Rear View Mirror

Weekends in the rear view mirror.

For such a somber event, we were all pretty upbeat and cheerful for the drive to Nebraska for my Mom's graveside service.  We ended up having Leon's little brother, Finn, with us for the adventure.  He and Meri got on great.  Leon, Maddy and Matthew hung out in the "way back" and Leon showed off his Lego Star Wars game on his ancient Ipod.

I mostly visited with Robb, worked on funeral thank yous and took out some stitching from some zippers that I salvaged from some of Robb's old shorts that he was throwing away.

 We arrived first at the cemetery and waited in the van.  It was COLD, wet and windy.  It's always windy at this cemetery.  2.5 sets of my grandparents are buried out here and I was only able to put a rose on one of their graves before frost bite was kicking into my bare legs.  Slacks and boots would have probably been a better choice to wear...  

The tent blocked some of the wind and most of the rain, but I come from a big family and we couldn't all fit comfortably, so some stuck out on various sides.

The reason the graveside service was 1.5 months later was so that grandchildren who couldn't make it to the actual funeral could make it to this.  And so that the weather would be better.  I'm almost thinking it was warmer in early March!  But who knew?

Matthew was gracious and helped be a stand-in pallbearer for it.

The service was short but poignant.  

And Beautiful Savior will always make me cry now.

Afterwards, we all drove to another town about 20 minutes away and filled the entire back party room of a Pizza Ranch.  So good to visit with them all.  I got to hear all about my brother's trip to Florida.

Mental note: Buy the strongest and most waterproof sunscreen I can find...  The Florida and Bahama sun was not made for lily white Iowa skin.  He and his girlfriend were peeling pretty good.

On the way home, the kids crashed within 10 minutes of being in the car again.

It reminded me of this photo that I took within 10 minutes of getting in our rental car in Ireland.

Kids are so sweet when they're sleeping... :)

Finally got home after almost 4 hours in the car and our company for dinner (brother-in-law and his wife) arrived 10 minutes later.

Yep - Lisa helped me get some of the food cooked while Robb manned the grill.

After dinner, Maddy helped Meri get all dolled up for a "Porch Prom" that she was attending that evening.

I KNOW!  I'd never heard of a "porch prom" either!  But it was Prom night at our local high school and Meri has graduated so she wasn't going.  Neither were a lot of her theater friends that own a house close to the high school.  So they had a party on the porch, watching and mocking the high school kids as they arrived at the high school for their grand march.  Meri was upset that she couldn't make anything but after hitting up the local convenience store, went to the party bearing chips and cheese dip.  She didn't get back until 2 am and I think she had a great time.

Ellie, Duke and Reedus were all under one roof again for the weekend.  They were excited and as crazy as ever to be together.   The people left back at the house on Saturday had to deal with it.  Not us.   Ellie promptly dragged the food dish to the bathroom and slept behind the bathroom door all day.  She can be moody.

Duke left with Maddy and Matthew on Sunday morning and Ellie stuck around until last night when Meri got done with her community play practice.  And suddenly we're just down to Reedus, who is snoring not so softly under the table as I type.

Teen Challenge arrived at the auto repair place this morning and picked up Meri's car.  Well, it's not hers anymore.

Oh!  My niece from LA came to the burial and brought my fabric that I had gotten in LA in February!  Now I have bunches of fabric to sew with again!  Not that I was running out or anything, but it's great to have fresh material when browsing through my stash and dream about what I could make out of it.  Jen, Meri and I looked through and came up with some ideas already.

Anyway, that was the weekend.  Everyone is back to their own homes and I'm scrambling to get work done today so I'll get a lunch time to sew.

How was your weekend?