An Emotional 2 Weeks. . .

I have thought a lot about whether I should post about the events that have affected me and my family these last couple of weeks.
They have been hard, emotional, but yet I feel like they have really stretched our family and made us look at life in a different way.
This blog is a fun way to document the fun and crazy things that happen to our family through out the years. As I think about the past few years, we have also grown so much as a family. Because these events are apart of our family's growing process I decided that it would be a good thing to also document the hard times as well.

In the last 2 weeks,
we had two big losses:
My Grandpa Merrill and a dear friend, Brittany.
So in their memory I want to share how they have influenced my life.

Our Dear Grandpa Merrill,
we love him SO VERY MUCH.
My Grandpa Wiest passed away when I was a young girl. My sweet Grandma Wiest was so lucky to have remarried to Merrill Bushnell. They were married for 11 years. Grandpa Merrill treated me as his own Grand daughter.
I always felt very special and loved by him.
He had such a great relationship with Andy. When we went away to medical school he had such great advice for him and us as a family, we still refer back to many things he told us.
Isaac and Seth adored him. He rocked both of my boys to sleep when they were little babies by singing them a Spanish Lullaby. It was such a sweet thing, and really made me feel that he really loved my boys has his own Great-Grandchildren.
His death came very quickly, and very unexpectedly.
He had a stroke early in the morning and passed away later that evening.
This was one of the hardest days for me. Because I live in Michigan, and my whole family is in Utah. I was not able to give him a hug and tell him goodbye. So hard.
Things I love about Grandpa Merrill:
his smile, his honesty, his practical jokes, his love for others, his love for his family, his love for the Savior and the LDS Church, his love for sports, sunsets, and traveling.
In his obituary it says that he was a man of Balance. I totally agree! He really was, what a great example he set for all who knew him.

My dear sweet friend Brittany passed away from a very long 5 1/2 year struggle with bone cancer.
Brittany and I were good friends in high school and had most of our Early Childhood Education classes together. We also had so much fun teaching preschool together at the Itty Bitty Bruin preschool.
After high school we ended up working together at TNI (Tahitian Noni International) in Provo, UT. We ended up working right next to each other, our cubicles or desks were connected. We had a lot of fun, and went to the cafeteria for lunch every once in a while together. As we worked together it was so fun to watch her go through her first pregnancy with her first little girl. We had a very fun baby shower, and I remember when she came back to work after her daughter's birth, she would tell us all about her sweet little girl. She loved so much being a mother.
After I had Isaac, I stopped working at TNI and that is when we moved to OHIO for medical school. I feel bad that I did not keep in great contact with her after that.
A year after we moved, Brittney found out she had bone cancer after the birth of her second daughter. She did go into remission and was blessed to have her third child, a little boy.
She suffered so much in these last 5 1/2 years, but yet was so strong and did all she possibly could to take advantage of her time with her family. She was such a wonderful mother!
She was so young and has such young children, It is hard to know why our Father in Heaven would cut her life so short.
She did leave an imprint on my life and I will always remember her for her strength, her bright smile, and her very Strong testimony in our Heavenly Father.

As I was grieving and trying to come to terms with these two events,
I had a Big event coming up.
As many of you know I am the Primary President in my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
In the fall we have all of the children sing songs they have learned and talk about what they have learned over the year in a formal program that is given in front of the whole congregation.
The theme this year was:

I am so grateful for this knowledge.
We will see our family and friends again.
Death is hard, but it is such a blessing in the grieving process to know that it is not good bye forever but yet. . .
until we met again.