Shamrocks and Goodbyes

Tuesday, March 13th my grandma, Rosemary, passed away at the age of 86.  She is finally at peace up in her forever home and her funeral was a joyous homegoing celebration.  She had actually planned the majority of it about 10 years ago - all the way down to the specific menu that would be served at the luncheon afterwards.  My favorite part of the funeral notes she left to her kids went something like this "You kids can change things as you wish or change parts of it - I won't be there to boss you around."  She was such a wonderful lady and had served as the parish secretary at the Catholic church where the mass was held, so the pews were nearly full.  The luncheon afterwards served best italian food chosen by my Grandma.  The hall was decorated with green/white table cloths and green/white shamrock balloons in honor of her beloved St. Patrick's Day.  It was such a wonderful way to remeber her.   

  

Dessert was spumoni ice cream and all you could eat shamrock cookies.  Somebody with pretty blue eyes had about 8 of them!

4 generations - taken when Finley was only a few weeks old!

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a tasty dinner with some friends and neighbors.  This also coincided with the Marquette game, so we watched that as well.  We were in the midst of a heat wave at the time, and with cooking corned beef and potatoes all day our poor house had heated up to 80 degrees. 

I was too busy sweating and cooking to get many pictures, but Pat snapped one of Finley and her best bud Maria.  These 2 were peas in a pod hiding from all of the other party-goers under the crib or under the bathroom sink - crazies!

Because I love Pat, I agreed to fix corned beef for the first time.  I dislike corned beef usually, but being pregnant and seeing it raw in the package at the grocery store, it's a miracle I agreed.  Pat was the one who trimmed the fat and cut it up!  We tried 2 different recipes: traditional with pickling spice and a guiness/brown sugar recipe.  Both of them got great reviews from the guests, who may have just been being polite! But, I wouldn't know since I didn't try any. 

After all was said and done, I thought about how nice it is going to be when all of our kids are old enough that us adults can actually all sit and eat without interuption, but for now we are just thankful for good friends who are in this crazy phase of life with us!