Grampa's Memorial Service and after

ok, so when i critique myself, one of the things i think i do too much of, is too many pictures. well what i mean is i think i have a hard time editing them out. so then i just put too many on the blog (which takes an eternity, i might add). and while i'm doing it, i think "if you could just pare it down it would be more enjoyable for others. to get a good quality taste rather than an overflooding of everything." and i have this belief that what i put on won't be as enjoyable because it's too much and too overwhelming and the quality of some are less than the quality of others, but when it comes down to it, the flooding side wins out. i guess i'm just a flooding person wishing i could be a quality sparse person. well there you have my confession. get ready to be flooded.

friday morning i took the tswassen ferry. it was a beautiful sunny morning. i thought that the ferry left at 10:45. it doesn't. it leaves at 10:15. i was sitting in the sunshine enjoying a piece of pizza by the slice in front of the fireplace. i had my camera and a cup of steamed milk with a shot of caramel in it. then i saw these old people running to their car and turned to see cars passing my stationary car in the line-up. this caused me to spill some steamed milk on my arm, but other than that i got on the ferry ok.

i was doing crosswords in the car, but got sooooo cold that i ventured upstairs and sat down in what i hoped was a warm spot. i hadn't been there long before cousin eugene comes along and says "you don't want to sit with your family?". he says this like i wasn't 16 the last time i saw him. anyways sure enough, around the corner was andrea and eryn and drew and kaetlyn and rhiannon, dough and del and their kids, eugene's two girls and uncle les! well what do you know.

i drove douglas and andrew in my car. andrew said helpful things like "i thought you're supposed to pass on the left." and "why is your car shaking?" and "your turning signal is burnt out" (it wasn't.). in turn was smart alecky to him. meanwhile douglas in the back seat made weird beeping sounds but claimed it wasn't him.

john and alysha and christian and ryan were at katie's house and so was mom and dad. katie's house smelled like mustard but no one could tell me why. alysha and i went with katie to pick up michealah and natalie from school and soon after that we went to evan and esther's (aside: what is with people in our family chosing mates with aliterating names? evan and esther, bethany and ben, doug and delanie. i ask you.) anyways we went to ev and esther's to practice our song. esther wasn't there and evan wasn't about. chaos ensued, but we some how got a tiny practice in before going down the road to the unitarian church which they shared with the moose lodge or something.

the first four rows on both sides were saved for family but it was barely enough. all grampa's grandkids were there except for bonnie and shannon. pretty impressive. i sat beside martha and walter but they moved so bethany and ben could sit there. kevin and layne moved so amy and andreas could sit together.

it was interesting being in a unitarian service. they seem like really nice people. they had jaunty hymns to sing. karen, the minister gave a good talk about grampa's life. uncle les spoke too and read from his book, as did the minister. we sang love at home. martha didn't sing with us though and layne said she left during our song, which is too bad. our whole family was together but only for a little while.

after the more formal part there was an open mike of sorts. here's uncle dunc. doing his bit. he talked about how grampa believed his molecules lived on forever. i believe that too. i just believe they'll be all together in the form of grampa.
i could have picked one of just uncle dunc's head, but then i kind of liked how you could see kaetlyn, eugene, mom and uncle dennis.
eryn and layne sang imagine. this is them as seen in the distance from drew's brown and purple head. that's eugene's daughter in front. apparently she's very good at basketball.

cousin jody, now known as joseph talked too. i liked it. he talked about how we're all new versions of grampa. and told a story of when he had climbed some cliffs at piper's and grampa's reaction and how he was always encouraging and teacher.
andrea spoke during the open mike, but she didn't make this face at the time. that would have been a little bizzare. this was after when she was showing her special talents.
here she is holding the rock star baby.
i wasn't much into taking pictures during the refreshment time due to the fact that i'm not very good at inside low lighting shots, but layne wanted to take some so i gave him my camera to do so. here's what he clicked:
jawn and uncle dennis having a talkeroo...
dough, dad and uncle allen who were blurry, but interestingly, kaetlyn and drew are clear behind. andreas can also be seen in that pic and amy's cute forhead.
this is when he started using the flash. andrea and her two boy cousins.
this picture originally had sarah in it too, and that's her arm in kyle's elbow crook, but she was having a case of her temporary bum eye, so i stepped in and cut her out.
jord and trace.

ok then layne was done.
andrew giving me a look.
i obviously played around with these ones.
eryn thought it was weird that i was taking her picture.
this was when she was talking to evan and saying that she's the odd one out in her family, short, petit and with dark hair. evan was saying that no one knows what colour kaetlyn's hair really is for sure.
jordan refused to admit that his tie was christmassy.
evan refused to to be icky. but he couldn't help it. haha, i meant he refused not to be icky.

so after that we had a potluck at the church. this was after gorging on all the good stuff at the unitarian church. there were even the cheese biscuits that kevin mom and i gorged on at gramma's christmas party. a fact which we all marveled at to each other while stuffing our faces with them. kevin found me again at the dessert table. joined the group of us stuffing our faces with the good sweets. bethany loved the zucchini cake with cream cheese icing and dough recommended the lemon bars. andreas and keven favoured the nanaimo bars. i ate them all.

anyways, the potluck. we were late. everybody was already eating when we got there, but we still managed to eat lots. we brought the pork roast after all.
i like this picture. it makes me laugh. especially layne's head on the table.
so then i wandered into the rs room and there were bethany and amy composing a song together on the piano. a really pretty song that i hope they remember. i decided to document them. and that i did. i don't even know how many pictures i took, but let's just say it was a LOT and way more than i put in here, but let's just also say that there is a serious case of flooding here, but i hope you find some to enjoy.
ok they both at different times stopped to give me a look. not the exact same look, but similar and similarily done.

don't ask me to explain what amy's style of wearing that top. i like this one. the pregnant tummy, the moving hands, the hand coming out of the bottom of a shirt...









haha, this is obviously a posed finger shot. this was 'angry playing'.
from baby bun's perspective.
a delicate wrist.




then tracy wanted me to take a picture of her and her baby boy. so we did it on the stage. i told her i wasn't very good with inside pics but she wanted it anyways.
this one i need to fix, but didn't feel like doing it before putting it on the blog. it saved with too much highlight on her face and hands, although wasn't like that before saving. it's a weird thing picasa does sometimes.
sloan in his cute toque amy made him.
i like his cute little hand and nose in this shot.
i tried to take a lot of delanie's earring but non of them turned out the way i wanted. here's one of them anyways.

bethany in her, what tracy called "sexy pose".


dad has two brothers who are chiropractors so he knows a thing or two.

isabel chubby cheeks series:



we had a family meeting about this year's family reunion. everyone went around and said what they wanted/needed in a site. doug wrote down the requirements on the board. there were two factions: have it in the okanagan, or have it on the island. i volunteered to research and so did andrea. john's doing the technical stuff.
the sloanster.
that night katie and i and dad sat around and talked. then dad went to bed and katie and i talked for a while longer. she's the new activity day's leader. i think that will be a really fun calling for her and something she'll be so good at. well she's so good at any calling she gets, really. it was nice to stay at katie's. elizabeth did her job of being incredibly cute, very well.

a blurry version, that i still like. i don't know if it's because i'm prone to blurriness, but there's something about some blurry shots that i like.
and that's all i can remember about that day. isn't it enough?