Aunt Joyce's Funeral

My great aunt Joyce (my grandma's sister) passed away this past week after a 9 year battle with cancer. We have a very large extended family on my mom's side so it seems I am constantly meeting new people that I am related to. Aunt Joyce, however, I have known pretty much my whole life. I have even lived with her and her daughter Cindy for about a month while I was between apartments when I first moved to Utah. She is an incredible lady and will be greatly missed. I am so glad that I was able to make it to her funeral.

I was privileged to host four of my aunts and uncles that came all the way from Washington for the funeral as well. It was sad circumstances but a fantastic visit. Within the past two weeks I have been able to see/host all of my mom's siblings except her older brother, Tom. (Susan came for a week while she was looking for houses. She is moving to this area.) I feel so blessed! I have been really needing family time. I would host any of them again in a heart beat.

So... my mom made me promise to take pictures while they were here, and I failed miserably. It seems the only time I remembered to snap a few pictures was when we were eating.

I am totally loving Vicki's face in this picture. I bet I don't even need to point her out for you to figure out who I am talking about. ;)

L to R: Jim, Dan, Aubrey (cousin), Vicki, Juli, and Jason.

After the funeral, Joyce's ward hosted a luncheon. Juli was so kind and held Cooper on her lap so I could eat. He promptly took over her fork and started stabbing everything on her plate. Sorry Juli, hope you weren't hungry...

Juli (with Cooper), Aubrey, and Vicki

On their last day here we had a BBQ. It was delicious.

 Well, there you have it. All of the pictures I took while they were here.

Lucky for me, Juli and Vicki were great at taking pictures and Juli was super fast at posting them on Facebook. I was able to steal several of them so I can post them here. Thanks Juli!

At the cemetery 

I loved this idea. Joyce's children and grandchildren signed her casket and left farewell notes. It was beautiful. (L to R: Brian, Cindy, and Joel)

Meanwhile my boys had a blast playing with the pinwheels on the graves. We had to follow them around and make sure they didn't destroy anything. There was a lady there supervising and watching them closely, which made things awkward. They weren't hurting anything but I still felt stressed since she was right there.

Finally corralling them and heading back to the car. They look so big in this picture!

This is the beautiful view that Joyce's grave overlooks.

Aubrey let Bennett "drive" to our car so I didn't have to haul them across the entire cemetery.