Dashing Through the Snow! Oops, Wrong Holiday.

The view from our front deck this morning.

My extended family has a longstanding tradition of visiting ancestor's graves in the valley on this holiday. Then we gather at a park for a picnic lunch. As new generations have come along they have joined in. We visit three of the many cemeteries in the valley and this year two of them had at least three inches of heavy, wet snow. That has never happened as far back as my father's 87 years can recall. We built snowmen on some of the graves we were visiting and felt like maybe we should have sung some Christmas carols. Then we skipped the park and gathered at our house for lunch--it was raining and windy by that time. We had 30 loved ones visiting and munching. It was a wonderful time.

My Great-Great Grandma Rebecca's grave. She died just a couple of weeks after coming west from Tennessee.

My nephew is helping me add features to the snowman on my Great-great grandpa Henry's grave.

 Due to my friend's passing and funeral I haven't had time to sew the past few days. I visited her grave this afternoon. I didn't get to go after the funeral because I was in charge of the lunch for the family after the graveside service, so I stayed at the church to get that set up. I was also an honorary pall bearer. My friend said she wanted those who had born her up in this life to bear her out of it. Her daughters and nieces were the pall bearers and her friends were honorary pall bearers.

DH and I did finish creating my design wall this evening. I need to get quilting now and have something to show on it soon.

'Til next time, from the little mountain valley where the sagebrush grows,

Janet O.