September

September was the strangest month I've ever experienced in my life. It started, obviously, with Keith's passing and funeral. I felt like I was walking around observing my broken life as an outsider. I responded to people normally, I think, but it was as if I was on auto-pilot while remaining detached most of the time.
I wanted to include some pictures of Keith's funeral. Our Funeral Director recommended that we take a picture of Cole and Ally with two special pairs of something. The kids would then place one in the casket with Keith and have one to keep for themselves. I thought this was a great idea but stewed all week over what the kids would use. I wanted it simple but somewhat meaningful. The night before the funeral, it all came together.

Cole is holding a pair of bears my mom gave me at my baby shower when I was expecting the boys. Cole remembered which one belonged to whom and was very careful in putting Keith's bear next to him.

Ally is holding Bernard and Bianca from The Rescuers. Anyone who spent time with Keith last Spring/Summer knows how much he loved that movie. One of my sisters and my mom found the pair of mice on Amazon last Summer and Keith got to enjoy them briefly before he passed.

Keith is buried in an LDS section of the cemetery next to the Zoo and Children's Museum. He is as close as a plot can be to the Portland Temple monument.

Anyone who attended Keith's viewing or burial, can attest to Cole's attentiveness to his brother. He rarely left Keith's side and would remind other children to be reverent. It was the sweetest and most heart-breaking thing I've witnessed. But I want Cole to know if he doesn't remember it, how he truly was his "brother's keeper" that day.

Cole and our beloved Bishop Eckhardt.

Aunt Darel and Cole at the luncheon.

Me and some of my besties from BYU. They were so sweet to come from  AZ and CA to support me.  15 years and 13 children later, it's pretty awesome to have such great friends.

Smartie Sibs

Uncle Shea and Ally

The day after Keith's funeral, we took our trailer (did I just say that? Yes, we co-own a trailer with Clint and Julie. My sisters will never let me live it down). Anyway, we hauled our trailer 10 hours in 2 days to a special fishing spot of Brent's. We camped, fished, hiked and just got away for several days. We were in the middle of nowhere. No cell phone service, no internet. Fishing on dry flies took enough concentration to help distract us anytime we were on the river.

This is the first picture we took as a family after Keith died. I remember it so well because I just hated taking it without Keith. Brent's parents came along for the first few days which was nice so they could help with the kids when we felt pretty unmotivated to do much of anything.
I appreciated such concentrated time with Cole and Ally. I had often felt bad about not spending the time with them that I would have liked to in recent months. We went on countless "witch hunts" around camp. Just this week they asked to go back so they could look for good witches and bad witches in the forest.
As a side note, I had Chelsea register me for the Boston Marathon while we were camping. I only had a short window to try and get in and of course, I had no internet. So, Chels registered me while we were camping and I found out the day we returned that my registration was accepted. I wasn't even sure I wanted to run it. My heart couldn't have cared less about a race at that time, but Brent strongly encouraged me to have Chels register for me while we were gone so I would have something to focus on throughout the Winter. He was right. I'm glad to have it to focus on right now even if I don't care about it as much as I once did.