Easter

My parents were going down to Vernal over the Easter holiday to clean and move my Grandma Southam from her home.  I haven't been to Vernal for 10 years. Since I didn't know if I would make it back again I invited myself along. Natalie felt the same as me and invited herself also. We fit a lot into the last 12 days.  I am going to break this Easter into a couple of posts.  Cora took our other camera and that will be a few posts also.

Here we are just starting out.  We met at Natalie's, it is the closest to the border, at 5 am on the 4th. (Which means I got up at 3:30 :0) Her kids are really great travelers.  They really entertained themselves just by looking out the window and a few books the entire trip.

The first night I got a hotel with my airmiles.  We went to Taylor's house first.  I had never seen his house, it was nice to do that.  Kristin made us a delicious dinner with the best dessert ever.  Taylor came back to the hotel with us and chatted for a bit while Natalie took the boys swimming.  The next morning we continued on to Vernal.

This is one of my favorite memories from going to Grandpa and Grandma Southam's.  I loved to just sit in the front room and listen to my mom and aunts talk.  They would have deep gospel discussions and light hearted chats.  So much laughter and love.

This is my Grandma's house.  It is a 15 hours drive from our house, my mom often did it alone with us 5 kids as dad had to stay and take care of the farm.  As soon as we turned down this last road we would always roll down the windows and start cheering.

Natalie and I stayed at our cousin Katherine's house while in Vernal.  She was so good to us.  I loved her house it was very warm and cozy and comfortable.  We had such a good time with her.  Katherine's husband Randan did all the evening meals so that the adults didn't have to stop and fix dinner.  He did a great job.  Here Ryan is 'helping' Grandma make the juice.

Grandma had the best food storage ever.  She really took to heart that council from the prophets.  I really think she had a 6 year supply of water.  Natalie said that Vernal was in a drought because Grandma had taken all the water.  We needed to haul it all out.  The decision was made that we were going to load into boxes, carry out to a trailer in the garage, and drive 20 feet to a big dumpster that was rented.  I thought loading into a trailer and driving to the dumpster was the craziest thing ever.  And being me I voiced that opinion.  After about a 1/2 hours I backtracked that thought aloud.  It was so much work.  We stood in an assembly line and handed everything up.  It went so fast and we laughed so hard.  I really love being with my aunts on my mom's side.  They are all very real.  What you see is what you get.  We would yell up 'keep', 'throw', 'so and so's, etc.  All the way up the line.

We loaded this trailer a couple of times.  The front person you see in the checker shirt is my Uncle Rod.  I didn't see him very often but he was always one of my favorite uncles.  I remember him taking me down to the 7-eleven and buying me Slurpee's.  Anytime he would spend with us was a blast.  It was really great to see him this weekend.

We just threw everything in.  A lot of breaking glass.  It was fun to go through Grandma's house with the siblings.  We weren't there for very much of it.  Katherine took us around to some cute store in Vernal and we did a little shopping.  I got great cowboy boots for Cora. We would show up in time to pull lunch out, eat, and clean up so they didn't have to stop.  Going down we knew we weren't there to do anything but clean and be back ground, but when we would sit and listen it was great to hear all the stories behind everything.  I guess the cousins did have a chance to go through one night after the siblings were done but we had already gone back to Katherine's house.

Here is the dirty hands result of decades worth of food storage.  They look a lot cleaner in the picture than they really where.  To be continued.....