Have You Seen This Blog? (You Have Now): 2001

Friday, December 28, 2001

Gran's funeral

Since Gran was a veteran, he was eligible for burial in Portland's Willamette National Cemetery, and since my little family lives so close to Portland, we had his funeral at our stake center. It was kind of odd, asking my bishop to "throw" a funeral for my grandfather, whom he'd never met, but it went off wonderfully.

People came from all around the West to pay their respects, including from Redmond, OR, where Neenaw and Gran had lived, and Sisters, OR, where they had served an at-home mission. During the eulogies, I heard some great stories I'd never heard before, like Gran once building someone a new stick shift for their car out of a broom handle. And it worked, of course.

We sang "Abide With Me; Tis Eventide" for the closing hymn. He once heard me playing an arrangement of it on the piano and told me it was his favorite hymn.

New baby Carter was a sweet addition to our group. Uncle John joked that in Heaven, Gran and Carter must have "passed each other in the hall."

After dinner at the church, put on by our ward Relief Society sisters, we traveled to the cemetery and had a short military graveside service.

It was a hard, but beautiful day, very tender, sweet, funny, sad, and joyous. I can't wait to see Gran again.

Tuesday, December 25, 2001

Christmas 2001

New mixer AND new baby! SCORE

This was a happy and sad Christmas. We came home with Carter on Christmas Eve, but on Christmas Day, we heard from Grandpa Smith that his father Gran had passed away earlier that morning.

William Ricketts Smith

1918-2001

Love and miss you always

Willamette National Cemetery

Saturday, December 22, 2001

Carter's Birth

Carter was our fourth C-section birth. That morning we drove to the hospital, locked our keys in the car, and had to call AAA to rescue us (Mom had her card with her, thank goodness). The birth went well and everything was perfect. Here's our cute new boy:

Grannie took these pictures about twenty minutes after his birth.

What a good, easy baby he was, so happy to be snuggled. I was excited to have him and loved holding him, and the nurses kept making comments about how often I held him. They must have known he was my fourth child and maybe they thought that by now, a mom would be more casual about a new baby. One of the doctors came to see me my second or third day there and said, "I hear you're loving the hell out of that baby!" - which was nice, but weird.

The other memory I have of his birth is how beautiful it was outside, and the nice view I had from my hospital room of the courtyard, where hospital staff had placed white wicker light-up reindeer for Christmas. It snowed while we were there, and it was so pretty, kind of magical. They gave Carter a little red and white Santa cap.

For most of my pregnancy, we thought really hard about naming Carter "Gordon," after President Hinckley (and Barenaked Ladies' debut CD - we were diehard fans of BNL at the time) - but we just couldn't pull the trigger on that one. Hubby was a big fan of the TV show "ER" and we knew another Carter who was Brennan's age, and thought it was a manly-sounding name, a surname like his brothers' names. Robert is Hubby's dad's name and Hubby's middle name.

Carter and Isabella have the most "overused" names in the family. There weren't many Isabellas around when she was born, but there are now, and for a long time, whenever we went anywhere, we'd hear another set of parents calling another boy "Carter." The good news is they're the kids most likely to find personalized license plates with their names on them.