Grandma Evans

On Monday, September 26th, I received word that my Grandma Evans had passed away.

This is a picture taken in her younger years.  She was born September 24th, 1915, so she'd just celebrated her 96th birthday 2 days before she passed away.

This is a picture I took of Grandma and my sister at Susannah's wedding reception in Boise, ID back in June of 2009.  She was pretty weak and had lost a lot of weight, but she still looked like grandma.

We visited her this summer just after Lake Powell and she was very frail, could barely speak, and her memory was going.  She continued to decline after that until her passing.  What a great lady.  We're so sad to see her go, but I'm very happy that she's now free from pain and can be with Grandpa Evans and our Heavenly father.  Click HERE to read her obituary.

I flew in to SLC on Thursday, September 29th and my good friend Allie picked me up.  Here she is with her cute oldest daughter Megan.  Not only did she pick me up, but we went back to the airport to pick up Susannah and Evie a few hours later!

Here are Allie's girls and Evie playing.  They were so cute together.  Allie's kindness didn't end there, though. My parents drove in from Seattle and Allie fixed us all dinner!  She also let us borrow an extra pack and play for Evie to sleep in over the weekend.  Our trip wouldn't have been nearly as smooth without Allie!

On a side (but very important) note.  Thursday was also my parents' 39th wedding anniversary.  I thought I'd post this wedding picture of my parents with all their parents - who are now all deceased.  My Grandma Evans is next to my mom.  To see these fantastic people in their prime revisit THIS post!

Here's my mom with her siblings:  Bob, Norma, and Janice at the viewing before the funeral.  Here's a snippet from my Grandma's life sketch that my mom wrote and I read at the funeral.  This picture made me think of it:  

Norma and Janice were little red haired girls, Bob was blond and both LaVerne and Glyn were dark haired. The story goes that Grandma North was visiting for church one Sunday and saw those 3 children sitting together and said, “Honest to John, LaVerne, those kids don’t look like they belong to you.” 

My mom was born 8 years later and had the dark hair like her parents.

Here are some of my cousins/cousin's husbands carrying the coffin before the graveside service.

Of course Evie made everything fun - even a funeral.  I love that baby!

Just previous to the grave dedication by my dad.

Evie liked the headstone.  She actually likes everything!

They hadn't yet engraved Grandma's death date in the headstone.

I got a couple of videos of Evie at the graveyard.  She really wanted to be down on the ground.

This is her new crawl - like a stinkbug or spider monkey!  In the background you may hear my mom thinking about setting me up with a friend of the family who's in his 60s.  Hmmmmm.

We stopped back by the cemetery after the lunch at the church and they'd already covered her up.  The cemetery has a beautiful view of the mountains!

Here are my cute parents next to the grave.

Some of the beautiful flowers left there at her grave.

We drove through Provo Canyon to get over to Lehi where we stayed the next two nights.  

I'm always amazed at how beautiful the mountains are in that drive through the canyon.

Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon.

I had to snap this quick one too.  This town and this mill are in the movie "Footloose."

My cute parents again. We stayed Thursday night with my mom's cousin Jim in Heber, but we stayed with my cousin on my dad's side for the other two nights. 

Evie has a hard time crawling in her footie pjs so she was wearing them more as a dress when she was playing around before bed.

I though this was a cute video of Susannah and Evie reading Evie's favorite book.  It has a mirror on the last page and Evie really likes looking at herself.  She has a cute reaction in this video, but I was too late to get the more dramatic reactions.  She was squealing the previous two times through this book.  The camera ruined it! 

This is my cousin Desiree and her husband Kurt.  They were the kind folks who hosted us at their house Friday and Saturday nights.  We spent Saturday watching General Conference at her house.

Desiree did invite her local siblings and their families over for a grilling evening before the Priesthood session.  Here's Daylen with Evie.

I'm not sure what my dad was retrieving over the fence for Kurt, but I thought this was amusing.

Here's Donovan and my dad with Daylen's boys in the background.

I love these girls.  I also love this windblown model shot of my mom!

Evie had some oatmeal after the BBQ.  She got it ALL over her face.

I took this video to give you a better handle on how bad it was!

I LOVE Evie's "scrunchy face."  Susannah got her started on it, and with some prompting, she kept it going a lot during that feeding.

Another great side view of the scrunchy face.  She's a funny kid!

Front view mid blink.

Sunday morning Susannah, Evie, and I flew out.  My parents dropped us off at the airport and then they drove back to Seattle.  

I waited for Susannah and Evie to board their plane and then headed to my gate.  On my way, I saw this out of the airport window - a temple.  I think it might be the Bountiful temple, but I'm not positive.  It was a great close to my trip to UT.  What a visual reminder that families can be together forever.  That's what's most important.

PFE T-Shirt Quilt

While I was visiting my parents in Washington, I bought some fabric to start a t-shirt quilt for all my school t-shirts.  When I visited my sister, we utilized her rotary cutter and got the fabric all cut and ready for the top of the quilt.  When I got back to Houston for the week before I headed to Hawaii, I cut out the t-shirts and got the top of the quilt done.

I finally decided to get back on it and get the quilt done.  I worked on the back last night and got it cut and ready.  I didn't have a quilt stand, so my aunt borrowed one and set it up at her house.  I brought my stuff over and we got started.

Here's Aunt Maylene doing some tying for me!

She got one of me too.

She showed me a quicker way to bind the quilt, and actually helped me get it all pinned and ready.  I came home and got it sewed up.

It's finished!  I really like it!

This is a little more of a close-up so you can see the fabric I used on both sides.  I've got another one to get busy on now!

Oklahoma

I decided to make a little road trip over the long weekend.  I've been meaning to visit my cousins and aunt & uncle in Oklahoma for a while now, and I finally made it out there.

My cousin Ryan made this little clubhouse for his son.  It's a got a bed a the top and a slide down just to the left.  I was really impressed.  He built it from scratch.

My cousin Heather took me to downtown Oklahoma City.  They have a riverwalk area that's really nice.  It's like a little mini San Antonio down there.  She also took me to the Oklahoma City bombing Memorial.  This is still written on the wall by the memorial.

I loved this reflecting pond between the big monuments they built on either side.

I'm standing on the outside of one of the monuments looking at the other one.  It was just before sunset.

These chair-like things were put up as a memorial for each person who died in the bombing.  They're arranged by floor.  The second floor row was sad because it had smaller chairs for all the kids from the daycare.  So sad.

We had someone take our picture looking from the other direction.  Sadly, my eyes are closed.  Oh well!

This inscription was on the outside of both of those big monuments.

They still had stuff up on those fences that people had put there just after the bombing happened and people are still putting stuff there.

That tree is called the Survivor tree.  It's pretty scarred from the explosion too.

After we left the memorial, we went to visit my aunt and uncle.  This is the view from their backyard - the Oklahoma City temple.  My Uncle Art is in the temple presidency.

 I stayed with Mike and Heather.  They're living in the house that Uncle Art built lots of years ago.  This is one little shot of their yard.

This is the house.  It's pretty cool.

The coolest part about it is that it's built into a hill so it's sort of considered underground.

The weather magically cooled down last night and has remained FANTASTIC, so we had a family dinner out on the porch.

Mike was kind enough to take one with me in it.

I always get a kick out of dirty faces and little Brooklyn had a cute one that I couldn't pass up!

Here's Ryan and Sarah and their family.  

I tried to get one of just Heather and Mike's family, but Cannon and Brooklyn jumped in for some camera time!

Here's Brooklyn again with a huge piece of powdered donut in her mouth.

Yeah for Art and Gene!

Ryan's my SkipBo nemesis.  Sadly, he has effectively kicked my trash in SkipBo this trip.  At least I won one!  He's one lucky game player.

Here are some of the boys flexing their muscles.

Somehow, the flexing turned in to a massive dance party.  It started with these 3 and ballooned into pretty much everyone.

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Things kind of ended badly when Jacob took a pretty hard slap to the chest from his sister, Lily. You can see the welted hand print if you look closely.  He was so upset and hurt that he ended up throwing up.  We've had a great time other than that!