Won't you be my neighbor?

So on this lovely Monday afternoon. I walked over to my neighbors house. Her tomato's where getting ripe like crazy. I picked them then knew she was totally overwhelmed with work and stuff. So I asked her what she wanted done with them. She said whole tomato's. I said OK took her bottles and the tomato's and went home.

This is what she ended up with. 10 quarts of tomato's.

I love my neighbor so much and I am glad that she is my neighbor and lets me do her canning for her. I really do like to do it.

I also proceeded to mow the lawn. All by myself. Usually I make Gene or the kids do the lower have because we have been know to have those creepy slithering things in our ward. Then I watered our yard. I mean really watered like almost flooded our yard.

Then for family night I made us all go out and weed the raspberry's. I will only do this when Gene is home to do the whole snake check thing before we start weeding.

Next thing I know is that Kelty has gone in the house. Surprise surprise she somehow managed to get out of weeding. All the sudden I hear tons of commotion in my house and hear "Dad, dad, there is a snake in the house. See previous post about how terrified of snakes I am. Thinking she is joking he walks in. Sure enough their is a snake in my new living room. He gets it kills it and then flushes it sown the toilet. Great now I have the fear that somehow its going to slither back up my toilet and bite me on the butt.

In all seriousness, he has a friend who works for the sewer plant. I really asked him if he would call him and make sure it came through the sewer so I know it is no longer anywhere near my house.

Gene proceeded to laugh and tell me no. I am serious here I wanna know its gone.

Then to top it of I have ants in my master bathroom. It's on the second floor of my house. Who what and how do you gets ants in there?

So question of the day. Who wants to be my neighbor? I will bottle tomato's for you.

Or better yet, my house is for sale. Who wants to buy house, it includes snakes, and ants in your bathroom. Great selling point huh.

LION KING

What more can I say but Lion King was simply fabulous. So glad we went and where able to take our kids to it. A serious miracle happened while we where their. Jesse sat still and was memorized by the whole thing. That my friends is a miracle in our family.

My mom went with us. It was so great that she was willing to come with me and my crazy family.

My mom and I waiting for it to begin.

My cute little family just sitting and waiting and so excited.

I would highly recommend going to see it. Good times to be had by all. The topper to the night was that my mom bought us Crown Burger for dinner. Yumm-o that is a family favorite around here. Such wonderful memories hopefully my kids will thank me for one day.

GOOD GRIEVE???????????

GOOD GRIEVE..... (sorry alot of words not alot of pictures.)

Is there a good grieve? I mean like is there a good way to grieve to loss of a loved one? I am not sure if there is a right or a wrong way to grieve. Some days it s really hard, like you can barely function, other days you get up and laugh and learn and try to be better because someone is in heaven and hopefully watching over you. It’s also hard because when that someone you love dies when is a good time to stop having those breakdown sobbing till you almost through up moments, 1 year 10 days never? I don’t know, I guess what I need to learn is when we have those moments how to put it in perspective and use it for the better of me and the person I am grieving.

About 14 months ago my niece died of cancer, at the very young age of 10. A very mean aggressive type of chordoma tumor cancer. All cancer is mean and aggressive but this kind is really mean and very rare.

My niece, being 8 months younger than Kelty, where good friends. It has been hard on Kelty to have Anna gone. It has been hard on all of us but especially Kelty. The child has a right to grieve for her cousin. The problem that poor

Kelty is facing is that she has to very different parents in the way that we grieve. Gene cries for the allotted 2-3 days from when we are told someone has died to the funeral then he is done. I mean done to almost to the point it’s not healthy. Like don’t talk about them anymore they are a has been in our life so to speak. Don’t get me wrong he believes in the plan of salvation and knows he will be with them again but for the time being they are gone. Let’s move on. Then there is me. I cry for weeks, day’s months at anything the drop of a hat and I cry. I go to the cemetery, a lot. I take flowers for birthdays and death days. I talk about the person like they are just gone on trip. Then I cry some more.

So for Kelty this is kind of a problem. She doesn’t know what the best way to grieve is. Cry every day and be sad or just not mention it like the big pink elephant in the room? So for a 12 year old this can be really confusing. Getting two very different ways to grieve.

To me I don’t think Kelty has totally grieved over the loss of Anna. Sure she cried but I am just not sure she has totally grieved?

So the other day when Kelty came home from school so upset I asked what was wrong. After literally weeping and wailing on my floor for about 15 min’s. She finally got out that she just misses Anna so much and it completely sucks that she had to die. Good Grieve? I would think so we talked about Anna and the positive that she did for us while she was here. Then Kelty made the statement “I wish cancer would get cancer and die.” Pretty true and profound statement if you ask me. So Kelty and I talked and talked and talked about what Anna loved to do. One of those things was going to build a bear. So the date was set. Tomorrow night we were having a date just me and Kelty. She was going to build a bear just for her so when she was sad, lonely, missing Anna. She could hold the bear and hopefully gain a little peace from it.

Well in talking with my sister she said don’t make it all about being sad though. We need to have positive moments that come from grieving. Why don’t you have Kelty take her own money and make a bear and donate it to the hospital for someone else? Great Idea I talked to Kelty she liked the idea. So it was set we were going to get her a bear and then get one for someone else who needed a little help. Good grieve?

Through a friend of a friend of a friend, I just so know someone who happens to have cancer who’s 7 or 8, I think. So I asked if it would be ok if we made this bear for him and gave it to him. They said yes that is awesome.

We get to build a bear Kelty looks at all the animals and decided on her bear it s name is huggable bear. Pretty good for what we need! Then she looks and finds one for the other child. We move on to the noise station. Where you can put sounds in the bears if you want. We look, listen, play, listen some more to all the sounds available. Then off to the side is a heart that beats like a real heart. Kelty sees this and immediately knows this is what she wants to put in both these bears. “Anna needs a heartbeat and soon this boy will need one to.” Again my child is always amazing me and what she says. Moving on to the stuffing of the bears she stuffs hugs gets the other little heart that you get to put in the bears says a little wish on it and finishes up stuffing the bears.

She baths them, dresses them, and finds the perfect shoes to go with the clothes she has chosen. She laughed she cried a little bit but all in all I think she had a good time.

One good thing that came out of this is. When we were driving home from the mall and talking. I told her about when all 3 of my babies were born. They came out and would do this little round O thing with their mouth. Every time they would do this I would think of my Grandpa Warren because he was always trying to get us to whistle. So to me it was like a little part of him when I would see kids do this. Kind of like he was saying I was keeping them safe until it was there turn to come to earth. Just a little reminder of him, something that only I would think of. I told Kelty this and said who knows maybe Anna is up there teaching your kids to stand on their heads and kick their legs out like she did.

So this is my question what is a good way to grieve? Hopefully this is a good way to grieve. She knows that every time she has a break down about Anna does not mean we are running out to buy her a build a bear. But I think she knows that there is always a hug waiting from mom, a listening ear or just someone to cry to.

If you can read this, this is the note Kelty wrote and put in the box with the bear. Such a good day for us.

So again GOOD GRIEVE?

2 YEARS WOW

On Sat September 4th was the 2 year anniversary of my Grandma Whiting's death. So I told my kids in honor of her we where doing things she would have liked to do.

We went to the farmers market to buy veggies to bottle. (True that my grandma would have grown her's but this is the best I could do last minute.)

We saw my mom and Aunt Ila at the farmers market so we had to have there picture taken with my boys.

So we bought us some red beets. Also its a pretty sad day when you have to buy tomato's from the farmers market because the 200 hundred plus plants that you planted this spring decided not to produce.

So we bottled salsa and pickled beets, in honor of my grandma.

I had every intention of cleaning my house to Crandall clean on this day. I did get it picked up and looking pretty good but I so know I wouldn't have passed the white glove test that my grandma would have given me. I was to tired to clean that good. When I was talking to my friend and told her all I had planned for this day. She says "I am coming to check the tops of your door frames." Man failed on that one to. So fun to have friends who knew my grandma and can remind me of little things like that, that I had totally forgot that she did. That was always my job at her house since I was so tall.

I didn't take any pictures but after all this we went to the cemetery and sat around her headstone and talked about our favorite memories of grandma. Jesse was that she loved him. James said that he liked the ice cream she always had. The kind in the little containers with the wooden spoon. Kelty said she just liked to be around and listen to her. Gene said his favorite memory is when we lived with my parents for 4 months while building this house. He would come home for lunch and grandma would walk over about 11:55 and ask me what I had fixed for him. Then when Gene got home he would egg my grandma on and say things like yeah Camille why don't you have my lunch fixed. It was all in good humor. Grandma would laugh and just sit and visit with her.

I of course have many favorite memories of my grandma.

Inviting her over in the mornings before school when we had pancakes.

When she would make whole wheat bread and then we would make French toast out of it.

Watching the Lawrence Welk show on sat. night with her.

Eating sugar on out pancakes and listening to her tell us (every time) she ate pancakes with us. How they would roll one or two up with sugar and put in there pockets for later in the day when they where hungry from working on the farm.

Hot Milk cake and Ice tea during hay hauling season.

I can go on and on of the many memories I have of my grandma. Since I lived next door to her growing up I have a lot. She was very much involved in my life and she is a very big influence on who I am today.

I don't think a day goes by that I don't think about her. Good or bad I still think about her everyday.

I love you grandma thank you for making me into the person I am today.