The Sharpest Crayon

Without a doubt, Christi (August 1999, age 2) is the sharpest crayon in this pack! (hee hee)

Christi "plays hockey" on Aunt Marty and Uncle Jeff's pond (Winter 2001, age 3)

Shayla at swimming lessons last night.




SHAYNE'S FUNNY: On Monday the employees at the bank wore Ohio State shirts. They asked Shayne where his OSU shirt was. His response was, "I paid $8,000 in OSU tuition for Angela this year, and I didn't even get a t-shirt!"

FUNERAL FUNNY:
I had never planned a funeral before so I really had no idea how many people were needed to carry a casket. I thought about it and decided it must be eight. We decided upon the eight people that would best represent Christi’s life and we knew she loved all of her pall bearers and that we made the right choice. In those final days we emailed and asked them to serve. We were going to ask our Philadelphia friend, Tim Grant, to be an “Honorary Pallbearer” knowing how much easier his family made our lives while we were in Philly, but he lived ten hours away and we knew he couldn’t make that journey. (So imagine our surprise when he and his beautiful wife, Debbie, showed up at visitation on Friday night!!)

So I overheard my brother-in-law talking about “Team A” and “Team B” at the visitation and I asked him. He finally told me that an adult size casket only needs six pallbearers and Rich, our awesome funeral director, informed them that Christi’s was a child’s size one so eight people wouldn’t be able to walk and carry her. He set up an “A” and “B” team and they were going to take turns “4” and “4”. I said that was fine, I just didn’t want her dropped. (Christi would have thought it was pretty funny, but trust me I would not have chuckled about them dropping my baby’s body!)

On the day of the funeral, when the pallbearers were needed, Rich told them “all bets were off” and that all eight should carry her. So moving very slowly and taking small steps as not to trip each other, Christi’s body was gracefully carried by eight awesome individuals! (And when “Harriett” turned around and carried Christi’s “backwards” – in true Harriet style, as they were leaving the church and the visitors had already gone outside, I could only imagine Christi jumping up and down giggling and giggling over her sweet friend, Traci and her joke playing! Later I asked Traci, our female pallbearer, if Christi was heavy and she whispered, "Don't tell the guys, but I think they can handle it without me." Well, I didn't tell Traci, but Shayne and I thought she could just pick up her feet and because she's so tiny she could just swing by the handles. Christi would have LOVED that too!

Now in my next “Funeral Funny” post, I’ll share why it was a very good thing to have a child’s size casket (if that can ever be a good thing).