A trip down memory lane...

Over the weekend, Joe and I visited my family down in Io-way for my lil' brother's birthday. (did that rhyme? :) It was so nice to spend time with my parents and siblings, as well as catch up with my grandparents and other Iowan friends.

One of the highlights of the weekend occurred Saturday night in my parent's living room. We had just finished eating out at Chili's for Sambo's birthday dinner and were waiting for the second set of grandparent's to arrive for cherry pie and ice cream. While we waited, we flipped on the tv (the ginormously huge one that my family just purchased) to the PBS channel. It featured Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians -- a group foreign to me. Before we knew it, my grandpa was singing along to all the songs they were playing. What a sweet moment! Instantly I was reminded of all of my memories of singing with Grandpa:

...the first time he taught me "Christ Arose" in the basement of our home in Canada and singing it with him every Easter since...

...the little ditty, "Put your shoes on Lucy, don'tcha know you're in the city? Put your shoes on Lucy, dontcha know you're kinda pretty?" every time I put my shoes on at Grandma and Grandpa's as a child...

...Grandpa's deep bass voice singing out, "Silver bells, silver bells, it's Christmas-time in the city..." almost every year at Christmas time...

...singing in the "way back" of our station wagon when we went to get maple syrup while living in Canada...and not even noticing that we were completely lost....

...this past year when we went through the Cedar Memorial Christmas lights display and spontaneously sang Christmas carols as we drove in the car...

As I remembered those sweet moments and listened to Grandpa's beautiful bass voice singing "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad)", my heart smiled. I pray that those memories will never fade from my memory and that Grandpa will always keep on singing.