Highs and Lows

In high school, my favorite part of youth group every week was at the end of the night when we went around the circle and shared our "highs and lows" or "glads and sads" from the week with each other. It gave us a few minutes to celebrate the happy things with each other and sympathize with each other on the not-so-happy things. Last week was the ultimate week of highs and lows, and since I obviously don't go to youth group anymore, I will share them here.

I don't want to recap the "lows" in too much detail because I don't want to relive all of it right now, or in the future either really. Last week, my Grandma passed away. She was one of the greatest people I've ever known and she was the best Grandma. My sisters and I were lucky to grow up 15 minutes away from our Grandparents and got to spend virtually every holiday and birthday with them, spend the night at their house often and go over for brunch after church or dinners on the weekends. You know all the good Grandma-like things that Grandmas do, like let you have an extra piece of candy after your parents said no, or take you shopping with them and spoil you? Well she did them all, plus more. Not only did she treat us like royalty, she was also funny as heck and a fiesty little woman. She loved all of her family fiercely, especially my Grandpa (and her 6 daughters, 16 grandkids, 25 great-grandkids, and 2 great-great grandkids!) and we all loved her back just as much. So Chuck and I cancelled everything in Boston and bought last minute plane tickets home to be with family for the memorial service.

When we arrived at my parent's house, we found out that our family dog, Lucy, was sick. After a few days of medication and no improvement, we took her back to the vet the morning before the memorial service. My dad got a call right after it ended saying that Lucy was not going to get better and it was recommended we put her to sleep. So, my parents, sisters, Austin (Sami's boyfriend), Chuckie and I went to say goodbye to her at the vet, immediately after saying goodbye to my Grandma.  It was pretty much the worst. We got Lucy when I was 15 and we all had our own special relationships with her. She liked to drive Dad crazy by running through his newly raked leaf piles in the Fall. She liked to give Mom "hugs." She liked to crawl on Sami on the couch. She liked to sleep at the end of Laura's bed. She liked to flop down in front of me and force me to rub her belly, a trick I accidentally taught her that she never forgot after the very first time. Lucy loved everything about her life and her family. She was a good dog.

Lucy and I still kept in touch even when I was in Boston.

If all of that, plus lack of sleep plus stress wasn't enough already, Thursday night when we had only 3 hours to sleep before we had to head to the airport, Chuckie got violently ill and stayed that way, even while we were traveling through airports all day. I've never seen him this sick in all the time we've been together. It was like a nightmare that wouldn't end. 

Friday afternoon we got back to Boston, along with my sisters who have had plane tickets to come up and see us for months. We had a whole weekend planned in New York City to celebrate all of our birthdays- specifically Sami's recent 21st birthday and Laura's quickly approaching 30th birthday. The weekend just also happened to be my actual birthday so we celebrated that too. Friday We used Friday as a day of rest so we could actually try to enjoy our weekend in New York. We slept most of the day, showered, went to the grocery and bought all kinds of food and then went home and ate it while we watched Newsies. It wasn't quite the day we had planned for months but, it was necessary down time.

The "highs" of the week came Saturday and Sunday when we were in NYC. There is something so energizing, no matter what state of mind you are in, about being in THE big city. There's just nothing else like it. Our cousin and her boyfriend met up with us Saturday and we did some sight-seeing, had dinner and went out. I can't remember the last time I (personally) had as much fun as we did on Saturday night. Sunday we met up with more cousins for brunch (at a place with bottomless sangria...yum) before some more sight-seeing. The weekend was busy, funny and a great way to celebrate our birthdays. I have a lot of pictures so I will post them in a separate post soon.

Again like I said earlier- we had some of the lowest lows and highest highs all in the same week. Thank you to everyone who was there for our family last week and has reached out to me or them. It means the world. And thank you to New York City, for giving us one of the best weekends ever, when we needed it most.