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Published in Logan Herald Journal from January 15 to January 17, 2013
Our loving husband, father and grandfather passed away Jan. 12, 2013, after a courageous battle with interstitial lung disease. Greg was born Oct. 16, 1951, in Fort Sill, Okla., to Kenneth and Yvonne Howell. He was the oldest of seven children. Greg spent his childhood in Manti, Utah, and graduated from Manti High School. After obtaining a degree in Finance from the University of Utah, he spent the majority of his career as a mortgage banker. He was a man of integrity and valued honesty in all of his business dealings.
On July 23, 1981, he married Andrea Felt and they were later sealed in the Logan LDS Temple. They are the proud parents of five children. Greg had a strong testimony and faithfully served in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in various capacities.
Extremely patriotic, he also served his country as a captain in the Utah National Guard. Greg was a commander of Battery C in the 145th Field Artillery Unit and continued his love for marksmanship throughout his life. He also enjoyed volunteering at the Cache Valley Public Shooting Range.
Greg had an unquenchable thirst for adventure. He loved world travel, aviation and riding his motorcycle. He was an avid outdoorsman who loved sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm with his family. Greg also enjoyed hunting – especially pheasant hunting with his dog. Handy with tools, he could fix anything and took pride in quality workmanship. He could often be found working on his Toyota Land Cruiser.
Greg’s greatest pride, however, was his family. He is survived by his wife and eternal companion Andrea; children Megan (Michael) Bennett, Jordan (Rachel), Robert, Lauren and Rachel; daughters Allexis (Jeff) Owen and Candice (Grant) Beckwith from a previous marriage; 10 grandchildren; mother Yvonne; and siblings Deborah Mangum, Cynthia (Matt) Thalman, Kerri (Mark) Rawlins, Kathy (Max) Anderson, Loraine Mitchell and Blake (Jennifer) Howell. He was preceded in death by his father Kenneth and brother-in-law Mike Mangum.
Honoring his wishes, no funeral or viewing will be held. A family graveside service will occur Wednesday morning at the North Logan City Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the LDS Church Perpetual Education Fund.
We will miss his sense of humor, quick wit, hugs, playful spirit, listening ear and sound advice. Although we miss him immensely, we know that the separation is temporary and we will be reunited as a family again someday.
Our House is Still Standing
I’m trying to have a good perspective and a little gratitude. These are the things we have had to have repaired in the last three months:
1) Our dishwasher stopped working-it appears to be receiving no power. Last month the top rack broke, this summer it stopped working, and last fall it flooded all over our newly refinished hardwood floor because of a faulty seal. All this from a dishwasher that is only 18 months old!
2) Our garage door wouldn’t close.
3) Our furnace went out. We froze for a few hours and paid $500 to replace the motor
4) Our washing machine stopped working.
5) The piece you stick the seat belt into broke and has to be replaced.
6) Our toilet keeps breaking
These are the things that could have happened (this is the gratitude part):
1) Our dishwasher could have exploded shooting shards of plates and glass all over our kitchen
2) Our garage door could have gotten stuck closed and we couldn’t go anywhere
3) Our furnace could have been leaking carbon monoxide and we could have all died
4) Our washing machine could start putting rust spots on all our clothes like the machine we used in Russia instead of just not working at all.
5) The seat belt could have malfunctioned while we were in an accident sending one of my children careening through a window. At least it broke because the extreme cold weather we have been having cracked the plastic and not while it needed to have some weight on it.
6) Our toilet keeps running, the handle falls off and sometimes it doesn’t flush. All of these things are better than a flood of sewage all over the house!
And above all else, our house is still standing! And we can afford to fix these things so we aren’t living in a freezing house, with a perpetually open garage, and having to use dirty dishes and wear dirty clothes.
We Find What We Seek
Last Christmas Sam and Lizzie’s belief in Santa changed drastically. Sam had been defending Santa’s existence almost daily at school and Lizzie was quietly skeptical. Sam was looking for proof that Santa existed, Lizzie looking for proof that he did not. Lizzie finally found her proof when she discovered the Santa wrapping paper hidden a day before Christmas and then noticed the gifts from Santa were wrapped in the paper she had seen in my room. That was all the proof she needed. Lizzie confronted me and I had to confirm her suspicions. We decided to tell Sam too. Poor Sam acted like we had just told him the sun would not rise the next day.
Yesterday Lizzie and I were doing some last minute shopping and she sadly said, “I wish I didn’t know about Santa. Christmas is about two things to me, celebrating Christ’s birth and the magic of Santa and presents. Now part of that magic is gone. I guess that means I am supposed to focus more on Christ’s birth now.”
I was grateful for her wisdom in focusing her attentions on the real meaning of Christmas. I was also struck by the idea that we really do find what we are looking for. The promise at the end of the Book of Mormon always seemed miraculous to me as a missionary. (It still does.) I especially love Moroni 10:4 which says, “if ye shall ask with a sincere heart with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
If we really are seekers of truth we will find it. If we seek scandal, negativity, wrongdoing or hurt we will find it. This applies to our testimonies, the church, our relationships…Santa! If I seek truth and good the magic will be there all around me. I recognize this when I am seeking the spirit. I see God’s hand in everything and everyone. I see his love, wisdom and perfection in everything and everyone. When I am lax in my spiritual enrichment I see things through the eyes of a natural man and even attribute natural man-like qualities to Heavenly Father and everyone around me.
My children teach me so much! How could I have ever known when I started out my journey as a mother that my life would be touched and blessed in so many ways by the choice children that call me mother?
For the record…I still believe in Santa Claus.
Practical Application
This morning during scripture time Grant shared Acts 20:35, “…It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Lizzie really resonated with this scripture and exclaimed, “Yes! That is right! It is better to give a punch than to receive one!”
I’m so grateful these children are making the scriptures so personal.
Anna’s Prayer For Her Hero
Anna, in a recent prayer said, “We thank thee that William is brave and fearless.”
Welcome to the Cafe Gratitude
So with Thanksgiving behind us and a whole lot of us not feeling all that grateful I have decided to take some drastic measures. After yet another meal of children saying, “I don’t like this” or, “Can I have some cereal instead?” I decided that I would have our children eat for at least a week of dinners what other people around the world eat: rice and beans. Tonight’s dinner was amazing. We had black beans and rice with some homemade whole wheat tortillas (our kids burned through 2 dozen) a plate of carrots from our garden and one orange cut into six slices. I said a blessing on the food that went something like this: “We are so thankful for this meal, for the beans and rice that are so healthy and filling, for the carrots that came from our garden and for the abundant land where we live, we thank thee for the orange that has come from so far to give us vitamin C and for the tortillas. We are thankful that no one has allergies to wheat and that we can eat all of this and be filled. We are thankful for this clean water that came from our faucet and that we didn’t have to walk for miles down to a river to get it…at this point the kids were all snickering and I could no longer restrain myself. I laughed too and then exclaimed, “What? I’m being serious! I AM grateful for all of these things! ” Then I wrapped up my prayer and we ate. That is the amazing part. We ate! ALL OF US!! Lizzie glowered for a few minutes and then with a resigned air ate her food. Sammy, being the good sport that he is said thank-you every few minutes (while eating half the tortillas) Anna and William ate without complaint. (Even after finding out they couldn’t drown their carrots in ranch)
Maybe this is the answer? I don’t really know. I told our children that so many people in the world live so simply. One in seven people are undernourished. The amazing thing is with our simple dinner we still had a fresh fruit and vegetable and plenty of food. No one was still hungry when dinner was over. It is this type of awareness I want to instill in our children. They have no idea how lucky we are. Indeed, I think truly I have no idea how lucky we are. I guess we shall wait and see. As for the name, “Cafe Gratitude”, I put a sign up on the door “Welcome to the Cafe Gratitude” for Sam and Lizzie to see as the walked in after school. They knew immediately that the day of reckoning had arrived!
(Incidently, there is a Cafe Gratitude restaurant in L.A. that serves organic, vegan, locally grown food.)
I’m Not Alone
I just saw this on one of my favorite blogs:
This just made me thankful that the only things I have found infested are those that I haven’t adequately stored and they are both in the garage. (Our bulk oatmeal and hot chocolate). So far our only pantry issue each year is an occasional mouse in the fall and all we have to do then is throw Kevin in there, close the door and WHAMMO! Mouse is gone within seconds!
Hot Chocolate Anyone?
I just learned a lot about pantry pests. I see them so infrequently that I have never taken the time to figure out what they were. Today, I learned that some of the most common found in Utah are the Rice Beetle and the Sawtoothed Grain Beetle. Fortunately my food storage doesn’t ever get to the beetle stage. Ok, it did once- I bought a couple of bags of Lundberg Farms brown rice from Costco and put it in a bucket in the garage. A couple of months later I pulled it out and I could see the black rice beetles through the opaque walls of the bucket! I was utterly disgusted and Costco was kind enough to take it back. Unfortunately it sometimes happens that I find the little babies in my food storage. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often. Sadly, it happened today.
This morning was a misty, grey, amazingly beautiful fall morning…one of those times when you feel like you can reach out and hold a piece of air in your hand it is so moist. I went outside and noticed some elderly men in the ward using a big noisy machine to split our even more elderly neighbor’s wood and stacking it into a perfect wood pile. I decided to acknowledge their kindness by having the kids bring over some hot chocolate. A few years ago we bought a HUGE bag of hot chocolate powder and have been using it each cold season. This was the first time this year we had pulled it out. We are hot chocolate pros around here (usually). We have the disposable hot cups with the cool lids, and even spray cream to top it off. So, I made the hot chocolate, enough for the men and for the children. William and Lizzie brought it over and then came back to drink theirs.
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The Boys Speak
Sam and I were discussing what he wanted for Christmas and why he was so excited he said:
“Last year I didn’t really want anything for Christmas and that’s because I didn’t know neodymium magnets existed, or powerful lasers or the periodic table!”
Sam’s Christmas list is as follows:
Neodymium magnets (he would like the ones with a 300 lb pulling power but knows he wont get it)
A science tie for church
A huge periodic table poster for his room
A powerful laser that can burn through things. (Something I’ll let him buy when he is a grownup)
This week William was in the bathroom and was calling to me urgently. I was in the middle of washing all of our garden onions, carrots and beets for winter storage but came into the bathroom since he apparently really needed my help. He asked me the following question:
“If you could extroy (destroy) one thing in the world what would it be?” And without waiting for an answer he excitedly exclaimed, “I would extroy badness!”
Halloween
I have had so much to record that I haven’t taken the time to record any of it! It all started with a very memorable Halloween.
This year I was feeling a bit “Scrooge-ish” about Halloween. Although I loved the night as a child, I was feeling like our culture was trying to dupe me as a parent…those costumes that are so expensive yet so cheaply made, all that candy that is just poison to our children’s bodies and detrimental to their behavior (not to mention that this year the bags of candy were smaller than last year but even more expensive…do they think I don’t notice???) So, Grant and I bribed our children. We told them if they didn’t go trick or treating all night we would have a party and play bingo for “Cash and Prizes” (we used that term every time we talked about the bingo game. It was so fun to hear little William tell his music teacher that we were going to “Play bingo for cash and prizes”!)
Halloween morning I woke up with an awful case of pink-eye. It was so gruesome I felt it completely apropos to this day even if it was painful and inconvenient. I spent the day preparing for our dinner that night. I call it my “Pinterest Dinner” since all my ideas came from, yup, you guessed it, Pinterest! We had a peeled watermelon “brain”, worm sandwiches, hot dog mummies, monster mouths (apple lips with almond slivers coming out for teeth) and a skeleton body made of vegetables.
Delicious “Worm Sandwiches” |
Everything was ready when Grant and the kids came home from work and orchestra. By that time I had a sore throat and was feeling like I would love to just climb into bed. William was so excited and trying to be so helpful. Anna had missed her nap so she was very ornery. We had put a plastic table cloth on the newly re-finished table, lit tea candles by each plate, and had dry ice “smoke” streaming over the whole table. Sam was almost speechless with joy at the prospect of FIVE WHOLE POUNDS of dry ice.
During dinner, (a dinner that scared Anna so much that she didn’t want to sit down at the table), Anna’s plate caught on fire. I was getting something so not at the table and Grant who has been so busy at work that he was practically sleeping with his eyes open didn’t really notice. William was the first to see the flame and was calmly repeating, “fire… (3 second wait), fire… (another wait), fire…” Until Lizzie saw it and screeched, “FIRE!!!!!” Sam put it out and I rushed over just in time to see the melting plastic plate burn through the table cloth, and all the layers of finish, glaze and stain on a small spot of the table I had just spent a month refinishing. I slumped into my chair totally flummoxed. (I’m not sure if flummoxed is the right word but it sounds like what I felt!) Grant, trying to be the encouraging fellow that he is said, “Oh don’t worry! Look how tiny the spot is! You can hardly see it!” I croaked out, indignantly, “That isn’t really what I want to hear right now!” Our discerning children picked up on my hint right away and started sympathetically saying things like, “Oh Mom! We know you worked so hard on this table! You must feel so, _____________ (they filled in the blank with words like sad, frustrated, upset, disappointed).” I felt somewhat consoled.
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