Weekend

 You've had a birthday, shout hurray!

We celebrated my dad and it was a good time.  It was also a good time that Adam got home Friday.  We were both too tired to think about dinner so we had bread and cheese and fruit which is one of my top five dinners.  Also, chocolate lava cake from Marks and Spencers.  I slept 11 hours that night.  I never knew I had the capacity for that much sleep prior to cancer!

On Saturday we headed to Starr Valley.  We stopped quickly at our house and there were two mouse in traps (so horrible and I am not even the one that empties the traps, although I was the one to clean the floor--horrible).  We made our salad and went to Marianne's.

All my dad's siblings had come and it was nice to see everyone.

Demar, Lora (his wife), my dad, Drew, Claudia, Olivia, Brad (her husband), Jennifer, Joe and Jeannette (his wife)

I love how much they all love each other.  They had kind of a wild childhood with plenty of independent adventures, but Grandpa and Grandma also raised them to be a close-knit band.  It is aspirational.

Olivia made my dad banana cream pie.

After we ate, everyone shared a memory of my dad.  My favorite part was my aunts and uncles disparaging each other's memories and saying, "That's not how it happened," and "Who's telling this story anyway?!?" and "You have a very creative memory."

They were good stories all the same, whether or not they were disputed.

The aunts and uncles all went to Aunt Olivia's and my dad stayed to visit with us a little.  We gave him the gift from Marianne and Olivia and me.  It was Marianne's idea to create a book containing all the blogposts my mom had written from their mission to Nauvoo.  My dad cried when he opened it (and so did the rest of us).  It was more a gift from our mom than us, because she had written it.

Before Ammon went back to Utah, we posed for a picture (Enoch and Tabor weren't able to come and they and their families were missed).  Olivia and I did this with our hands to make my dad laugh and it worked.

Making him laugh has always been a dopamine hit.

Our dad went to go spend the rest of the evening with his siblings and Marianne and Robert came over to our house for frozen pizza.  Olivia was invited too, but didn't see the text early enough.  She came over to visit and I love being in their neighborhood.

Sunday morning Adam and I decided to take a walk.  I was expecting a gentle walk along the fragrant willows, but we decided to go up and see the top of our property line.  It is a nice view.

I used to play there as a kid, but Adam hadn't been all the way up.  My dad called just when we were reaching the top and I said, "If I sound winded, it is because I am winded!"  It is steep.  He said he had two bits to give us.  He made two bits for each of his children.

He wrote up a description for each of us, "for when you sell them at an auction."

I said, "You know none of us are going to ever sell them."

He said our grandchildren might.

I hope they never get that hungry.

I need to figure out how to display them.  I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't have a-bit-stand-in-case-your-dad-made-you-two-silver-mounted-bits....

We went to church and happily, Edgar was the high council visitor and Olivia and Ruben were speaking with him.  Marianne led the choir and it was a big choir and I was related to everyone except 4 of them.  I whispered that to my dad and he said, "I am too."  It was a great meeting that I was grateful to attend and then we drove home.  I had to stop singing on the way home because my throat started hurting.  Any trip with Emma and Mark is going to involve music.  And we started the trip by singing hymns that are based on Psalms.  There are a lot of them!

I am grateful to be home and looking forward to another week of school.