Funeral and Fun

I hope the title of this post is not offensive to anyone--I know it is a bit of a dichotomy. However, those two words really sum up best the last several days. On Friday, July25th, we attended Grandpa Clark's funeral in Salt Lake City. All of my siblings and their spouses were there, along with my parents, from our branch of the family. It was a nice service which focused on celebrating Grandpa's 93+ years of life. I know it was somewhat disappointing to our family and others that the precious truths of the gospel were not mentioned, not even a church hymn was included, but that was Grandpa's wish. Grandpa was an inactive member of the Church for the latter part of his life. However, he always expressed his support and often seemed proud of his children's involvement in the Church and their dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've always loved Atticus Finch's line from To Kill a Mockingbird that basically says you can't judge another person until you've walked in their shoes. That pretty much sums up my feelings about Grandpa and his choices regarding his activity in the Church. I didn't get any pictures at the funeral, but I took a few at the graveside service in Bountiful.

Now, the second part of this post reflects all the FUN we've been having with some of our Clark and Brown cousins who are visiting from Arizona. The Browns have been staying with us and we've had so much fun talking, shopping, eating and talking some more. Saturday night, the whole extended Clark gang (except Dave, Robin and their kids) went up Provo Canyon for a picnic dinner. Tonight everyone's coming over for a BBQ and FHE. I'm going to be sad when they all leave in a few days. In the meantime, we are enjoying the lazy days of summer!