Wednesday, January 13, 2010

More "Ketchup" from the Summer!

I'm still so behind on chronicling last summer's Utah trip! We did so much and I dropped off the blogging hemisphere, darn it!

One afternoon while in Salt Lake City, we drove all around, looking at past Prophet's graves. After awhile, most of the kids wouldn't get out of the car. My two sweet oldest girls, Emma and Rachel got out to stand by the grave of our beloved Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley.

The same girls posed next to Brigham Young's grave. He has his own special cemetery in Downtown SLC.

We met in Monroe, Utah for a Levie family reunion. My Paternal Grandmother was Geraldine Levie Goold. Her husband, my dad's father, recently passed away. This was the first time my kids had been to a grave of someone they'd known. Ben is kneeling on the box of ashes, of my dad's oldest sister, Janet. We were gathered at the cemetery that day to bury her ashes next to her parents.

We wandered around the cemetery, looking at our ancestor's graves. One of my favorite Great-Grandmothers, the one I'm named after, was buried in Monroe also.

Sarah Jacobina Wicklund Goold, born in Sweden 1852, to Danish parents who were immigrating to America. While in Sweden they joined with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and found passage to SLC, when Sarah was 4, with the Willie Handcart Company. Little Sarah had many hardships, as did her 9 month pregnant mother. The whole family made it to Utah and each raised a righteous posterity. It was really special to show the kids this grave.

As we continued our trip to St. George that afternoon, I read the kids all sorts of stories about their ancestors. In this photo, my sister, Briana, is standing behind Emma and my favorite aunt, Linda, the one I grew up with in Alaska, is standing near my dad and me. My niece, Ariana, is in front of Emma and my cousin's oldest, Olivia, is standing in front of me!

3 comments:

suzy said...

I love cemetaries!! How fun! And I love the headstone of your ancestor that you were named after. In YW this year we are going to try to get the girls to do some geneology and bring their own names to the temple. That is cool that you know so much about your own ancestors. I need some cool stories to tell the girls to get them excited. I might make some up.
P.S. I want to be your neighbor too! But I don't want to wait for heaven...I want to use your kids right now for babysitting and I want you to bring me treats. Haha..

Lana said...

she blogs!!!
yeah! I am glad to see you back, I missed seeing your cute little family:)

Elaine Goold said...

I was surprised to see that Grandpa's death date is not on his headstone. I am going to try to get that done. I didn't know you thought you were named after Sarah Jacobina Wickland. We weren't thinking of her when we named you Sarah. It was more the bible Sarah you were named after. We were going to try to name all of you names from the scriptures, but didn't do that with Briana and Eric.