Funeral Weekend!

My grandma passed away last week. She was a lovely woman.  She lived to be over 90 and was completely ready to go. I got to fly to Utah to be with the family and celebrate her life with them. It was SO much fun.

Here I am with my sister Karin.She had only one pair of gloves, so we decided to clean Michael Jackson style.

Here's my brother Matt. The shorts and dress shoes/socks/shirt are nice, but I wish I had gotten a picture of him wearing my dad's lederhosen. That dad wore as a 13 year old in Germany. His summer lederhosen (read: supershort). And then we all sang Edelweiss. It was magical.

Here is my dad, Papa, holding my little Ainsley on funeral morning.

Here is Ainsley in her funeral finery. For grandma, all the girls wore pearls. I think grandma would have really loved Ainsley's getup. She did have a red and white head bow on during the service, which was just lovely, btw. (the service. Okay, and the bow)

Here we have my dad's two sisters, reenacting their bridal portraits which have been hanging there for over 20 years. 

Same thing, Matt and Katie.

I wish I could tell you the whole story of this portrait that a big fan of my grandparents had commissioned of them in Africa. In real life, grandpa wasn't constipated and grandma wasn't African. My nephew Conrad pictured here won the portrait in the family auction. Again, SO FUN.

Grandpa broke his leg a few weeks ago, so he has been staying in the VA facility they just built about, not kidding, 2 miles from the Stewart farm. So convenient. On Sunday my sibs and parents and I went to the church service they had there. It was awesome. And it was only half an hour long. Then we chatted and spent some time with grandpa. His memory is gone, but what a pleasant guy.

Here is Ainsley with Nannie, who is my mom's mom.

Here is Ainsley with Papa Cy, who is my mom's dad.

I want to go into more detail on the Auction, and since this is my blog I will. No one is making you read it. So here is the deal: my Grandparents Stewart have lived on the Stewart farm for about 50 years. It has been in the family since it was built in about 1850 or so. It is a very old, big, treasure-filled farm house. Some non-treasure, too, but plenty of treasure.

After the funeral and cemetery and luncheon, we all went back to the farm. Everyone got a piece of paper and pencil, and we wandered through the house and dug through some of the hundred or so cabinets and cupboards and wrote down anything we might want. Then we all got together in the living room and compared lists. Like Scattegories, if no one wrote down what you did, it is yours. Oh, prior to this, if you gave anything to G&G, it is automatically yours if you want it back. Any items that are on multiple lists went to auction.

Only the siblings got to participate in the auction. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren gave their lists and negotiated with their parent/grandparent about items that were most important. The amazing part is how few items went to auction. There were more than enough treasures for everyone. There were some hotly contested items, except that it wasn't hot. It was pleasant and fun. Not a hard feeling in the room, except from me because my dad wouldn't go to bat for ANY of my items. Just let them go. Sheesh. Okay, I'm fine. I got the Lords Prayer Blanket which still smells like grandma's house and I got an African drum from their mission to Ghana, and a trunk full of other delightful things. Anyway, each sibling got 500 Stewartbucks. Depending on how much others bid, you could see how important it was to them, so you had the opportunity to be gracious, but also to let it known how much you wanted something without having to explicitly prioritize. It was fabulous. My brother-in-law who is a real estate attorney I guess about wet his pants with how illegal our proceedings were, but whatever. Everyone was happy in the end. 

And now I have to make some quesadillas for my screamers. Ah, real life.