Granner

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I've gotten behind.
This is a post about Granner, my grandma. She passed away a few weeks ago on 11/27.
She was 81 and lived a wonderful life full of family, friends, singing, big earrings, homemade pizza, and cheerfulness. She was always so happy to see each one of us, asked about our lives, and made us each feel special. My mom said that when they saw her over Thanksgiving (in the hospital) she commented about 5 times about how cute Lucy was in her Strawberry costume for halloween. She really treasured all her children, grandkids, and great grandkids.
Here's Granner with Lucy last summer at her 80th birthday party:
4 generations - my mom Cindy, me, Lucy, and Granner (last summer):One thing I'll always remember her for is that she taught me how to sew. When I was 10 she taught me and my sister Camille how to use a sewing machine. She took brown paper bags, drew straight lines on them, and had us sew back and forth as straight as we could. This has led to years of sewing projects, clothes, baby items, and even scrunchies (haah). Sewing is a skill I will always cherish and appreciate the talents she shared with me.

Granner had a great sense of humor and often laughed at herself. A couple years ago the men in the family had a beard-growing contest. When it came for them to model off the beards for judging, Granner came out in her own beard and joined the festivities. Funny lady:
It's sad to think that Granner won't be at my parent's house this Christmas and that there won't be any more "happy birthday" songs over the phone from her. Her health had been up and down for a few years. And when the end came, it was a little sudden. So we were sad to see her go, but we know she is in such a happy place now and so happy to be with my Grandpa again. He died young of a heart attack at 58. So she's spent many many years alone. How fun to be reunited with your sweetheart!

It's a little crazy that over the past month our weekends have been - Funeral, Funeral, and birth of our little boy. We really ignored doctors orders with all of our traveling. But I'm so glad we were able to be there for both funerals, to celebrate the lives of our grandparents.
For this service, both my parents and Aunt Karen gave wonderful talks sharing stories about Granner. Aunt Terry, her husband Eric, and daughter Debbie sang. And all the grand/great grandkids sang as well. It was a beautiful service.
Here we are with most of the siblings at the viewing:
Ava looked adorable in her little black and white dress. And I finally got a picture of Makenna! She takes the best close-up shots:
All of the Grandsons were pallbearers, except for Colin who's serving a mission right now in Belize:

Some impromtu singing at the gravesite:
My sister Camille and me:
The entire Suman family were together for the first time since Mark got married. So we got a family photo. I can't believe how big just the immediate family is getting!
And here are my favorite photos of the weekend.
Lucy and Casey at the cemetary:
Little Ava. Jazz hands! Sprockets? Spirit fingers? She's totally pro:
Gram (my mom) with Ava. I love this picture. It looks old-fashioned.
And finally, a shot of the three littlest Grandgirls. Makenna, Lucy, and Ava. The all had on blue:
It was an emotional, but beautiful weekend.
Bye Bye Granner. We'll love you forever!
(photo from my wedding day)

More pictures

Time for more Owen pics, right?
We've been staying at my mom's house for the week which has been a great help. My mom even volunteered to take Owen for a couple nights. Woohoo! Sleep!
And Lucy loves playing with her cousin Jeremy. This morning my mom was out doing yard work and she had the ladder out on the grass. Lucy-the-brave climbed on up and just kept going. We ran over to keep her from falling off and she was almost at the very tip top. It looked pretty funny:
Owen has been doing a TON of sleeping. I know that's what little babies do, but it seems like he should open his eyes at some point. And tonight he finally woke up for about a 1/2 hour. He was eyes open, and we got some cute close up shots:
Totally cross-eyed:
Finally, a picture with mom:
Grandpa Suman loves all his grandkids. He's always excited to hold them:
Back to sleep Owen...

Welcome Home Owen

Everyone's been asking for pictures. So here they are! Sorry for taking so long....I just wanted show good variety of the little guy.

Out little baby boy is here! Owen James Willard was born Friday 12/7 at 4:30pm. He was three weeks early and still weighed in at 7 lbs 11 oz (glad I didn't go full term!). The fun thing is...he was born on his little cousin Ava's birthday. She turned exactly 1 while he was being born.
Friday morning I went to the dr. for my normal check-up. I had been very uncomfortable the night before and thought I was having some contractions, but it's hard to tell since I've had braxton hicks the whole time. So I had him check to see if I was dilated and sure enough, I was at a 3 and the baby's head was super low and ready to come. So he decided to induce me and have the baby that day. I was able to go home first and get some stuff together and drop Lucy off with Casey's mom Linda and by noon I was hooked up the IV and machines.
Here I am, walking in to St. Joseph's:
4 1/2 hours later, our little Owen was here! The whole process was super fast. I had an epidural, but it started to wear off toward the end. Thinking that I'd be in labor for longer, I didn't push the button for an additional dosage because I didn't want that to wear off too. I was holding out so I'd have some comfort for the home stretch. But the nurse said, well, go ahead and push the button...it'll take 15 minutes for the pain killer to set-in. Just then she checked my progress and what do you know, I was at a 9 and 1/2. Um, we're having this baby now!

In came Dr. Schmones. He asked if I could feel my contractions (so I'd know when to push)...uh....sure can. Thankfully we only did three sets of pushes and he was out. But I now understand why women scream during labor. It hurt real bad and I felt like throwing up. I'm just very thankful I was never a pioneer woman, delivering a baby on the snowy plains.
Here we are after delivery with our nurse:
And one with Dr. Schmones. He is so great. We love him:
Both our parents came up to visit us. But Owen was in the nursery for a few hours being monitored, so they only got a peek of him through the window. Lucy came too and she was just the cutest thing, running into the room, so happy to see us:
We had fun visitors come see us over the next couple days. I should have taken pictures of everyone, but only got one of my sister Camille, her husband Bryan, son Jeremy, and his special "Honey Bear" (he's Jeremy's Show and Tell bear at school. So they took a picture of him, Owen, and Honey Bear so he can share the fun news with his class this week. Cute)
Thanks everyone for stopping by. It was so sweet of you and we loved the chit chat (along with the peanut butter cups, Chipotle, flowers and gifts. Woohoo!)

Owen is sweet little guy.
He looks so much like Lucy when she was born. We just keep having flashbacks to two years ago. Check out the resemblance. Here he is, little Owen!:
And here's Lucy at the same age:
He does all the normal baby stuff and is taking a snooze in his swing right now. Last night was a bit rough. But I'm hoping that tonight goes better and hallelujah for naps. It's been helpful having Lucy stay with Linda for a few days. We went out there last night to visit her and show off Owen to Casey's parents. So Lucy met her brother for the first time. It was funny coincidence, but their first encounter went like this:
"Lucy look, baby!" Lucy smiled and pointed, saying "baby".
"That's your little brother"....to which she replied, "uh oh".
So true. We all got a good laugh. She was okay when other people were holding him, but kinda freaked out when I had him. So it'll be an interesting next month (or year?) as it is for all families with multiple kids.

We're so blessed to have 2 healthy children and we already feel weird saying "our kids"....it's plural now! I'm a little freaked out to be in charge of both of them all day. But everyone else has figured it out. I'm sure I will too.

Welcome home Owen. We love you already!

The Day is Here!

We're off to the hospital. Our little boy is coming early and he's quite ready.
We'll post more info later!

The rest of Thanksgiving Weekend

We got back from St. George late Friday night, so we still had the whole rest of our weekend left! Saturday morning we walked to Vons for donuts (a new favorite weekend activity) and then I went downtown to Santee Alley to find a cute purse knock-off. Most of the purses I saw were cute, but still about $35-40 and they didn't have any cup or bottle holders (a necessity) on the outside. I walked around for 45 min, then went in one last shop, saw this fake D&G bag, WITH two outside pockets, and so....I bought it for only $20! woohoo. I told Casey it would be my birthday present. Here I am last Sunday using the new bag. And hey, you all wanted to see a good pregnant shot, right?
The other picture is my other birthday present. Casey and I have birthdays a week apart from each other. His is Nov 20th and I'm on the 26th. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of Casey with his birthday presents - spending the weekend playing his new video game (which actually doesn't work right. lame) OR trying to solve his Rubick's Cube. But I can show all the hard work he put in putting doors on my bookshelves (that was the present). I'm trying to get our house a little more organized before the baby comes. I've been wanting doors for our Billy bookcases (Ikea). Normally it's $60 for a set of doors. But we went there Saturday night and they were on sale for $10 each! So I we bought doors for our other bookshelf too. Woohoo!

And since we weren't planning to travel for Thanksgiving, I had already purchased a 12 lb turkey (that's the smallest you can find). It sat in our fridge for a week and on Sunday I roasted it up. We still had our own little turkey dinner. It all turned out yummy and we had all the fixings. Surprisingly, Casey's favorite were the sweet potatoes. I did half with marshmallows and half without. Both were yummy. You can see our messy kitchen/sewing room here (which is why I never have the missionaries over for dinner - I never want to clean off my table!). So I had Casey set up two TV trays, for our proper dinner. We felt like poor college students.
After dinner, we headed to Griffith Park for the Festival of Lights, put on by the LA DWP each year. Normally you can only drive through, but this year it was open to pedestrians only for the first week. We had so much fun and Lucy loved it! This light tunnel was the best.
There were all sorts of light fixtures made to look like LA landmarks: The Hollywood Bowl, LAX airport, City Hall. Very creative. And they had nice music playing along the way.
It was a fun fun weekend. We packed a lot in there. And it didn't stop....since Monday morning, Lucy and I headed down to my mom's house to celebrate my birthday and go out to lunch...but I'll write about the following week in my next post. And I'll end with a picture of Lucy eating a PB&J, sitting on her favorite trike. She can't reach the pedals yet.

Busy Weeks

We're coming down to the wire. Only a couple weeks left till our Christmas baby arrives! I haven't blogged in weeks. I've had much to write about, but too many sewing projects taking up my free time. So here we go, I'll try to keep it brief but informative, since so much has happened.

We had planned to stay in town for Thanksgiving weekend and have our own little dinner, just the three of us. Both our families were headed out of state and my doctor thought it wise for me to stay put, just in case. But life is funny. And instead, we spent the last two weekends traveling by car and plane to our grandparents funerals. Casey's grandpa, Earl Willard, passed away a couple weeks ago of old age. Here he is last year at Thanksgiving:
He was 94 and lived a good long and happy life. It was really amazing to see all the posterity in the room that came from him and Casey's grandmother. A rewarding treat to witness. The funeral was in St. George, where his grandparents have been living for years. So we jumped in our car Thanksgiving morning and made the 5 1/2 hour drive. We arrived just in time for the turkey meal. It's quite a reunion every year when all the Willards come together, since there are 7 brothers and 1 sister and each has a slew of kids of grandkids.
Here are Parry and 4 of his brothers, slicing up the 5 turkeys that were cooked over night in the pit at Uncle Bob's house.
Parry (Casey's dad) and his younger brother Bob (on the right).
Bob has a special octagonal-shaped room built on to his house for Thanksgiving gatherings. It's perfect and fits everyone (though we're pretty packed in there).
Lucy had fun playing with the other kids, with the hit of the weekend being....the marble rack. Here she is with Drew, cousin Ryan and Holly's little boy.
And she immediately liked Uncle Brady (all kids do). She wanted to copy him and laid down on the floor next to him.
Here's Aunt Lauren with cousin Jennie's baby. She was so sweet to spend so much time helping out, feeding her and holding her. I'm sure Jennie enjoyed the break. (no Lauren does not have a second head. That's just Kent)
Casey's parents hooked us up with the best place to stay for the weekend. Friends in their Simi Valley ward have a 2nd home in St. George, fully furnished and decorated and said they could stay there whenever they wanted. So we all jumped on that! There were 4 bedrooms, we had a king size bed, and Lucy even got her own room. It was like a huge hotel suite! Here we are hanging out in the house. Lucy had crazy static hair.
Casey and Linda (Casey's mom) tried to get Lucy to say "hello?"
Aunt Nicole and Lucy. Lucy had fun playing with her cousins Jacqueline and Jillian. We're glad Jeff and Nicole made it down for the eventful weekend!
Friday was the funeral service for Grandpa Willard. Though it was an emotional day for many, it was happy to know that he lived a great life. And he actually died in his sleep...fell asleep one night and never woke up. Sounds like a pleasant way to go. Here's a picture of Grandpa Willard when he was young and dapper. Good looking guy!
Since all the family was there, I took the opportunity to snap photos of all Casey's Uncles and Aunts. Here there are:
Brother, Uncle Sherm and wife, Aunt Donna / Wife, Aunt Hazel and brother, Uncle Paul
Wife, Aunt Penny and brother, Uncle Randy / Brother Uncle Kevin and wife, Aunt Vickie
(from left to right) Uncle Robert and Sister, Aunt Teresa / Aunt Mary and Brother, Uncle Cal / Aunt Karen and Brother, Uncle Bob.
And a cute shot of Lucy with the other Grandpa and Grandma Willard (Casey's parents).
Casey and Lucy with his Grandma, Ruth (who survives her husband at 92 years old). Lucy was not in the best mood. But Grandma Willard looked cute.
The service at the church was beautiful and full of great stories. When we drove to the grave-site, however, a strange dust storm started up and it was freezing outside. So we didn't stay there very long. Here's a shot of the brothers as pall-bearers.

And all the cold family, being blown away.
We all went back to Uncle Bob's house after for a nice dinner and then Casey and I got on the road. It was a very quick 2-day trip. But I'm so glad we were able to be there with all the family to celebrate Earl Willard's life. I know Casey was happy we didn't miss it as well.