Oregon

Oregon was great.  We got there Wednesday afternoon.  We stayed with Geoff's mom, along with Chris & Angela, and Nicholas.  They fed us amazingly!  Which, of course, we don't expect, but they did anyway.  I love that there is such a homey feel at Denise's house.  Her husband is a big time hunter and apparently has a whole gun cabinet (under lock and key) and showed us a bunch of his guns on the first night.  Geoff was fascinated.  Most of them were handguns, but he brought out one rifle:

That thing was heavy.  I thought they were sorta neat too, provided they weren't loaded.  Being around loaded guns makes me very nervous.  But anyway.

On Thursday, we slept until about 8:00, ate breakfast, and went to Walmart.  Came back to the house and took a nap.  Then we went to Grandma Lemmon's house.  Everyone was there going through the stuff in the house.  Cleaning it out, keeping mementos that they wanted, etc.  She had been in that house for almost 40 years, and apparently bottled everything, then kept it all for decades, with the insistence that you can eat anything if you just boil it for 20 minutes first.  Denise gave me a couple of pictures that had been on the walls, one of our family, and a matted photograph that she'd taken and won a prize for - it was very pretty.

Later on, Chris and Angela arrived.  Hanging out with them was fun.  I'm not sure if I'll ever see Angela again, which is very sad because I feel like I've just started getting to know her.  But anyway.  Geoff, Chris, and I went to see a movie that night.  We asked Denise if she'd teach us how to make her famous lemon pie.  There's a secret to the lemon pie.  All of her family has tried, and failed, to duplicate Denise's pie.  But, she willingly shared the secret with me! and Geoff of course.  I felt so special.  I have sworn never to divulge the secret.  We made the pie again last night and it turned out good!

Friday was the funeral.  Everyone there wore pink shirts, ties, and/or pink ribbon pins.  Nicholas thought his outfit made him look like the mafia: (father and son)

It was such a beautiful service, with beautiful musical numbers and talks.  I didn't take the camera with me to the funeral, but the flower display was gorgeous too.  We went to the cemetary for the final remarks.  Then we went back to the church for a lovely dinner provided by the relief society. 

There was a guy at the service named Mike McGinty, who was in one of Grandma Lemmon's kids' ward in Idaho.  Joe (the kid) suggested that Mike McGinty contact his mother, who has geneology records going back to the year 3 in some lines.  It turns out, that he is a cousin of Grandma Lemmon, and never knew anything about his family until he got to know Grandma Lemmon.  She gave him a charge to continue following the family lines, and boy was he enthusiastic.  Very, very excited, and very grateful to have met the family.  I thought it took a lot of courage for him to come to the funeral where no one knew him, but he was a nice fellow.  It's pretty amazing, I think.  That such a random connection would be made, but an important one at that.  And he was clearly bitten by the geneology bug.

Well, after we had eaten, we said our goodbyes, picked up our stuff at the house, and headed back home again.  I slept most of the way home, and we got home around 3:30 a.m. and went straight to bed.  I noticed sometime on the drive home that I had a rash on my upper shoulders.  By the next morning it had spread all up my neck and face.  I don't know what it is!  The only thing new that I ate was Elk steak.  Maybe it was the laundry detergent used on the sheets or something, I don't know?  Gross though.  But I am glad that I could count on Geoff to drive most of the way.  When it's that late, I don't necessarily trust myself all that much, even if I don't feel tired.  He's a sweetie.