Happy Birthday Grandma Houlie....

My Grandma Houlie turned 83 yesterday. It brings a smile to my lips that I was able to take her, my other Grandma and my two girls out for a fun dinner on the town. We had yummy food, fun conversation and the girls were so excited and so loving to everyone at the table. My Grandma Houlie's real name is Lura. She is called Grandma Houlie because when I was little my parents told her that Houlie in Hawaiian meant American or White. So she insisted that she would be my Houlie Grandma and my Grandma Bea could be my "Spanish" Grandma. Now, she's never to this day realized that Houlie is not a complimentary term in Hawaiian and we are just content to leave her in the dark since it's been so many years and she loves her nickname. For those of you that don't know ...Houlie is equivalent to Honkey or Whitey or some other not so nice label for ignorant white people that think they know everything and ruin the culture of the island. Sooooo....we are just going to keep this little secret between us okay bloggie friends? She's old and had no idea about computers so I think the secret is safe.

Anyhoo, my Grandma was very involved in my life and has always made me feel very important. She is the type of person that would drop anything she was doing if she felt she was needed by her family. She is a colorful character who is very full of life. She can make a car dealer weep and she always gets the best deals on cars because she can haggle better than anyone. She is short and has all white hair so she comes into the dealership looking like this sweet old lady then she rips into them until they are begging her to just please take the keys to the new car and go away. She and my Papa Tom always took me to the ocean or camping when I was little. I went on lots of vacations with them. She taught me how to play poker and how to cheat at it too. She can argue politics, religion or any issue you might want to argue about and she gets soooooooo carried away when she argues then when it's all done she's so happy that there was a lively discussion. When she was younger, she said most of their holidays with her family, somebody would get in an argument over something or another and would wake their kids up in the middle of the night to leave because they were mad. She makes the best pies. She has pie dishes that are the hugest pie dishes you have ever seen. Her specialty is Sour Cream Lemon and let me tell you - it's the best pie ever. She can shoot, hunt, fish, camp and she once beat out all the other men in her small hometown of Kiwani, Illinois at a bat throwing contest. Bat as in baseball, not nocturnal creature. She threw the bat farther than any man or boy in the town. I guess you could say she's a tough old broad who was waaaayyyyy ahead of her time. She always worked when my Dad was growing up and was very good at business and was always the Manager of the fine jewelry department at Macy's when she wasn't running my Papa's jewelry store.

We had a great time at dinner last night. It was fun to see how much she loves my girls and how much joy they bring to her life. She's a funny lady and I'm glad she's my Grandma.