The Last Living Siblings

I've had the opportunity to spend time with both my father's and mother's last living siblings lately. The last of my aunts and uncles, the thought makes you see life in a whole new light. It seems odd to see yourself as the older generation, I surely don't feel like I am. Don't worry it will happen to all of you. My mother was the youngest in her family until she turned 18 and then a baby brother was born in her family. My Uncle LeRoy (he prefers to go by Lee) was born not too far before my oldest sisters, so he actually seems to be more like a nephew on the family tree than the Uncle. Since I am sooooooooooooooooooo much younger however he is much more an uncle to me. :) While we were out to Vernal for Garrett's wedding I had the opportunity to spend the day with him. He has always been so supportive of our family and is good to come to anything he possibly can. I hope that he will be able to attend our Willard Family Reunion this month. I know he will be there if he can. On the side note, Larry and I usually get season tickets to the play at Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City, and to make a long story short, Uncle Lee and Aunt Kathy have decided to join us this year. I look forward to spending a monthly date with him this Fall and Winter. Love you Uncle Lee
My Uncle Lee and all my sisters
This past Memorial Day Larry and I made a spur of momment decision and went to Idaho to decorate the graves. What a long day, but that's a whole different story. Anyway, my father's sister that is just about an year and a half older than he was was turning 90 years old. I had sent her a card because I didn't think I'd see her. She had a big birthday party that her kids did for her the week before, but her actual birthday was on Memorial Day this year. Anyway, after we decorated graves in Wendell, Aunt June arrived to decorate her family graves. We told her we would help her, but she said "I don't know if I will be here next year and I want to decorate all my famiies graves myself." All but one of her siblings are buried there in the Wendell Cememtary,that would be 8 of them, along with her parents and grandparents. Her sister Beauton is in Twin Falls and actually Aunt June will be buried in Shoshone next to her husband. After we finished at the cemetary went back to my niece Katie's house. Some of the family like to have a little potluck and it became a little birthday party for my Aunt June. She looked very good and was still getting around very well. Still glad to have her around. Love you too Aunt June.
Marla and I with Aunt June on her 90th birthday
Here's just a few other pictures of Memorial Day in Wendell
Mom and Dad's grave

Grandma and Grandpa Willard and Andersen's graves

Emily and her fiance', Ben

Garrett and Kaitlynn!!

!!! On May 11th a dear nephew was married in the Vernal Temple. Garrett chose a cute and wonderful girl from Vernal, Kaitlynn Winn. The funnny thing is that I've known her since she was born also. I lived right around the corner from her parents and we were in the same ward in Vernal. Anyway, she's a very cute girl with a wonderful family. I was so happy for him and it was so evident by the smile on his face that he was an extremely happy young man that day. Amazingly they also had the opportunity to buy home before they were married. Not many young couples are able to do that. It's also fun that he is living in Kaitlyn's and my old ward. I've got spies that can keep an eye on him. Garrett is a special nephew as I was also able to be his 2nd grade teacher, so I spent a lot of time with him. He called me Miss Willard at school and sometimes when I was over at their house I had to tell him he could call me Aunt Patsy and that we were off the clock. I don't know it really mattered what he called me, the class all knew he was my nephew. I really don't have favorites when it comes to my 28 nieces and nephews, I love them all very much. (Don't want any of the others to think I have favorites.) I've had a lot of time to spend with them all and they are all a special part of my life. However, I did have opportunity to be even a bigger part of Garrett's life and I'm happy that he has been successful so far and hope for great things for him in his and his new family's lives. Best of luck to Garrett and Kaitlynn!! May you cherish each other and always remember this special day and how much you love each other. Love to you from me. On a side note, all my sisters were there and so we had to take a few pictures together and so I wanted to add some of those to this post. It is always good to be with my family. I'm grateful that we try to stay in touch and are there to support each other and our families. Love you sisters and hubbies!!

Blast From the Past

Well....so it has been a few months since I have put my fingers to the keyboard and added anything to this blog, but I'm no longer teaching and this is my first week out of school and I decided it is time to put something down. I know that it doesn't work too well to try and go back to all the things you've missed posting, but I just have to put some of these things down as I like to use this as a bit of a journal.

I'm going to go clear back to December of 2011. We were all so excited as a family to have Nate and Steph come up. They had moved to Las Vegas from Georgia and we hadn't been able to get together as a whole family since they moved. Steph was pregnant with their first and was due the first week of March.

With her family in Georgia we wanted Steph to have a baby shower, so we decided while they were here we would have a baby shower. Shannon, as always, went way overboard and planned the whole thing.

We also enjoyed Christmas Eve together as a family. Nate and Steph needed to leave Christmas Day, so we felt Christmas Eve would work best. I asked the girls to each make a soup and then I ordered bread bowls and also made a soup. Along with a few other things added to our meal, we really enjoyed our evening with visiting and having fun together. As you can see I must have been very busy just enjoying the family, because the only picuter I got was this one of Chris a little out of it.

(Not really, we were just having a bit of fun.) The next morning Larry and I opened our gifts together and made phone calls to the kids. And this is the problem with not writing it down right away, but I believe it was the next day that we went to the cabin to spend the rest of the Christmas Vacation. There was hardly any snow as you will see in the pics. We did do a little snowmobiling, but stayed totally on the roads. I read a lot and enjoyed just being a bum and relaxing.

Well...even though Nate and Steph's baby was due the first week of March she ended up coming on February 23, 2012. Avonlea Mary-Hazel Walker was born at 9:42PM Pacific Time. We would have liked to go down right away, but didn't quite work into our schedule. Although the best Aunt and Uncle, Shannon and Chris, went down the week after she was born. Spring Break was coming up the first week of April so decided to wait until then.

We thought it would be fun to make it a family affair, so Larry and I went down in Jamie's Burb, along with Jamie,of course,Dallin, Zac and Shannon went back down with us. Jamie and us stayed at a hotel and Shannon stayed at Nate and Steph's. We were there about 3 days and just enjoyed playing with Avonlea and doing a little shopping, of course out to eat and visiting. I just have to share a "few" pics. :)

Avonlea is now 3 months old and getting cuter everyday. I thought I'd also through in some of her professional pics that make her look even cuter.

In May a previous student and my nephew, Garrett got married. I am excited for him as he seems so HAPPY, but I think I will actually do a small post on that seperately after this one is finished or else this will be very long. Just to bring us up to date now. Last Thursday our eldest granddaughter, Starley Polei graduated from Tooele High School. It was the day before school got out for me and it was in Salt Lake City at the Huntsman Center at 4:00pm.

Larry and I both wanted to be there and so I found someone at school that could watch my class for the last 1 1/2 hours of the day so I could get away and make it in there for it. Jamie and Bruce volunteered to pick me up that way I could just meet Larry in there. So I hurried home and got ready.

It was suppose to be best dressed, which I thankful that they did. On a side note, I'm glad that they wanted to make this a true Pomp and Circumstance affair, and not have people coming in just whatever they wanted. Although there was a few there in whatever, most were well dressed.

Anyway off my soap box....it was a nice evening and I liked that the kids did most of the whole thing themselves. The only speakers were from their class and a couple of muical numbers also from the class. It was really nice, and as always we only got a few pictures after as she was flitting here and there to see friends. She went out to dinner afterwards with her mother and Trevor and so we went out with Bruce and Jamie and Dallin.

It was a very pleasant evening. We have Jennsen graduating next year so I thought that it would be like this year and that Stansbury High would graduate after Tooele again and that way graduation wouldn't be until 7:00pm....but after looking at the district's calendar for next year they are flip flopping, so looks like I'll be finding someone to watch my class again next year. Oh well!!!

Well, this isn't super detailed but it is long enough and it has basically caught me up on the main events since I wrote last. Life is good and family is all important. I'm grateful for Larry's kids and being able to be a part of their families. It's been a good year thus far and I'm sure there are many more good things to come in 2012.

Hawaii Five-O

The first of this year we received a phone call from Marriott Resorts. They had a good deal to go to Hawaii, of course the good deal had a catch of coming to a meeting for them to talk you in to buying in on a vacation time share with them. Anyway, Larry thought it would be fun for me as I had never been there, he said he had already been there and didn't really care if he went back....so this was basically for me, which was very sweet and thoughtful of him. Larry suggested that we make plans to go during the summer while I was off work, but I told him that I didn't want to go in the summer when it was warm here. I would rather go during the fall or winter. After all was said and done we planned to go over UEA in October, then I could take some of personal days and still have some extra time with the vacation that we were on from school. It just so happened that the UEA vacation was the 20th and 21st of October. That made it even better, because I could spend my 50th birthday in the 50th state. Then people started saying that I could do the Hawaii Five-O thing. Very funny, but anyway it was perfect. We had a lot of fun.










A long story made short, our eldest daughter Shan and her hubby Chris, along with their daughter Jennsen (whose birthday was the 20th) decided to go with us. Then so Jennsen wouldn't be stuck with just us adults they also invited our grandson Zac. We all had a lot of fun.









We left on the 19th of October and arrived there that evening about 6:30 Hawaii Standard Time. With the 4 hour difference that made it a long day. In fact that was the hard part, my body wanted to wake up at 4:00 in the morning, because it was 8:00 by my body clock.
The next morning we all headed off to hike Diamond Head.









I didn't think it would be that bad, it wasn't very long, but it was pretty straight up with lots of stairs, which my knee hated....but I DID IT!!!









After that we headed over to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling. Zac and Jennsen were excited to do that. Shan isn't a very good swimmer, well she doesn't have a lot of confidence, anyway she was nervous at first, but she did great! I'm proud of her. Larry and I were able to see a sea turtle swimming along.






I tried to find the kids, but I couldn't see them to wave them to come over, so we were the only ones to enjoy that. Got a little red, which is easy to do just snorkeling along and not paying attention to time that you're out there. We all had a ton of fun doing that though.
Then we went down the road a little and saw the Blow Hole. It was hard to get pictures, but Larry got a couple.












The next day we headed up toward the North Shore and over to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We made a few steps along the way to a fruit stand to try some local fruit, stopped to to see the Temple and the BYU campus there. The temple was beautiful, wish we could have fit in a session there.













We had a lot of fun at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We enjoyed all the stops at each of the island shows and the parade on the water. Shannon and Zac both got a temporary Hawaiian tattoo. We also stayed to see the main show called "Ha....breath of Life" It was a late night getting home, but so worth it.








The next day we planned on going over to the Flea Market at Aloha Stadium. We planned on picking up our gifts and souvenirs there, but unknown to us the Warriors had a game that day and so the market was not going to be open. We would have to go back the next day. Since that through a wrench in our plans for the day we tried to decide what to do. Larry and I had our meeting that day and so we would have to be back at the resort by 2:00. We figured that we had time to go up to the Dole Plantation for the morning and then we could be back and everyone else could just enjoy the resort and play around.















Later that night we went to a Luau just down from the resort called Paradise Cove.










We went down a little early and were able to make a lei bracelet and a few other things. We girls enjoyed doing that. Zac got himself a Island tattoo on his face. He thought that was great. It was a great buffet and great entertainment.





Sunday was my big "50", and since we had not been able to get our gifts the day before as we had planned, we had to go that day since that was the only day left that they would be open before we left Monday evening. Talk about a major shopping experience!!






We also decided to drive to the North Shore to see some waves. There was a high wave warning for that day and so we wanted to see some surfing.
















We also found a good place for Zac to go snorkeling again. He really loved doing that. The waves were great and we also saw some of the surfers out. Just driving up there was like rush hour. We then came back and enjoyed the rest of the day back at the the resort and then went out to eat that evening for my birthday. It was a nice day, but I missed my Sabbath feeling.

Monday was our final day. Our plane flight was that evening around 9:00pm. So we checked out of the resort that morning and left our luggage with the bell hops and headed out for something I was really looking forward to.....Pearl Harbor!!!














We spent pretty much the entire day there, taking the tour out to the USS Arizona,(Very humbling to show our respect to those who died there.) I even took pictures of the oil, which they call black tears, that is still coming up from the ship. We learned that since it is the 70th anniversary this December, that one of the men that was assigned to the Arizon, but was not on the ship at the time, has passed away and his family have plans to bury him with his shipmates on that date. I didn't realize that they did that still. Always interesting things to learn.












We also went over to tour the USS Missouri (which is the ship that the Japanese surrendered on.) and then on over to the Aviation Museum. Jennsen was excited about this because she is into the Ghost Hunter shows....the museum was on that show. One of the manikins named, Kramer, is always in a different position in the morning when the workers show up. So we had to take pictures with Kramer.







I also took pictures in Hanger 79 of the actual broken window panes from bullets from the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What a excellent day. We finished in time to head back to the resort and eat and get our bags and then off to the airport.
I loved my Hawaii Five-O adventure!! We loved having the family along too!! I would love to do it again, if I can only talk Larry into going again (I think he had more fun that he will admit.)....maybe to another island!