Fantasia

Fantasia is my favorite movie. It has been one of my favorites since I was a kid, and a lot of that has to do with my grandpa. Earlier this semester I really thought about why I love the movie so much, and I turned it into one of my poems for class, which I am sharing here.

Fantasia 

Before I was born,
My grandpa was many things.
A sailor in the Navy,
A teacher, mail carrier, father. 

By the time I came around,
He was just my grandpa.
He didn’t do much,
Except watch basketball and opera.
I wasn’t interested in either. 

One day he bought a video.
An animated film.
Something my grandparents never had.
This was the only one he’d ever buy.
Fantasia. 

Grandpa got the movie for its artistic merit,
Mainly the classical music,
I loved it for the dinosaurs. 

My grandpa didn’t do much with us,
He had heart problems,
He couldn’t play like other grandparents.
But we did watch Fantasia. 

I’m not sure how much of an impression,
It made on my brothers,
But Fantasia sure left an impression on me. 

It is the reason I love animation,
It is the reason I love classical music,
It’s probably even the reason I love dinosaurs. 

I would go so far to say,
Fantasia is one of the things,
That made me, me. 

Grandpa died earlier this year.
He’d been sick awhile,
So it wasn’t a shock.
It was still sad though. 

Last week grandma asked me,
If there was anything I wanted,
Something to remember grandpa by.
I didn’t even have to think about it.
There was just one thing that grandpa left,
That I knew I’d want. 

A Strange (But Really Cool) Coincidence

Yesterday I put together post about my Grandpa Bell's funeral. I edited the photos in the afternoon, wrote it that evening, and put it all together last night. I put it up on the blog and scheduled the post for this morning on Facebook and then went to sleep.

Then this morning I woke up to this picture in my Timehop.

So, it might seem like I did this on purpose, but I didn't! Completely by coincidence I posted my blog post, including this same picture, exactly one year after Grandpa's 90th birthday party.

Now, I'm not one of those people who believes that this was a sign that Grandpa is looking down from heaven and sending me a message or whatever, but it was such a cool, strange coincidence that I thought it was worth posting about. :)

Grandpa Bell

As most of you know, my Grandpa Bell died last month. Sadly it was the same day as Jacob's wedding. We found out as we left the reception. I didn't want to mention that in the post about the wedding, but thought I should mention it here. We knew it was coming, but it was still a shock.

As funerals tend to do, we had a ton of family brought together that week. I took a bunch of pictures before and after the funeral, so I wanted to share them here. Before I do that though, I did want to share a couple of the pictures I took at Grandpa's 90th birthday party last year. All his kids made it down for that special occasion, and we had to photograph it. This was my best picture from the day.

My other favorite picture I took that day was this one. There were a bunch of really old photos on a table at the party and I decided to arrange and photograph them. I'm really glad I did.

We miss you grandpa.

The whole weekend of the funeral, my nephew Jackson was the center of attention.

Dad is obsessed with Jackson the most, and of course gets first dibs as grandpa, but Mandi loves all babies and had to be persuaded to relinquish him. :)

We spent a lot of time at Uncle John and Aunt Becky's house that weekend. It's a great place for big family gatherings.

I swear I didn't put an Instagram filter on this picture, it just turned out this way!

Jared had a story to tell and Afton was a captive audience.

The funeral home was decorated so nicely. Lots of amazing pictures from the past.

That big one was taken by my cousin Kim. It's one of the best pictures any of us had of him.

It's one of my favorites. It's just the perfect picture of him.

I didn't get any more pictures here after this because I just feel weird about taking pictures at funerals. Plus I was a pallbearer and had to focus on that. I'm glad that Mandi was there because she stepped up and took some great pictures that day.

I don't think anyone likes funerals, but grandpa's was really nice, and a fitting tribute to him. I'm really glad I was a part of it.

After the funeral all the pallbearers were given a shell from the guns that were fired at the ceremony. I put mine on my bookshelf, next to a couple of diamonds from Jacob's wedding.

After the funeral we had a picnic in a park, though I didn't get any pictures there either, because it was a lot of people I didn't know and the few I did were too scattered.

After that, the family all headed back to Aunt Becky and Uncle John's.

Sometime later, an ice cream truck came by for some reason, while a bunch of people were outside, and Uncle John bought everyone ice cream!

The rest of these pictures were probably taken the next day. We went back to Uncle John and Aunt Becky's after church on Sunday.

I loved this picture of Grandma and Maggie. :)

Then Jackson was back to being the center of attention.

That's all I've got. It was an emotional weekend, but really nice too.