Last week

Last Monday Mom flew in and Tanya arrived on the train. We all met up in the NW 23rd area, aka Nob Hill (all those transplants years ago wanting to keep their old homes alive). A few of the stores were looked through, one of them the Cost Plus where Brandon came home with a bag of Amaretti cookies and mom got me a loofah sponge kitchen scrubbie.These things are wonderful! They don't scratch up your teflon, but are tough enough to help get off the stuck on stuff in your pots and pans.

We had dinner at Ling's Garden and then separated to head out home. William needed to do some studying for class so needed to keep it an early night.

I met up with Mom, Tanya and Aunt Mary at Willamette National Cemetary. They have a handy site locater system in the front lobby, so we printed out the locations of Grandpa Howard and Don, Mary's husband who is also there. Mom had faxed all the pertinent paperwork last week up for Grandma, but apparently no one owned up to taking it off the fax machine. Luckily she had thought to bring all the copies along, so just a little bit of a wait while paperwork was handled. Gave Aunt Mary time to share with me, since her son Jeff, wasn't willing to listen on how she'd like to be taken care of later. I'm the eldest, so I guess the knowledge bearer. :-)

Then we found out it was a simple walk across the parking lot up to the Columnar right there to find out where Grandpa has been waiting. It's amazing that it has been almost 20 years since he died.

He's on the end wall area for the Columnar.

There's a nice view, still a little hazy, towards the downtown area that can be seen from there:

We then headed over to Clackamas Town Center for lunch at Claim Jumper's (Tanya and I split a Tri-Tip Dip sandwich - minus the ortega chiles that was awesome!) and then some shopping. I only picked up the January Simply Knitting magazine as my purchase.  I got it for the Shaun the Sheep bag on the cover. We weren't able to visit much longer as I had to pick-up Brandon from work, that whole one car thing. ;-)

Wednesday we met for a brunch before Tanya needed to catch the train back north. Lovely brunch at Mother's. I scored because I was able to take both Tanya's and my leftover Portabella Mushroom Scramble home. Between the two I was able to get another two meals. Yes, the servings are that big! Then Aunt Mary delivered Tanya to the train.

Aunt Mary has been knitting with some ladies over in the Gresham area but because of her wool (lanolin) allergy, she has been only knitting wash cloths from Peaches n Cream. She had never been inside Knit-Purl and since we were so close I thought it would be a shame for her to miss that so mom and I headed there to meet up with her. I was then able to show her some other fiber choices. I had picked up from the library a copy of No Sheep for You to show her at brunch. She didn't seem to have a reaction to the handspun alpaca and camel that I brought for her either. So hopefully there will be some broadening in her knitting horizons.  

After going through the shop we parted ways with Aunt Mary planning to drop off Mom for her flight back home. A short visit but with all the girls together and lots of reminiscing about Grandma along the way.