January 29, 2010 by Melanee.

When I review the experiences I have had in my life I see the chain of events that ultimately make me say “Ah-Ha” Well I am doing it again.I found a connection on my life journey.
In our faith our temples are our places of instruction, a place of service, a place of refuge from the busy problematic world, a place to commune and receive answers to prayers. When Randy and I personally met for the first time last year on Valentine’s Day weekend we took a trip to New York City and did a session with my sister Rachel and her husband at the Manhattan Temple. This was the first time Randy attended the temple since Gayle’s passing and I went twice since Kev’s passing, but found it very difficult to attend. When we went to Manhattan Temple it felt good again and comfortable again. I enjoyed being with Randy at the temple again. Our relationship grew and each time we met together we went to the temple. When I came out to Utah in March we went to the Manti Temple together. When I came out in April for Randy’s son’s wedding we went to the Idaho Falls temple to witness Darrin and Rachel’s marriage. When he came out to Connecticut in June we obtained our marriage license and did a session the Boston Temple. When Randy came out for Marlene’s wedding he helped drive us to the Washington DC Temple and witnessed Marlene and Stephen get married. Then on August 1st we were married in the Boston Temple by my father. On our cross country honeymoon we visited the Kirtland Temple, then we stayed for four days in Nauvoo and did a session in the beautiful Nauvoo Temple.We met many senior couple missionaries with similar circumstances as us who lost their spouses and found each other. To top off the great honeymoon trip we were privileged to have an exclusive tour of the Rexburg Temple by Randy’s mission friend who painted the murals in each session room. We saw each room of the temple and heard about his personal experiences with getting the temple ready and the inspirations behind his paintings. Since we have been married and moved to Utah we have gone to the temple together often.

Then on Monday an announcement was made to build a temple in our neighborhood-two blocks away from our home. This is huge to me since all my life the temple has been my place to go to enjoy the spirit, learn about the gospel, and receive answers to my many prayers. Randy and I have made a temple journey of sorts and we are ready for when the temple is built, and opened for the public to see, then dedicated to the Lord, and the work can commence. I will literally be able to walk to the temple.
Having the blessings of the temple gave me comfort during my darkest times. Now being able to have the temple in my life everyday will be so fulfilling and joyous to me.

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January 18, 2010 by Ashley.

Just thought I’d put up the other pix I never got around to putting up in my last post. Stay tuned for the next post in 3 weeks though when Baby #2 comes!!

Our portable DVD player is probably the best investment we ever made (especially when I was doing a ton of traveling with Lydia a few months back). One day I just got desperate and she LOVES watching movies anyway. Glad to say though this was the only time I had to do this.

Lydia can put on her own pair of sunglasses and then she goes around going “Cool! Cool!” because when I first put them on her I would say she looked so cool with them on.

Right at the end of October we got a whole lotta snow. This is our grill. And backyard

I took Lydia to reading time at the library once and she got a little cup of dirt with a pumpkin seed in it. I actually planted it and it was the one thing in our garden that grew. So here’s Pat and Lydia carving it for Halloween. Lydia wasn’t as excited as we thought. She mostly just ate the pumpkin seeds.
CLICK HERE FOR MOVIE -> dscn2986_med.MOV

Probably not impressive now, but this was when Lydia first started climbing stairs on her own really well (17 months old - right around Halloween). Gosh it was nice not having to carry her anymore!
CLICK HERE FOR MOVIE -> dscn2989_med.MOV

I finally put Lydia is this famous bathing suit I wore as a baby. Unfortunately I waited a bit too long so the suit is a “tad” small. Plus Lydia wasn’t in her “modeling” mood. I was hoping to get a similar shot, but the one photo where I’m standing up in it I cannot seem to find right now, so this will have to do. Any similarity??

Lydia loved playing in the fall leaves
CLICK HERE FOR MOVIE -> dscn3008_med.MOV

Pat’s most recent [GIANT] project has been building a trailer on the trailer frame we bought last summer at a garage sale. He put a LOT of time and work into it. I wanted it built by Thanksgiving so he could drive out to Utah and get some furniture and my boxes of things that had been brought from Connecticut. His hard work paid off and he finished, like 24 hrs before he was scheduled to leave. It’s really sturdy, did well on the trip, and now our house actually has some furniture in it! One glitch though, was that Pat made this really nice gate for the back (you can see it in the picture). On the way there though, he hit some bumps on the road and it came off without him knowing. By the time he noticed and backtracked it was smashed into a million pieces in the road. It was severely devastating for us both (if you’ve ever done a project that took a lot of time and money, you can understand). But with Mom’s help he was able to figure out a temporary gate for the trip back. Here’s before and after pix.

Pat made the mistake one night of showing Lydia that she can be driven around in boxes. Lydia’s inside with her “B.” That’s what she calls her special blanket.
CLICK HERE FOR MOVIE ->dscn30371_med.MOV

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January 18, 2010 by Melanee.

I wanted to repost Mallory’s teacher experience in honor of MLK Day. This is very appropriate, worth thinking about, and a subject worth talking about.
Mallory writes:

So I have a very interesting and funny story about what my students told me this week. As most people know, February is black history month. What many of you also know is that my class is made up of 100% African American students. I read them a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. and I was telling them how not all white people hated black people back then. There were several white people who were on their side. One of my students then said, “I don’t like white people” to which another student replied “That means you don’t like Mrs. Fackrell!” Then he responded back, “Mrs. Fackrell isn’t white.” Then my students proceeded to ask me, “Mrs. Fackrell, are you black or white?” I didn’t really know how to respond, given the conversation that just went on, so I simply said, “I’ll leave that for you to decide”, which then almost unanimously they said, “Mrs. Fackrell is black.” So I’ve officially become accepted! It’s kinda exciting and funny at the same time. Anyway, just thought I’d share that little funny teacher moment! Until next time!

Melanee’s opinion added: Wouldn’t it be nice to have races and colors just blend in the background so we really see who each of us are-sons and daughters of God.

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January 14, 2010 by Melanee.

Having been raised in the Northeast has it’s challenges when you are trying to do what our faith teaches us to do. We have been taught for many years to have food storage for your family in case of emergencies or future problems that may come up and also a 72 hour kit to take in case of emergencies. This is widely known. Obtaining that food storage was a huge task because the resources were not there. Most things needed to be ordered through ultra organized effort from the leadership in the church to ship everything to us from the west. We could order through catalogs or take a two hour drive to Massachusetts to get basics at the Bishop’s storehouse.
Well, I just went on a 15 minute drive to the Bishop’s Storehouse today to replace some of the food storage I gave away from my move. (I think I gave away about 75%-which is a lot) I walk in and a really great elderly man took my order and entered a very large room to gather everything I needed–already canned. Afterward I went to a nearby grocery store(from a tip by one of the workers there that sugar was at a good price) and got 75 lbs of sugar for a really good deal, a 5 gallon bucket, and 2 gamma lids(screw top lids for 5 gallon buckets)-In The Grocery Store! All these things I had to order from catalogs. Most stores I frequent out here have a food storage area with all the things that took us weeks or days to obtain. It took me less than two hours including travel time to obtain a portion of what I needed.
The resources here are enormous and I am grateful for that. Now I need to get back to replenishing my food storage. Let me contact the person in our ward that has the canner to can the powder milk and sugar I just got.

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January 14, 2010 by Melanee.

As I was going through my paperwork I found a “poem” or thought that I had written about eight years ago for a dear friend and co-worker when she lost her mother suddenly to Crerutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Upon reading it-I find the writing reflects what most of us go through when we have trials and losses in our lives and how we come out in the end.

Through Our Experiences…..

We care as we never cared before
We laugh as we never laughed before
We have faith as we never had before
We have sorrow as we never had before
We gain knowledge as we never had before
We gain strength as we never had before
We love as we never loved before

Written by: Melanee Webster Bronson

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January 12, 2010 by Melanee.

Apologies to all because life has gotten pretty busy since I have settled here. The holidays were filled with family and visitors. So, my usual place was in the kitchen cooking up a storm. I have enjoyed putting together meals that would feed up to 20 people that have come. About two Sundays a month we have Randy’s children and Marlene and Stephen for dinner. That’s 10 adults and two children right there. Thanksgiving was 17, Christmas the same, basketball party 18 attended, New Year’s Eve 17 people. I have enjoyed meeting new people and having people over. Randy and I have attended 4 funerals and two wedding receptions. My daughter Mallory and her husband Wendell came to see me after the Christmas holiday for three days. That was really nice. (Also I do have to say that shopping for Christmas for nine children and six grandchildren then relatives was quite a challenge, but a good challenge. Because I had time to shop during the day which is a huge luxury for me.)

My parents visited for a week due to my uncle (Mom’s brother) passing away. They got to see my new home and we enjoyed having them here. My father upon coming into the home inspected my refrigerator and saw that my Thanksgiving turkey needed the meat taken off so he started in on my turkey carcass right away. Then made some soup with all the Thanksgiving leftovers. We also enjoyed seeing my Utah cousins.
We have had guests since Thanksgiving-The Kenyons (Gayle’s brother’s family), my parents, Kurtis (Randy’s son from Alaska), Mallory and Wendell. We would love to have more.
Then Randy’s daughter added to the family on December 1st with a granddaughter, born 8 minutes after arriving at the hospital. So, I took care of Josh and Maia while my parents were here. Talk about double duty.

I have also had problems with my house that I am selling. Thanks to those friends who were my eyes and ears to tell me what was going on. It is not fun trying to get repairs done on the house when you are 2000 miles away.The cost was enormous and I did have to fly out for a week mainly to have a planned visit with my daughter Leah and my grandchildren, but I had to extend the visit to supervise fixing the problems that occurred when the work got done on my house. Everything has settled and it is fixed up. Does anyone want to buy a home in a really nice town in a really good school system?

I have also found that writing takes a lot of time for me to do and I haven’t had the time or should I say inspiration to write. I will try to do better.

Christmas was good, but I really missed my girls. I bought cardinals to go on my Christmas tree. Decorating the tree was great to go through all the memories of all the ornaments that were put up. My sister Rachel gave me a cardinal ornament to hang on the tree. We had two trees in the home. One to represent each of our families. We also got together with my sister and brother to have a “Christmas breakfast dinner” at my brother’s–in law’s house. We enjoyed the lobster that Aaron brought along with all the good eats I am used to. It made it feel like home.

Randy had been wonderful to me -Helpful, we enjoy conversing about almost everything, He just knows when I need him. Sometimes I think he can read my mind. But he claims he can’t. It just shows how insightful he is. We are glad to have love and joy in our lives once again. We like going to the temple together. We have gone maybe 5 times so far. I have gone twice with a new friend from my ward. It is so nice to have the temple and church resources so close now.

One thing I haven’t been good at is trying to see all my Utah family members, also keeping in touch with all my Connecticut friends and family. Randy and I sent out 150 Christmas cards between us. I still didn’t send all that I wanted to send to people because I didn’t have addresses. Gratitude is the word that I can say for all my friends and family where ever they are.
Okay—-New Year’s resolution—- to update my blog more often. Please be forgiving if it’s short and to the point.

What I am looking forward to in 2010: Ashley’s daughter due February 2 and Mallory’s daughter due March 19. I love being a busy grandma.

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December 9, 2009 by Ashley.

Well, my third trimester hit me like a freight train. It’s like one day I woke up and suddenly I was very uncomfortable and sore and waddling around like a penguin (very attractive, I know). It didn’t do much for my ego when someone at church finally asked if I was pregnant and said, “You were walking like you were pregnant, but I didn’t know for sure, so that’s why I asked.” I’m just lucky I guess that that pelvic ligament thing that is supposed to stretch during pregnancy is stretching in such a way that it is severely painful. And you never knew I bet how important that muscle/ligament was because apparently you use it to walk, lift your legs, turn in bed, etc etc.

Things had been going very well until one day Pat wasn’t feeling too hot and apparently spread it to Lydia. So after a few days of waking up at night, having a fever, and just feeling crummy, she finally started to improve, but then I got muscle soreness from head to toe. I never felt full blown sick, but I’ve never had literally every single muscle group in my body be so incredibly sore (without having the flu or something). I was afraid it was due to pregnancy, but the doctor said it wasn’t and thought I had H1N1 (swine flu) even though I never got full blown sick. I found out yesterday that she discussed it with the pediatricians down the hall (because I had this weird throat thing) and it was probably another virus that I forget the name of. I’m very thankful the full body soreness went away (I was on Tylenol 24 hrs just so I could move without excruciating pain), but during that 1-2 weeks I stopped being able to exercise and was not up on what I was eating. So now I’m 7 lbs ahead of schedule which is depressing, but thinking about it just makes me want to eat chocolate (thus not helping the problem). Here’s a picture of me at 30 weeks. I figured it was about time I put one up because Mallory already posted 2 and Auntie Rachie 1 and they’re way behind me. As you can see, I have both of them beat (Mal and Rachie – don’t feel bad. It’s not a good thing. Stay small for as long as possible!!)

Other than that, things are going well. Our baby girl is jumping all around regularly. It’s always my favorite part to feel the baby’s feet and elbows and knees. Pat and I have resorted to getting a name book because we just can’t agree this time around. Pat comes up with all these names he loves (and I like too), but I feel like he named Lydia and so I want more input with this one. Apparently he hates all my names though and on top of that we have a huge combined family so a lot of the names I like are a relative’s or a relative of a relative’s already.

Halloween
Horribly belated I know, but better late than never! So I wanted Lydia to have a creative costume (not just one of those jumpsuits you buy at Walmart now for every child), but it had to be less than $5 and require little to no effort on my part :). Fortunately, my friend Eliza offered an old costume her little girl wore in the past and I loved it. So, for Halloween Lydia was a chicken. I thought it very fitting because for a while her nickname was Chicken Lydi. (In truth, Pat brought up that he thinks it’s actually a duck because of the flat bill and the webbed feet, but I like chicken better so we’re gonna go with that).

Lydia was going through her “stranger” faze at this time so we thought she’d just cry on any attempts at trick-or-treating and Pat would just have to carry her everywhere. So we practiced at home, where she would knock on the laundry room door, I would open it up and put some candy in her bucket. Although we tried, she never ended up saying “treat” (we tried to shorten it to an attainable goal), but she got VERY excited seeing her bucket fill. She even got to the point where she’s knock by herself…it was so cute. So Halloween night we set out with our friends the Fairbanks to go trick-or-treating down our street. We’d put Lydia on the top step and have her walk to the door by herself. And she did so well! Not one tear – not even close. She actually loved it and would have gone on to another street if Kambria (their 3 year old daughter) hadn’t pronounced she was freezing to death and had to return. Below is a movie of Lydia trick-or-treating. It true Reality TV fashion, I completely staged it. I didn’t want any of our neighbors thinking how weird I was whipping out the camera to record Lydia so it’s at my house with Eliza answering our door. And I know I’m biased, but I think she’s just the cutest thing in the world doing this all by herself!! (the giant chicken costume helps too). And even if she was being pushed to the side by bigger kids, she would totally inch her way to the door on her own; she was holding her own ground for sure). Oh, and I kept having her say Thank You in sign language (touch your hand to your chin and bring in straight down) and you can see that a tiny bit. Unfortunately our neighbors need to know sign language to know she was trying to say thank you. I think one woman thought she was blowing kisses or something.
Click Here for Movie –> dscn2990_med.MOV
Afterwards we came back to the house and made doughnuts. This was a tradition in Pat’s family (to make them instead of going trick-or-treating) and we thought it’d be a fun one to adopt. Having the Fairbanks over made it more fun too – and there was less pressure for me to consume ALL the doughnuts. I found a recipe that was supposed to mimic Krispy Kreme and it totally worked! Here’s Pat with his AMAZING doughnuts.

I’m usually against certain homemade foods, because I actually prefer the store/processed ones, but I was so completely impressed with these. Don’t they look awesome?! Instead of the classic Krispy Kreme glaze, we decorated with frosting and various toppings. It was fun and very delicious :).
Pat even successfully made a giant doughnut to celebrate Eliza’s birthday.

I have more updates on day to day life, but I think this post is long enough for now!

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October 30, 2009 by Mallory.

Just a reminder for everyone. We (the Fackrells) have our own blog now. It’s funwiththefackrells.blogspot.com. There is also a link on the left of the screen. If you want to know the on-goings of our life in Memphis, then just go there. I’ll be making it private sometime, but as of right now, it’s still public. So enjoy!

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October 21, 2009 by Melanee.

A week and a half ago we received the news that Randy’s mother-in-law (Gayle’s mother) passed away. I was able to visit with her twice. Zoe, being 93 years of age along with her husband, Karl, who is 91 showed how being married for 70 years can be really precious or cute. My first visit was a really sweet scene of them sitting up and leaning towards each other touching heads while they both slept. I wish I had a camera to freeze that scene, but it will stay in my mind forever. Karl cared deeply for his bride and did everything he could to make her comfortable.
We traveled to a remote town of Ely for her funeral. That’s where they lived most of their married life. We traveled 3 and half hours with only passing maybe seven remote towns along the way. Lots of sage brush, dry lake bed, pinion pines and the beautiful mountains that bound the land. I compared it to my three hour trip to New Jersey to visit my grandchildren- huge difference in people, population, cities, and scenery.
The funeral was very touching. Randy and Gayle’s two brothers, Terry and Reg, spoke. Laura, Randy’s daughter, played a beautiful piece on the piano. Other friends spoke and did musical numbers. Terry’s family did a beautiful job with the display of quilts, funeral programs, family pictures, copies of family recipes to pass out, and cookies to munch on. Family gathered together for prayer-there was not a dry eye due to the great love for their mother and grandmother.
But something happened during the burial services that should be written in the family history for posterity’s sake. This helped lighten the mood and really created lasting memories that will never be forgotten. I don’t know all the reasons why this occurred. Maybe it was because it is a small town. Townspeople are usually in charge of certain things and maybe this part did not get done. This experience made a good story and the family laughs about it to this day. They also think Gayle and her mother were laughing during the whole ordeal.

When the hearse arrive and the family gathered near the grave site. They noticed that there were no bars to set the casket on or straps or machine to lower the casket after the dedication. There was just a real deep hole about 8 feet deep with the plastic cover to seal the casket off to the side about 10 feet.There was a problem-there is no way to lower grandma into the ground.
The wife of the graveyard keeper was calling her husband to tell him there was nothing available to lower the casket. She started talking on the phone while the grave was being dedicated, so she was politely asked to leave the area while she tried to see what needed to be done.
But, one the sons, Ronnie, took charge and found someone to go home and get three twenty five foot straps and three two by fours. A few minutes later they were brought to the site. The boards were put across the hole and casket was set on top. A fellow in his thirties was lowered down to place the bottom half of the plastic cover before the casket was lowered. He got everything set and tried to get out of the hole himself, but he dislodged rocks on the side that landed on the cover bottom. He was lowered again to clear all the rocks. They moved the casket out of the way put the two by fours across the hole and the fellow hiked himself up like dismounting parallel bars. The casket was lowered by the sons and grandsons, but someone noticed that the spray of flowers were not removed from the top. So, one of the light and agile grandsons who was 10 years was lowered upon grandma’s casket and retrieved the flowers. The straps were removed and the plastic cover to seal the casket was lowered with the straps to cover the casket. The same grandson was lowered again to jump on the cover to make sure it was sealed. There was a jovial mood about the whole thing and all the family members said they now have a story to tell that will be passed down through the generations.
These small towns produce resourceful people who take the situations as they come. They try to solve the problem, laugh about it, and get on with life without complaining.
Welcome to the wild west!

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October 17, 2009 by Marlene.

I feel like I’ve been dead to the blog world for a while and Ashley’s the only one really posting. Sorry guys.
Life has been same ol same ol for the most part. The first round of midterms are over and I enjoyed a small break from the craziness of study, eat, work and sleep and not much else. Now the second round is approaching so the pattern of life is coming back but hopefully this time won’t be quite so stressful.
As I said in an earlier post(or meant to if I didn’t) the grounds crew for our complex pruned our sun blocking tree letting me have some sunlight for my plants. I still need to move them around to keep them in the sun but it’s much better than nothing. I know it’s WAY too early but I planted some seeds in my little seed starter. I have some flowers and cilantro growing. I spilled mustard seeds from our spice rack in the soil so those are about to take over the universe. Seriously. They sprouted like the next day and I can’t bring myself to kill them. Maybe they’ll be pretty. I’ve never seen a mustard plant before. Yesterday I thought that maybe I got a plant from the Little Shop of Horrors. In the morning there was nothing in that spot and after they sat in the warm sun all day that evening I had two leaves thick and sizeable ready to eat whatever came too close in proximity. I had NO idea what it was and it was cool but weird. I dug down a little this morning and found that it’s a resurrected squash seed….so I’m not entirely sure how I’ll keep that alive over the winter so we’ll see how that goes.

Last night we watched the movie Chocolat and of course we had to have some air popped popcorn. Usually I’ll make one bowl for me and fill our colander for him but that was getting annoying and since we don’t have any big bowls I decided to improvise. Stephen has an empty drawer in his nightstand so I washed it out and put the popcorn in there instead. It was perfect! It fit everything and was soo easy to mix because of all the extra space. We will still look for a big mixing bowl but it looks like this just might end up being our popcorn bowl. Oh and by the way, yes we did have chocolate afterwards. A must for that movie.
It was a really good movie. I originally saw it in DC with my family years and years ago and we lamented not having chocolate afterwards but it was still a really good movie. It’s a movie about a woman and her daughter opening a chocolate shop in a super religious french town just before lent. It has a nice message and I definitely recommend it.

That’s just about everything exciting on this side of the island for us. Until next time.

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