PawPaw's Funeral.

I am so thankful that we were able to go to Louisiana for PawPaw's funeral. I have no doubt that we wouldn't have all made it to the funeral if we were in Arizona. I would have just gone by myself. A small blessing for sure.

It was also great fun to see all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. A great reunion as we all came from different parts of the country. Utah, Texas, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. I know our grandparents were happy to see us all together. It's amazing to see the posterity of just 2 people. And we were missing quite a few!

The view coming into the cemetery:

Elodie and her cousin Adri.

All the grandsons were pallbearers.



My cousins son played taps at the funeral. He did a great job.

2 of our nephews Austin and Aidon.

My mom and her sister.






My Parents.

I caught this sweet picture of my brother and his family.


My mom and her siblings. Minus one Aunt who had already left.


Cousins.
Whitney Grandkids. Minus a few


My mom and all of her siblings.

PawPaw Whitney

We lost our sweet PawPaw Whitney last night. My mom and her siblings brought him home from the hospital last Monday knowing that he didn't have much time left. He would have been 98 on the 30th and has lived an amazing life! He and my Grandma Whitney had 8 children, 34 grandkids, and over 70 great-grandkids (and counting: there are still a handful of us cousins who haven't even started having children!).

I'm so grateful that we were able to go to Louisiana twice this year. We visited with PawPaw almost daily while we were there. He stood in the circle of Evyn's Blessing and my girls got to spend some fun moments with him this summer. None of that would have happened if we were still living in Arizona.

It's hard to feel sad that he is gone. Grandma Whitney passed away when I was 16. We know that it was a sweet reunion for PawPaw and MawMaw to be reunited. For PawPaw to see his parents and brother that passed on before him. We are so happy that he lived such a long life and did so many amazing things! It's the way it should be!

We love you PawPaw!

July 2011

Evyn Kate 7 months

Plans A,B, and C

Plan A:We had big plans for today. A few weeks ago we had seen an advertisement for a huge sandcastle competition that was going to be down on the beach. It was to last 4 days- Thursday through Sunday- and Saturday was the biggest day of them all. We had made plans a long time ago to take the girls for the day and we were all pretty excited about it. Until we realized (aka: actually read the map) that the beach it was on was 3 hours from our house. We weren't really prepared to make it an all day event, we hadn't left early enough, and personally I didn't want to spend 6 hours of my Saturday on the road with 3 kids.

Plan B: Chris suggested we take the girls bowling. It had been a LONG time (aka: Addysen was a baby) since we had gone and it sounded like a fun way to spend a few hours of our day. We loaded up, got to the bowling alley, Christopher inspected it before we unloaded the girls, and again we were all pretty excited about it. AND THEN, we realized it would cost $60 for the 4 of us to bowl ONE game. Are you serious? I mean, didn't bowling become uncool back in the 90's? Shouldn't the prices for bowling gone down?!? Apparently not. It was 5 bucks each just to rent the shoes (that we were going to return in one hour) and then it was close to $7 per person per game. Crazy! Call us cheap but $60 for one hour? Not happening. Especially knowing Addysen would probably lose interest half way through the game. We almost turned around and paid the money though after we told Elodie and Addysen we weren't going to bowl. And going home and playing bowling on the wii wasn't the same. You should have seen their faces. You would have thought we had taken them to Disneyland on a day the park was closed!

We stood in the bowling parking lot for a few minutes trying to rake our brains for something fun to do....At this point we couldn't just go home!

Plan C: Usually you don't need a Plan C. And clearly today we didn't think we needed a Plan B. either! A few suggestions got knocked down but when we mentioned going to a park the girls were on board! Clearly we should have picked the park as Plan A! So off to the park we went. And not just any park, a park we hadn't EVER been to before! That seemed to do the trick! What would the swings look like. Would there be a slide?

It turned out to be a really nice park with 4 different slides! The weather was perfect. Warm with a cool breeze! Especially nice in the shade where we kept Evyn.

We ended our afternoon with a stop at Walgreens. Everyone picked their own candy and we got a redbox movie. And another highlight was going through the carwash! Who knew!!

We could have spent a lot of money today. Spent a lot of time in the car driving. But instead, we hardly spent any money at all, enjoyed the weather, and spent some fun time together as a family. AND we made it home in time for naps! Bonus for me!

Lesson #1 learned again: You don't have to spend a lot of money to spend time with your kids! In fact, most of the time, the best memories are made when you hardly spend any money at all. With the exception of Disneyland....Disneyland is ALWAYS the exception to any rule!

Happy Saturday!

The first of many.

Elodie had her first real project due today. Her class has been talking about compasses, symbols, and landmarks for the last few weeks. Her assignment was to draw up a map from her house to school. She had to have a certain amount of landmarks and symbols. The route from home to school had to be clearly marked. But most importantly it had to be done by her. We could help her with straight lines and such but her teacher was clear that she didn't want the projects to look like the parents had done most of the work. It's surprising how hard that is to do!

My original thought was that the map wouldn't be overly detailed. Since Elodie had to do the work herself I pictured some cute drawings of the streets, sonic, the dollar store, and the school. Nothing fancy. But not Christopher. He brought home an areal view of our city and was all about the details! I should have known better. He is a structural engineer after all. It's a glimpse into what he does at work. Except he does ports and harbors and not streets. This was business and I let him take the lead on this one.

The 2 of them sat at the dining room table and worked on this map for a couple of hours. I was surprised at how well Elodie concentrated on it! I mean she has a pretty good attention span but 3 hours working on one thing is hard for anyone! Christopher made sure everything was proportional, Elodie did all the coloring, I helped with the title, and the stickers were a nice touch!



I was really excited for Elodie to turn it in today! it was a family effort and we were all proud of her map! I especially love the heart on our house. The mommy sticker at Sonic. Which you can see how close it is to our house, it would be hard for anyone to not stop there everyday! Right? I don't go every day. Maybe like 3 times a week. And only during happy hour or if I have a free survey coupon. Justified. I love the sticker of Elodie at her school. The girls said it was dad at the golf course. I very dark skinned dad. Addysen is up at the top of the poster and they named a million different friends at the park.

I'm sure all projects won't go this smoothly but it was a nice start to the first of many!