okay, so I don't have a good picture of the crazy Halloween costumes he wore...but, I have a great memory!! one year on Halloween, I was about 16 or 17. Dad got all dressed up in a black cape with a hood. put on a mask, and went and sat on the front porch for hours. Just sitting very still. As the night progressed , a little boy came up to the house to trick or treat, and as recall dad stood up or moved , maybe even touched the boy on his shoulder. That little boy is probably still running screaming...lol! Dad was so funny, and he LOVED Halloween. He really knew how to party!! (Ange)

Ghosty

We all know how much Dad loved Halloween. I miss all the halloween garb he used to put up every year. I don't seem to have the same energy to put out all those decorations for halloween, but I know my kids wish I did. They really miss going to Grandma and Grandpa's and walking through the old "cemetary" that dad created along the trail to the backyard. They want me to buy a candy bowl with a hand sticking out of it just like Grandma's and they wish we had a little ghosty that skated around on a pumpkin. Ghosty has become like the blinking red christmas bells mom always hung on the garland around the stair rails for the holiday's. When mom dies someday (not for a very really long long time) I think we are apt to do more fighting over the red Christmas bells than anything else, but ghosty is gaining a quick 2nd place. It's funny how simple things like that come to mean the most to us. Our family traditions have had the most impact on our family bond. When Gramme died, it was her fridge magnets-those little green and orange flowers-that I wanted because they are what reminded me the most of her. Halloween reminds me so much of dad because he loved it so much. He loved scaring little kids! I think that we should all post our favorite dad on halloween memories, so if you have one- take a second to post it for the rest of us, and if you have pictures, post those too. Check your e-mail for the password to post on this blog. I sent it out to everyone already. Thanks! -Steph

OCTOBER BIRTHDAYS!

Happy Birthday to me (Steph) who turned 40! on the 6th, Brooks who turned 10 on the 14th, Steve who turned 32 on the 15th, Maddie who turned 18 on the 17th, Angie who turned 30 on the 18th, baby Eli who was born on the 22nd and Johnson who also turned 10 this year, just yesterday in fact-October 24th!

"October people are the butterflies..." -Aunt louise
"October's falling leaves, crisp air and golden light is perfecly enchanching. It prepares us well to nest, to enter into cooler day's and long for celebrations of harvest, home and family. " -unknown

Expression

I woke up at 4 a.m. really missing Jeremy and Melissa to the point that I couldn't sleep and had to get out of bed. This was probably due to the news that the baby has arrived and I just wanted so bad to hold him even if it was just for a second. Funny how you can love a little creature so much when you are just an Aunt.
What a gift we are to each other. What a gift this little boy is to our family. I remember like it was yesterday Jeremy and Melissa's wedding. I remember so well when they were dating as teenagers. I remember Jeremy just before he left on his mission, and I wrote this to Melissa in a letter last Christmas, that my sweetest memory of them was when Melissa choreographed a dance in her high School dance company that she performed with her company on stage. We had the privleage of of going to watch her performance and what I remember the most about that was the look on Jeremy's face-who, as I recall was just day's away from leaving on his mission. His eyes spoke a million words as he watched Melissa dance. Somewhere in that solemn expression I saw the love he felt for her, a yearning to stay close, the obligation of his calling knowing he had to leave, and a hope for their future. Truly I have never seen such an expression of pure love mixed with all the anxiety of what lay ahead. Jeremy won't say he was thinking any of this-at least not in public. But I was there and that expression is forever imprinted in my brain because I remember how it made me feel about my brother. I loved him more because I witnessed this. I have never felt more tender toward him. I will never forget it.
The song Melissa danced to that night was the song played at their wedding breakfast when she recreated that dance and performed it for him again. This became their love song, and I can't listen to it without being reminded of them. This is the song I have downloaded for the playlist, John Denver's "for you".
All these years have passed since that first dance and the expression it created on Jeremy's face. I can only imagine how Jeremy would be looking at Melissa today, the mother of his three beautiful children. There is probably no way anyone could describe the love behind that kind of expression.

Baby Elisha

It has been almost a year since Trent and Lecil lost their newborn baby to a rare birth defect. I have just been thinking about them today in light of the birth of our newest family member, Jeremy and Melissa's baby boy who was born last night in North Carolina. I hope Trent and Lecil know that we are thinking about them and praying for them still and hoping their hearts will be comforted continually. "and God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes, and their shall be no more death..." We love you.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

It's not hard for me to imagine that moment someday when we will be joyfully reunited with those we have lost. I think of this scene and imagine what it would be like to be walking alone on this road and spot a figure in the distance moving toward me. I can imagine what that would be like if I suddenly realized that the figure was Dad. I can't even explain how I would feel, or how I would run to him. I know I would be blinded by my tears. I know I would feel like my knees could buckle under me, but I would somehow keep running until I was there, until I reached him. I know I wouldn't think about another thing but throwing myself at him and wrapping my arms around his neck. Wouldn't that be a dream come true? It's hard to picture that ever happening, and yet someday- somewhere over the rainbow...

How lucky we have been

How lucky we are to have such a wonderful mother. There are so many people who don't have any kind of relationship with their mothers and who don't even want one, but we have been so blessed this way. We have had the great blessing of having two parents who loved each other all their lives and who loved us and raised us in the gospel. I don't know if we ever think about what a gift this really is. We must have done something right somewhere in the spirit world because we are truly privileged. We have had wonderful lives because of our parents. I am so grateful for them.

Never too far away

"Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts" -Author unknown











"you don't choose your family, they are God's gift to you as you are to them." -Desmond Tutu

The Family

"We are a strange little band of characters, trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. " -Erma Bombeck


"The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family"
-Lee Iacocca

"what greater thing is there than for people to feel they are joined for life, to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories." - George Eliot


When I think of you, my family, It is hard not to burst with gratitude toward you. I miss those of you who no longer live close. But even across the miles, our hearts are knit together in unity and love for each other. We are never alone, because we always have each other. How comforting and uplifting it is to know that I have you, when the world turns on me and I feel abandoned, if I just turn my heart towards you, I know that I am loved. I am wanted and needed. I hope that each one of you-every single one of you- knows that you have such a friend in me. I am committed to you in body and spirit. I love you so much. -Stephanie

I remember angie when she was just a little girl...

...and now she is 30 years old. Where do our lives go so fast? What became of that little girl in the picture? She's not a little girl anymore, but a beautiful butterfly. I remember mom giving me a birthday card several years ago and inside she had written something that aunt Louise had said. She wrote, "Louise always said that October people were the butterflies, they are just content to fly, carrying beauty on their wings and bringing no harm to anything." This little analogy has always made me feel special to be one of the "October people" like Louise, and how wonderful that I share this trait with my sister- who entered the world ten years and twelve days after me. This year we have just celebrated our 30th and 40th birthday's, and I just wanted to say this much about my only sister: I couldn't ask for a better friend. She is just like me in ways that I am so thrilled about. I can tell her anything and she still loves me, she is one of the only people in the world that I can be completely insane with. We have are own language, and I'm not talking about speaking each other's language as in that we somehow understand each other through some wierd telepathy- come on! Do you think that ever really happens? Heck no! I mean really our own language- that sounds like a cross between German and hispanic and includes words like Chachee and Tar. Angie was the first person to ever put true meaning behind the phrase "I like Cheez". Following in the footsteps of our brilliant father, both of us- lone females in a house full of men- have loved dressing up when an occassion called for it, such as the time when Angie put on a pair of plaid polyester pants (pulled clear up to next Tuesday; right above her rib cage) a red wig and very large prescription glasses and then went to our neighbors house and asked for directions just to see if they would take her seriously. They did, even though she was slummped forward and trying to look all dopey and she spoke to them with a slurred lisp. I hid in the bushes and laughed. This was just last year or something, so it's not like she was a kid doing this. She has never been shy. I love brave women who will do anything that I will do in order to embarrass someone (namely ourselves), and believe me, they come few and far between. Usually I am the only one in a crowd who will take on the dare unless Angie's in town. In that case it's probably a good thing niether of us drink because most of the time people don't believe we're sober when we're together. So here's to Ange-my BEAUTIFUL (really, she is so unbelievably beautiful), crazy, sensitive, magnetic, charming, warm, bright, graceful, charismatic, intelligent, talented, loving, entusiastic, perfect sister. You have blessed my life for 30 years. The day you were born is among the happiest in all my memories, and even higher on that list remains the day you and I became best friends. How I love you with all my heart and I thank you for bringing your magic into my life. I feel so blessed to have you and to be the only woman in the world who can truely call you sister. I love you. Happy 30th birthday!