A Trip Down Button Lane: Knotts Berry Farm, Grandma and More

Obviously I haven't been very good at updating our blog but life has been a little crazy. My sis-in-law took her kids to Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm and asked if Jason and I wanted to tag along. Jason wasn't to keen on going to Disneyland but he was game for Knotts. So we flew over on a Wednesday and met them at the park. It was such a beautiful day and we were able to walk on all the rides. We could even just stay on the ride if there weren't enough people in line to fill up the ride again. It was pretty sweet! As soon as we got there Sydney was stuck to my side and Gavin and Tanner were stuck to Jason and Ellie was just glad to be there! I am sure Jen and JL were so happy to be relieved of their parental duties for the day. It was really fun seeing how excited the kids got about all the rides. The park closed at six, which was actually perfect cause it started getting dark. So off to the hotel and then we left early on Thursday morning since Jason and I both had to go back to work.

I dropped him off and just went over to my parents house til it was time for me to go to work. Well I was in the middle of dying my sisters hair when Jason called me with some sad news. Grandma wasn't doing to good and we were told she wouldn't make it through the night. So I had to tell my mom how to finish dying my sisters hair and go pick up Jason to go visit Grandma. We spent most of the evening there and I called into work. We got the news the next day she had passed away early morning on Friday the 13th. It is always sad to lose a loved one and she surely will be missed. We will miss her cheerful smile and all her stories but we know she is so happy in heaven dancing with Grandpa again.

Since Grandma passed away, we were lucky to have one of our friends from Hawaii come out to attend the funeral. Walter was able to get work off, however, Alice had to stay home cause she couldn't get work off. We loved having Walter here and had so much fun at our cabin over the weekend. There was still over a foot of snow so we actually had to hike about 1/2 a mile to our cabin. When we got there it was dark so we were hikin in the dark. It wouldn't have been so bad but Jason was telling Walter about the bears and mountain lions up there so I was making sure we were having a loud conversation the whole time we were hikin' in and it didn't help that we saw huge mountain lion tracks just after we started hiking in. Even though I was out of breath I made sure there was some sort of noise that was being made. I just didn't want to have to show off my bear and mountain lion fighting skills! Ryan, Jared, Krista, Kenny and their kids as well as mom and dad Button all came up a little later. We had fun just playin' inside that night but we were all excited to go play out in the snow the next day. Jason bought some flint and steel fire starter things, ya know the kind that Bear Grylls and Survivor Man have, and wanted to have a contest as to who could start a fire first using only things found in the great outdoors and the fire starter. Jason and I were off to a great start but Kenny found some nice dry weeds that started on fire pretty quick so he was the champ. We then used that fire to cook us some good dutch oven lunch/dinner. While we were waiting for Linner to cook we had fun sledding down the road and having snowball fights. We only had one sled (since we had to hike in, we didn't want to take too much stuff) so Jason had the brilliant idea of getting the garbage can lids. Well, the snow got to soft in the afternoon so they didn't work to well. Ryan brought up his four-wheeler and was pullin' us around in the snow. After awhile we were all kind of hot (it was a really nice day) and so we decided since Walter is from Hawaii and they make shave ice, we would make Utah shave ice. It certainly wasn't the same but it was pretty good. We improvised and used snow and soda. How clever are we?! Ya, we pretty much rock! I love that we are all so close and have so much fun together. And I love love love the mountains and the snow and our beautiful cabin that we all built together. GOOD TIMES!