Wisconsin - Take 1

February 1st is my Mom's birthday.  Can I just say, I love birthdays!?!?! Everything about them, everyone deserves to feel special on their birthday!  My mom needs to feel extra special on her birthday because she is the most amazing, incredible, deserving woman in the world.  Anyways, Happy Birthday Mom!  Mom's birthday this year was crazy.  I kept coordinating with my Dad as to what we would do for her birthday.  The plan was to go down to Provo and go out to dinner and a movie.  Closer to her birthday we found out Grandpa Stoehr's health had taken a turn and Dad was now looking for flights to get Mom out there to see her Dad.  I started looking for Dad and then I decided I wanted to see my Grandpa and be there for Mom.
I spoke with Brady, Mom, Dad and Shawna about this for a while and we decided to send me out there with her but we wouldn't be leaving on her birthday we would go the next weekend.  We went down to Provo and celebrated Mom's birthday and then the next weekend I said goodbye to Brady at the airport as I went with Mom to Wisconsin.

We flew out of Salt Lake and had a connection in Denver, due to a kid that threw up on the plane we were delayed for quite a while and missed our connecting flight in Denver.  The plan was to get to Shawano late Friday the 8th and leave on Monday the 11th.  The plan was that way Mom could make up her hours at work for both weeks.  What was very frustrating is that Shawna got there Friday night but Mom and I ended up staying in Denver for the night.  Luckily the airline changed our flight so we wouldn't have to cut our visit short, we were now coming home on Tuesday the 12th.  Shawna was a trooper and got a hotel for the night in Milwaukee so she could pick us up the next day.

The next days flight worked out very well and Shawna picked us up just like we planned.  We were on our way to see Grandpa and Grandma. We drove up through Green Bay and our first stop was to Grandpa.  We got there around 6 or 7 and as we were going in to the nursing home some of Grandpa's friends were coming out.  That is where we met Eddie and Nadine for the first time.  We spoke with them for a little while and they told us about Grandpa, we went in and Grandpa was asleep.  Mom went over to his bed and tried to talk to him, we didn't want to fully wake him up but we wanted to let him know that we were there.  Mom said hi to him and it took him a little while to figure out who we were and once he did he got a big smile on his face.  It was quite emotional since we didn't know what to expect, and it was worse that I thought it would be.  It was good though, he ended up recognizing all of us and we said bye and let him sleep and we went to Grandma's.

We got to Grandma's and Steve and Lorraine were there with Tyler and Troy.  Aunt Peg was there with Larry and Dave and Grandma.  It was a full house and we stayed up and talked for a while but we went to bed fairly soon.  It was good to see them and it was good to finally be there after all the hiccups.