Funeral Planning in Missouri

 I left off on my last blog covering Friday, July 28th, getting news of my dad's death. That weekend we still had Mary's state lacrosse tournament. And life with four kids to resume. Saturday morning we had plans to meet a friend and her twin girls at the water park, it was a little chilly but we made it happen. 

I think these pics were from Friday night that a parent took. 

We finished up our rock tumbling. This was the set that came with the tumbler. 

Sunday, final set of lacrosse games

Mid-day I caught a one-way flight to Springfield (layover in Atlanta so about 8 hours of traveling) which left Kyle to parent solo for the remainder of the week. I flew down to plan the funeral and be with my brothers, Kyle was going to drive later in the week to be there for the funeral and then we would all drive back together the next weekend. 

While I was gone Thomas attended a birthday party at Mall of America

It was a hard week, cleaning out my dad's house, planning the funeral... I have to say planning a funeral is like planning a wedding but in a crunched amount of time and carrying the heavy weight of grief. It SUCKS!. Our first bit to tackle was re-homing dad's 21 finches! They had created quite the mess in his kitchen and was a big mouse attractant. We were able to get rid of them all, except for 2. The one gouldian finch and one of the 20 zebra finches (so he has company) which I ended up taking home and are now our pets. 

 

We did some funeral planning, crematory, bought a cross for dad's crash site. And had lunch with our mom.

 

Kyle back home, kids getting ice cream after Mary's end of year lacrosse celebration.

August 1st (whatever day that was, Tuesday maybe...) Josh and I went over to the track near the AirBnB we were staying at to get a run in. Felt good to sweat and work some grief out. 

Going through old photos. 

 

Checked out the space for the funeral: 

Then Wednesday was operation bird removal. 

We cleaned out one cage for me to keep and got my two birds transferred. Then the guys hauled the rest in two trips to the store that was taking them while I cleaned up that area they once lived. 

 

Thursday, we finally made the trek out to dad's crash site. It was about an hour and a half from Springfield, near Mount Grove

We attempted to go up to the nearby house for nails because we didn't have something to secure the cross. But they didn't have anything... this kid answered the door and gave us tiny tacks!! It was also about 100 degrees! I got SOOO many chiggers from this, but we took our time and got the cross set up like we wanted and my dad's best friend Dave who was riding with him that night was coming back anyway to get his sign put up and secured it for us. This was after Dave came out:

Dad's bike:

Kyle arrived later that day, Thursday. So Josh and I checked out of our AirBnB and moved to the hotel. His fiancé was also flying in that day but it was pretty late for her to get in. Funeral was set for Friday. Some more family flew in as well, cousin Patty from New York. 

Felt good to see my kids. 

All dressed up for dad's service:

Saturday, I don't even remember what we did. Kids went to bass pro to kill some time, we went out to eat with family. 

Sunday we had to leave SUPER early to get Isaac back to Minnesota for a football evaluation. 

Birds made it safely home. And we named them. Andy (the zebra finch - for Andy Reed the Chiefs head coach) and Ragnar (the colorful finch, for his purple and yellow like the Vikings)