Celebrating GK

October 3rd 2012

The first year after you lose a loved one is the hardest. Every first his painful...first birthdays, first anniversaries, first Mother's Day, first football season, first Christmas...every holiday stings a little. I was anticipating her birthday and we had been talking for months about what we would do. We really wanted it to feel like we were celebrating her instead of mourning her loss. So we came up with these traditions that we are going to do every year...

GK was cremated and her ashes have been spread in Florida, Nashville, Minnesota, and North Dakota so we don't have any place to go and honor her. It's okay though because we believe that her spirit is with us wherever we are. We have felt her in Washington, Boston and now here in Utah. Since there is no head stone to visit I came up with an idea that we would find a cemetery and do a scavenger hunt of sorts. We would spread out and find the first head stone that had "Kathryn" on it, spelled the way her name is.

We lived right across the street from Pine Hill cemetery. It became a place very dear to us because that is where Aric and I would go every Sunday after church to talk. So off we went into Pine Hills looking for "Kathryn".

It took some looking but we found our "Kathryn". We brought a dozen red roses, GK's favorite.

We sang Happy Birthday to her...

...and made sure to wave our jazz hands at the end just like she used to do.

We also wore red in honor of her since red was her favorite color. It made it easy to keep track of Camden as he was running all over the place and you couldn't miss him climbing in the trees. I was trying to teach him to be a little more reverent to show some respect but then I realized that these spirits didn't care. I'm sure they were enjoying all of his energy.

This was my red...

Once at home I made all of our favorite GK dishes...

...her taco flaked chicken, parmesan potatoes, lettuce only salad, fruit/cookie salad and chocolate cake for dessert. It was yummy.

I am so glad this year of "firsts" is over. We still miss her so much and our lives are not the same without her but we have gotten used to our new normal without her. We don't like it but we are doing our best to live our lives in a way that would make her proud. It's been neat to watch the girls find their own creative ways to remember her and honor her. She is always in our hearts and never far from us...

We Love You Grandma Kathy! 

xoxo