Sunday, June 20, 2010

Farewell Elder and Sister Springer!

One of the most important reasons we took this trip to Utah was to be there for my parents' mission farewell. There were so many things about the farewell that I never want to forget.
Seeing Luke and Ruthie hanging out at the after party...This still makes my heart smile :)
The Brockbank family,well, a few of them (Lori, Jillybean, Carlie). Some of my favorite people :)..
The Westbergs were in town! (Todd with Drew and Jared)

Hanging out with my mom and sis and taking maybe the only mother/daughters photo in the history of us being mother/daughters....

Seeing Parker interacting with the cousins he misses so so much...
(Cole, Parker)

um...not sure what to say about this except that Andy hasn't changed much since he was a 10 year old boy...

Getting our ENTIRE family together for a pic in front of my parent's house

And finishing off the evening with a game of "hot box". We used to play this on Sunday afternoons as a family in this exact same spot. Oh the memories...
(Parks, Hayden, Cole, Casey, Jared. I'm sure Lake was there somewhere)
On a more serious note, some things I really hope to remember for a long, long time, is *seeing the amount of support my parents received from friends, family, and ward members. I always knew they were awesome people, but it was so cool to see how many others have been influenced by my parents as well. *The musical number during sacrament meeting...they had the whole family, kids, grand kids, siblings, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, everyone there who is a family member in some way to my parents, get up and sing "I'll go where you want me to go". It was an emotional site to look around and see the choir seats overflowing with people my parents love and who love them, aunt Rose leading the music, aunt Gay playing the piano. It was amazing. *Hearing my parents bear testimony in Norwegian (their new native language) even though they have only been learning it for a very short time. *And finally, seeing my dad get emotional. In my 29 years of life, I can not recall one time where I have seen my dad get emotional. Not one. It was funny to look around at my siblings faces and see the same look of shock that I felt on my own. And the sweet part was he didn't get emotional when he talked about leaving all of us behind, it was when he talked about my mom.
Thanks mom and dad for your love, support and example. I want to be just like you when I grow up :)

3 comments:

EMILY =) said...

This post is so sweet. It really makes me sad though. All the memories!! And I miss your your/my parents!!!

Ali said...

Did you really post these last summer, or did you change the dates to look like you did? Because I sware I check your blog more often than this, and never saw them before! I'm in tears. Serious sobbing tears. Is it weird that I have so many memories of your house and was so sad when I heard it sold? The part about your dad getting emotional when talking about your mom was the sweetest thing ever. I'm so glad they are loving their mission. I wish my parents could do the same thing, because it's such a strong desire for my dad.

val said...

wahoo. so glad i clicked on your blog to see all these updates. i've been wondering about you. i don't even know when you are due.
your parents farewell sounded so wonderful and your trip...wow! we miss you guys!!