Grandma's Funeral: The Viewing

 We found out Grandma had died at 11:30am on Wednesday, March 13, 2013.  42 hours later the entire family was on an airplane flying out to Utah.  Matt and I brought the entire family, as did Lisa and Adam.  Shanna and baby Clara came, and Mom and Dad.  There were 15 of us on the 8 am flight on Friday the 15th from Atlanta to Salt Lake City.    It was rushed trying to hand off a ward service project and neighborhood Easter egg hunt--both of which I was in charge of, finding boarding for Roxie, packing and getting the house ready to leave, but in a way it was nice to be crazy busy so that I didn't give in to the urge to lay on the couch and cry for my Grandma.  We left for the airport at 5:30 am...which means I got up about 3:45 am...after only 90 minutes of sleep!  

 It wasn't enough that we had 15 people on the plane--around 30 bags and many car seats...but then Caroline lost her ipod on the airplane.  We waited until everyone was off and the flight attendants and our family searched the plane--we pulled of seats we searched all over that entire section of the plane (and it was a BIG plane)--we didn't find the ipod, but we did find a Nintendo DS that someone left and a driver's license (that someone will be very sad not to have when they try to fly home!).  So after holding up the cleaning of the plane by about 25 minutes we left and trecked everyone down to the baggage claim area to file a report on the lost ipod.  That went pretty quickly and then everyone went out to the rental car area.  It seems so simple to say that--but in reality we were like a cloud that went slowly but left chaos in its wake!

Getting the rental car was even better than expected....we waited in line (forever) only to find out that Adam and Lisa (Adam was right in front of me in line) had taken the last mini van (I blame this all on Adam joking about that very thing happening when we stood in line).  The rental car agent was happy to offer me an SUV that was "ONLY" $35 more per day (which is what I was paying per day on the mini van).  We finally convinced them that we were not going to pay any more and we were told we would have to wait another 20-30 minutes for the car to get to the airport.  But, we were told that it was an upgrade, instead of some old minivan we got a Ford Flex (modern day station wagon)...with heated leather seats!  We finally got in the car nearly 2 hours after the plane landed.  It was great....really great.

The rest of the family had stopped in SLC for lunch, but we were so far behind, and not really hungry so we headed to Orem to the hotel.  We had to make a bathroom stop on the way and when we got out of the car Caroline found her ipod--it was in her boot....that she was wearing....the same boot she was wearing on the plane...and she never noticed it--even when we were tearing the plan apart!  At least it was found and we didn't have to worry about replacing it.  

We checked into the hotel and told the kids they were going to have to change into church clothes.  Not a great way to start a vacation!

 We got to the viewing a little early so we took a few pictures of the kids.

Love this picture--Aaron's expression is priceless.

The viewing was happy, and heart breaking--lots of laughing and crying.  My cousins that lived close had made grandma's recipe for raisin cookies--I love these cookies, they have long been my favorite, but I have never made them because it would take hours to make them--making the raisin filling, and the cookie dough and cutting out the cookies and filling them and putting them together and then baking them--as much as I love them it always seems like more work then it is worth!  My cousins were great to make them and they were just as delicious as I remembered.  There were also displays of grandma's favorite things and things from her house--toys we played with, old photo albums, pictures, and things that reminded us of Grandma.

 Matt left the viewing early and took the boys to get dinner.  Caroline and I rode home with Lisa and got something to eat on the way.  We didn't get back to the hotel until after 9pm (11pm Eastern) and we were completely exhausted!  I was worried about getting up for the funeral in the morning, but I should have remembered that my boys were on Eastern time---and they were awake and ready for breakfast at 4am!