I was able to go out to Utah for my Grandma’s funeral. It was a really nice weekend. My parents and Sherri were able to come as well and we all stayed with DeAnna. Friday evening there was a viewing. Except for my brother I think all of my extended family was there. My cousins Erin, Lisa, and Melissa made photo boards and displays of her life. Grandma looked very nice. A lot of my dad’s cousins and aunt and uncles were there too. After the viewing a lot of us practiced a song, Come Unto Me, written by Grandma to sing the next day at her funeral. My Grandpa sat on a chair by Grandma and talked with people as they came to see her. When he got there he put his hand on her chest and looked at her for a while then said, “Well Dear, you are cold and dead.” I think he was just being matter of fact, not funny or morbid.
Great Aunt Elain, mom and Lynette (Elain’s daughter)cousinsAuntsCazier FamilyGrandma’s sister Elaine and all of Grandma’s childrenJones FamilyBandley Family
The next morning we had the family prayer before the funeral. All seven of her children spoke at the service. They did a great job. The whole family sang her song, Families are Fun to Belong To. Some of us sang her song, Come Unto Me, and the closing song was a recording of her playing Danny Boy on her trumpet. She was an amazing woman. So kind, talented, and loving. My aunt Mary said that heaven had one of its best trumpeters back and she was probably already playing with the angels. I think she is too.
Howard Family (Ace, Leilani, Neo)Duerden FamilyMary Rowley FamilyJones Family
It was pretty chilly so the graveside service at the cemetery was brief. After my dad dedicated the grave, Grandpa was ready to go. There was a very nice lunch at the church. Her daughters sang another song of hers, To Mother. After the luncheon some people went home, a lot of us went to Grandpa’s house and visited and hung out together. He was exhausted and it had been a busy few weeks for him since Grandma had passed away so eventually he took a little nap. We had popcorn with raisins in it as a snack- one of his favorites. It was a very nice weekend. I enjoyed seeing family that I haven’t seen for a few years. Grandma will be greatly missed. She lived a great life and left an amazing legacy. There is an empty spot now that she isn’t with us physically anymore.
Grandma and AllisonFour GenerationsDropping me off at airport to go homeFascinated with grandpa’s snoringGrandma and Grandpa’s homePinegar Family
My sweet Grandma-Annie Joy Pinegar Jones passed away last night in her sleep. She was one of the kindest, sweetest people. She celebrated her 90th birthday just two days before she passed away. She has been in a lot of pain and not wanted to eat the past year but she still loved to have company and did her best to visit.
The last time I saw her was last April. She struggled with her memory sometimes but she knew who I was most of the time and we had a good visit. I have many special memories of her throughout my life. She was an amazing musician. She was my first piano teacher. I was practicing on her piano one day and I missed a note and was struggling to figure it out. From the kitchen she said, “Move your 4th finger on your left hand down two white keys.” She did that more than once. She had a beautiful singing voice too. She played the piano and her trumpet all over the world. I could listen to her play for hours. She usually played one or both when we had a family gathering, reunion, or a family home evening. One of the songs that will always remind me of her is “Danny Boy”. She wrote many songs too, we have a little blue book of sweet songs she wrote for her kids and grandkids to use for Family Home Evenings. “Families Are Fun To Belong To” is now in its fourth generation of being sung in Jones families across the country.
My dad went to see her two weeks ago. She didn’t want to take a picture because she is to old but she smiled and was a good sport.
When I was really young we lived pretty close to them and saw them often. She had sleepovers with the grandchildren. She didn’t really enjoy cooking but she always made sure you had something to eat when you came over. The first thing she said after giving you a hug was, “Are you hungry?” It didn’t really matter what your answer was, she would make you eat something. Their home grown grape juice and canned peaches with a piece of toast was always a favorite of mine. Cold cereal is a staple at their house and I have carried that tradition on in mine.
One time, I wanted to go swimming with my aunt and her friends and was disappointed I didn’t get to go. Grandma found a swimsuit for me and pinned it to fit me and had grandpa put a sprinkler on a tarp on their back yard hill so I could slide down it. Then I sunned on a blanket with Grandpa. Her and my grandpa had more family gatherings then I could ever count at their house. My cousins and I spent many hours doing our makeup in her bathroom and then showing everyone how we did. I remember making cookies with her and deciding to try my hand at juggling the eggs. Of course it being my first attempt ever at juggling it was a complete disaster. She had a very surprised look on her face when I explained what I had been attempting to do, but she was patient and told me to practice with grandpas tennis balls outside instead of eggs.
When I was older we lived farther away and didn’t see them as much but they came to visit us and we spent many fun Summer vacations at their house. They often put together family reunions for everyone to come to and see each other. She always sent a card for my birthday and Christmas.
She served missions for our church in Jerusalem, and Washington DC with my grandpa. She walked with her best friend every morning for decades. She was always happy and concerned with taking care of everyone and making sure you were comfortable. She had a sweet laugh. Her Christmas tree was usually flocked and always seemed huge in my memory. I don’t remember her ever being angry but I remember her talking about something one of her grandkids had done and calling them, “a little shit”. I still laugh at that memory. Sundays she always had curlers in her hair, and played beautiful music. She thought she was being a bad grandma if you helped with dishes or did any cleaning. She wanted us to play and enjoy ourselves at her house. She was self conscious about her hair and how thin it got but I thought she always looked beautiful. She had classic, timeless beauty.
I am her name sake. I have always felt special and proud to be named after her. The first words that pop into my head when I think of her are; joy, family, kind, patient, consistent, constant, loving, music, family history, caring, sweet, and strong testimony of the Savior. I will miss her. I know she is in Heaven, having sweet reunions with her past family and friends. She is probably playing a trumpet too. I love you Grandma Jones.
When I was young I spent many years begging to get my ears pierced. My mom didn’t mind but my dad wanted to convince me to never have them pierced. His mom never did, and it was something he told me over and over he admired about her. He also asked me why I wanted to put more holes in my head. When I was around 4th or 5th grade I made the deal to practice my piano, say my prayers and read my scriptures every day for a year and then I could get my ears pierced. I don’t know if they made me do it for the whole year but I did it for a long time and then I got my ears pierced. At some point along the way I also remember telling my grandma that she was making it harder for me to get my ears pierced. When she asked what I meant I explained my dads thoughts that she was somehow making a moral stand to not get her ears pierced. She replied, “For Heaven’s sake, I’ve just never done it. I have no moral concerns for having or not having pierced ears!” I was quite delighted with her response. My dad tried to convince her otherwise and she would not agree. I am not positive but I think she eventually did get her ears pierced.
Anyways, with my girls every now and then I’ve asked them if they are interested in getting their ears pierced. They both have not had any interest in it. Out of the blue the other day Emilee came up to me and said she had a dream that I took her to get her ears pierced so she wanted to do it now. I told her we could plan on it sometime to see if she forgot about it or if she was serious. She continued to bring it up several times a day for a few weeks so this past Saturday I took her to get them done. When we were walking into the store I asked her if she had her “brave pants” on. She looked down at her pants and said, “No! I have my gingerbread pants on!” LOL! She picked topaz studs for her birthstone color for her studs to wear while her ears heal and handled it like a champ when she had it done. Apparently, her gingerbread pants will also work as “brave pants”.
Every week I have to delete dozens and dozens of pictures and videos that Emilee makes with my phone. She makes goofy videos and pulls silly faces at herself and entertains herself forever with it. For posterity sake I thought I would include one of her latest videos in the family blog. Allison is pretending to knock so Emilee will go answer the door in the back ground. Emilee incorporates it into her video when she cackles, “You can’t trick me!”
Allison has had a lot going on this month. She just finished a big project for school and did the presentation. They did a wax museum and she presented the gymnast Gabby Douglas. This was the same project I helped edit. She did a great job presenting and making her poster.
She went to the zoo with the McDonald family a bit ago. Lori sent me some cute pictures.
This last picture made me smile. This is a very Allison thing to do. We went to the dentist the other morning and while we were waiting for her to go back I looked down at her leg and noticed she had turned to of the moles on her leg into a smiley face.
Our church has a Bishop Youth Discussion (BYD) about once a month for the teenagers in the ward. They have different topics each month. This past month was the first one that Allison and Matthew had gone to together. They leader guiding the discussion had several of the youth come up front. He told each of them to write something down on a piece of paper that someone else would have to do. Of course they all wrote down something silly or embarrassing for whoever ended up with their paper to do. Allison was one of the kids selected and on her paper she wrote, “Confess your love to Matthew Terry.” Once everyone had written something down, their papers were collected and they read a scripture. Neither one of my stinkers can remember what the scripture was but the message was-treat people the way you want to be treated and don’t ask others to do things that you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. The leader then returned each of the notes to the person that had written it and told them they got to do whatever they had put on it. Honestly, I couldn’t have picked a much better object lesson for Allison to participate it. Someone recorded it for me and sent me the video. I will admit it brought me some smug satisfaction. Allison (and Matthew) were good sports.
The other day when I was wasting time on the internet watching funny videos I came across that joke. It comes from one of first You Tube videos that ever went viral-the guy sang the song “Maya He, Mayo Ho, Maya Ahah”. That is probably not the actual name of the song but is how it is remembered. It made me chuckle. I decided to try it on a few people. It did not work so well for me. These are some of the responses I got.
We stayed home this year for Spring Break. We are toying with the idea of building a house and have some things going to see what we could get approved for on a loan so we didn’t want to do anything to extravagant. To help add a little bit of fun to the week, I agreed to watch our friends dog Po. He is a Berna-doodle, at least 100lbs, a fluff ball, and very playful. They had a lot of fun with him.
Matthew took him to the dog park a few times and he slept with him at night. Emilee fed him and took him on a few walks. Allison catered to his every need and whim. She barely left his side. They all played with him and had a good time. He is a pretty smart dog. He knew how to play hide-n-seek so they played that for hours.
They were hoping it would change my mind about wanting a dog but I told them from the start that wasn’t going to happen and this was just for a week. I thought he was a very good dog but he made everything smell like a dog, scratched my floors and required a lot of work that I don’t have energy for.
He brought a lot of fun to our Spring Break, and now when we see him at our friends he is very excited to see us. We fit some other fun stuff in for our Spring Break too. Emilee did horse camp, we saw several movies together, had lots of play dates, went to lunch together, the zoo, and stayed up to late and slept in to long. It was great.
The last part of the break Ryan went on his 15th annual March madness trip with his BFF Mike and Sam.
Allison was given the assignment of writing a paper on Gabby Douglas for school. In class they switched papers and peer edited it for each other. They were given a specific form with items to check and give feed back on the paper they edited. Allison was sick this week and wasn’t able to get her paper edited, so her teacher suggested she have a parent edit it and fill out the review form. Ryan was out of town so she asked if I would edit it for her. In hind sight I should have had Matthew do it but I wasn’t smart enough to come up with that at the time. Allison has a lot of amazing strengths and talents. She is a very smart girl. She has been working really hard on her moodiness and responding to emotions on the same level as the person she is talking with (instead of always responding with a 10).
In general we have been getting along a lot better. So much better that I completely forgot that one of Allison’s many strengths is not taking constructive criticism well. Especially from her mother.
She left me in my room with her computer and the review sheet and I started editing. I followed the review sheet and highlighted, noted and marked whatever it told me to do. After about 5 minutes had passed Allison returned to get her paper. I told her I wasn’t done yet. She left and came back 5 minutes later. I still wasn’t done. She looked over my shoulder and asked what could be taking so long. When she saw that I had actually made edits to her paper (that she apparently thought was unimprovable) she show cased another one of her talents. She is pretty incredible at quick thinking and has a quick wit to match. Unfortunately, she sometimes uses this ability to ring someone up and down on a level that makes you feel like it was scripted for a movie if she feels wronged. Looking back now it was comical, at the time not so much. She was truly flabbergasted that I could have found anything wrong with her paper beyond an accidental grammar error. Allison also has an incredible way of pushing my buttons and one of my weaknesses is that I let her. We both started arguing and ended with me telling her to edit her own paper, her taking her computer and storming out and yelling, “All you had to do was put your name on the editing sheet-THAT IS IT- three seconds to do something and you screwed it all up!”
A few hours later she came and found me and with the enormous amount of grit and determination Allison has coursing through every cell in her body she swallowed her pride and told me, “I changed some of the things back and ignored most of your suggestions. BUT you actually did have some good corrections that I kept. Thank you for editing my paper. Oh, and sorry for yelling at you.”
I picked my jaw up off the floor and gave her a hug. Not to long ago this would have gone a totally different way and been dragged out for days. While I could have tweaked her apology a little, the fact that she apologized on her own without any prompting is a big step. Huge steps have been made.
According to my children, I am an obsessive compulsive cleaner. According to me my children are messy lazy slobs. Of course we both disagree with each others perspectives of the other, but as I love to tell them I am the mom, the adult, the owner of the house, and maker of the rules so for now they have to do it my way. This opinion of each other leads to a constant debate in our home, as I am sure it happens in many homes, when a chore is given between “I did do (fill in job requested)!” and “You did not do (fill in job requested) well.” A simple task that if done immediately and correctly would take 5-10 minutes can be dragged out for hours. It is truly exhausting.
The other day when they were doing some of their jobs, several of them needed to use the vacuum. I was doing some things of my own and also needed to use the vacuum. As all of us used it and passed it around I noticed this;
Exhibit AExhibit B
According to our usual MO’s the loosely wrapped cord would be my kids doing, and the neatly wrapped cord would be mine. However, many years ago I decided it was annoying to wrap and unwrap the cord every time I used the vacuum that I keep in the closet and never look at. I started wrapping it as shown in exhibit A. A little bit messy but that is the way I prefer it. Such a slacker, I know. You would think my children-that cut every corner they can when doing their chores-would be all for wrapping the cord this way. Honestly, I’m surprised that it gets wrapped up in any way at all but all three of my children- every single one of them- neatly rolls the cord up as soon as they are done using the vacuum. They don’t put it away of course but they wrap the cord and tuck it in all nice and neat. AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. I will say nothing though. I am not willing to find out what happens if I suggest my kids do something less… thorough. All my ‘harping and nagging’ over the years has taken root in their heads to wrap the vacuum cord. I can only hope that one day it will spread to throwing their trash away, or putting their dirty dishes in the dishwasher with out being told. Maybe it will spontaneously pop into their heads one day to put their dirty socks in the laundry bin instead of leaving it wherever they take them off. That hope keeps me from telling them, they don’t have to wrap the vacuum cord. That is irony at its finest for you.
These two besties are just like sisters. Reese and Emilee were due within a few days of each other but Emilee came early so they are two weeks apart. They have been besties since then. They went to pre-school together but are in different school districts. They see each other at church and church activities and take riding lessons together and squeeze in as much play time as they can in between. They both love horses and talk about them for hours when they play. They both have similar interests in clothes (they grab the first thing they touch in the drawer regardless of if it matches or not) hairstyles (brush it just long enough to get it in a pony tail) and sense of adventure (they always climb, run, jump or fling themselves in, up, or down whatever they can). They are both the youngest and are often left hanging out together on Friday or Saturday nights while everyone else is off doing things with friends and their parents go out to dinner together. They are easy to have together and fun to watch. This picture is from the other day when they were at our house and decided they would practice putting ponytails in each others hair.
Allison has a very witty sense of humor that catches me off guard sometimes. She loves to make people laugh when she isn’t being a grump she is fun to joke around with. A few months ago I got a little to attached to a stupid farm game on my phone. The kids took notice and gave me a hard time about spending my time on something else besides them. Allison is also a very crafty and artistic person. She started making funny stories or pictures with stick figures. I am not very artistically gifted so I was impressed at how funny and detailed she could be with just stick figure drawings. One morning I found this funny little picture left for me next to my sink in the bathroom. It made me chuckle.
As mentioned a little earlier in this post, Emilee doesn’t concern herself to much with looks when getting dressed. Her first priority is comfort. Last week she attempted to add a functionality component to her Sunday outfit. Luckily her dad caught her before getting to church. When he asked her why she was wearing what she was wearing, she logically explained, “I put my clothes on that I want to wear after church under my church clothes so I can change faster when I get home.” When the look on her dads face looked like it was heading towards “I don’t think so” she quickly added, “And it keeps me warm.” He told her to trade her socks and pants for tights and get in the car to go.
Emilee is making the blog a lot this week. Another quirk of Emilee’s is her love of popcorn. Emilee is a ridiculously picky eater and has a HUGE sweet tooth so popcorn is one of her more healthy choices of snack. It also falls into the category of easy and fast for her to make by herself. Over time her love of popcorn has gotten to the point that she will eat nothing else if we don’t monitor or limit her popcorn intake. She eats all of the popcorn too, kernels included. I don’t know how she hasn’t cracked half her teeth chomping the un-popped corn. This popcorn trait is inherited from her dad. He likes his burned, she will eat it burned but prefers it not. Anyway, I digress. Most days when Ryan gets home Emilee has done her chores and home work and whatever else she needs to get done so she has popped herself a bag of popcorn and is sitting down to enjoy it while watching a show. He of course wants to have some and reaches for a handful. She turns into the equivalent of a dog that has possessive food issues. It got to the point that it was causing contentions between the two of them and we had to talk with Emilee about realizing there is plenty of popcorn to share. So far she doesn’t agree there is enough. So, the other day we were watching a movie together. Emilee popped some popcorn and came to snuggle me. A bit into the movie I told her thanks for sharing her popcorn with me and she was doing a good job at sharing. We continued watching and eating. I happened to glance over and realized that Emilee had been mining our popcorn the whole time! She had taken out all the butter pieces and put them in a separate pile on the other side of me so she could eat them after she ate what she left in the bowl ‘to share’ with me. Little stinker!
