Grandpa Gumbel

Grandpa Gumbel's Obituary as it read in the Evansville Courier and Press....

Leo Bernard Gumbel, 87, of Evansville, passed away Thursday, May 24, 2012, at the Deaconess Hospice Care Center.


Mr. Gumbel was a farmer and a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Vanderburgh County and the Vanderburgh County Farm Bureau.

Surviving Leo are his wife of 64 years, Marie (Weiss) Gumbel; two daughters and their husbands, Joann and Bob Rentchler, of Tennyson, Ind., and Delores and George Fuhrman, of Evansville; two sons and their wives, Lawrence and Nancy Gumbel, of Evansville and Bernard and Pam Gumbel, of Seymour, Ind. Also surviving are seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial will begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May, 29, 2012, at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Vanderburgh County, Rev. Eugene Schroeder officiating. Burial will follow in the church cemetery.


Friends may visit with the family from 2 until 7 p.m. Monday at Pierre Funeral Home, 2601 W. Franklin Street, where there will be a memorial service held at 5 p.m. Friends may also visit from 9:30 a.m. until service time on Tuesday at the church.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Deaconess Hospice or to St. Joseph Catholic Church Vanderburgh County, Care of the Poor Fund.

Published in Courier Press on May 27, 2012 .
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My Aunt Pam read a poem at Grandpa's Funeral Mass that really said it best....

Miss Me, But Let Me Go

When I come to the end of the road,

And the sun has set for me,

I want no rites in gloom-filled rooms,

Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little--but not too long,

And not with your head bowed low;

Remember the love that we once shared

Miss me--but let me go.

For this is a journey that we all must take,

And each must go alone.

It's all a part of the Master's plan,

A step on the road to home.

When you are lonely and sick at heart,

Go to the friends we know,

And busy your sorrows in doing good deeds.

Miss me - but let me go.

--Betty Miller

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A funeral dinner was served by the church. We took that opportunity, to get the nine Gumbel Great-Granddaughers together for a photo. From L to R: Mattison (Carla), Olivia and Audrey (James), Kayla, Isabelle and Alyssa (Nick), Ciara (Carla), Shelby and Jenna (Christa).

The last photos I have of my Grandpa Gumbel are from Christmas 2010.  As you can see in the below photo, Shelby was very interested in Grandpa's bald head.  I kept trying to keep Shelby away from Grandpa, as I thought it was disrespectful for a 6 month old to play with an elder's bald head.  Grandpa, however, said "she's not hurting anything, let her play."  So, we let Shelby rub her Great-Grandpa's head. 

 

I miss you Grandpa, but I know you are in a better place now.



Spirit of Terre Haute

So after 3 weekends of picking up sticks (see prior post) I was begging Lance to take the kids off my hands for a couple of hours on Saturday 4/5/12 so I could clean house.  In my mind it was in desperate need of cleaning and I was not getting it accomplished with my two little "helpers".  With the spring being so early and hectic this year Lance had been gone pretty much every night and weekend working for Vincennes Tractor and then working on our Boonivlle farm on the weekend that I also thought he needed to spend some time with the kids. 

Anyway he agreed to give me some time on Saturday morning to dust, vacuum, do laundry, etc.  When they left the house I thought they were headed to Grandpa and Grandma Hofmann's to drop off some things, over to another farm to take pictures of a piece of equipment someone was wanting to trade in and MAYBE to the park at Cory.  Lance called at 11:30 and asked if I cared that they didn't make it home until after lunch sometime.

They ended up at Demming Park, in Terre Haute.  Demming Park is the home of "The Spirit of Terre Haute," a small train.  On Saturday's they give train rides for $1.25.  The kids played at the playground and got to ride the train twice.  As you can tell in the following pictures, they were super thrilled with the ride!

 

 

Jenna is really into Thomas the Train and his friends.  She came home from the park telling me she got to take a ride on James (the red engine in the Thomas stories).  I was super diappointed that I wasn't along for the visit/ride.  I was thrilled that I not only got the house cleaned and laundry done, but also got all the kids winter clothes put away, summer clothes out, and all the 4T clothes for Jenna next winter inventoried so I know what I am still need!

Five, Six Pick up Sticks

I have been lacking posts lately, for that I am sorry.  What have the Hofmann's been up to you might wonder?  Well, we spent 3 weekends (Saturday afternoon after Lance got off work and Sunday) picking up sticks.  We own a 40 acre farm in Boonville and in the Spring of 2011 the county cleared the trees against the road and we hired a guy to finish off the tree row that the county did not clear.  This year we had the fence row between us and our neighbor cleaned up.  There were several massive stumps on the property we had taken out so we could keep the weeds and saplings under control.  Lance and I had several sticks to pick up on the farm....

... from the old clearing and the new clearing, so we made three trips to get the farm...farmable and to farm.  Spending Thursday night packing, Friday night doing light cleaning, being gone Saturday and Sunday, getting back home after 10pm each Sunday night, unpacking on Monday and keeping up with laundry, the blog got forgotten.

Anyway, the farm has been disked (where the trees were removed), anhydrous applied, chemical applied, planted and ready for the corn to grow.
  

Nose Dive

I went and taught a class at Ivy Tech on Wednesday.  I got done with class and went to do a home inspection.  After the home inspection, I headed home and did the first weedeating adventure of the spring/summer.  Lance brought home the kids and left and went to drop off parts to some customers.  When they pulled in, I was trimming between the house and garage, the last strip I was hoping to get done.  Lance took the kids in the house for the couple minutes I finished around the sidewalk to the garage.  I shut of the weedeater and hung it up in garage.  Lance came out with his little shadow behind him.  He gave me a kiss and and idea of when he would be home.

Shelby had been standing on the platform of the concrete steps. When she went to make her first step she slipped and slid down the remaining 2 concrete steps on her nose!  OUUCCCHHHH!  Her nose didn't look bad after it happened, infact it never bled....

 However, day 2 (below), it looked much worse, and day 3 (today) it looks worse yet. 

I love the facial expressions in both of these photos! 

Easter

Easter weekend we went south to celebrate Mattison's birthday, celebrate Easter, and my parents 34 wedding anniversary which was on Easter Day.  We started the day off with church.  It was chilly and breezy, Jenna let me get a picture, but I don't think Shelby ever did.  Jenna in front of Mawmaw's azelias. 

After church, Lance and Dad went to the farm to pull out a tractor that Lance had hung up while we were disking our farm on Saturday.  The tractor go un-hung Lance disked and Mom and I took the girls to the park (as a reward for being good during Easter service).  We got back from the park to celebrate Easter/Anniversary with dinner. 

We ended up eating and running because Lance's Grandfather, Benny Williams, went missing.  He has dementia.  He drove to the end of the driveway to get the Sunday paper, when it was not there he got in the car and kept driving.  The authorities issued a Silver alert and the Hofmann & Williams families went on a HUGE Easter Egg Hunt.  They found him, alive and well, in Mount Vernon, IL (he lives in Terre Haute, IN) at 11pm.  Needless to say, he gave the family quite a scare.