Well Isn't That Something

At the end of December Great Papa Dean passed away. He suffered a heart attack at the beginning of the month and was never able to recover. Seeing him in the hospital and then in the assisted living facility was hard, and sad, and although you are never ready to say goodbye to someone I can find comfort in knowing that part is over for him. Sadly this is not the first loss the boys have experienced in a short period of time and although they were better prepared this time and were able to visit him and understand a bit more, they still keep asking why everyone dies at the same time. It's a hard question and one Jon and I have also asked ourselves over the last year.  Great Papa Dean was 90 years old, his death was not tragic, he had a good life, and I think we've all been able to find a lot of comfort in that.

Dean Gillette grew up in La Verne, California with his parents Earl and Florence and his sister Dorris. As a child he did the Boy Scouts, 4-H, and worked on his father's farm from the time he could walk. He was a high school football and baseball star, going on to play as a halfback at Oregon State for a year, playing both football and baseball at Mt. Sac and La Verne College, and was drafted by the Red Sox. Instead of playing professional ball he joined the Marines and rose to the rank of First Lieutenant.  After leaving the Marines he and his wife Norma (Blingy) moved back to La Verne, had four children, and Dean continued in the family business farming citrus. Grandpa and his siblings remember fondly fishing, camping, horse back riding, and hunting trips with their father growing up. In the 1960s he and Norma began purchasing land in the Orange Cove area, they ultimately divorced, but in the 1970's he married Great Grandma Didi and they built their home on a hilltop overlooking his beloved orange groves in the Central Valley. In the early 1980s Earl, Dean, and Grandpa started Gillette Citrus with Uncle Mark joining the family business shortly after. Some of my earliest memories are of going to the packing house, testing fruit, and playing with the boxes. Farming was the central part of Great Papa Dean's life and he definitely instilled the same love in his two oldest sons, that passion has continued on to me, and maybe one day his great-grandchildren will continue in the agriculture industry as well.

Papa Dean was not an inside kind of guy, if you were staying at his house you were usually told to put your shoes on and go out and play. He did, however, always make sure to warn you to watch out for rattlesnakes in their garden and not to fall over the edge of the hill their house sits on. If you were really good you might get to go down to feed the cows or, on rare occasions, to the shop with him. All I remember of the shop was it was filthy dirty and full of tons of parts and tools that were in disorderly piles and buckets.  It would drive this Type A, little kid crazy and I would sit and try to sort and organize things while he worked on a project.  I'm thinking this may have been the reason I was allowed in the shop in the first place!

If you were inside with Papa Dean it was probably a Sunday which meant pancakes for breakfast and a good shave with his electric razor. If he had bills to approve he would sit undisturbed at the secretary desk in his office. I don’t know if we were ever explicitly told not to bother him or maybe we just drew our own conclusion - not wanting to mess with him when he was in a room with a huge cabinet full of guns. Papa Dean was always working and if you wanted his attention you better be working hard too. Good grades, recitals, and awards as a kid and long hours at work, a promotion, having a baby, or hosting a party always got a “what a hard worker” seal of approval from him.  The only thing Papa Dean liked less than laziness was spending money and you never heard the end of it if your name was mentioned in the local paper and he was fined at his weekly Lions Club meeting.  I guess if he had to spend money at least the reward was everyone knowing about his kid's or grandkid's achievements!

There was never a social event Papa Dean missed and he usually had to be dragged out by poor Grandma Didi who’d been ready to go for the last hour. If you wanted to feel good about yourself you just needed to invite him over for dinner - he would rave about the gourmet meal you cooked and how delicious everything was. He always loved getting together as a family and once everyone had gathered he would take it all in and say “well isn’t this something.” In all honesty he said this so often Reed and I have made a game out of it in recent years to see who heard him say the phrase the most at get-togethers. I’m sure if he was able to look back on his life and all that he and his family have accomplished he'd say the same thing - Well Isn't That Something!

Goodbye 2018

As is tradition, we rang in the new year with friends, overtired children, and great hope for the year to come. It was a long night full of spills, commotion, baton twirling, tortoise watching, dance parties, and New Years kisses but we wouldn't want to celebrate in any other way. Cheers to 2019!

Christmas 2018

We officially started our Christmas celebrating when Uncle Kyle and family got to town a few days prior. We met at the zoo for Zoo Lights and had a fun night exploring the zoo and seeing all of the neat light installations. There are never many animals out but the kids seemed to have a great time spending the evening together.

After all of the holiday outings and activities the boys were definitely ready for Christmas to finally be here. On Christmas Eve we stopped by the assisted living facility Papa Dean was staying in so the boys could see him and give him his Christmas present. The boys had been asking about him a lot so we decided it would be good for them to see them but knew this was probably the last time they would see him as he seemed to be continuing to decline. It was a hard visit but they both said after that they were glad we went. Once we got to Nonna and Pepe's house the boys built a Lego Christmas City and Reed declared that building a Christmas Lego set should become an annual tradition. Once C, Tio, Lyla, Zach, Gran, and Aunt Di Di arrived we exchanged gifts. Tim was there too and was a good sport during all of the gift madness. We gave Lyla a karaoke machine she tried out and then the primos went outside to ride bikes. They were adorable together and make quite the gang! Tio tried out Jon's Onewheel and took a really nasty fall that he is still bruised and banged up from. After getting out some restless energy and Auntie P, Michael, and TJ arriving it was back inside for games, dinner, and more games. The highlight for Reed was the Santa Tracker Tim had on his phone, which he was obsessed with checking.

After a late night Christmas Eve the boys slept in a bit but as soon as they woke we opened stockings - Reed was so excited that Santa had remember Shell-Ten and left him an apple and the boys opened their gift from Santa as well. We had seen Santa a few different times during December but each time Kieran would refuse to tell him what he wanted. When I asked he told me "Santa can get me whatever he thinks I should get" or "Santa always does a good job picking something he knows I want." Luckily the kid was right and Santa did a great job getting the boys a Hotwheels garage. We also exchanged gifts just the four of us. We got the boys PJs, books, and an ornament like we always do, they had picked out gifts for each other, and then had made me and Jon gifts at school. It was the simplest but also very sentimental of gift exchanges. Soon Grandma, Grandpa, G-Momma, Uncle Kyle, Aunt Kari, Annaliese, Haleigh, and Lydia arrived. We made sure to take family pictures since we aren't all together very often, had our traditional minestrone soup, opened gifts, let the kids try out their new roller blades from Grandma and Grandpa, played games, and had a yummy dinner. Christmas went by in a blink of the eye but we really did have some lovely days spending time with our nearest and dearest.