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Sad start to Summer

I hope you all are doing well busy with summer holidays and bustling with activity!  Is it just me or is summer as a grown-up is just not the same as it was as a kid?  So much responsibility and if you have kids, it’s all about them, isn’t it?  Thank GOD for teachers!  It’s this time of the year when you whole-heartedly know that they are underpaid.

With end-of-school events and activities, I have been the busiest I’ve ever been.  Living an expat life means you get to meet amazing people and develop these friendships that are temporary by nature of the situation we are all in.  There have been many goodbye parties and many hopes that I will see these wonderful friends whom I’ve met.  My family and I are still in Viet Nam for perhaps another nine months or so.  Our path ahead is unclear.  On top of that, I’ve been sick.  I don’t know if it was by some Grand Design, but I got dengue fever therefore missing out most of the tearful goodbyes.  It felt like I had the flu for 4 weeks, but with worse headaches and body aches!  The flu would have been a walk in the park.

Then my paternal Grandmother just passed away this week.  No, this is not the maternal Grandmother who raised me and whom I visit weekly and whom I blog about.  My paternal Gram, “Ba Noi”, lived in Da Nang and we visited her twice a year.  Nonetheless, in the short time that we’ve been here and the times my kids got to spend with their Great Gram of Da Nang, she really enjoyed them and they loved her.  They were quite sad to hear she had passed but I had prepped them in the previous visit regarding her condition.  They handled it quite well.  My son Ethan summed it up best, “Well, at least she had a long great life”.

So this afternoon, I will board the plane to attend the funeral for her.  But I will go knowing what Ethan had told me.  I will be with a lot of family, many aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins and nieces and nephews.  So I’m okay.  The beach will have to wait for another time.  And I will be back to blog about clutches soon enough.  🙂

In tribute, here are some pictures of her.  RIP Ba Noi.

Ethan has an amazing love and connection with older people.  Here he is communicating with his Great-Gram.  He doesn’t speak Vietnamese and she doesn’t speak English.  It works somehow.

Since I’m always the one with the camera, I wasn’t able to take a great pic. But this captured the love just as much. Here she is kissing my hand.

From April, 2012. Hayley, Noah, Great-Gram Khuong, Ethan.

Hope you and yours have a great weekend.

xo Winn

June 28, 2013 Posted by Thy K | WhileBabyNaps General Updates | cltuch, clutch, clutch making, clutch patterns, clutches, Danang, Dengue fever, Grandmother, Vietnam | 2 Comments