Short Recap of Mom's Celebration | personal

We are taking it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute these days.

Mom's Celebration of Life gathering was a success.  We still aren't sure how many people actually came by, but it was a lot.  My sister got in contact with Kaleigh Baker, she was so generous to come by and sing for us in the afternoon.  It was beautiful...and heart wrenching at the same time.  Such a bittersweet day for us.  While it was so wonderful to see how many people care about mom, it was so sad to know that they were there because she is gone.

We seem to be hanging in there.  Dad has been busy trying to get all the paperwork side of things handled. I don't know how he does it, I would be a complete mess trying to handle all that.  In fact, I have been a complete mess lately.  I can't seem to remember anything that I'm supposed to be doing.  Even this post has taken me three days to get to because I get sidetracked too easily.

Crystal has been busy going through interviews for a promotion.  While I know that she has been very stressed about whether she's going to get the job or not, I have full confidence that she will.  She's just good like that.

Stephanie is back to school again.  One of her classes is requiring her to build a complete website so she told me that means I'll be getting mine soon.  Woohoo!  I'm so very proud of her for doing so well in all of her classes.  She is just so smart, that's probably why she got so bored in high school.

Jack is continuing to work as a security guard in the mall.  It really is the perfect job for him.  He's such a big and quiet guy, it suits him well.  The last couple days he's been dealing with a pulled back muscle.  I'm not sure how that happened but I'm hoping that it will get better for him soon because it looks pretty painful.

School started back for Gracey this week.  It was so nice to be able to sign up as a volunteer for her classroom a couple days a week.  I've never been able to do that before and not having a full time job has allowed me the opportunity this year.  I really don't know if I'm going to be putting too much on my plate by trying to help out the teacher.  To be quite honest, I just found out this morning that Gracey has been getting to class late every day this week.  Whoops!  Sorry, Mrs. Cooper!  I've vowed to change all my clocks forward a few minutes tonight.

My sweet, wonderful Brian has been working his butt off all week in the heat.  I really don't know how he does it, but I am so thankful that he does.  It was so amazing to me to see how much effort he put into cooking all the meat for mom's celebration.  He started Friday night at our house, setting his alarm to go off every hour from midnight to 4am so he could put more wood in the smoker and turn the meat, then he loaded it all up the next morning and continued cooking at mom and dad's house.  It was well worth all that effort though.  The smoked pork was excellent and it seems to be a favorite for most all who attended.  It just dawned on me that I didn't get any photos of him cooking, or the spread.  Bummer.

I continue to think about my mom every single day.  That's nothing new, the only difference now is that I can't hug her when I want to anymore.  That hurts more than anything, and it seems that dad has the same thoughts as me on it, so we give each other hugs.  Most days I wish I could just be there with him all day and night, but I can't.  I have my own little family I have to take care of.

Here are some photos from the celebration.  We will post more to mom's blog soon.  I need to get the photos that dad printed out from all the years on there first.

We had a few bottles of red wine available in case anyone wanted to have a glass on mom's behalf.  She liked a nice glass of red wine on occasion.

These flowers were sent from mom's brother, Bryan, who lives on the other side of the US and was unable to attend.  They are beautiful and still blooming pretty as of today.  I know mom would have loved them.

These were flowers brought to us by mom's work friend, Jill.  They are so very pretty and we are so very glad that mom had such a wonderful friend's at work.

This was the memorial wall of photos that dad worked so very hard on.  He spent hours over the last couple weeks searching through all of our family photos to find the very best to be included here.  I think he did a marvelous job, even if it is hard for me to look at sometimes.

Dad and his brothers.  So very glad they could make it down.  He was smiling the most while he talked with them that day.

This is mom's sister, Sharon.  Our beautiful, kind and sweet Aunt Sharon.  How would we have made it through all of this without your help?  And, mom's brother, Johnny.  Dear, sweet Uncle Johnny, it is so amazing that you were able to make it all the way here and we are so very glad that we were able to spend the weekend with you!  And by the way, thank you so much for my gift.  I will treasure it forever!

Kaleigh put on quite a show for us.  Thank you so much, Kaleigh!

And thank you, Nate for the beautiful sax music.  We are so very lucky to have had you with us this day.

Thank you to all of our friends and family who attended.  It really means so much to us that each of you were there celebrating our sweet and kind mom.