Grandpa Herbert

I'm finally getting around to this post. It feels kind of like when I went to start on Dallin's scrapbook...a year after he was born! I didn't feel like I could tackle it until then and even after a year I cried through the whole process and took about 6 hours to do one page. Anyway, it's not that bad this time but we've had family in town, two friends go into the hospital and I've watched their kids, a trip to the hospital for me (just paranoia and needing to hear the heartbeat...he decided to throw a party and actually MOVE as soon as she put the monitors on me...at 11:45 p.m.!!) and illnesses. Anyway, here's my recap of Grandpa Herbert's funeral.

My sister, Danica, and I flew together. She was 29 weeks pregnant (looking 50 weeks along, she would say) at the time and didn't want to go it alone. What was funny was that as we were squeezing into the aisle to try to deboard one of our planes, and running into each other's tummies, a lady a couple rows back said, "Are you sure you two should be flying right now?" I assured her that I was just past the halfway mark and so i was fine. And Danica told her she had OK'd it with her doctor. She informed us that she was a NICU nurse and she has seen many babies who come in because their mothers went into preterm labor from flying late in pregnancy. Ha! What a coincidence. Although the flights were, for the most part, terrible, we made it unscathed.

We stayed at my Grandma's house with my mom and my Uncle Bryan. That was nice because the night we got there, we sat around and talked about Grandpa. Open flood gates. Grandma and my mom told us lots of cool stories about his last few days. One thing I thought was funny was that he was diagnosed three years (or so) ago with prostate cancer. Since he had known that he wouldn't want to go through treatment because of his age and because he wanted to enjoy his life, they decided that they didn't need to keep track of what was going on in his body. When they went to the hospital a couple of weeks before he died because he was having trouble breathing, the doctors did some kind of a scan and found tumors in his lungs and lots of other places. The hospital doctor asked my grandma who his oncologist was. She asked him what an oncologist is!! Ha! She didn't even know it was a cancer doctor. He explained and she said they never saw one because they didn't want to know and worry about what was going on and he wasn't going to have treatment. So he asked when the last time he saw his primary doctor was and it was two years ago. Apparently he was very amazed that my grandpa had gotten along as well as he had with relatively no pain. That is the blessing and exactly what my grandpa always wanted. To enjoy the end of his life without pain and without worry about dying.

The next day was the funeral. It was hard, hard, hard. The blessing was being there with my mom (who had been through much of her grief already, was handling things well and just wanted to parade her children around to the other family members and friends there!), Danica, and my brother, Brandon. Brandon really took care of me, putting his arm around me, holding my hand. It was a very sweet moment for me. Thank you, Bran. You saved me that day. I was asked to give the opening prayer for the funeral, which I thought I would not be able to do. Amazingly enough, I stood up there and said the prayer without crying. I got many comments on it afterwards, from family, friends and twice from my grandparent's stake president. That made me feel nice. My Uncle Bryan gave a great life history for my grandpa full of really interesting things and, of course, lots of funny stuff, too. My grandpa LOVED a good laugh. My grandma had told my Uncle David that Grandpa had always promised her 20 years (Grandma is Grandpa's second wife. His first wife, my other grandma, died when I was 7.). When he died they had been married 23 years. Uncle David said she got a 13% bonus. That's my family...always being funny.

One of my favorite stories from the funeral was about my Uncle Bryan's 16th birthday. He already had his pilot's license, like my grandpa and my Uncle David. For his birthday, Grandpa handed him a small box. Uncle Bryan was feeling kind of jipped since 16 is a big birthday and he was hoping for something that would fit in a little bit bigger box. When he opened up the box, there were two keychains in there. One was a key to the airplane hanger and the other was a key to the airplane. Grandpa said, "I trust you. I know you'll take good care of the airplane." Hello! When some (spoiled rotten!) kids are getting cars for their 16th birthday, my Uncle Bryan was given access to the airplane! Uncle Bryan then just shared about how Grandpa was very trusting. That would be true. He had me driving his cars when I was probably 10. I was an old pro by the time I actually took my driving test.

After the funeral we went to the cemetery where he was buried with my grandmother, Ella Mae, and where my grandmother, Arleen, will be buried when she passes as well.

Grandpa just wanted to be buried in a pine box to save money. Sounds just like him! Grandma put her foot down and got this beautiful casket.

This is my family with Grandma and my cousin's wife and two daughters. Grandma bought herself two new dresses for the two days of services. She said Grandpa was always doing that...buying her two of something because she couldn't decide between them. She looked lovely and she said it made her feel good to have new clothes.

Here's my mom with her brothers and my Uncle David's wife. Yes, I have tall uncles. And a short mother. Where did my mom's lack of height come from? Her grandmother, who was only about 4'11"!! My uncles are so darned handsome.

After the family luncheon, one of my cousins, Jordan, had an awesome idea. See, during the summers when Grandpa and Grandma lived in Mesa, Arizona, my parents would drive us halfway and my grandparents would drive halfway. We'd meet in Blythe, California, a total armpit of a town, and my grandparents would take us to back to Mesa for a few weeks. What great memories! Just about the only thing in that desert town was a Thrifty's grocery store and they had ice cream for really cheap. They scooped it with this cylindrical-shaped thing. Grandpa would always take us there before headed out for Arizona. All of us cousins (seen here in the picture, except for my sister Feney) have vivid memories of stopping there for ice cream. Anyway, Jordan said there aren't any Thrifty stores anymore but there was a little convenience store that had Thrifty ice cream. And maybe they used the cylindrical-shaped scoopers! We decided that in Grandpa's memory, it was a must to go there and get a picture of us eating our Thrifty ice cream. It put such great smiles on our faces. I wish I could've thrown a picture up to Grandpa in heaven so he could get a smile out of it, too.

Me, Danica and my mom all went to the Mesa temple after that. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we enjoyed walking around that beautiful temple.

And, of course, I couldn't leave without getting a picture of my favorite kind of trees...

Sisters...pregnant together again!

Me and my cute mom.

I'm sure there's lots of things I wanted to share for my benefit that I have forgotten about. It was a great trip to Arizona. It was wonderful to see my grandma, although it was very hard to leave her knowing that she would be alone and sad. It was wonderful to see my handsome cousins and spend time with family to cover the sad moments. I love my family. They are the greatest. I feel so blessed to have each of them.

The day before we left, we went to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix (I think!). It was basically cacti. It was pretty fun. The cool part was that it was during a Chihuly glass exhibit so there was his glass stuff interspersed through everything. I loved that part.

Great Wolf Lodge!

So, we actually took a family vacation! We left the day after my grandpa died. It was a good time for me to get away, enjoy some time with my family (which I know he would have wanted) and just relax...well, kind of. I was kind of having too much fun to relax. What a great place! I decided we needed to do something like that before the baby comes and we're stuck at home, sleep-deprived. It was WAY worth every dime we spent. And now, without further ado, here are...a whole bunch of pictures!!

The room we got had a cute little "cabin" for the kids, complete with bunk bed and their own TV and Nintendo (seriously, who has time to play Nintendo or watch TV while they're there?). It amazed me how well they took to the bunk bed. Evan had seemed leery of them in the past but was way excited about it and did a great job sleeping up there without being scared. Maren is still in a crib at home so I wondered how this would be for her. She loved it and called it "my yoom". She slept great on her bed and now I'm thinking bunk beds may be the way to go for these two. Exciting stuff to come! What silly faces they have here!

Evan took quite a while to warm up to the whole water park thing. But once he did, he had a blast! He would go down this purple slide and then skip/run through the water to get back on. The boy who is NEVER pushy or aggressive with other kids he doesn't know was trying to get ahead of others to get to the stairs first. I definitely saw a different side of him that was fun to see. I loved watching his face when he came down the slide and said "wahoo!".

Yes, Maren looks drunk here but I thought it was a really cute picture of Michael.

In addition to the slides, Evan really enjoyed playing in the fountains. I couldn't believe how free he got with letting water spray in his face. I love watching my kids overcome their fears and come out of their comfort zones!

Speaking of out of his comfort zone, that purple slide isn't the only one newly-brave Evan went down. He also went down some serpentine ones that started at the top of this four-story fort. Michael took him up a couple of times. I was shocked to find that Evan had to go down by himself, instead of on Michael's lap, and he did it! Well, at one point all the adults except me went on a crazy slide that I had no desire to go on, especially being pregnant. So I was taking care of Evan, Maren and our friend's daughter. Evan wanted to go on the serpentine slides while we waited. Well, I knew I didn't want to climb up all those stairs with these other two girls. Plus, there's water spraying everywhere in there and see that bucket about to spill at the top of the picture? That's full of 1,000 gallons of water that dumps out about every three minutes. I knew we could end up right under it at just the wrong time. So I told Evan that if he could climb up there by himself, he could go. First of all, I couldn't believe myself letting him do that. Second of all, I can't believe he took me up on it! I watched my little guy go and was so, so nervous. I tried to watch him like a hawk but it was hard to see him at times. I just hoped for the best. Evan wasn't too fond of the dumping bucket and he said it did dump while he was up there but he was fine with it. He came down the slide with a big smile and I let out a sigh of relief. Still can't believe I let him do it but it feels really good now knowing that I did.

All the fun really tuckered Maren out. Plus, we had stayed up until 10 p.m. the night before and she hadn't had a nap that day. Poor thing was exhausted. This is them waiting for me to get back with our pizza lunch. I was really looking forward to getting some snuggle time with her while everyone else played. Unfortunately...

She woke up just in time to get some pizza, regain her energies and get ready for more wet and wild fun! No snuggling!

Maren also loved the purple slide and would go around and around on it. She seemed so small to be going on this "big" water slide (comparatively, you know?) but she loved every second of it...as you can see by the big smile on her face.

And this is the Bybee family at the end of day 2 of our Great Wolf fun. It was about 10 p.m. by this time and everyone was completely beat. Ha! This was the best we could get. So, our neighbor, Anton, came over the day saying he was going to GWL and wanted to find out what it was all about. Well, we pulled out the pictures. We showed him videos. And we talked to him about it for about an hour. Yeah, we're ready to go back...like now!

Lisa's 2009 Visit

So much has happened since Lisa visited last month that I hadn't gotten around to blogging about it yet. For those of you who don't know, Lisa is my "oldest" friend, in that she is the friend I have had the longest. She moved around the corner from us just before 2nd grade started. So I six. Yeah, that was a long time ago! Anyway, she is blessed to be able to do quite a bit of traveling and chose to visit us this year. The kids had a great time waking her up in the morning! We went to The Children's Museum and our favorite restaurant, JoPa (if you're in the area and haven't been there yet, you must go!). We went to Target and she spent her whole Saturday with me at the church getting it ready for our annual Sweetheart's Ball. Yeah, pretty much she just lived my life for 5 days...nothing exciting! Ha! Before my kids came along we used to go to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival or Seattle and other "fun" places. Oh, how things change with kids around! Anyway, for some silly reason I didn't get many pictures (maybe the batteries were dead...again?!?!). These are all from The Children's Museum...

Obviously, there was a Bob the Builder exhibit. The kids loved it. Unfortunately, Maren was always looking at something and never at the camera. But I thought this picture of Evan was too cute to pass up.

And here's Maren pretending to be Daddy in her scrubs, showing off the x-ray she took. Looking at those bangs makes me wonder why on earth I waited so long to get them cut. Sorry, Maren! I think that borders on child abuse.

And here's Lisa with Flat Stanley. Lisa's nephew made Flat Stanley in school and Flat Stanley had quite the trip. He got his picture taken on the airplane, with lots of different strangers, and in some very cool places. It was fun to have him along for the trip! :-)

What a Day!

Boy, this body has had quite the day. This morning I went to Zumba. That's 8 - 9 a.m. That's some super aerobic, hip-shaking working out. Oh-so-fun and oh-so-sweat-inducing! Anyway, I got home, jumped in the shower, got dressed in my clogging outfit and headed for a church building where we had an audition for a fine arts showcase next month. We were going to audition this new dance we started in September. It's awesome, it's fast, it's hard. It's impressive. Well, I had missed quite a few weeks of practice because of sick kids and Michael's birthday and other random things. So on Thursday I got together with a fellow clogger and got caught up on the ending. I hardly slept all last night because the dance was running through my head...making sure the last steps were cemented enough that my feet would do what I needed them to during the audition. When I got to the church at 10 a.m., we ran through the dance two times. I'm starting to feel like I have Jell-O for legs by this point. Then we go into the audition. They love the dance, but not the music so much. Doesn't quite fit into the evening's other events. So we tell them we have other songs. Then we proceed to show them THREE more dances. Hello! Way more than I bargained for today. My poor body. That would be a lot for a non-pregnant person to do. I would've liked to have seen myself in bed by 10 p.m. tonight because I'm EXHAUSTED, but I had too much work to do. I just stopped, without being done, because I could hardly keep my eyes open any longer. It's been a long day. Three hours of dancing, an hour of weeding the garden, two showers, a trip to the temple and lots of work. But I did enjoy a small bowl of ice cream. It was nice knowing that I had worked it off by 8:20 this morning!!

The News I Can Hardly Bear to Share

When I was looking up the picture I wanted to use for this post, I thought the pain in my heart might kill me. Oh, this is hard. My grandpa, who I made a really great post about a while back and can't find it now, passed away on Wednesday. He's had cancer for years now so I shouldn't be surprised. And we had about a week's notice that it was coming. But nothing can prepare you for the realization that it could be 50 years before you see someone you love so dearly again. I have kept pretty busy since finding out...Maren being sick, packing for a little vacation, vacationing, cleaning, etc. But whenever I stop for just a second, he is always on my mind and the tears flow freely. I can't imagine my life without him and I wish my kids didn't have to spend so much of theirs without him. He loved them and me so much. If you asked anyone who knew him what one stand-out thing was about him, it was that he loved his family. He made it known ALWAYS. There is a huge hole in my heart right now and it saddens me to think of how long it may be there. And then I think about Dallin and realize that it will always be there. I wish that I could've talked to him before he passed and asked him to kiss my grandma for me and to scoop up Dallin and tell him we love him. I'm sure he did that anyway because he would know. But it would sure make me feel better. Michael went into the Missionary Training Center on March 4th. He thought that was pretty cool because he was "marching forth" to fulfill his calling as a missionary. My grandpa died on March 4th. I know that he is "marching forth" to his eternal glory. I fly out to Arizona to attend his funeral on Monday. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say and get off my chest when I get back...

Gender!

It has been quite a week around here. There is much to post about. Maren has been really sick with an ear infection, which we found out about the day I had my ultrasound. For three days straight I pretty much did nothing but hold her. It was great to get to do that but terrible when I would look out at the ever-worsening state of affairs around our house. Luckily, she is on the mend.

Anyway, as I said, we had our ultrasound. Well, Evan and I went to the ultrasound. Michael had too many patients that day so Evan held down the support fort in Michael's absence, which was fine with me since it's about the 30th ultrasound I've had and Michael promised to bond with the babe in utero regardless of being there or not. Everything appears to be fine, though they weren't able to get all the views of the heart they needed. I have to go back in a month to have that part redone. Evan was a trooper, hanging out with me during the ultrasound and then with the perinatologist afterwards. He was so, so talkative that I had to ask him a few times just to not talk at all. He was asking tons of questions and talking about the baby. It was very cute...most of the time. And he was not disappointed on the gender. It's a boy! This should surprise no one who is at all connected to my circle of ward friends, friends and family. In our ward there are two other girls who are pregnant within about a week of me. Both with boys. My two best friends are pregnant with boys. And my sister is pregnant with a boy. It's the boy cycle. I'm happy (would've been either way!) but slightly sad for Maren who will be alone in her girlyness, having two brothers, three boy cousins on my side, four on Michael's side and the only girl cousins being 13 and 15 years old! Oh well. She'll be well looked after.