Anna's 5th Birthday

Our Anna Lucia turned 5 this past Sunday, we are thankful to God for her precious gift of life to us.  She is all girl and yet is tough enough to hang with her three brothers, full of energy, full of talking,
full of imagination and great joy. Here are some pictures from her birthday festivities that happened to span over three days here(not intentionally). We had a party for her on Saturday and was a treat to have Uncle Herschel and Grandma Donna here to help decorate and get things ready. 

Anna came down dressed as mama and papa, my hat Travis's shirt and shoes.

Splash party in the backyard!!

Getting ready to play a game!

Throwing balloons at their parents, Anna seemed ready to go.

Her pool cake

Blowing out the candle

Birthday girl!

Our traditional chocolate chip pancake breakfast had to wait until Monday,

And they were worth the wait!!

Vacation in Tennessee

We left from Florida to an already planned trip to spend a week in Tennessee with Travis' family, so we have had some good time in the car:)  Thankfully the kids travel great for their ages.  This was tiring after having just left all of the emotional hardness of Florida, but it was a fun time!  See the pictures below and
enjoy!

All the cousins at Uncle Steve's friends amazing pool!  Yes Anna is the only girl:)

Sammy loved this little hottub/small pool, the dogs he liked okay.

The kids at Cades Cove in one of the old cabins.

Cades Cove fence-We saw one deer running and two bear cubs!

Anna in one of the big fields.

Sammy trying to follow his siblings to climb this tree.

Isaiah climbed really high and then caught the branch and swung down, it was pretty cool.

Picnic in the woods, keeping our eyes out for bears.

Knoxville zoo, had to get a picture of the GATOR!

Camel rides, what fun.

Giraffe was pretty close though hard to tell in pic.

We had a great time with Granna and Grandpa at their house, playing with all their toys. 

Questions & Reflections by the kids

As our previous post stated we have had opportunities to talk to our children about death, and now more personally since grandma died.  It has been a good time of sharing with them, of hearing their little hearts and thoughts in all this.  Here are a couple of their words:

1.  One of our kids at the funeral, asked if he could see Grandma, I said sure look up at the slideshow and the pictures all around, he said no I want to see her and pointed to her coffin which was a closed casket.  So he wanted to see her body, I think he was very curious at these events.

2.  Our children have been praying for grandma since her death:
Lord please help grandma to feel better in heaven.
Lord please help grandma to have fun in heaven.
Lord please help grandma to not miss us in heaven.
Lord help grandma to have good friends in heaven.

3.  One asked if we should stop praying for grandma because she no longer exists.
4.  One asked if God likes it when people die and go to heaven..and went on to say it doesn't make sense if he is because its sad.

Well I won't tell you all of our responses but as you can see we have a lot of questions to answer and not all of them are easy.

Grandma

Well it's been a long month in the Williams home, with two trips for me to Florida due to my grandmother's illness, which meant Travis being here with the kids.  He did an amazing job.   In the end my  grandma passed from this life to be with Jesus on July 4th.  This was a very long 3 weeks for our family, a reminder of a lot of things about life, death, family and God over all of them. 

My grandma lived a long 89 years of life, here is an article the local paper wrote about her:

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/jul/07/anthony-westbury-legendary-leader-of-the-pack-a/

Grandma holding Sophia when she was a baby, she LOVED to hold her great-grandkids!

Our family at the beach last year in Sarasota with grandma.

Grandma with Aunt Beth.

I am proud that she was my grandma, she taught me a lot of things that at the time I probably took for granted.  At her funeral my brother shared some light thoughts on all she taught and I thought it was helpful to laugh and be thankful so here are some of those things he shared:

1.)  Grandma taught us how to clean, scale and cut off fish heads-you've heard this before.
2.)  She taught us that if you weren't catching fish you weren't tilting your head the right way.
3.)  She taught us you were always welcome at the dinner table, but you always had to wear a shirt, (think this is more applicable to the males-thus my brother sharing:)
4.)  There is no such thing as a bad cookie, that is so true, she loved sweets and would eat any cookie around.
5.)  The F word...which was fiddle..de...de..., she would say this if a fish got a way, or if something happened she wasn't expecting. 

  Here is a picture (mainly for Lorraine) of the pallbearers, they were all staff of the boy scouts. 

It was also fitting that the day of her burial was the last US launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis, a big news deal, many were able to see the trail of smoke of the shuttle just after the graveside service.