Another Chapter Closed

We headed to Iowa to clear out our items from Ice Iowa's house on Thursday morning. Nathan had thought that he could go over alone, sort out our stuff, load the UHaul and be back home on Friday. Hmmm ... no he doesn't have a secret S underneath his t-shirt. I thought it would be best to have both of us work this project even with the munchkins and Blake in tow.

On Thursday afternoon, we arrived and met with the executors of the estate. They were very nice men who have years of experience with estates which is nice since we obviously are lacking in this area.

Let me assure you that the munchkins are not good at 'helping' with this type of project. You might be envisioning a munchkin assembly line where we pass items to each other to load the UHaul. Ah .. no, I don't think so. In addition, they don't entertain themselves well for any length of time. The only positive was that the little miss needs two naps so we were able to set up her play yard in Ice Iowa's bedroom for naps and bedtime. We actually think that she had the most rest that she's ever had in her life during the three days we were there. Having a big brother who is doing CRAZY things in your bedroom tends to make you want to reject sleep so you don't miss the show.

We started in the kitchen where we grabbed a couple of items that will be nice adds to our kitchen. We took the two Aebleskiver pans, a Danish breakfast delicacy (think pancakes in a ball) that will be awesome to use for making breakfast en masse. We grabbed their waffle iron which will help with our weekly sourdough waffle mornings. And, we grabbed their raclette which will be awesome when we entertain folks (it's a Swiss eating style and involves cooking your own food very much like fondue except you're grilling your items and broiling your cheese and bread. Very fun and very yummy and yes, our children can say raclette in addition to boursin, paella, and hummus. If nothing else, they will be well educated on culinary items :). I went through all the recipes and pulled the ones that Mom had written out or that were hers. We still have not found the infamous cube steak and gravy recipe. I guess we'll have to search out the relatives for that one.

Nathan had ordered a 5 x 8 trailer which they didn't have so they comped us a 6 x 12 which we thought would be PLENTY big. How much stuff could we take? Ha... ha .. ha! As we went through each room, we found a million (only a SLIGHT exageration) photo albums, slides (yes, slides complete with their carousels and all) and journals. Both Mom and Grandma Zimmerman wrote an entry every day of their life. You can imagine how many journals that might create during ones life if you never threw out any of the journals. What do you do with such things? We're not even sure Mom would've wanted us reading them much less keeping them to share with future generations. It was a tough call but Nathan and Brent decided to leave them and have them disposed of. If Mom's journals had been more character revealing including her thoughts on various items, we would've been more prone to keep them but instead they were just a recounting of her day i.e. got up, nice weather, went to store, took Nibbles to the vet, etc., etc. Thankfully Sasha and Mia won't have such items to contend with.

The house has the first floor rooms of kitchen, dining room, eating area, office, guest room, living room, master bedroom and bathroom and a guest bathroom. The lower floor has another guest room, guest bath, family room and another area that has a ton of desks, books, display cabinets, toys and a door that leads into their full basement which is HUGE (this place was considered 'downsizing' from their last place although besides the yard being taken care of for them, I think the square footage is as big or bigger). The basement resembles catacombs and beyond the massive main room there are little rooms off the main room. Incredible.

The Christensens can be characterized as ummm ... 'collectors'. Mom had a mouse collection, a rabbit collection, there was a stamp collection, coin collecting, shells, matchbooks, rocks, various china patterns, depression glass, Isabel Bloom statues, legos, Star Wars, books, magazines, bird plates, bird statues, music boxes, eggs, craft supplies, quilting materials, sewing items and on and on and on. I have decided that I am not a collector. I don't like knick knacks. They actually make me nervous. If I could see clean expanses of counter space and sparsly populated shelves, that would be my ideal.

I also was not raised by 'sentimental' parents. Despite my mother's protests to the contrary, there are no photos of me growing up after the age of five unless it was a school picture or I was holding a Boxer. There are certainly no scrapbooks and no labeled albums with old school papers. There are also no written accounts of my childhood and no old science fair projects. There just aren't. My thought is that neither way is wrong but both are polar opposites and speak volumes about our parents and about what makes us feel comfortable now. My attempt to overcome this obvious lacking in my genetic makeup is the blog. I'm sure one day our children will confront me with my shortcomings but I can point out that there will be enough photos to pull together a rehearsal dinner photo montage and I have two boxes started as 'hope' chests for each child that contains some family heirlooms that are meant for them. OOh .. and I also have an ornament box for each child so that they will have their own set of ornaments when they move out.

Wandering through this massive, jam packed house, it still felt 'empty'. It was hard not to be sad thinking about Mom selecting this house, the house of her dreams, and only getting to live in it for a few months. It was equally sad to think about Dad living alone in this house for the following year and finally beginning to overcome his grief just to be taken away so tragically. As Sasha ran (seriously, the child doesn't know how to walk or settle down) through the house, he kept talking about Easter and decorating eggs with Ice Iowa and finding eggs all over the house. He often asks how we'll go and visit Ice Iowa. Can we use a rocket ship? A long ladder? The BIGGEST airplane ever? No, we can't visit Ice Iowa but he's always with us. We can talk to him any time. He looked at all the photos that had been glued onto a board in Dad's memory and especially liked the photos that included Ice Iowa eating ice cream or cake. It made me glad that when I talked about 'the best grandmother in the world' he immediately knew that was Grandma Jan and he pointed to her photo.

I often times worry about how we'll keep the memory of 'Ice Iowa' and 'Happenin' Jan' alive for Sasha. I never want him to forget what exceptional people they were and how much they loved him. How do I help Mia to know two people that she never got the chance to meet? I've started telling her how much they would've loved her. How I was sure they would think that she could be anything that she wanted to be and how perfect they would think she was. How they will watch over her for her entire life. They were always Sasha's biggest fans even when he was struggling with various things. They always thought he was so smart, so awesome and so cute. I know they would think the same things about Miss Mia.

As we loaded the last bit of stuff and made sure we had photos of the items that we want the movers to bring, we couldn't help but tear up. Another chapter is closed. We've lost two amazing people in such a short time. How is all this stuff going to fit into our house??