We arrived in Utah on Friday afternoon and had a BBQ that night at Uncle Kevin and Aunt Kellie's house. It was an impromptu family reunion, since everyone was able to come. It was great to be together with all of the family. Here are the older girl cousins. Can you tell they are related?
Kaylie, Maddie, Abby, & Calissa
Saturday morning at 11:00 am was the funeral at his ward in Layton. The service was really wonderful. Travis conducted the service and I was able to play "O My Father" as a piano solo. When we came out after the service it was pouring rain!! The freeway was a lake and we had quite the drive up to Brigham City for the burial. Here is a shot of the Brigham City Temple.
You can't really see the rain in this picture much unless you blow it up, but you can see it on their shoulders and can tell by their smiles. We figured Grandpa was getting a kick out of us all getting wet for him.
My mom and cousin Carrie picked out these beautiful flowers for his casket.
Can you see the hidden cowboy boot?
Another beautiful spray of flowers.
Here's the plant that my brothers and I got for my parents.
That night we had pizza for dinner over at my parents house and then most of us went to Kevin and Kellie's for a movie and games. The kids watched a movie,
and the adults played games. Tina won each game that we played. (BJ and Conner stayed back at my parent's house working on homework).
Sunday, we went to church and had a family dinner. Monday, we went to Bountiful and had breakfast with Trav's parents and then I drove Trav to the airport so he could get back to work. Then, all the adults headed over to my grandparent's house to help cleaning things out. My three brothers and Nathan carried piles and piles of books upstairs for over three hours from my grandpa's storage room. He was a voracious reader (to say the least) and had thousands of books. After a while, they got tired of going up and down the stairs so they just passed them through the window well and in through the front door.
I love this picture of Tina and she looks at the thousands of books!
The girls tackled the other rooms and sorted things for garbage, DI, and keep. It was a busy day working together to help out my parents. We had dinner over at Kevin and Kellie's again that day.
Tuesday, we headed back over to sort through the books, so they were available to have a book dealer come over and make my parents an offer.
We made some order out of the chaos! It was amazing at how many different kinds of books my grandpa had!
Another fun thing, was going through my grandparent's things and choosing a few things to bring home. We got to go over on Saturday for the kids to choose some things too. I was able to get some things that remind me of my grandma, my great-grandpa, and my grandpa. We were grateful my parents let us choose some things to keep.
Tuesday afternoon we went to Boondocks and played for several hours before having dinner. The kids had a fun time.
Wednesday, we ran a few errands in the morning, made one last trip to my grandpa's house, and then celebrated Kevin's birthday. The kids and most of the adults, went to a dart place to play.
Grandma's pictures turned out blurry, but I had to put a few in the post to help us remember.
Then, we went to Kevin and Kellie's while the kids played in the water and on the slip-n-slide.
Poor Conner and Calissa had sore muscles the next day!
Then, we went to Kobe Steakhouse for dinner.
Then, we got together one last time that night to say good-bye. Everyone left the next morning to head home. Drew and Tina to Concord, BJ and kids (minus Chrystal and Maddie) to Arizona, and me (plus Maddie) back to Concord. It was great being with family and being able to help my parents get a start on sorting through my grandpa's things. We are blessed to have such a great extended family!
