Weekends Are 'Preston Time'

We always start with 'reading time with grandpa'...
...then we wrestle...grandpa is getting easier and easier to 'pin'.
something always goes on the head...
Saturday morning at grandpa's house brings another book
But we have to take Lacey outside to play too...
and while we walk Lacey, Grandma and I have a talk.
Grandpa has a few chores I need to help him with...one is in the attic.
But there is some measuring and building that needs to start
so I help grandpa with a few things here and there
and then he finishes with the details...
I always leave grandma with something to do after I leave.
When it's time to go, I can put my own shoes on..almost.

After Preston left on Saturday, Del and I spent the rest of the day doing some projects and running some errands before we went out to dinner, which was wayyy yummy and very filling. We were both ready to call it a night and go to bed early, but it was only 4:30 in the afternoon and we knew if we went home and crashed, we would be up at 2:00 in the morning!!! We are getting sooo old.
So, we decided to go to the mall...not an event we do more than once a year..at Christmastime. We are not 'Mall cruisers', nor do we enjoy the huge crowds of people, but we had to find SOMETHING to do and plus, we did want to check out a few Christmas ideas. We stopped at Toys R Us for an hour ( we ARE grandparents after all) and made some Christmas choices for Preston and then we headed over to the mall.
You would have thought it was the week before Christmas with as many people that were there!!! But we had fun. But the most significant event was running into the daughter of my dear friend Dr. Scott Charlton. I worked with Dr. Charlton for over three years at my previous job and loved every sweet moment of those years. I love that man.
Over two years ago, he came into my office to tell me that his wife, Cookie, had just been diagnosed with cancer. He sat in my office where we cried together and I listened as he expressed the fear and devastation of the knowledge that he would lose his dearest friend most likely within a year. It broke my heart. Then, I didn't hear from him for months. I wrote him letters, notes and sent him cards. I tried to call several times but never heard from him. But I knew that Cookie had most likely passed during that time...
So, running into his daughter Whitney unnerved me a little. I recognized her; she didn't recognize me 35 pounds lighter. So I stopped her. Within 2 sentences, she confirmed what I had suspected and I wept. Her mother had passed a year earlier in October. She proceeded to tell me details but I wanted to her to pass over much of that and get to 'how was my dear friend?' As I had anticipated, he had fallen apart and was feeling very much a 'lost soul.' I cried more. After about a 30 minute conversation with Whitney, she took my phone number and I told her I would call her dad in 10 days after he returned from a missionary trip to Cuba.
And I will. I miss him. I love that good man. Such a good good man. I have such love and admiration for him and want to, if I can, bring him some sense of joy and peace to his soul.
The experience left me quite subdued the rest of the evening and when we returned home around 7:00, I was still upset by some of the details Whitney had shared with me of her fathers 'past year'. I cried quietly here at my computer, but wasn't able to write anything down. My thoughts were of my own husband..his MS and current discomforts...and I thought of how I will feel when I lose my dear husband at his passing. Please dear God...not any time soon.