Thankful

We flew out for Utah the week before Thanksgiving for Nanny's funeral. We dropped the kids off at Grandma Marsha's and Grandpa Keith's house and Aaron and I drove down to Monticello, UT for the funeral. Did I mention that Marsha and Keith were saints? John came down with a nasty cold on the plane ride to Utah. Yup, Marsha and Keith were kind enough to take care of my sick kiddos. Saints I tell you.

On the drive down I "got" to drive in snow. I don't drive in snow because I never learned how. In this case, there wasn't much of a choice. It was snowing pretty bad too. We rolled into Monticello at 2am. It was at that point that Aaron realized that he forgot his white shirt for the funeral and I forgot my coat. We are quite the pair. Good thing we have each other! Friday morning we woke up and Aaron announced that he was going to try and find a store to buy a white shirt. I tried to explain to him that we were in Monticello, UT. Population 1300. He went to the front desk and the lady was more convincing than I was. She told him there wasn't a place to buy a shirt. She did have a white shirt that was left in the lost and found. It happened to be his size and it happened to be ironed. Manna from Heaven. My manna from heaven came in the form of my mom sharing her coat with me. It was very nice of her. She had a long dress winter coat that she wore. While we were there for the weekend, it snowed a foot. It has been a very long time since I have been in a foot of snow.

The funeral was very nice. We got to see family that we haven't seen in years or decades. The funeral was predominately grandkids sharing memories of Nanny. I was the last to go since I was the youngest grandchild present. It was very interesting to me to listen to the memories of the other families because they were very different from the Anderson kids' memories. We grew up in New York and very rarely saw Nanny and Papa. The other grandkids talked about how Nanny was a great influence for them and source of stability and strength. It was then that I realized that Nanny was for each one of us what we needed. Nanny joked around with me. I needed a laugh more than a stabilizing influence in my life because I was blessed with my Mom and Dad. I was impressed that Nanny was able to meet our various needs. I learned some stories. One of my favorites I already knew some of the details, but I learned the rest of the story.

Nanny lived across the street from Buddy her brother. Buddy drove a beat up old pick up truck that he used in his cattle business. Nanny was sick and tired of looking at this old ugly pick up truck parked across the street from her house. She told Buddy on a number of occasions that if he didn't paint that truck, she would paint it with polka dots. Sure enough, she painted it with yellow polka dots and some of them had smiley faces on them. Nanny was in her 70s when this happened. This was not a rascally teenager, this was a rascally senior citizen. This much I knew. What I learned was that Nanny enlisted the help of her niece to do the paining. As it was explained to me by her niece, Nanny was management! Her niece was afraid that they would get in trouble with the law. Nanny told her not to worry and to just keep painting! I was giggling! Nanny was the mastermind and management to the whole plot!

When I was 12 or 13 my friend LeslieAnn Dickens and I were frustrated with a boy in our ward named Alan. I don't remember what the offense was but we decided that we would toilet paper his house and fork his lawn. Nanny was our get away driver.

After Nanny moved to California to her assisted living home she was a bit sad. She complained that the people there had no sense of humor. So one time I came into town from Houston and I toilet papered the outside of her door, in loving memory of our escapades together. I don't know if her neighbors thought it was funny or not, but I enjoyed it.

I would always ask Nanny what trouble she was causing and she would play along and ask me what trouble I was causing. She had a great sense of humor.

Aaron and I got to go to Arches National Park in the snow and look at a few things with my cousins. It was a lot of fun. We also received a tour of Monticello from my mom. It was snowing a lot so the tour was a little difficult to see Monticello since it was covered in snow. Aaron never really got to see the horse head on the mountain. We ate a wagon wheel pizza place and that is the only restaurant that I remember eating at as a kid. We got to see the temple which I hadn't seen yet. And as a very cool experience, we got to stay at Nanny's old house. The guy that they sold it to doesn't live there so he let all of the cousins stay there during the funeral. It was cool to see it again. I remembered the chandelier over the kitchen table. My dad showed me the holes in the wall where my mom's ribbons hung from various awards. We went to the cemetery and it hit me that that was Papa's grave. I hadn't been there since he died 30 years ago.

 

Nanny's House

Nanny's Parent's House

On Monday we went back to Provo to spend Thanksgiving with the Russells. We had a great time visiting with Keith, Marsha, Kerri, Todd, Dray, Kate, and Elle. We were able to see Regan, Bentley and Annie briefly before they headed up to their family reunion on Michelle's side. Emma and Elle played happily together and Emma was beyond sad to say good bye to her cousins. We went swimming one morning at the Provo Rec Center. They had a cool set up that I probably would have appreciated more if it were summer. John appears to be in my camp as far as warm water goes. He wasn't having too much fun since it was pretty cold. We went to the gymnastics room just about every day. I know I have said this before, but I love that place. That is my favorite thing to do with the kids. They loved it! I want to petition for Keith to keep his access after he retires.

Thanksgiving was delicious! I learned that Marsha holds a secret whole wheat roll recipe that is amazing. Everything was delicious. And, Marsha appeared to put the dinner on without breaking a sweat. Someday, I aspire to being like that. I am guessing it will happen when Emma and John are grown up.