*This is what I'll call a vintage blog entry... from the past, but worth remembering ;) More vintage blog entries are on their way!
We drove to St. George and stayed the night, woke up and had a fun family breakfast at IHOP and then drove the rest of the way to Provo. We arrived in the afternoon and immediately stopped by Grandma Lolo's house to hug her and see my parents (who were staying with/helping her). It was a great reunion. We had fun playing games and relaxing on grandma's front lawn.
Throughout the day we met up with Dave and Erin, Scott and Sara (who had flown down from WA), and Jen. We had all congregated to Utah to celebrate our Grandma "Gigi" Brown's 90th Birthday!!!
Can I just take a little break to brag about my cute grandma? She is seriously amazing. This 90 year old is beautiful, energetic, feisty, positive, frugal, spiritual, kind, generous and has always been such an amazing example to me and all of her millions of grand/great-grandchildren (okay, not that many grandchildren, but pretty close :)).
She is the lady that my mom would find on the roof fixing a shingle in her ripe age. She had a hard time climbing the stairs to her house, so she built a new one by herself. She makes rugs out of pantyhose (COTD=child of the depression). If we send her a letter in the mail, we can guarantee there will be one from her quickly to follow. She is dedicated to genealogy. She lost her husband 15 years ago, moved from her wonderful town of Richfield Utah to Washington to live next door to my wonderful parents. She lived there for almost 15 years and just recently moved from WA to Orem Utah to live in a beautiful retirement home. What I appreciate throughout all of this "uprooting" in her later years is her positive attitude. She has had some difficult health issues and has found a way through her faith to rise above them. I love this good woman.
Needless to say, we were not about to miss her big birthday bash. We decided to stay in a hotel to make the family reunion feel more like a family vacation as well.
We loved going swimming, having Dave, Erin and Jen join us for game nights in the lobby (UNO!!), and renting movies late into the night.
The day we arrived was also the first part of Grandma's birthday... the adult party. Sounds bad, but it was super fun.
It was Grandma, all 4 of her kids, all of their adult kids and even some of Grandma's older great grandchildren attended. We celebrated in her retirement home lobby and had a wonderful program of singing and piano playing.
Grandma was in heaven.
Many of her friends throughout the years also stopped by... it was quite the crowd. We talked for hours, ate some cake, performed some songs and called it an evening.
My cousin Shaun and his wife Kristi kindly watched all 3 of our kids (they have 3 kids as well, almost exactly the same ages as ours). The kids had an absolute blast and it made my heart ache, wishing we all lived a little closer.
The next day was the actual "Grandma's-90th-Birthday-Party/Family-Reunion-in-the-Park" day. This time, the kids were unleashed and holy moly... there were a lot of us. It was great!
My uncle Bruce has 10 kids who are all married and have kids (the latest total from my Uncle Bruce was 48 grandchildren!). It was most definitely a party. We love to have Grandma look around every once in awhile and remind her that she did this ;). We met at a park in Herriman (it was sooo windy), had a picnic lunch, played on the playground, talked and reconnected. Spencer loved lining grapes in the holes on the table :).
Dallin had fun hanging out with some of his cousin buddies,
and Claire was in heaven with her cousin Eva.
It was a great afternoon honoring a great woman.
That was the end of the family reunion part of the trip... it was a great time! More of our Utah trip to follow...
1 comment :
Great memories . . .
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