We hope you’re doing great. We wonder how your classes at school are doing, and then we say to each other, that we are sure you’re doing great. You both were such awesome students and all the teachers always were so happy to have you in class. We can only imagine that has continued.
We think about the gymnastics, and how Eli was progressing, and wonder what activity he must be in with baseball season over for a bit now. Maybe more karate, who knows, but oh boy, how he love Ninja Warrior Training at Stars and Stripes. The other day I posted a memory that popped up in our photos of a Guillianna Frozen Birthday cake from a few years ago, but today I found Elijah’s American Ninja Warrior Cake!
The other memories on this date, several years ago, Guillianna lost a front tooth and could literally sing, all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Cheer photos also on this day since it is the middle of cheer season. A few years earlier your Liberty Cheer team was really having a lot of fun together, it was a definite favorite of all the extracurriculars for Guillianna. Above jazz, tap, ballet, and hip hop was cheer for sure. All the cheer meets, and practices were like heaven for Guillianna, minus the running lol. Eli was a huge fan of the cheer meets, it was lots of Eli Nana time and I am pretty sure he rooted for Gugu and her team mates with more excitement than any of the fans in the stands. One thing for sure, between all the varied activities, the one on one Nana, Eli or Nana Gugu time was always spent laughing and having fun. So grateful for the memories. Hopeful one day soon we will get photos, or hear of the new activities and see you enjoying them.
Best support ever, a brother who loved watching how happy his sister was at competitions.
Then there were photos where on this day, two years ago, you were caroling at Fox Run for all the residents. So much fun. I do have video of the two of you singing, and the people around you so very happy, however the video and pixellating faces is very hard with the equipment I have, I continue to work on this. Just know the copy of the regular video is available on a non public page for you when you are older if I cannot get the graphics to be pixellated properly. These videos and the many others we have are so worth preserving – for you’re both so adorable and the memories so precious.
We are so proud of you both, and enjoyed watching you in all your activities and academic accolades, like the awards from NDPMA for international baccalaureate, caring. Or the brag tags, and honor roll. The two of you are both so smart and so outgoing, love participating and the combination of all these things will lead you each to an amazing journey for sure. Stories we cannot wait to see unfold and hear all about some day.
Today we went into downtown Rochester, and there is a new place, it is called Dino’s Cookie Dough Bar… and yes they sell “cookie dough”. It is a place we hope you will get to go to. You would love it. All different kinds of edible cookie dough. Peanut butter, double chocolate, or chocolate chip, funfetti, or Monster, that has peanut butter chocolate and chocolate chips just to name a few. After baking with you two, I am telling you, YOU WOULD LOVE THIS PLACE.
The evening was quiet and stayed in, watched a little television which is highly unusual for us, and started making a list of holiday shopping stops we will need to make this week. We had seen Uncle David in the hospital and he is doing okay, healing from his surgery. We had lunch with great Grandma Sally and then did a little grocery shopping. All in all it was a quiet day. We always remember spending Sunday’s at our children’s activities be it hockey, or cheer, and then more recently your activities. We miss Elijah gymnastics, or Gugu cheer, and the breakfasts we would have …. when thought of, it makes us happy to remember and we hope you have new Sunday plans with mom and dad that bring you the same smiles.
It is Saturday, December 8. Today Poppy and I will see some friends from when we were just kids. We will eat dinner with classmates that we may not have seen for many years. Life has a way of bringing back good friends and good memories, and so tonight we will go into the town, the city of lights and share a meal with old friends.
We hope you two will have a wonderful weekend. We hope that you have lots of fun planned, maybe a birthday party? Maybe a movie, or dinner with the family. What every you do we hope you smile an enjoy it. We will share photos with these friends of ours, all of us grandparents now. We will tell stories of you and all the other cousins, and we will be so grateful for our memories. We will surely hope to build more memories with you both, trips to the Mitten or during school breaks, but for now we will tell stories of the many years and happy times spent.
We know that Aunt Kiki and family came to see you both to say happy birthday. We hope you know that EVERYONE loves and misses you both very much. We hope that you have had a great week, and we imagine your decorations for the holiday have begun. Christmas tree trimming was a specialty of yours. Love, love, love, the decorations you have made in the past and the post it notes you left in the tree! This is an older video, (video credit goes to Alex Boge and his link from FB) – of downtown, we hope the link works for you – it is absoultely still as beautiful and just how you remember it !
Hugs and kisses to you both we love you to the moon and back,
The days for us begin with photographs from our phone and the photo stream, displaying “ on this day” …. and then photos from this day for the past four or so years will appear ! These photos always bring a smile , and certainly almost all of them will have something we did together, school events, gymnastics, karate, dance, cheer, play dates , and all kinds of Elfie and Snowflake activities. It makes us think of ‘ShaNANAgins’ and fun we had day after day year after year. While it makes us happy thinking of you it also makes us so concerned as to what could have happened or what has been said if you in fact actually hate and no longer wish to speak to us, and how you both are coping. It is likely that you keep your feelings of loss or sorrow to yourselves not letting it show for fear you’ll be making people you love and need to love you disappointed or sad. Fear that if you show you’re sad, you will displease. This is what we guess, for we have not heard from you a single word recently, and the last words were through tears that you were leaving. Last memories of two kids who didn’t want us to ever leave. Kids who wanted us to call and give kisses on the monitor… it is all so hard to comprehend, and when we sit, think and talk, we have collectively been forced to assume it is about love, acceptance, and the core human need to be loved and please.
We understand that all children want very much to make others happy. We worry what effect all of this will have in the future and yet we have no ability to change any of it. We can however add the photos and stories of the real and true memories here in the Mitten . Nelli Sachs was a famous Nobel prize winning author, a poet, a writer, who used the power of the written word to bring light through darkness. She survived through terrible times, Like Ms. Bertyl whom you met, Great Grandma Sally’s friend who is 103 years old ( on Elijah’s birthday) and also survived a terrible time in Germany, the ability to use positive thoughts and good in your life is essential when people you love are missing or gone. Positive happy wonderful things are important and they are what anyone would want for a child to have in their lives! I am not a poet nor am I a gifted writer, but Poppy and I do this to help not only you one day, but writing is also for Poppy, Nana and our parents – for ALL of the family you have shared your entire lives with who wish for you the same things we do. Hearts full of love, good childhood memories and new adventures with mom and dad -HAPPINESS. We hope that there are many new and wonderful memories being made and of course we will always hope to hear all about them and share in your lives.
Sadly, we have been asked to stop sending you any gifts – and this is a very telling to us, it is more the feelings of others that are preventing your involvement with any of the family – we don’t know what you have been allowed to have so far of the many things sent to lift your spirits or feel love from us all. Can’t imagine how you’re little hearts would feel, if it were thought that we missed a special day in your lives, or a holiday! We can’t imagine what you must think when there has been promises of contact, and then this ? We don’t know why anyone would want to stop the warmth and love sent to you and believe it or not – we have been threatened with legal action because someone has said and believes it is a form of “harassment”. We have actually have been forced based on these comments to seek legal counsel to ensure our efforts to protect you both from thinking we abandoned you, when we NEVER WOULD – Our hope is that your innocent hearts are in no way being hurt with actions by either of us , that the website and our message of our role as grandparents is in NO WAY inappropriate or unjust. The fact is that you are both minor ( under legal adult age ) children and it is currently the right of your parents to determine – who you can see – who you can have gifts from- and who you cannot see. We are more than sad that your mom no longer wishes to have us or the family in her life , this statement is based upon the emailed letters from her email account , and a call made from her to Poppy from a blocked telephone number. While the perception your parents have is their “right”, it is also a “right” that each human being has to write. Just as I have written these words, from my heart, for healing, and for historical documentation of what is our journey, a true story of love. We, Poppy and I, were in fact the ones who actually lived these years – lived with you two, and who know factually what that time frame has been- what it encompasses and how truly good and happy you both were. Others, only have a perception – if others were not present – and did not see the day to day life – their perception is not factual, and is based upon something other than truths. Based upon the events over these almost 12 months, it seems they perceive it to somehow bad and that we did not look out for your best interests. The idea that you do not want to see the very people you always loved to see every day has completely reversed, and been brought about so suddenly and drastically, is either untrue, or has been brought about by emotional distress to somehow have to choose? It is all a mystery! Our website and the information that is carried within its many images and postings- is historical and factual data that we can only hope will one day be appreciated by our own daughter and valued by you both. While time passes though in the here and now, it is hard to imagine that you cannot have Christmas gifts from grandparents – that birthday gifts could have, ever be denied . That knowing us, talking to us, seeing that we are a constant in an every changing world, would bring anything other than pure joy and connectivity to your hearts? All of this is beyond comprehension. The saddest part of all is what this separation could do later in life. If loving us seems to make others uncomfortable, and if for that reason you have been placed in a position no child should be in, that would be emotionally difficult on anyone, especially a child. It is okay to love. To love mom, to love dad, to love grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and to miss all of them. It may be that some people do chose to go years at a time, alone, independent, or unattached, or even not speaking to people, “cutting people out of their lives” and others choose family, chose hope, choose building relationships. Some people choose believing in family and have less interest in divisiveness, comparisons , and less desire to isolate – Poppy and I will always choose love, the path of working at relationships, and hope for family is and will be us, forever and always…. despite any and all of the bumps in the road, we will choose to love.
Everyone is different in this world and each of us has value and brings to life a purpose. Poppy and Nana will always look to show our love and our belief in love, our hope for our family to one day value love and each other.
It’s been another full week and likely as the weekend approaches we are hoping you will have a lot of fun things to do. This time of year in the Mitten had brought school concerts and holiday Christmas shows for gymnastics. It has had cheer competitions and lots of Elf mischief. The decorating of gingerbread houses and baking cookies are all things you used to love to do – hopefully some of which are carried on traditions- and hopefully some new ones have emerged too! This love letter was difficult to write as it is written as an explanation of the grown versions of yourselves. It is written to answer the questions,” why Nana and Poppy forgot Christmas?” Or “why did they not care anymore?” Questions you should not ever have had to ask. So this love letter is written to your grown up selves… we did not stop loving, we did not stop caring, we remember you every day, with love, and warmth. Nana uses the words on this site to see through the sorrow and loss that is surely just as real to you as it is to us. We want for you to live happy, to know your parents too want you to live happy, and that people simply have individual differences. Those differences should not interfere with your love for all of the people who have been there through all of your lives. We can always hope to hear something positive and wonderful, that says ‘Christmas’, a message of love and hope for happiness where individuals, with different ways of life, different backgrounds, different cultures,different behaviors, can agree that kindness, willingness to share love, compassion and kindness is key to a childs development, and key to humanity as a whole.
We love you both to the moon and back , we always will, the love we have for you will not change no matter what age you are. Our love is there on every birthday, every holiday, every single day, and when you are small we do know you may think we have gone, or that we forgot, but one day, you will know all the distance, and all the time in the world will not change our love for you both.
Nana
