A year in review!

Its been over a year since I last posted. So much has happen and its hard to know where to start but I can sum up. I left on the of March to Washington to go and help take care of my mother. I didn't know at the time how long I wold be gone but knew that there was a possibility it could be longer or shorter depending on the situation. Not long after arriving, my mother passed, in fact it was Sunday in between General conferences. By the time I arrived she was pretty much unresponsive, so I don;t know for sure if she really knew if I was there, but she did look at me once and a tear came to her eye so I'm hoping that she knew. It was pretty much a long, slow process of seeing her go. Each day trying to take care of her needs and keeping her comfortable. My sister-in-law Gail was wonderful with her and so were the rest of the family. She was surrounded by family when she took her final breath.

Once she passed we then took to taking care of funeral arrangements. Jimmy had decided he wanted to drive Mom to Arizona in the back on his truck, but his truck wasn't capable of doing it so we instead asked Monica to use her truck and she agreed. On Wednesday we loaded her casket into the back of Monica's GMC and decided we should head to AZ that night. It was a good thing because the weather was just horrible. We drove through blizzards, snow showers and rain all the way down. We stopped a couple night in the way down, once outside Boise and then another night in Provo. We also picked up Jori on the way and she was able to come to the funeral with us. It was a long drive, but we were able to do it in 3 days.

Sheldon along with Kai and DJ flew out and met us in Tucson. He was able to get in the day before we got there and get everyone who was going a room at Davis Monthan AFB. We ended up parking Mom at an old friend of Shel's for the night and meet everyone at the base. Thank goodness for some wonderful people who helped us when we needed them. I can never thank them enough and am eternally in their debt. I hope they know that I will always be there if they ever need anything.

The day of the funeral ended up being one of the coldest days of that year;) Go figure Mom wouldn't make this any easier. We huddled around under the canopy that was provided at the grave site and with the turnout that showed I am so grateful for those who came to share the love of my mother. We ended up with family who lived in the area and old family friends from the old 3rd ward. Even some of our old friends came to support us for the day. We decided to meet up later that evening at a Golden Corral for dinner and talked the night away. An interest thing happened that week. A few days after Mom passed my Dad's youngest sister passed away too. So the family was waiting to be able to bury their Mom, a brother who lives in North Carolina couldn't come out for medical reasons so they were postponing her services until Alex could fly out. I think being there for Mom was good for them as well. Even though they weren't there for their mother, they were able to talk about her and share things about her with us.

Shel and the boys stayed for about another week in Tucson. During the week we ate out at our favorite restaurants and shopped and ate out more:) We took a trip to Mesa to meet up with Shel's family for an evening and it was great seeing everyone. Once the boys flew back to the Netherlands I headed up to Provo to get Jori all moved out of her apartment and get her stuff squared away so she could fly out to the Netherlands for the summer. I spent the week with her, helping pack and clean up her room and parts of the apartment. I moved her to Ivan and Lori's to wait out her flight to Europe then I headed back to Washington to get ready for my flight home.

I was able to spend a couple more days in Washington, making sure I had everything I needed before flying back and headed home at the end of April.

In May we headed North to Copenhagen, Denmark with Monica and Jon and took a 7 day cruise on the Baltic sea. We went to Tallin Estonia, St Petersburg Russia, Helsinki Finland and Copenhagen Sweden. It was so great seeing everything and being on a relaxed vacation:) We were able to get some really great souvenirs, a Russian nesting doll, neat ski hats for the boy's that are long enough to be a scarf from Estonia and a cute troll doll and other small things to put in my curio one day. It was fun to just relax between ports and look out the balcony to look at the country side when we did leave Port. Gotta say, Sweden is gorgeous!! I spend almost 2 hours sitting out watching at we left Stockholm.

After the cruise we then had Christians graduation. He had his ceremony at the end of May then headed back to the states so that he could see his friends graduate in CA. He has been staying with Kathy Troub, working at a meat packing plant and has decided to move back with us once we go back to the states this summer. His mission plans are on hold right now, and there's more to that, but I won't get into it here now.

Guess I'll stop here because I know this will get too long so I will do the catching up in small spurts. Hoping to add picture too:)