A Fitting Tribute

It has been a crazy couple weeks. On February 10th my dad passed away. He has been battling pancreatic cancer for a while now, and I am glad that he is no longer in pain.

 

His funeral was held on Friday, and we left for Utah on Thursday morning. 

It was the longest drive. Ever. 

Lets just say it included a 4 or 5 hour pit stop in Flagstaff (thank goodness for Chris' Aunt Kay and Uncle Kevin who live in Flagstaff,) a pricey rental car, and a new transmission. And did I mention we were going to attend my dad's funeral?

The service on Friday was absolutely perfect. Chris gave one of the talks and he did a great job. My dad and Chris have gotten along since the first time they met. That is saying a lot because, well, lets just say my dad is an engineer and is not usually a people person. I am so happy that I have an audio copy of the service that I can listen to anytime. 

That night me and my family decided to head out to the desert to shoot some of my dads guns. My dad loved guns. Everything about them. Buying them, shooting them, and even reloading his own bullets. I thought that I didn't really like shooting guns because the only time I had ever gone was to shoot clay pigeons with shotguns. Looking back I know that I should have started out with something simpler and built up to moving targets with a gun that has a bit of kick. Anyway we had a great time. 

The secluded canyon that we shot in.

 Wow, is my posture really that bad?

 My brother Danny.

 Christian.

My mom. In the back you can 

see the targets we were shooting at.

 My niece Nicole was allowed to go because she is 18. She got excited about her pistol and got all dressed up as a cowgirl to match it.

My sister Jill and some of the group in the background. There was my mom, Bret, Lisa, Jill, David, Danny, Natalie, Nicole, James (our brother from a different mother,) Alan (our cousin,) Chris, and me.

I ended up staying in Utah for another week and helped my mom go through some of my Dad's stuff. My brothers and sister spent a good amount of the previous week going through stuff, and there is still a lot to go through. My dad never really talked about himself so it was kind of fun to go through his stuff and see a different side of him. I found a journal where he had written about how he met my mom and some of their courtship. He also wrote about some of his jobs and each of the kids births. Except for mine, he skipped right over that year. I don't know why but that makes me laugh.

We spent the last two days with Chris' family. We were happy to be there the same time that Heather was with her three little ones that we haven't seen in a year and a half. We attempted to get a picture of the cousins, but are missing Noah, Zoey, and Kaia. Maybe some day we can all coordinate and get together. David was in a really bad mood and so he looks like this in all of the pictures.

You know what they say about 2 year olds. . .

that they are terrible, but I hope that isn't true for David. We are just coming out of a rough phase and into a really fun one. He is my little pal and we had a fun birthday with him today.

The kids and I woke up to Krispy Kreme donuts that Chris brought home after his shift at the church farm. We decided to add some candles to his donut to get him prepared for his candles later.

Later we had cake pops instead of a traditional cake. David LOVES cake pops. 

 Want one?

Yum, yum.

On a side note, I started potty training David this week. I potty trained Sadie around 26 months, but I have quite a few friends who have potty trained their little boys right around their second birthdays, so I have been debating it for a while. I finally decided to do it even though I thought he might not quite be ready, but I am sooo glad I did. We started on Wednesday and I knew things were going well when I went up to get Eve up from a nap and came back down and he had undressed himself and gone in the potty all by himself. Today he was dry all day, even during his 3 hour nap. I don't know if it is him, the cloth diapers, or if I have gotten A LOT better at potty training in the last two years but so far this has been easy, stress-free potty training. 

Awesome. . .

Doesn't every one have a garden growing out of their hair?

Photo courtesy of Nicole.