A New Member of the Club

...which club? The "Grandma Club"!

On Dec. 30, 2009 I became a grandmother for the first time! Jay William Barnes entered the world at 2:22 am, weighing in at 7 lbs 4 oz.

Below is the first picture I saw of Jay. It came over on my cell phone (via text) from my son-in-law. It was love at first sight! (check out that blonde hair!)

Jay was born a few weeks early. He had a little bit of a rough start and had to be under the bili lights in the NICU. I called them his "disco dancing" lights!

Daughter #1 and her Sweetheart, Jay's parents, live in Utah, near the Idaho border. As soon as we heard the great news that our grandbaby had arrived, we jumped into our car and drove as quickly as we could. 12 hours later...the picture below is my husband meeting his grandson for the first time. Notice Jay holding is grandpa's finger!

Here he is looking at his mom. "Are you my mother?"

Two new happy parents with their little baby, ready to leave the hospital.

I returned to Utah 3 weeks later to spend a week with the little family. Here they are with Jay. Look how much he's already grown!

He's now almost a month and half old! He weighs over 11 lbs! (yes, I'm one of those grandma's, who shows everyone pictures of the cutest baby ever! I show everyone...the people at the grocery store, the bank tellers, the ladies at the quilt shops...everyone!

And what kind of quilt did his grandma make for him? A fleece blanket to keep him warm up there in the snow. I chose a fleece with surfboards...to remind him of his grandma down here in sunny California!

Now back to quilting! Lots of little boy quilts to make for my grandson!

New Years Eve Memories

What did you do for New Year's Eve? Me, I just stayed home and watched the Twilight Zone Marathon.

I had a touch of the flu. That's me peaking in the window at William Shatner! (my favorite Twilight Zone episode!) Actually, I felt as bad as that guy looks! So my New Year's Eve was pretty uneventful...but relaxing.

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I recalled past New Year's Eve celebrations. One of my favorites was when I was 20. I was all alone for New Year's at BYU. My roommates were still home in California. I had to get back to Utah to work right after Christmas because I had a job at the University Mall...selling shoes at Thom McAn. (do they even exist anymore?) Just before closing an old friend came by and invited me to go with him to Park City for New Years Eve. He worked at one of the ski lodges there. I said "Sure!" I was grateful not to have to spend the evening alone.

I stayed in the employee dorms of the ski lodge and had a blast! Skiing, riding the tram, goofing around. Such fun! At midnight a trail of skiiers holding torches skiied down one of the slopes. It was an awesome sight.

(this isn't a picture of the night I was there...but I found a picture that looked just like it!)

I'll never forget that. Those were the days I didn't have a care in the world. Oh, to be that young again!

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Another New Year's Eve memory. I was 21 living in Spain, serving an LDS mission.

In Spain they have a tradition at New Year's Eve (or Nochevieja) as the countdown to midnight begins, you eat 12 grapes, one on each chime of the clock. I was with a favorite family celebrating New Years in Jaen. The family gave us all 12 grapes to follow tradition.

Eating the grapes was very funny because it's impossible to finish eating the grapes by the time the clock finishes chiming. We all laughed at each other with our cheeks full of grapes. Pretty soon we had a big mess of grape juice all over us! I remember they told us that this tradition started in Spain because one year there was huge grape harvest and the king of Spain decided to give grapes to everyone to eat on New Year's Eve. Ingenious!

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And now my least favorite New Year's Eve memory. It was 1987. Daughter #2 was 9 months old. She was sick with a stomach virus and bronchitis and was in the hospital for 5 days. It was a very stressful time for our family as you can imagine. She had to be kept in a mist tent the entire time for the bronchitis and had an IV to replenish her fluids. She was terribly dehydrated and the only place the doctors could find a good vein for the IV in her in her foot! Poor little thing. The nurses set up a bed for me in her hospital room. The only bed available at that time was a small juvenile size bed. But I didn't care. I slept there next to my little baby each night she was in the hospital. The first night there in the hospital was New Year's Eve. I stayed up to watch Dick Clark's countdown. As the New Year began I turned to my little girl--asleep in the mist tent, contected to machines and tubes--and said outloud, "Happy New Year Stacy!" I'll never forget that.

A few weeks later, she was back to her old self. As you can see in the picture above, she was once again healthy and happy!

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And in closing...I hope your New Year's Eve memories were good ones.

Perhaps you saw...

wait for it...

Pink Elephants!

This darling baby quilt is similar to another elephant quilt I did for a lady back in Oct. I lightly quilted it with a medium meander throughout. I used a pantograph pattern in the border called, "Sydney."

The back was a lovely minkie fabric. It was soft and cuddly. I know the little girl who received this for Christmas loved it!

Looking for Mary Jane

To continue yesterday's story...

With today's technology, there is so much family history information at your finger tips. With just a click of a mouse, you can find all kinds of stuff.
The LDS Church FamilySearch.org website is a great source and it's free! Another one I use, which requires an account is Ancestry.com. And Utah is what I call the 'genealogy capitol of the world.' So where was Mary Jane?

Did you know that if you want to find just about any grave in Utah, you can search here: Utah State Burials. Now Richmond, Utah is not the smallest town in Utah, but their cemetery records are NOT on that search engine! Our family records indicate that Mary Jane Brower was buried in Richmond, Utah, but I wanted to verify it.

Well, wouldn't you know it? The beginning of Aug. I knew I was going to be in Logan, Utah with Daughter #1 at her Sweetheart's Family Reunion. And wouldn't you know it, Richmond, Utah is just a few miles north of Logan. I asked Daughter #1 if she would take me up to Richmond to go hunting for Mary Jane's headstone in the cemetery. Daughter #1 was a good sport about it. (believe me, this wasn't the first time I've asked one of my kids to go hunting in a cemetery!)
Richmond is a small, quiet town. Here are some pictures I took as we drove around looking for the cemetery. By the way, a drive around town takes about 5 minutes!Check out the picture below. I thought this was so funny! I thought this was someone's pet. It's a sheep! A sheep was tied up in someone's front yard! No need to get out the lawnmower!

We finally found the cemetery! We got there and walked all around that cemetery for an hour and never found Mary Jane's headstone. Daughter #1 and I searched and searched. Below is Daughter #1 doing her "detective work." (I think she was imagining she was on CSI!)We talked to a gardener who said the only index and map of the cemetery was at the City Hall. Wouldn't you know it? They were closed! When I got home, I did more research on the city of Richmond, Utah. I also searched the Internet for any more records on the Brower family. Then I called the Richmond City Hall and asked if they could direct me to website with an index of their cemetery records.

"Sorry," the lady said. "We're not on the Internet."

Then I asked, "So could you email me an index?"

"Sorry," the lady said again." "We can't do that. We don't really have a list. Our cemetery records are on index cards."

She asked who I was looking for and she could look it up. I said, "Thanks anyway. The next time I'm up there, I'm coming in to your office. What are your hours?"

I couldn't believe it. A card catalog? What? Wasn't this Utah? Wasn't this the "genealogy capitol of the world?" Ok, below is not a picture of the lady at City Hall. But it's who I imagined I was talking to!

In my research about Richmond, Utah, I learned that they had a 5.7 earthquake there in 1962 that caused some extensive damage. Check out this picture below. I found it in a news article about that earthquake. Look what happened to their cemetery! Could Mary Jane's headstone be one of those that's toppled over? I made another phone call to the woman at City Hall. (I think she may be their only employee.) I asked her if the headstones were repaired after their 1962 earthquake.

She said, "Oh, no...well, I hate to tell you, but the broken headstones are still stored in a shed."

Another shock! These people's headstones have been stored in a shed since 1962!

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My next trip to Utah was over Labor Day weekend to attend a wedding in Twin Falls, Idaho. I flew to Salt Lake City, then stayed at Daughter #1's house. We had one morning free before we took off to Twin Falls, so I begged Daughter #1 to take me back to Richmond to visit the City Hall. The woman at the City Hall didn't look at all like I imagined. She was actually quite young and very nice and helpful. She looked up Mary Jane's records and told us where the headstone was located. Somehow we missed it. Isn't it beautiful? "Mary Jane H. Brower 1835-1915, Age 80 years."

Perhaps we were meant to miss it. After all, I would have never discovered more about her life. And by the way, I have contacted the Utah State History website and have asked them to contact Richmond, Utah and encourage them to get their records online! I'm also working on who to talk to about getting those headstones repaired too!

Look at what else I found. I found a picture of "Brother Brower." I will call him Brother Brower, too...just like Mary Jane did.

Thank you Daughter #1 for your help! You really were a great help. After all, it's your heritage!
Tomorrow...a picture of one of the most beautiful quilts. Time to put the genealogy away and get back to work.

Two Mysteries Solved

Have you ever done a mystery quilt? Well, here's one for you to enjoy. I quilted it for a lady who loved the fish fabric and wanted to incorporate into the quilt. I think this quilt turned out lovely.
Although afterwards, I thought, maybe I should have quilted a fish or two on it.
And here's a family history mystery I've been working on. It's about a woman in my husband's line named Mary Jane Humphreys. She was born in 1835 in Canada and as a young girl joined the Mormon church with her family. They traveled to across the border to the U.S. and lived in Nauvoo, IL. There, her parents died, leaving her and her sisters and a brother as orphans. She even knew Joseph Smith and family stories say that she told her grandchildren that he would push her and her sisters in a swing in Nauvoo.

Somehow the little girls made it to the Salt Lake valley. Their brother died along the trail. My husband's line actually comes through her sister Sarah Maria. However, I've been working on compiling records and pictures of the entire Humphreys family.

In 1854 Mary Jane became the sixth wife of Ariah Coats Brower. Her older sister Sarah Maria lived in Nephi, Utah, married to Andrew Love. My records indicate that Mary Jane and her large family lived in a home in Richmond, Utah until her death in 1915. In a life sketch I found about her I read the following...

"Mary Jane spoke of her husband as 'Brother Brower' and once asked by her granddaughter, 'Why do you call him by his first name, didn't you love him?' She told her, 'I respected Brother Brower, but I never knew love until my children were born and they are my love.' "

This just broke my heart and I have been searching for Mary Jane (at least her headstone) for quite sometime now. Last month I went to Richmond, Utah and I finally found Mary Jane's headstone. I thought it would be an easy task, but as you'll find out next time, it was harder than I thought.

Mary Jane Humphreys Brower, in her later years.
Her sister, Sarah Maria Humphreys Love, below, is my husband's great-great grandmother. Note: Both these women have such frowns. I've learned they had such hard lives, no wonder they frowned.

The "Pioneer Life" in 2008: Part One

As I was working on this quilt... I was reminded of my last trip to Utah where I visited Daughter #1. I saw many old churches, barns, historic homes, etc.
...much like the things in this quilt.Living in a small town in Utah, I tell Daughter #1 that she's living the "pioneer life." Once raised in Orange County, California...she surfed at the beach, played water polo and hung out with friends at the local mall. Her life is quite different now. But it made me think that perhaps she sees many of the beauties her pioneer ancestors probably saw. I'm sure they saw barns...kind of like these...

I'm sure their neighbors were getting ready for the local rodeo...much like this guy...

I'm sure there were church buildings all around. In fact this one was probably built by the pioneers themselves! Wait a minute! Take a closer look in the front of this church! Did the pioneers see those too?

It's a wild turkey with her baby chicks! I know Daughter #1 never saw those in Orange County!

Perhaps the pioneers enjoyed beautiful sunsets like this...Or this...
Don't get me wrong! We have beautiful sunsets too, here in Orange County. Many of our sunsets have beautiful vibrant colors created by smog and marine layer. There's nothing quite like them!After the sun goes down back home in Orange County, Daughter #1 would enjoy the fireworks of Disneyland too. Maybe she can look at a sunset like this and reminisce about those days. Can you believe the colors?
I'm sure the pioneers had to wait for the cattle to get out of the road! Just like this...

I'm sure the pioneers enjoyed views of the fields like this. This is how it looks along the highway Daughter #1 drives along to work each day.
I'm sure the pioneers had to wait for hay hauling 'wagons' to get out of the way as they were trying to take pictures. "Hey, buddy, I'm taking pictures here!"
There, that's better... Was this where the pioneers did their banking? No ATMs at this bank. It must be a pioneer bank!

And did a pioneer paint the side of this building below? "U and I," I thought that was so cute. I thought it meant "you" and "I"...but they tell me it means Utah and Idaho and it was this company that processed sugar from sugar beets!

And I'm sure the pioneers attended a church like this. They called it a 'tabernacle.' I thought it was just beautiful. Maybe on my next trip, they'll let me go in and see the inside.

Did the pioneers have golden arches on their McDonald's restaurants? Probably not, but Daughter #1 does!

And is this what the pioneers would have seen if Daugther #1 and her crazy mom lived back then? Maybe so...

Or not! Here we are dressed appropriately in our pioneer bonnets...in COLOR!Check my blog again for more on the "Pioneer Life" in 2008! There's more to share!