to the next task on our list for the day. On the way to the checkout Jamie took a look at the price tags and said that I was paying way too much and we should take Jeff's advice and head to Fleet Farm because they had cheaper shirts. So I put everything back and we drove to Fargo to Fleet Farm. I found absolutely nothing there except for one pair of Vikings socks for me - $6.00 and we left the store. We were starting to get behind on time and we still had to get Jamie's clothes and my aunts were now waiting for us to help with the food. We headed back to Moorhead after some debate about stopping at Kohl's to look at their Vikings selection and prices. We went to my grandma's instead and starting helping cut and butter buns and cut up fruit. One funny story about this is teaching Jamie how to butter buns. The butter was frozen so he grabbed a bowl to put it in the microwave and soften in. He left it in there way to long and pretty much melted the entire stick and then decided that he would just put it back in the freezer and start to re-freeze it. I grabbed a new bowl and new stick of butter and told him that we were not going to play the game of melt the butter, freeze the butter and melt the butter all day - get a new stick and get a move on buttering! As we were making sandwiches with the deli turkey they had bought my grandpa was out waiting for some lunch. My aunts told me that he would not eat turkey, doesn't like it, won't eat it. So they decided that I should be the one to bring him a turkey sandwich and see what would happen and I gladly accepted the challenge. I took his sandwich out to the garage on a plate and served him his lunch. He gladly accepted the sandwich and thanked me and gave me the look that I was a fabulous granddaughter. Then he opened the sandwich to see what was inside - I thought I was toast, but he closed it and took a bite and thanked me again. Success! I went back in and resumed cutting buns. We had a good laugh inside about it, especially when he came in and took another sandwich and ate it! We did tell him later that it was turkey and he argued with us that it wasn't. My family was also on beer duty and my aunts had went to the store to get the beer and ice. One requirement was to buy Michelob which is the beer my great grandpa used to drink. As we were unloading the beer into coolers Jamie looked at the Michelob bottles and thought that they looked like a dark beer and we said that no one in our family would drink a dark beer. My aunt Pam and I decided to take it back to the liquor store and attempt to find the correct Michelob that my great grandpa drank almost 20 years ago. At the liquor the lady explained to us multiple, multiple, multiple times that this was the regular Michelob and that the labels are now different than back then and that it was not a dark beer, but a lager beer. We sat there and listened to her say the same thing about 6 times before Pam finally just said "stop, we understand" (and we had already said it enough times, that yes, we got it, but she wasn't listening to us). We ended up taking the beer back and opening one and drinking it. Whew - that was an episode and a half that I do not ever want to have again with someone. Now that food and beer was ready we still had to get Jamie his clothes and we all still needed to shower and get ready before the prayer service. This meant no nap.
Taking Jamie shopping is a whole story in itself. The reason this started was that my brother told us the night before when we were out that he had decided that it was really time to start dressing nicer and looking more appropriate for his age - gasp - Jeffrey?! He told us he was going to even buy a suit the next day. This got Jamie thinking that he didn't have a suit to where and needed one. We headed to Herbergers. I grabbed a lady in the men's clothing store and told her what I wanted. I wanted some darker brown almost chocolate colored slacks for him and a fitted shirt. Jamie had shoes that he thought he was going where with this outfit, but they were not dress shoes, but they were brown so we attempted to go with it. The poor girl that had to help us. I told her absolutely no khaki colored pants. At least they were having a sale on their fitted shirts, but that also meant that they were picked through. We finally found some pants and shirts and sent Jamie to the dressing room. He then decided that he needed a tie and a new belt and then at the end needed new shoes as well. Seriously, the poor girl at the store. This was quite the shopping episode and sorry to say Jamie I will probably never go shopping with you again, but I still love you! Back to the house to shower and get ready and we were off. The visitation was very nice and they had a nice video and I saw a lot of family that I haven't seen for a very long time. After the visitation we headed back to my grandma's for food and visiting and a toast to my great grandma.

Jeff and my dad. Obviously my dad was coming from work and in a hurry .
We thought it was pretty funny - Jeff in a tie and dressed up and my dad not .
Side note: Jeff came into the funeral home without his tie actually tied, I had to grab my cousins husband and have him come and tie it for him.

Yep, even my dad was shocked - look at him - who is this ?!

Me and my BapBap

All the grandkids and Nana and BapBap.
So happy that we took this picture. I think its rare that we are all together anymore
(yeah - that would be me for moving away that is not ever there.)