Dad's death, funeral, and burial

As I note on the next post, we moved into my parents' home on April 16th to help my dad take care of my mother, who was in rehab at the time learning how to walk again after a fall damaged a nerve in her left leg. Then we noticed dad was jaundiced, took him to the doctor, and learned the next day he had pancreatic cancer. He died 2 weeks later. We had a very nice funeral. Below are pictures from the burial two days later in the Logan Cemetary. Josh gave a very nice family prayer at the funeral, Nicholle gave the opening prayer for the funeral, Jane, Miles Holman, the bishop and I spoke, Diane Critchfield sang Oh My Father, and Doug Critchfield gave the closing prayer. Ty, Josh, and Logan, along with Travis and Tim Holman, and Kevin Holman were pallbearers. Here you see Logan dedicating the grave. All in all, a nice family-oriented time as we celebrated my father's life, and comforted my mother.The Honor Guard that came was the best I have ever seen at a funeral. They did a great job of honoring military veterans and adding some great pomp and ceremony to the service. The three volleys of rifle fire scared some of the grandchildren, but it was very impressive.

So What Else Could Happen!?

So much has happened in the last 1 1/2 months. Probably the busiest of our lives, or at least with some of the most and most dramatic changes. I will make several posts, this being the most current. We moved into our new home, my parents home, on April 16th, totally redid the basement and Linda turned it into a beautiful, comfortable home for us. The new carpet and lamanet (?) floors were (notice the past tense) beautiful--until last night when the drain you see below flooded and ruined the kitchen floor and bedroom carpet. Service Master is doing the clean up with the insurance paying (after our $1,000 deductible) for clean up, new carpet and new flooring. So we are going to spend the next week or two with our home messed up--again. But it is okay. We have been blessed in sooo many ways we can't complain.

Grandpa Tom's early birthday dinner

Since Nicholle and kids were in Utah, and because Matt, Jenny, and children sent me Omaha steaks, we decided to celebrate my birthday 2 weeks early! It was one of the few nice days we have had this Spring, in the mid-60s. Notice I'm on the patio without our picnic tables. We have started giving away stuff since we are moving this monthReal steak for the big people (including Sam and Amanda) and tube steak for Connor and Madison.

At the table with Grandpa Holman. Notice everyone is about done except Nicholle (lower right) who was taking care of kids. She finally got to her steak. The wait was worth it!

Thanks Matt, Jenny, and kids! It has been a fun birthday already. Omaha steaks from just one of my children; I can hardly wait to see what the others send me!

We are selling our home!

Just over a week ago, we put our home on the market. We have lived here for almost 25 years and it is the home our children remember most as "home." It is the only home our grandchildren have known for us. In fact, Blakie-Bones was living here when he was born while Matt, Jenny, & Amy lived here & waited for Matt's security clearance on his current job. We have lots of great memories and will really miss the backyard. But Linda is retiring this year and I will in 3 years and we want to be able to go on missions, visit our children and grandchildren without worrying about the lawn, or shoveling snow, etc. We are also ready for a single story home; stairs in a 4-level home could become as problem as we get older. We've already had an offer but countered and they didn't respond. Of course we are selling when prices are way down; they dropped $15,000 from 3 months ago when we first started thinking about this.

We may have big news about where we will be moving soon, if everything falls into place!

The Kitchen

After living in a kitchen with nails coming through the floor and a countertop that could cause harm to your arms we decided "enough was enough"! New solid surface counter tops and new flooring made me a happy woman.We ordered an undermount stainless sink but I guess it was our lucky day and a mistake was made and we got the more expensive intergrated sink. I wasn't sure I wanted it. My old white sink was always stained and dirty looking and I was afraid of the white thing but to my delight, I like it!
The faucet is pretty slick also. It does all kinds of tricks that I haven't even tried yet. We also got a new dishwasher that is suppose to be so quiet we will have to put our ears next to it to see if it is even running. (I'm not sure I believe it, but it sounded good)

A quick trip to Ikea provided us with new bar stools. Being a bit smaller than our last ones makes our already small kitchen seem a little bigger.

The built in desk is gone. It just provided me a place to stack everything that ever came into our house. For now I have put a little piece of furniture of my mom's. It is kinda cute there and it adds a little memory of my mom.

Now that the kitchen is clean and in good working order we just need to sell the house!

The Quilt

To say we are excited about the new baby boy coming into our family is an understatement. I am not a quilt maker, but I couldn't resist this fabric selection. I think I've done the easy part, now I need to sew it all together. Wish me luck!

Three Pines and a Utah Snow Storm

When Tom and I went to England about 10 years ago I noticed that instead of addresses the houses were named with plaques. I thought it was such a clever idea. So I began to think what I would call our house. Probably the most notable thing about our house are the three beautiful pine trees in our back yard. So hence my name for our Utah home was "Three Pines". This past summer we were back in England visiting Matt and Jenny and family and I again noticed...no addresses, just names. I mentioned to Matt and Jenny that on my trip years ago I had come to the conclusion that our home was "Three Pines". Can you imagine my surprise when I got my original English home name plaque..."Three Pines". I am not sure how long we will stay in our house but "Three Pines" will always travel with me. Memories of England and a good son and daughter-in-law that listened to my story!

We had a big snow storm last night and our our three pines and other trees looked very beautiful.