Thursday, March 27, 2008

Family Mishaps

So, I guess everyone has heard about Sammy's little mishap the other day with his finger and the Frisbee. I know some of you are curious, so if you want to see what the finger in question looked like before it got fixed, go here. It's kind-of gross, so don't click the link if you don't want to see it. If you do, you've been warned.
I think this recent event deserves special distinction. In my opinion, Sammy receives the dubious award of being the most likely to break something (wrists, fingers, spleens, etc.). Although, I think David is a close second--I don't know too many people who break their leg by jumping over some snow.
Anyway, I really hope your finger heals soon, Sam, and you don't need surgery on it. In the meantime, everyone stay away from ill-willed Frisbees and their tendency to mangle random appendages.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Do you feel older?

I just returned from Aunt Mame's funeral, and it was a very nice meeting. I was happy to see her one more time--she looked so beautiful. The last time I saw her alive was on her 94th birthday--February 11th--when I took Grandma into the rest home to see her. I guess that was about the last good day she had, and she has just kind-of gone downhill since then. Anyway, she always looked so beautiful to me, and when I went to visit her before Christmas (before she had a stroke) she told me why. She put curlers and pin-curls in her hair every night of her life, and slept on them! She did that her whole life until just before Christmas. I don't know of anyone in this day and age who would be willing to do that!

It was a joyful thought to imagine that all of my Great-grandparents' children are back with them again. She was the last of Robert and Lucy Turner's children to die, and now that generation is gone. So that means that all of us are bumped up a generation. If she was the first generation, then Grandma Anderson was the second generation, I was the third generation, and my children were the fourth generation. Now, all of a sudden, we are all bumped up. We all just got a little older today!

We mustn't ever forget our wonderful Turner heritage--how my Great-great-grandparents accepted the gospel and joined the Church, how they left their beloved England to gather with the Saints in Zion, how they unselfishly stayed behind in the midwest helping other Saints prepare to make the journey to Utah, how they eventually made it here themselves, how they accepted Brigham Young's call to go to Southern Utah (and I just know that they were acquainted with the Oxborrow family down there!), how they came back up to Salt Lake County and helped to settle Bluffdale, how William accepted the invitation to take another wife so that their family could have children, how those two mothers loved and cared for and raised two sons, how those two Turner brothers married two Crump sisters from Herriman and lived side by side the rest of their lives, how one family had 12 children and the other family had one but they still shared and loved one another just like one big family, how they taught their posterity to love the gospel and love one another and be stalwart in building the Kingdom, and how we have had Turner reunions all these years to remember them and continue to carry on their legacy of love. It is also a legacy of faithfulness, sacrifice, hard work, leadership, success, happiness, family, etc. etc. We must never let this legacy die.