Speaking of spending time with grandparents, check out these highlights from my delightful and enchanted summers vising my grandparents. That's me in the middle up there.
Heise Hot Springs (pronounced Hi-C) - if I had to pick one iconic scene from my childhood summers with extended family, it would be at this green water slide. Racing up the stairs and down the slide, again and again, trying to catch up with my cousin Becky and occasionally succeeding, resulting in us tumbling out of the slide in a tangled up heap of arms and legs, only to pop out and do it all over again. We must have slept really well on Heise Hot Springs nights.
My Grandma and Grandpa Gardner's backyard and outdoor kitchen. That's Uncle Larry, the rough cowboy who had a hook hand and a tub of Red Vines in his house that always required a pinch from his metal fingers on my nose to earn a piece of licorice. He also had a massive collection of movies on VHS and a video cassette rewinder and a hot tub and a deck that I got a huge splinter from once and a fascinating water fountain feature that my cousin convinced me had acid water in it so I wouldn't touch it.
My grandparents living room. I was visiting my grandma the summer that she replaced this seriously awesome carpet with something fluffy and pink.
Me on my grandma's lap. Heather and Aaron are standing next to Grandpa Gardner. These are all of their grandchildren, and I'm assuming this is their 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1983.
Look at these cuties! By my memory, my grandpa was softer spoken, hard working, and never up for much of a discussion or argument. He called lollipops 'suckers' which I thought was a bad word and he loved my grandma a lot. He died too soon, and I don't have enough memories with him, but I do remember when my mom got the phone call that he had passed away when I was 11.
My grandma was a feisty lady, just like her daughter (Grandma Cathy) and her granddaughter (me) and one of her great-granddaughters, my daughter (I think all of my blog readers know which one ;). She loved plants and had a TV in her kitchen where we watched The Price is Right and had a teddy bear cookie jar that was always stocked with peanut butter cookies and off-brand Oreos and she wrote and mailed out the beautiful Gardner Globetrotters newsletter. I can't even imagine how much effort she put into making sure our family was connected in an era when mail was essentially the only option. She took care of me when I went to visit her one summer and it was one of the biggest adventures of my childhood. She lived longer than my grandpa and her toy poodle Buffy kept her company in her later years. She loved that dog more than some humans, I'm sure, but I can probably say the same about my love of Laney. I got to spend just a few of my first days in Idaho as a college student at her house before she passed away in August 2000. She was a happy, loving part of my childhood!
