Barbara

We found out that my dear Aunt Barbara passed away on January, 16. While we were so sad that we won't get to see her again in this life, and we will miss her so much, we are so happy for her. She has reunited with her husband and parents, and is free from her broken body.

We were able to go to Lovell for the funeral, as were all of my sisters. It was wonderful to see them all! The AZ girls flew up together, and Adrienne drove to Green River and rode the rest of the way with Joel and I. We were happy to make it to Lovell safely, especially since we were driving through some really nasty snow. We were thankful not to be one of the cars that we saw in the ditch on the side of the road!

The funeral was on Thursday, the 23rd. We decided to take some family pictures before the funeral. We were all dressed up and looking nice, and we didn't want to wait until afterwards when our faces would be red from crying.

The funeral was lovely, with a wonderful life history given by my Mom and Barbara's children. It was nice to see so much family. I didn't get to visit with as many people as I would have liked, but that's understandable. We were just happy to gather to celebrate Barbara's life.

While we were all together we had a lot of fun, of course. We got to play games, visit, and just have a nice time spending time together.

Audrey was much more pleasant at this family gathering than she was last summer for reunion. She would even play with the Aunts! Here she is with Aunt Amy, playing ride-a-horsey. 

Rachel got some fun pictures of Audrey giving looks and playing around. She was enjoying being the star of the show, I think. She's a lot of fun!

On Friday we were driving around town a bit and stopped at our old house. It's vacant right now, so we made a call or two to see if we could get inside to see it. No luck. But we did snap a picture on the front steps, and we may have walked around it trying to see in the windows. :)

Unfortunately, illness hit us Friday night. Joel started feeling questionable and threw up a few times. Adam had a rough night, throwing up in the middle of the night and continuing in to Saturday morning. Luckily there was no more of that after Saturday afternoon, just a general feeling of unwellness and tiredness. I snapped this picture Saturday evening of Joel resting on the couch in the family room. It was just too cute to resist.

We headed home Sunday morning, and made it home safely with no problems. While we were sad for the occasion, it was so great to see my family.

The following weekend Joel and the kids and I made a quick trip up to Cowley for a baby blessing. Joel's brother, Daniel, blessed his little girl, Lydia! She is such a doll. We went up Saturday morning and came home Sunday afternoon, so it really was a quick trip. But we were happy to be there!