catch up part 1

geez oh geez.. it has been a while! well i have decided that for my documentation purposes, I must write about a lot of stuff that has been happening. But instead of doing one HUGE general overview post, I am committing myself do a fairly large post every day for the next few days to get it all done. I don't have my camera in our apartment yet, so hopefully I will get it by tomorrow and then I will have pictures. I don't think everything will be in order of when they occurred, because everything just kind of blends in.. first, I will write about my great aunt Libby. My cousin did a post about her memories with aunt Libby, and I really liked that idea, so I will do that, too. My great aunt Libby (I just called her aunt Libby growing up) passed away the beginning of March. She was 97 (i think) years old, so it was time, but still sad. I thought of that song by Toby Keith a lot that says "I'm not crying cause I feel so sorry for you, I'm crying for me." That is how I was. Even though I should have been a lot better at visiting her those last years, I knew I would miss just knowing that the option was there to see her at family functions. She didn't get married, so she kind of adopted all of her neices/nephews as her own kids and grandkids. I visited her quite a bit while I was at college up in Logan and was glad that my cousin who lived up there still frequently visited her.. okay so back to the memories:

• I remember going to her old house in Ogden for Thanksgiving/Christmas and having delicious food. She seriously was one of the best cooks! She had a basement that had a TON of toys and we would just play all the time. I asked my mom why she had so many toys if she didn't have any grandkids, and she told me that they were for her great nieces and nephews. I remember my little mind trying to grasp why she would do that if they weren't her grandkids.. but now I know. She loved us just as much as she would her grandkids and wanted us to have a good time.
• fast forward a lot of years.. I loved seeing her at Thanksgiving dinners at my grandma's house and on the way home we would chuckle at some of the things she would say, or think we said because her hearing aids weren't working right.
• She would always give us birthday/christmas presents - it was either a crocheted pillow or lotion or perfume. my family would kind of joke sometimes like "hmm I wonder what scent you get this time," but there was always a reverence when we opened it because we knew that she didn't have to do it, yet still wanted to show us she cared about us.
• When I was in college, I went to help her pack things up to move into an assisted living center. She had a HUGE bookcase full of cookbooks that I was boxing and she told me just to put them in a DI box. I asked her if I could look through them and she told me I could take whatever I wanted! I was so excited to get all those books for free.
• I went over for dinner one time and she asked me to make the gravy.. umm I didn't know how and I told her that. She was very surprised, but walked me through it and I have known ever since.

Alright so there is probably a boring post to those of you who don't know my Aunt Libby, but i wanted this to be written down somewhere. Her funeral was very nice, and Bailee did exceptionally well at the viewing. I gave her the choice of going and looking in the casket or not after we had a review of our beliefs pertaining to what happens to us when we die. She chose to look and was able to then explain everything to Afton and didn't get freaked out by it or anything. We were very surprised.. for those of you who know Bailee and the things that weird her out. Okay I need to go and stop Afton from overflowing the toilet with toilet paper again. I will be back tomorrow with hopefully a more exciting post with pictures!