My sisters are just the best!

Here's a few pictures I took as we walked around the cemetery.  Seems like this is where most of mum and daddy's friends and family are now.

It was nice to walk around the cemetery, remembering and reminiscing about family members...so grateful to be born of "goodly parents" and  have a heritage of great ancestors.

I got a call last night from my cousin Dan Tibbitts.  He said aunt sherry had passed away yesterday . We had just been thinking of her and wondering how she was doing as we walked past her and Elmer's head stone.  I'm sure they had a joyful reunion.

Mum would always put some flowers on Brother Beards grave...just because no one else ever did.

My sisters all brought flowers and I had some iris from the garden so we were able to decorate the graves of all those dear to us.

We went to lunch at Angie's...Teina and I had a little trouble finding it, but it was worth the search.  really good food and service.  After we went out in my car and had a little birthday party for Leslie.  Brenda made this cute table runner and brought us all a pattern so we could make them too.  Super thoughtful!  Leslie and Brenda had both said they wanted a picture like the one I made for Teina so I made one for Les's birthday too.

 Les suggested we sing "home"  while we were sitting there.  I knew I couldn't get through it...I sit  there and bawl while I am sewing the words.  It was extra tender to me after just visiting what will always be "home" to me.

Got to spend the nicest day with my sisters on Thursday.  I picked up Teina and we went up to the cemetery to put some flowers on the graves.  ( I have those pictures I will put on a different post...too many pictures! computer may explode!)  anyway, Brenda had called Boyd and asked if we could come over and see what he's done with the place.  he was fine with that so we planned to meet him there on his lunch hour.

Walking up the driveway was a little discouraging...It looked like he hadn't done any work in the yard at all..  I'm sure he's found that just keeping the lawns mowed and watered is a huge job...let alone tending to the rock garden, vegetable garden, fish pond and flower beds. 

It looked liked the deer had helped themselves to all the arborvitae bushes on the property...just little sticks left there.

 This was kind of disturbing...the rose garden  was completely over grown with weeds...could only see a couple of the roses alive under all the weeds   Maybe he just hasn't had time yet.

Boyd said a couple came to the house the other day and said their last name was Matthews.  They said they had looked up this old house on the historical registry because their great grand parents had built it.  We knew that the original owners were named Matthews so that made sense.  Boyd said they wanted to help him restore it inside and out to its original state.  That would be very cool.

 Its neat to see those cute ferns coming up , even though there has been no care given to the rock garden at all.  and the euphorbia has pretty much taken over the place.

 This was sad...Boyd said something came in and at the heads off all the fish except one. 

 Weird random tree growing in the middle of the rock garden.

 

We went in the front door and it was like whoa!  This is what he has been working on!  He had taken all the carpet and flooring up and found beautiful hardwood.  He said it was really hard wood and very hard to sand so it's taken him months to get them done.  They look beautiful though....different, but beautiful.  The other things he had done there in the living room didn't seem quite right...a big screen TV over the mantle?  And he had taken all the cute  wood trim off of the east side of the living room wall.  Just looked bare

He showed us through the whole house...

 
 

 

This was interesting...he had a bed and armoire he said was made by Brigham Young.  They were pretty amazing. Looked so different in that room where he had taken out those book shelves and cupboards.

 Ha Ha he tried to get a queen size bed down the stairs...no way man.  So he brought the mattress down and said he would try to get the headboard in through the window...good luck with that!

 This was my old room...sure looks different. 

 Mum's room...floors are pretty

 He had moved the sink in the back bathroom to face a different direction for a more functional bathroom.

He put some artificial wood flooring in a few places where there wasn't good wood floor underneath the carpet.

 That's the armoire...so pretty.  This was the only place in the house with a ceiling high enough to put it!

He took the railing off of the stairs...not quite sure why

 The kitchen looked really different.  He had redone the counter tops with (this is hard to describe)  black with tan leaves in it?  seemed dark in there. China cabinet...a little different looking.

 I'm not gonna lie, he had some weird decor in that house...I wish I would have got a shot of this thing that was sitting on the fireplace hearth.  It looked like a big heart ( real human)  made out of cement.  And in the middle of the front flower bed surrounded by ferns is a big cement Chinese man statue.  He had taken all the wall paper off ( it was pretty much falling off anyway) but underneath, he found many more layers of wallpaper.  After scraping for hours, he finally gave up and textured the walls so he could hide the rough places left by all the digging at it.  Looked totally boring in there without mums fun wallpaper and ruffly curtains.

 How many hours were spent sitting at the table with mum looking out this window watching the birds hop around on their bird feeder, or big pheasants  strutting around by the shack and in the winter time seeing the deer wandering around the yard..  So glad I have that happy memory...I think I'll go back and look at pictures I took when mum was still there...that's how I want to remember it.