Father and Sons (and a few Daughters)

This year our ward scheduled the annual father and sons camp out over Mother's Day weekend. They didn't realize they had done this and felt bad that they were splitting up families on a holiday weekend. (I guess they didn't realize that moms actually have fun during fathers and sons outings too.)  Because of this they decided to make this a "family fathers and sons" camp out.  I didn't really want to go but Kent, being the great dad that he is decided to take the kids and go.  I had Adele stay home with me since she's the young one requiring more supervision.  So they went camping while I went out to dinner and shopping with Adele and some friends. 

Elise helped to reel in someone else's fish but they didn't catch any of their own fish.

Margaret Yvonne Allen Nelson

02/22/1920 - 05/21/2012

Margaret Yvonne Allen Nelson passed away on May 21, 2012. Yvonne was born February 22, 1920, in Twin Falls, Idaho, to Margaret Smith and Louis Lowe Allen. She was the 4^th of 6 children, with 1 sister and 4 brothers. She spent the majority of her years before marriage in Salt Lake City. She worked as a secretary/stenographer. A blind date resulted in a sealing in the Salt Lake Temple on September 6, 1940, to Raymond August Nelson of Sandy, Utah. Their love story lasted over 60 years on earth and now into eternity. They were blessed with 4 children: Bonnie, David, Beverly and Betty Elizabeth. They lived in Denver, Colorado, Washington and Virginia.
Yvonne used many homemaking skills to create a tidy, beautiful, happy home. Over the years she developed talents: dramatic readings, oil painting, piano and organ. She enjoyed choir directing, square/round dancing, ceramics, floral arranging, crocheting, collecting recipes and dear friends and family.
The Nelsons enjoyed their golden years traveling abroad and being “snow birds” in Arizona. Yvonne has always been a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving in many ward and stake leadership positions. She was a temple ordinance worker and completed a service mission in American Fork, Utah.
Yvonne is survived by 1 brother, John “Jack” Allen and wife, Betty; also by her children and spouses: Alton DeLoy and Bonnie Vernon, David and Nanette Nelson, Beverly Bell and Dan and Elizabeth Cramer. She has 20 grandchildren and 62 great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by 4 siblings: Mary Allen Henricksen, Louis, Orlando and Richard Allen.
Funeral services will be held on Saturday, May 26, 2012, 11 a.m., at the Springville Stake Center, 245 South 600 East, Springville, Utah, where a viewing will be held from 9:30 to 10:30 prior to the funeral. Interment will follow at the Springville Evergreen Cemetery.

Funeral

On May 21, 2012 My 92 year old grandma Yvonne Nelson was mercifully released from this world.  She had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years and had been more rapidly declining over the past few years.  As common with Parkinson's  she was losing much of her motor functioning including her ability to swallow.  A complication of this can be aspiration pneumonia, which is what occurred with my grandma.  After she contracted pneumonia she was hospitalized and then transferred to hospice care.  She passed away a few days later. 

Some of my favorite memories of my grandma

• The "Burglar Boy" song
• Seeing her real hair.  Joking with her about taking off her hair. (She started wearing a wig in the 60s or 70s and liked it so much she wore one all the time.)
• Playing "rummy" with her
• Having sleepovers with my cousins at her house and having her make us waffles with strawberries and whipped cream
• Thanksgiving at her house every year, and her famous cinnamon rolls
• Her red candy dish always filled with candy
• "Nips"
• Sugar Easter eggs that she found in her cupboard once and fed to us even though they were a few years old.
• Going to visit her in Seattle when I was a little girl and riding a ferry
• Her soft wrinkly skin
  
  Since she had been sick and declining for so long it seemed like we lost her several years ago.  Her passing was a bittersweet day for her family.  We are sad to see her leave us but we are happy because now she can be reunited with my "Grumpy Grandpa" and be young and free again.  Love you grandma.

8 out of my 9 siblings and my parents.

My Aunt Betty, mom, Uncle David and Aunt Beverly.  These are my grandma's 4 kids.

Eclipse - Hardly Ever Happens

On May 20, 2012 there was an annular eclipse.  " An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light."  (thanks wiki)  When Emilia found out about the eclipse several weeks before it happened she was SOOOO excited!  The day before the eclipse we attended an eclipse activity at the rec center and learned about the sun and eclipses and other space stuff.  And we learned how to view the eclipse since they ran out of the special glasses we were supposed to get there.

The weekend of the eclipse Kent's folks and 2 of his brother's kids happened to be staying with us.  The folks were helping the brother move so they had the kids and they were passing through on their way home from Kent's brother's graduation in California.  Since they were with us we got to have an eclipse party with the extended fam.  We also met up with some of our good friends the Andersons.

We looked through the insides of zip disks to see the eclipse.  Hopefully nobody burned their retinas.

Kent made a pinhole camera.  It was pretty cool.  

 

Pancakes

 I was watching the news the other day and since they didn't have any real news to report they showed some "pancake art" that a guy had made.  He made a bunch of things including a whole bunch of organ shaped pancakes.  Not talking about the hymns-at-church type organs.  I am talking about hearts, livers, spleens etc.  Anyway at the end of the segment they mentioned that he did this pancake art by using a plastic squirt bottle (like a ketchup bottle).  Of course I had to try this.

No lungs or uteruses.  Just guys with no arms and aliens.  Love this.  It's super fun!

May

Yep, it's May. In fact in 2 days it will be June. I was sure I had at least blogged a little bit in May.  Nope.  The reason I have not blogged at all is that I have been spending pretty much all my "spare time" working on a special scrapbook for my parent's 50th anniversary.  I am so behind in  my blogging I don't know where to start. Not to mention the fact that as soon as I came to Blogger I found that I can't recognize anything because they changed it again.  That makes it really seem like I have been away forever.

May has been the craziest form of crazy.  Let's do a quick catch up k?

• Piano:  Our piano is at least 40 years old. We got it from my parents about 8 years ago.  We had never tuned it so I decided to get it tuned.  When he came to tune it, the piano guy said that it needed to be weighted and regulated before he could tune it because it was so bad.  The keys were uneven and played with too light a touch. And some of the keys only played when they felt like it.  So he spent 7 hours fixing the piano and I spent more dollars than I am going to say getting the piano tuned.  The good news:  all the keys work now and the piano sounds better than I can ever remember.

•  Band concert:  Emilia had her final band concert the last week of school. I am amazed how the teachers can take a huge group of 6th graders and actually make some music.  She has really loved band this year and I am glad she has found something that she loves (besides computer games and Wii.)

•  PTA Poster:  I made a couple of posters to decorate the doors at the school for Teacher Appreciation week.  I think it turned out pretty cute.

• We had a 2 hour-middle of the night power outage at the beginning of the month.  One by one the kids each woke up and came in to my bedroom.  They were all so scared because their nightlights had all gone out.  We put them in the living room on the couches with candles in the kitchen.  Not. Fun. FINALLY the power came back on 2 hours later. I never did hear what happened to make it go out for so long.

• The other stuff that we have been up to hasn't been super fun or exciting enough to merit pictures.  Like the daily feeding of grass bugs to our fish Goldie and Bob.  (We used to have Larry too but Goldie ate him.)  We actually have a sucker fish too, Harry.   See, for awhile it was just Goldie in the tank.  We were waiting for Goldie to die because we have had him/her for over 2 years and we just wanted to be done with fish.  Then the tank started to get pretty green and we decided that we really needed an algae eater.  And at the pet store we couldn't resist the ) $0.19 feeder fish so we got 2. (Bob and Larry).  Now  you know all the details of our fish.  Very important.
• I am also trying to work with our ward camp leader to get ready for camp which is coming up in about 6 weeks.  This has required time and brain power, both of which seem to be scarce right now.
• The first few days of summer vacation have been a little rough on all of us.  I am having a hard time getting used to not taking as many naps.  The kids are trying to get used to following the rules and doing more chores.  And we are all adjusting to being together a whole lot more than we are used to.  It has it advantages but there are definitely some disadvantages.
  
  There is more to post for May but that will have to wait until tomorrow.