Grandma and Grandpa Rockart were really great Grandparents, but then so were Grandma and Grandpa Saffell.  They were equal on the "Greatness Scale".  We had a family tradition of sorts when it came to Grandparents and kids.  Every so often, each of us grandkids, individually, were able to spend some "overnight time" with them, and it was GREAT!  I will talk about Grandma and Grandpa Rockart first.  Grandpa loved woodworking.  He had a nice shop in the basement of his house in South Minneapolis.  We lived several miles away and were able to visit regularly.  One day I came to Grandpa with a project.  We were studying the Wild West in school and I wanted him to help me build a fort that I could take to school and show how the settlers lived.  Off we went on a wonderful trip in table saw safety and cut up a bunch of slats and posts. It turned out GREAT!  It was squarish and we put hook and eyes at the corners so I could take it apart and carry it easier.  One side had a wonderful swinging gate with the posts extending above the walls and over the gateway.  There were walkways toward the top for the people to stand on and fight off the indians, and small buildings placed inside the fort. It was a fun project. That project was my first time to learn how to use a table saw. Grandpa also taught me how to use a table scroll saw as well. He showed me how to drill small holes for the screw eyes to be screwed in and the hooks on the other piece to be placed "just right" to hold the parts together.  Grandpa taught me lots of things as I was growing up.  One keeps coming back to my mind through the years that I remember fondly.  One weekend while I was there, Grandpa decided I needed a hair cut.  He used a bowl as a guide.  When Mom came to pick me up, she was less than happy, I need to tell ya!  That next Monday afternoon, I was at Dick's Barber Shop and there was really, very little he could do to make it look good.  Mom's standing order after that was NO HAIRCUTS!  I didn't really care . . . my eyes were in the front of my head and couldn't see my hair anyway!  But the lesson I learned there was that Grandpa Rockart was great with woodworking, but not so much with barbering.

Lily and Edward Rockart

One day, Grandma and Grandpa took me to a restaurant over in St. Paul that had an "All you can Eat" Fried Chicken Special. I LOVE fried Chicken.  Grandma and Grandpa Rockart took great pleasure in watching me eat "all I could eat".  After all . . .  that was the purpose that we went.  I was a skinny kid and they wanted to see how much I COULD eat.  Guess I ate enough that day, because they talked about that for years later.

Marjory and Guy E. Saffell

Staying over at Grandma and Grandpa Saffell's house was always a super treat too!  Grandma made the very BEST Silver Dollar Pancakes on Saturday morning.  I could eat a slew of them.  I regret that the receipt was never found after Grandma left us.  Those were some wonderful pancakes.  One morning I got up and wandered out into the kitchen where Grandma and Grandpa Saffell were sitting at the table (it was actually a breakfast nook, which is a table with a bench on each side, between two walls, with a window on the end of the table, looking into the back yard) and the pancake fixin's were ready to start!  I told them the screw fell out of my glasses and don't know what happened to it.  Grandma said that it is probably on the floor, to go look for it.  About five minutes later, out of the guest room I came with this little bitty screw in my hand.  Luck was on my side that day, because I was pretty well blind without my glasses.  As I remember I saw a glint of light from the screw on the hardwood floor.  Of course my nose was almost touching the floor when I saw it.  I remember the joy and smiles on their faces when I handed them my glasses and that little screw. My cousins and I always had a great time when family gathered at Grandma and Grandpa Saffell's home.  They had these humongous ferns on both sides of the front steps that, as kids, we played among them like in a jungle. Cousin Diane and Cousin Lee and I are all the same age within the year. Diane is our ELDER with a February birthday, Lee is somewhere in the middle and I followed up in November.  We had a great time when we could get together and play.  Dad and Mom, along with sister Suzanne and I, actually lived in a 20 something foot long, canvas roofed travel trailer, for a while in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard! We would have to use the bathroom in the house because there wasn't one in the trailer....THAT I remember well. It gets cold in Minnesota . . . don't cha know.

Memories of family for some folk are not as great as I experienced.  I was blessed to have wonderful, caring parents, and Grandparents.  We would go on family outings to Saint Paul's Como Park, which had a zoo and everything!  That's what we thought.  It had an outside monkey display and inside snakes, bears and large cats in cages, and was really a neat place to go on Sunday afternoon.  I thought that Como Park was a great place. AND it IS!  When I got married to Pat, and we were stationed in San Diego, however, I saw something quite a bit larger with a bunch of newer types of animals I had never seen in real life before when Pat guided me to the San Diego Zoo!  Both are wonderful, and great places to go visit.  St. Paul's Como Park has a FANTASTIC Conservatory.  That is a very big glass building that houses many different plants and flowers.  Wander through there and it is like walking through a jungle, only bigger than Grandma Saffell's fern garden.

I have been so blessed as well as Pat, to have a family that wasn't too dysfunctional that we could share holidays and normal days together and enjoy being together.  Christmas was always a wonderful time when my Dad and his brother and two sisters families always gathered on Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Saffell's house for Capon dinner with all the trimmings and then we opened our presents from our cousins.  Then we cleaned up and all went home. Our home, in that time, was in Circle Pines outside and North of St. Paul. When we got home us kids went quickly to bed because Santa was coming.  And sure enough, he had been in the living room while we slept! What wonderful memories.  Although I was too young to realize a lot of things, as a father, grandfather and older and wiser now, I can imagine my folks smiling contentedly seeing us kids enjoy the gifts of Christmas...and those through the year as well.

The point of the story:  However your situation was when you were growing up, there were some good times, hopefully, maybe those were few, or maybe plentiful.  However blessed you were, or how challenged you were, perhaps shaped who you are today.  Those with family values of closeness and sharing are to be thankful.  Did you know that we ALL have a Heavenly Father that takes great joy in blessing us with His gifts of Love?  No matter what has happened to us throughout the years, we have a Father that has been with us in the good times, and has stood beside us in the bad.  God loves us so much that He sent His Only Son, Jesus the Christ, part of the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . . . to come down and die on the cross for our sins. THAT is a gift that can't be topped.  That is a gift of such pure love that it takes away all the ugliness of our sins, that we can't get rid of but by His Grace and Jesus' sacrifice.  We all have memories of our earthly family.  There, no doubt, has been good times and bad. Think about the good times, and never mind the unpleasant times...they are gone....don't dwell on them as they don't mean anything now.  Think of God's gift to you.  There is a Christmas feeling in there somewhere to remember.  There is a memory of Grandma and Grandpa that will pop up and make you smile.

Blessings,
Gary