Run up to Christmas!

The weeks before Christmas are always filled with fabulous festivities! Here’s just a glance at ours before I forget what happened!

We attended a lovely Christmas Concert at the beautiful home of a dear friend:

A yummy dinner was enjoyed at newly found relatives’ home who are related to Rick and I on both sides. Their home is a literal museum of ancestor pictures! What an inspiration to see! It reminded me of my “Grandmother’s Corner” at our house which includes a watercolor that I did in an art class years ago of my mother’s grandparent’s house in Freedom, Wyoming as well as a treasured piece of original wallpaper from that house before it burned down which our new cousins, Judy and Gerry Weber gave to me that night!  I also have a small plate from my Grandmother Ida’s house. She died in the Flu Epidemic when she was 38 years old, taking her two youngest babies with her and leaving 8 other children. My father’s dear Mother’s eyeglasses and case are also hanging in that corner. All those ancestors would be thrilled to behold that picture of our family on the left to see what they started!

The Loosli’s Annual Children for Children Concert was held this year in a beautifully restored mansion less than a block from Saren’s house. It was a delight as always to see the kids organizing and conducting that fun evening where they raised about $700 which will be matched by the Eyrealm Foundation for several orphanages in Bulgaria where Saren served as a missionary. A video was shown of the orphans and One Heart Bulgaria is going to be thrilled with the kids’ efforts to provide funds for those needy orphans.

This is Saren, 7 months pregnant with twins visiting the orphanage 8 years ago. (Sorry not techie enough to figure out how to make these pictures large).

Among several delightful numbers, here’ s a group of kids playing Christmas Carols on chimes:

Eliza did a lovely violin solo and Ashton did a great job of entertaining us during the program and while everyone was wafting for the “costuming” for the Nativity scene which most of the children participated in (lots of shepherds and wise men not shown here).

 

The Shumways, particularly Hazel, also had a hugely successful Children for Children Concert in Boston which the Mayor of their city attended along with a wonderful group of parents who heard some beautiful music from kids who raised $1700 (which will also be matched by Eyrealm) for kids and families in Mozambique. The organization was Care for Life which Tal and Anita worked intimately with on their Humanitarian Honeymoon! Lives will be changed by their contributions to families like this:

And our darling 13-year-old Granddaughter Ana, also organized an amazing new kind of Children for Children Concert in Makawao (Maui). There is an annual Christmas Festival in their little town and she arranged with the organizers  for she and her talented friends to put on a talent show on the street to raise money for the children at Care of Life in Africa. We are so proud of her efforts as she raised about another $500 (including a match).  Way to go Ana! 

The pictures of these last two events are on Instagram and I don’t know how to copy them from there. Just know that they were awesome events!

 

I got to have had a Grammie Date with some of the Loosli kids that were SO much fun!

Saren came along with Eliza to see the grand production of The Nutcracker at the newly remodeled Capital Theatre. It was GRAND!

 

Ashton and I went to see one of our favorite characters from our summer Grammie Camp adventures….Bandito….in Bandito’s Christmas Carol.  It was at the Grand Theatre in SLC and it was hilarious, along with having a nice message. As you can see we were pretty excited! How could we forget to take pictures of Bandito? Ashton if you have any, pass them on. Bandito even begged us to take pictures! What were we thinking?  Is this guy cute or what?

Isaac and I got to see The Piano Guys at a packed Energy Solutions Arena. It was pretty incredible.

This guy is awesome!

Grandfather took the twins to see Here comes Santa Clause presented by the Utah Symphony in Ogden at the same time so I still owe them a Grammie Date but they had a ball! 

We had a perfectly lovely day on the 22nd. Since it was Kristi’s birthday and her birthday tradition is doing some kind of service, Kristi and Noah and kids, Kristi’s sister Stacey and kids and Susan and Scott Monson (Kristi’s parents) went to an assisted living center where our 94 year old friend had just been relocated. Since she didn’t know anyone yet, she was delighted to see all those kids who sang to her and heard her fun stories. The kids made a lot of the bystanders happy as they went around giving hugs! Forgot to take pictures @@@.

On the way to Ogden our fun continued as we stopped to see our darling friends the Edler family whom we grew to love many years ago when we did a Center City mission. They were delightful and we were so glad to see each other again! This picture of the Edlers was taken when they came to Thanksgiving dinner at our house a few years ago:

In Ogden we had a delightful evening with Jared and Saren and a few of their neighbors who don’t have family around at Christmastime! There was a very special spirit as the twins read a beautiful Christmas story, we played the chimes and Ashton accompanied us on the guitar as we sang Christmas Carols At the end everyone shared their favorite Christmas memory. One dear lady said that her favorite Christmas memory would be the one she was having that night!

There’s nothing like Christmas to bring out the pure love in everyone!

Next….the celebration begins!

Thanks-Giving

I just realized that I’d better post a few pictures from our fun Thanksgiving celebration before it fades into the Christmas festivities! How grateful we are for our bounteous blessings, most especially our terrific family!  Thanks to Saren who took pictures and Ashton who posted them on her blog I actually have some pictures to share.I only took two pictures. Thanksgiving Dinner is pretty time consuming!

Because we had almost everybody home for the wedding, our only family who lives close enough to drive came “Over the River and Through the Woods”  for some great times, good food and a lot of fun in the snow.

In addition my darling sister Lenna came with three of their terrific kids and their kids and our beloved Mexican neighbors with their little girls, and their cousins and their little boy came to add up to 34 of us enjoying a great day of Thanksgiving together!

As soon as the cousins walked in the door they started adding to the Thankful list as they rolled out adding machine paper by the yard filled with things they were thankful for. There was a contest between the kids and the adults and as you might guess, the adults won. Part of the reason is that the adults were busy preparing the food! Grandfather tapped the lists together and hung it above our Thanksgiving table for decoration! We ended up with about 800 things that we are thankful for!

 

WE had a girls’ table and a boys table…..

And an adult table where we played a fun Thanksgiving game. Everyone had to name three things they were most grateful for that was unique enough that no one at the table would duplicate it. We had several winners and it was fun to hear from this grateful crew!

After dinner we had a little impromptu concert where we had Saren and Eliza playing violins, Lenna playing piano with me on the violin, Cole surprising us with a violin solo and Ashton who played some beautiful stuff on the guitar!

Is this teenager cute enough? 

Even though the snow was melting, the kids had a ball out on the sleighs!

It was a Thanksgiving to remember especially since we just released our new book called The Thankful Heart. Even though it advocates specific ways to be thankful every month of the year, it is especially meaningful in November. It is a delightful book for us as the photography is mostly done by our children and our Bulgarian almost-daughter Eva Timothy. It also includes our Thanksgiving Cards from the past 40 years. Since thanksgiving is our favorite holiday, we always send a Thanksgiving Card instead of a Christmas Card. The pictures through the years are pretty funny but the poems written by Richard every the year are still beautiful and poignant!

Richard says, “Gratitude does not lead to happiness, Gratitude is happiness in it’s most attainable form.”

You can take a look inside the book by double clicking on the book cover here.

 

We are thankful to so many of you who take a look at this blog occasionally even though I’m really doing it for the sake of our Family History. We are so grateful for the good you are doing in your own realms!

And on to Christmas!!!

I Love Funerals!

Before I post about our past couple of fun adventures including Thanksgiving, I have to pay tribute to two of our older family members who died within a day of each other last week. On Richard’s side of the family, his last living aunt, Emma Rae Eyre passed away at age 88, six years after the passing of her beloved husband Vern.

This is how she looked when she married her sweetheart Vern in 1946:

She became a feisty red-head who was known for her vivacious personality, quick wit and her strong will!

Apparently there has never been a more ardent Utah State University Aggie Fan!  She and Vern ran the school when they were students and all their children followed suit. Since then they have attended every banquet, every awards presentation and every USU football and basketball game on record. One of her kids joked that they were sorry that there was an Aggie Football game at the very same time as her services  because she was going to have to miss the funeral.

Her son said that he called her one day to gingerly break the bad news that his oldest child would probably be attending BYU instead of USU and that others of his children may do the same. There was a long silence and then she said, “Sorry, I just threw up a little in my throat.” LOL! 

She lived a long life full of activity and many contributions to her family and the world.

Within 24 hours my wonderful brother-in-law Jesse Hirschi had died at age 94.  He was almost blind but had a clear, active mind and had gone to the grocery store with the help of a family member and died that night in his sleep. He was a wonderful soul and loving husband, father and grandfather.

This delightful picture shows him at age 91 enjoying one of the great loves of his life….fishing!

He married my half sister LaRue (whose mother had died of cancer before my dad married my mother) whom we all loved dearly. After bringing three boys in the world she passed away of cancer at our home in 1961. LaRue (lower right)  had given birth to a baby three months before she passed so my parents lovingly cared for that adorable little boy for three years until Jesse married Ruby (upper left) who brought light back to his life.

As you can see (above) Jesse served in World War II. In addition to the moving tributes of his brother and two grandchildren who represented all those children and grandchildren who loved him dearly, a group of five veterans about his age in full uniform provided a three gun salute and a moving message. Taps were beautifully played at the dedication of the grave. It was moving! 

Here he is a handsome young man:

Jesse was a fine craftsman and in addition to building our first little A-frame cabin at Bear Lake, he built a lovely little cabin on his property in Geneva Canyon to provide a fun place for his grandchildren to visit. Ruby had one daughter who had ten children and all those children and grandchildren in addition to his own, talked about the beauty of their memories with their grandfather at that place.

One grandson, who grew up in Phoenix Arizona where the summers are unbearably hot asked his father one summer as they were walking up to the cabin nestled in the cool of the woods, why in the world they lived in Arizona instead of the beautiful mountains of Idaho. The Father’s reply will mean a lot to anyone who knows anything about Southeastern Idaho in the winter. He said, “because you don’t have to shovel heat!”

Both funerals were celebrations of wonderful lives. It took both Richard and I back to the memories our childhoods with these two remarkable people! Life is about touching others’ lives for good and both of these valiant souls did that in spades! I love those reminders that always come with funerals!