Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was eventful, to say the least. Saturday we got up early, Kevin went golfing with the elders quorum and I weeded the front yard. When Kevin returned home I had the brilliant idea of getting mulch for our flower beds. We jumped in the truck and headed down to the local nursery. There were so many flowers to chose from, I got quite and few. Kevin found some mulch/barkdust for the flower beds. We got home and I started planting flowers and Kevin was weeding. Then, just like I do best, I changed my mind about the barkdust. I decided it would look better if it were all around the house too. SO, we jumped back in the truck and headed back to the nursery for round two. By then we decided it was time for a lunch break. We met up with Kevin's parents and had a quick lunch, we told them we would like to have them over that night for games and dinner and to see our front yard. After lunch we headed back to the house to spread the barkdust. We got it looking so good, who would have thought that I would even care about yard work, I think I had to be bribed or threatened as a child to do yard work.

After the yard work and clean-up we went to Kevin's grandma's house to help her with some things around her house. I received a phone call on my cell phone from Kevin's mom, something wasn't right. She tried calmly to tell me Kevin's dad was in an ATV accident and the ambulance was taking him to the hospital but that she wasn't sure how serious it was yet. She said she'd call me back when she knew more. She called back about an hour later and said he was in a lot of pain, it looked like he broke his ankle and maybe some ribs but they were taking him for x-rays. Kevin and I headed over to the hospital to see if there was anything we could do. We ended up staying with them in the hospital until about 10:30pm that night. They decided to admit him to the hospital because they needed to do surgery on his ankle to put it back together. He had rolled the ATV over himself and had broken 3-4 ribs, and broke his ankle in 3 places. To say the least, he was not feeling well. That night Kevin's mom and his sister and her family all stayed at our house because we are only 1 minute from the hospital. Sunday morning at 7am they took his dad into surgery. Kevin and I went down to the hospital to wait with his mom. When the surgery was over the doctor came into the waiting room and said everything went great. The put 2 screws in his ankle to put the bone back together and he said it went back together perfectly. The rest of that day was spent waiting at the hospital for them to release Kevin's dad. At about 2pm they released him from the hospital and then we had the task of getting him home. He wasn't able to use crutches because of his broken ribs (and he was still recovering from a broken arm from a month ago). So we got him into Kevin's sister's car and Kevin and Marc took him home. It was quite an ordeal to get him up the stairs and into the house. I am happy to report he is doing much better everyday. He now uses a wheelchair to get around but he is getting around more and more everyday.

Monday we woke up early again because Kevin had to work. I decided to take him to work because we had plans when he got off work. I dropped Kevin off and headed to Wal-Mart for memorial day flowers. Then I headed to the Draper cemetary to pay a visit to grandma and grandpa Nelson's grave. (the picture at the beginning of this blog is the Draper cemetary, I was suprised there were already so many flowers at 7:30 in the morning) It seems I get faster at finding it every year. I left the flowers and one of the flags. It looked like another family member had been there and left the pinwheel. The cemetary puts out flags for all the veterans. Next I took a leisurely breakfast at Mimi's Cafe (one of my favorite places). They have the best carrot bread and muffins. I thought next I'd do some shopping but it surprised me that nothing was open. It was 8am and NOTHING was open. I tried Target, Barnes and Noble, the mall... nothing. So then I decided to head up to the Salt Lake City cemetary. With the wonderful help of the Garmin I was able to find it. I always know approximately where it is but never seem to turn on the right street to find it. Now that we have this wonderful little gadget we've been able to find a lot of things a lot faster. As soon as I find the Salt Lake cemetary, as big as it is, I know right where grandpa Simpson and Uncle Dougy's graves are. They aren't hard to find.

It looked like grandma and probably DJ and Joan had already been there. I left flowers on both graves. The part of the cemetary that grandpa and Dougy are in is very easy to find because there are a lot of apostles in the same area. There are many large family head stones and there were a lot of flowers in the area. Not far from grandpa and Dougy's graves is President and Sister Hinckly's grave. I decided to walk over and pay my respects. There were a lot of well wishers. One thing that touched me was a little note from a young girl to President Hinckly telling him how much she loved him and appreciated him. There were many wonderful notes and flowers, I wish I could have captured it all to share with everyone, but here is the picture I did capture;

After I was done at the cemetary it was almost time to pick Kevin up from work. I went and sat at the airport for a little while and read a book, it was kind of nice to have a little down time. I picked Kevin up and we went up to Scott and Amy's house in Syracuse. We hung out at their house for a little while then went to Amy's mom's house for a BBQ. We had some yummy food! Amy had marinated some beef and chicken and shrimp then put it on skewers on the grill. We also grilled some vegetables on the grill. Just as we were ready to eat it started pouring down rain. It got really cold but it was still fun! Carley and Grayson and their kids were there, Jenny and Greg (Scott's sister) and their family were there. And Chris, Scott's mom, was there. We love feeling a part of their family!

After the BBQ we headed to Ogden to see Indiana Jones. I thought the movie was OK but the alien thing was a little too far fetched. We had a good weekend overall!