A sweet angel

Our cute Grandma Sharon passed away last night.  She was the most amazing person.  So kind, fun and beautiful all the time.  About 10 years ago when we lost Grandpa Dick the Alzheimer's disease set in with grandma.  The poor girl has been fighting it for 10 years.  But no alone.  She had her 4 kids love her unconditionally clear to the end and her 17 grand children who wouldn't let a day go by without their grandma.  It was a hard battle for her towards the end.  She made many friends along the way and gave us many laughs to remember her by... so i wanted to jot down some memories I have of my wonderful Sharon Perry that I hold close to my heart. 

Dear Big Red,
Grandma I wish you didn't leave us.  We love you too much! But you were in so much pain all the time and I know that with out your memory you were so frustrated with life. So at the same time of being sad and angry that you had to leave, we are all so happy that you are healthy again and you can remember and that you are no longer suffering.  You wanted more but you were trapped.  Today I wanted to write you a letter to reminisce of all the great times you brought your family.

Red we couldn't have had a more fun Christmas if it weren't for you.  You and Tricky made it the funnest and biggest production of the year.  Because of you and your fun traditions and love for partying, the Rasmussen Christmas Eve party will continue for years.  You made every Easter so mysterious!  We all got rich off of the nickles you would tape on the back of every candy and love to search high and low through Brookstone to find our Easter Bunny presents.  I'll never forget when you hid mine in the window well!

I wanted to let you know how much I loved you and loved the tenderness of your heart.  In the time I knew my Grandma I never heard you yell at anyone.  You were too happy.  You had no reason to be mad at any one.  I loved that you were always game to go on trips.  California has been a fun tradition yet again started with you. We will miss seeing that big red hair at the beach and you thinking you could handle the California waves.  Ha ha the image of big red's Big Hair just drenched will  never leave any of our minds.  The cabin will not be the same with out you.  It will feel void of its fun/loving Sharon.  But we will still go up every summer and winter to be there as a family remembering the times we had with you.  And I'm sure you'll be sitting with us with Tricky and your Coca cola. 

These are some funny traits about you that I will never forget:

• You never left the house with out your "eyes on"..... meaning mascara and blue eye shadow
• You always always ALWAYS had your red lipstick on.  Even until you left us.
• That red hair.... oh what more can we say about big red's red hair.
• You never went without a toothpick
• You loved the Mormon Tab
• You always had to have either a Coke or a Dr. Pepper
• When your disease was bad, I spent the night with you.  I got scared of the big empty house we were in and asked if I could sleep with you, this is the answer i got, "Well sure honey......... (giggles) Ya big baby!"
• When I asked you what granddaughter I was you told me, "Oh.... i know... the pretty one" with a big smile on your face because we both knew you had forgotten.

Grandma Sharon I will miss you so much... it got hard near the end but I am so happy you are with your love.  Grandpa has waited a long long time to have his Sharon back. Your family that is still left behind will remember all the fun times we had with you over the years.  Heaven has gained quite the angel.  I love you and look forward to when we can all be together again. 

Love,
Whitney

It was very hard to be in the room as my last grandparent passed away.  We all watched her struggle for so long and the past 5 months were so hard on her.  She deserved more than to suffer.  Now she is happy, she has her memory back, she is with her love and she can watch her family grow from heaven.  I can only imagine the reunion between my grandma and her husband, her sister in law, her dad who she lost at 8 and her own mom.  Not to mention the little muts she loved so much.  She was truly a party animal so I'm sure heaven is quite the party with her now. 

I will never forget that room at Sunrise Assisted Living.  It was so full of the spirit.  I can't imagine not knowing the Plan of Salvation and loosing a loved one like we did last night.  It would be so much harder! I will never, never forget the image of my suffering Grandma getting a blessing from Tyler and my own husband as she was trying to go to her Father in Heaven.  Thinking of it now brings tears to my eyes.  The love I felt for Davis was imeasurable, the grateful feeing for the priesthood was unreal and the love I felt for my Grandma was so strong.  I will never forget that moment. 

Some old and Some new

On Aug. 6 which is a Saturday, I woke up to Davis outside cleaning my Altima.  My car was getting older and having more miles put on it and we decided to sell it awhile ago but never got around to doing it.  So Davis woke up early to get it super clean so we could at least take pictures to have for when we put it on ksl.  Well in the mean time he had found a little truck he wanted to buy to replace the Altima.  So he cleaned my car and then drove to Spanish Fork to buy this beauty of a truck.  While he was gone I figured I'd start the ad on ksl to sell my car.  I was in the middle of uplaoding my 4th of 9 pictures for the car when a guy called me to come look at it.  I was totally shocked that it was even on the internet since I hadn't even finished uploading pictures.  The guy came and looked at it and said well I know you are asking $3000 for it but I will go and get cash right now and  pay you $2,900.  I told him to go and get the cash and then come back.  I called Davis freaking out! He was laughing so hard and was also schocked that I had sold my car with in the 2 ish hours of him being gone to buy another car! What! How does that happen? We were so blessed to not only sell my car but to get rid of it so quickly and get that much out of it.  My mom and dad thought  I'd only get $1000 for it.  My sweet sister Ash thought I had only gotten $1500.  No faith in the old Brown bee bee! So here our new Ride! Watch out her beauty might make you jealous!

Yes yes it has a shell.  You can't tell but it doesn't even match... its gray.  Yep a true beauty!

The next week we had planned a Harley trip with Warnocks.  Every year there is an event called Sturgis at Mount Rushmore where all the hardest biker dudes basically ride through there the entire week.  Super cool.  Like all the rider gangs come and tons of police force are there to make sure its all safe and kind between people.  But the trip got rescheduled to next year.  So since we both had already taken work off we planned a married trip. 

I chose to go to Cali and Davis just said ok! Such a nice guy :)  I love San Diego because my family has a tradition of going there every other year and staying at the Catamaran Resort.  It is so much fun because it is right across the beach in Mission Valley and has beautiful grounds.  Well we are poor newlyweds so we stayed at a La Quinta like 5 minutes away from the Catamaran.  So it was still so awesome.  We beached it every day, went to the Zoo, went to the temple which is gorgeous and shopped until we dropped!  I have Meg and Callie for Christmas so they really benefited from this shopping trip.