Crazy Grandma Part 1!!!

When I say "Crazy Grandma" I don't mean demented (rephrase that...I usually don't mean demented). I mean crazy super fun. I was blessed with two crazy super fun grandma's growing up!

Grandma Hendy

Here is Grandma Hendy attempting to keep the peace. I think she might be praying.
From left to right: Zach, Kristen, Colton, Michelle, Grandpa Hendy, Michal, Joe, Hilary

My dad's mom is my Grandma Henderson, which somewhere along the way was shortened to Grandma Hendy. I have a very early memory of standing in her front room by the fire place while she explained to me that girls are precious and me asking her, "what does precious mean?"

Grandma Hendy is crazy fun when it comes to games. She is a Pitt mad woman! And if you want to play Jungle Match Uno with her watch out! When I was about 4 or 5 my dad and I went to Grandma Hendy's for a visit. There was about a foot of snow outside and I wanted to play in it. I didn't have snow shoes or boots so she made me some out of plastic garbage bags. She taught me to play a game called fox and hens. We made specific trails and safety zones (hen houses) with our foot prints in the deep powdery bright white snow in the back yard and spent the entire afternoon chasing each other.

I've heard people say that on the day my dad was born, Grandma Hendy was playing softball and that sliding into home is what caused her to go into labor.

Grandma Hendy is a hot chocolate smores grandma. My dad hated smores, he hated anything sticky. This may be a little off track but my dad hated sticky so much that he complained to the credit union for giving out suckers at the drive up window because he didn't want sucker sticks all over his precious car. Grandma Hendy was our sticky salvation. We loved camp outs with Grandma Hendy because she would always bring the smores. I don't even think she flinched when my dad complained that they were too sticky. She has a bag of orange sticky chewy circus peanuts on hand at all times, if you're lucky she'll share.

Hot Chocolate is her specialty, she's always making hot chocolate. On these same camping trips, if we were awake before our parents, we would sneak over to Grandma Hendy's RV because she would make us some hot chocolate with sticky marshmallows. A few years ago my cousin, who lived with my grandparents at the time, came home in the middle of the night to find Grandma Hendy in an Ambian induced frenzy. She was in a hurry to make hot chocolate for 75 people.

Grandma Yates

Colton forcing Grandma Yates to get her picture taken
It is a very rare thing to see Grandma without her hair done.

Grandma Yates was my mom's mom. She passed away in December 2006. I miss her a lot! Grandma Yates was a Crazy singing, ATV/Snowmobile riding, laughing tell it hurts kind of Grandma. She loved to sing and if I remember right she was in Madrigals in high school. We always knew when Grandma wasn't happy because she wasn't humming, whistling or singing.

Grandma Yates taught me how to drive a three wheeler ATV when I was 8 years old. I hit the gas closed my eyes and ran straight into a big old pine tree. Later that day she was driving full speed down a dirt road with me on the back when she hit a tree root that was sticking up. We bounced and rolled down into the ravine, now appropriately named Bloody Gultch. We were fine, I had the wind knocked out of me but Grandma had a broken collar bone.

My favorite Christmas tradition and I would dare to say that one of Grandma Yates favorite family traditions is the family Christmas party and  the No Talent Talent Show. Most of the family gets up and makes fools of themselves occasionally someone has a real talent.

I remember one particular talent- my cousin Wayne stood up at the family talent show and flossed his nasal cavity with a piece of spaghetti. Grandma was laughing so hard she nearly fell off her chair! (Click on this link for a long list of You Tube videos of people flossing their nostrils with spaghetti- youtube.com FYI, Wayne preforms this act more smoothly then any of these YouTube examples). After the talent show my Uncle Don plays the accordion while we sing Christmas carols and of course the accordion doesn't come out of the case without the Beer Barrel Polka.

Grandma Yates used to have a talking car. I remember if the door was open the car would repeat over and over in a futuristic female droid voice, "A door is ajar. a door is ajar." My brothers, my sister and I almost died in that talking car. For some reason Grandma stopped on a railroad track and I remember the guard rails coming down on top of the car and looking out my window and seeing a speeding train coming right for us. I started to panic and the car died. Grandma said a lot of swear words turned the key again and the car started. Later she explained that in a situation like that, it's important not to panic.Crazy Grandma!

Coming soon Crazy Grandma Part 2...