First Day of School 2016-2017!

Monday, Aug. 22 was the first day back to school! All of the kids were really excited to wear new clothes and shoes and go back to school and be with their new teachers and classmates. Maddie is going back to Spectrum Academy this year and we will see how she does. Emma, Nate and Olivia are still at Greenwood and love going there. This year, because of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the theme was the Olympics. They played fun music and had all of the kids parade into the school with lots of cheers and high fives. I am looking forward to some good quality time with Isaac this year before he goes to preschool next year. Poor kid has two more years before Kindergarten and is bored already!

Maddie 8th grade

Olivia 1st Grade

Emma 5th grade

Nathan 2nd Grade

Mr. Kilpack the  Principal in his Green Gator suit!

Gus the Gator

The Final Act to Make a Difference

Today I had the opportunity to attend a tribute to those who are organ and tissue donors because my Dad was one. Even though I myself am a donor and having a passion in the healing arts I know the benefits of organ donating, I still had a really hard time with my Dad being a donor. They came and talked to us about it literally just minutes after he had passed. I know from the medical standpoint that you need to get those organs and tissues and things right away...but it was kind of creepy to think about right after saying goodbye. We were still trying to come to terms with the fact that our father and husband had just passed away and now you want to disassemble his body?! Once my siblings pointed out that this would be his last act on earth of Making a Difference I felt peace, but I was still a little queasy about it all. My only request was that they not take his eyes. My mom did not want his eyes taken either so that made me feel better. Because his body had been deprived of oxygen for so long he was only able to donate bone marrow and skin which they took from his back. When we saw my dad again to dress him for his burial we asked the funeral home to dress him for us and we would just put on his temple robes because of the fact that they had taken bones. He was crinkly because of the fact that they had to wrap him in plastic to keep the body from seeping and he had basically pvc pipe in place of his arms and legs...gruesome I know! I looked at my Dad and tried to keep it together. As I looked at his face, that seemed to be truly the only part of him that was "him". In a strange way it brought me release. "Ok," I told myself, "this is not my Dad. His spirit is gone and this is just the shell of his body that his spirit lived in."
 So when my mom told me that the organ donor organization did a tribute to the families of those who had donated and who were recipients of organ donations I was all for that. They put his name on a beautiful glass panel with all of the other donors. Now this act of service has been memorialized. I was proud of that. I learned that there were 619 new names added to the wall this year with 31 of those names being living donors. They had two speakers of young people in their twenties who were transplant recipients. One was as simple as an ACL ligament but having that transplant allowed the young man to continue walking and remain athletic in sports. The other was a young woman who was diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye disease when she was 8 and by the time she was in high school was legally blind. She received her eye transplant her first and second years of college and can now see. There was also some beautiful music shared. Going to this tribute today brought me peace and closure on the matter. I no longer felt creeped out, I felt proud. Sitting around us were people who had either a baby who had died and been a donor or a toddler who was a recipient. That really tugged at my heartstrings!
 If my dad were still alive he would give anything to anyone who needed it. If a complete stranger needed a kidney he would be first in line to see if he could help. Now he has and I am so glad that we were able to give him this chance for his final act to Make a Difference!

Dad's name on the wall

Maddie and me at the wall

Nate the Great is the Big Eight!

My sweet boy Nathan turned 8 today! He has been waiting for this day for several years and has been counting down since January 1, 2016! Now that the countdown to the birthday is over with, it will be the countdown to his baptism...

Nate wanted to go swimming with a few friends at the Lehi Legacy Center. So he invited his friends Cash and Cam. They are on his soccer team. The boys came over and I tried a new thing-The Human Pinata.The idea is that you tape or glue candy onto a shirt and then someone wears that shirt and they run and people chase them and try to take off the candy...that's the idea. The reality is that the candy falls off while trying to put the shirt on. It was a failure today but the kids still got candy which is really the important part right?

After we picked up the candy we ate lunch. Nate specified Pizza Hut Pizza and wanted pepperoni. I also ordered a Hawaiian and that's what he and the boys scarfed down first. The girls decorated the kitchen with a few decorations.

Cam is on the left and Cash is in the middle.

After lunch we opened presents. Both boys gave him some time of a nerf gun,,,yay...and they had fun playing with it. Then we sang and had cake and ice cream. Nate chose a chocolate cake and Tiger's Blood ice cream.

Then it was time for swimming! We piled up in the car and headed out. The boys had so much fun and were really cute together. I started calling them the Three Amigos. They would play and have fun and then at random times they would just all come together and hug each other. It was so cute to watch!

Olivia was trying to help Isaac swim...the blind leading the blind. But they were so cute together as well and had fun playing in the water together. The girls were off doing their own thing. A good time was had by all!

Grandma Newby stopped by later that evening and joined us for dinner at Chili's. Everyone left the restaurant full and happy! Grandma gave Nate a very special present...a watch that belonged to Grandpa Newby. Nate really wanted a watch and he really wanted one of Grandpa's. My mom had given Jason my dad's Chicago Bears watch and ever since then Nate has wanted one. He even spotted this very watch on my mom's table one day. I told my mom to give it to him for his birthday and Nate was so disappointed when he noticed the watch missing from the table. He was so happy to see it in his birthday bag from Grandma! It was a watch my dad loved because it is black and orange in honor of his Spartans. I hope Nate will treasure this special gift and think of his Grandpa Newby when he wears it. 

I love you sweet boy! You have been such a joy in my life and you always put a smile on my face. You have the cutest smile, laugh and personality. You are the best at everything you do, especially at being a brother and a friend. You always give me hugs and tell me I am pretty but you are also honest with me if I'm wearing something that doesn't look good on me! You were such a good baby and you are such a good boy and I am so very proud of you! I can't wait to see what kind of a man you become and what your future holds for you! Love you Nathan! Happy Birthday!

Love Notes from Dad

A father holds your hand for awhile, but he holds your heart forever.

Today is Aug. 4 2016...3 months ago my dad died. 3 months ago my life as I knew it, changed. 3 months ago a time shift was created. I am now on a new time line. Everything is now determined time wise as either "before dad died" or "after dad died." Crazy how one day and one single moment can do that to you. But there are many time shifts like that. "Before I was married" and "after I was married." "Before we moved to American Fork," and "After we moved to American Fork." And many more examples like that. What's different about this time shift is the impact it has had on my life and the realizations that have come to my mind. It does not seem like it has only been 3 months...it seems like a lot longer than that. I can think of two reasons for this. One is that I am still in denial about it. I have not quite accepted this event as reality and I am pushing it farther and farther away. "My dad is not gone he is away on a business trip." The second reason is that I think about him constantly and therefore time has seemed to slow down. You know how you anticipate something happening and seems like it is taking forever to happen because you think about it constantly? Like your wedding day, birthday, Christmas, the birth of your baby (the last month and last week are excrutiatingly long!!) That is what this feels like to me. I think about my dad constantly and therefore time has just slowed down...at least where he is concerned. Everything else speeds up and I lose my grasp on reality. (Is it really time to do school shopping already?) For me, both reasons are correct. I am in denial still, but think about it constantly.
 At the beginning of the year, we decided that our one word to focus on this year would be LOVE. We had decided this way before my dad died (there's that time line again.) Our phrase to focus on is "Love conquers all." I have it in a nice plaque hanging in a prominent spot in the front room. We spent the entire month of February writing love notes to each other and putting them into little mailboxes. We have tried to really work on loving each other in our home.
 When I went to the hospital to see my dad the day he had his heart attack, he looked pretty scraped up because he had fallen onto the asphalt at the park he and my mom were running through. I noticed a scrape on his hand and it looked like a particular shape. When my mom came in later she noticed it for the first time but saw it as a scrape. I told her it looked like something and she looked again. Recognition lit her face and she said, "It's a heart! Aww, his last message to me." It truly was his last message to all of us....and a very fitting one for my family.

 LOVE is truly the word that describes my father. Anything we talk about associated with him we use the word LOVE. "Dad LOVED his country." "Dad LOVED rock and roll." "Dad LOVED suits and ties and belts and cologne and just looking and smelling good." "Dad LOVED to tease me."  "Dad LOVED his grandkids." "Dad LOVED his friends and to play games." "Dad LOVED the Savior."  "Dad LOVED Mom." Every holiday dad LOVED. He was so passionate about everything and everyone and just plain LOVED!
 We like to think of this mark on his hand as his first love note to us. I believe we tell ourselves what we need to comfort ourselves. I tell myself that this mark is no coincidence. He wanted us to know that he LOVES us and that this single moment that happened three months ago was just as hard on him as it is for us. I truly believe that not a day goes by that he does not constantly think of us. And he shows us in his own ways by leaving little love notes for us to find like the one on his hand. Here are just a few more that family members have found.

 Mom found this one a few days ago. She went running through the very same park where it all happened and while having a one sided conversation with my Dad she found this. 

This was the first one. My Aunt Eva was telling the story of my Dad's hand to some family members and when she looked up she saw this.

One morning soon after  Kayla was having a particularly hard day. She opened her door to go outside for a walk and found this. She took a picture and then went inside for just a moment. When she came back out it was gone. 

I think beautiful orange sunsets are also love notes from him

Maddie found this rock while at Cousins Camp this year. Apparently Macin and Nathan also found a rock that was broken in two halves and when you put them together they formed a heart. They painted LO on one rock and VE on the other and left them at the fairy garden near Mirror Lake in honor of Grandpa. 

Emma found this heart cloud after one of Nate's soccer practices. She said, "I bet grandpa was watching the whole thing and just wanted to tell us he was here."

I myself have not found any cool love notes but, then again, maybe I have. My sisters and I had necklaces made in the shape of a heart with my father's ring fingerprint and his signature that says "Love Dad" from the last Christmas card he gave us. I have worn it every day since I received it. It has never left my person. I guess I am carrying around my own personal love note every moment.

I love my Dad and I miss him so much! During one particular hard night I felt prompted to go to my journal. I had a card in there from my Dad that he gave me after my car accident back in 1997. That was a trial that taught me many things. In it my Dad wrote, "Bear, remember it is the difficult times that show us what we are made of and how we handle ourselves-show us your BEST!!" Even now reading that makes me cry. I'm trying Dad. I really am!

As you can see we are now obsessed with heart shapes. My children look for them every where and think of their Grandpa every time they see one...even in chicken nuggets...

Annual 1800Contacts Summer Bash

Every year 1800 Contacts does a big Summer party at Thanksgiving Point. They have different themes each year. This year was Camp Contacts and was supposed to be a Summer Camp theme. It wasn't my favorite but we still had fun. My favorite is still the Harry Potter theme and the Pirates theme. But anyway, they always have fun crafts and games for the kids to do. This year we did boondoggle and bead necklaces or bracelets, leather bookmarks or bracelets, went "fishing" and of course had good food and snacks. The kids favorite thing to do is swim and go on the bounce slides. Jason and a group of his co-workers have participated in the annual Tug-of-War contest and have won-completely undefeated-the last two years! These are the only years he has actually participated. He won a $50 gift card and admiration from his children. The company also does a plethera of other prizes but we usually never win anything. There are just so many employees and guests that it is hard to get your name drawn. But we have hope every year that this time we'll be lucky. Oh well...there's always next year!

 Kids favorite thing is swimming and being with their cousins!

 Get Read, Get Set...

 Pull! Pull! Pull!

 High Five! Undfeated Champs!

Victory Hug!