Korea at last/ Hospitalization

Caleb left for Korea Monday and called me from LAX and Seoul(4:15AM). His long flight was 13 hours. He had a short one on each end. check out his blog at calebander.blogspot.com

I called my calling card to find the out-of-country access codes and any further instructions. There were 4 different ones. I wrote detailed instructions and put them with the card so he was one of just a few in Seoul to be able to make their cards work.

My Korean friend pulled me aside at church, she attends another ward, and said she saw Caleb at the MTC when she was serving there. She spoke to him and said "he has a very good accent and can say many words perfectly." He may not know what he is saying but he can mimic sounds. I had 4 pizzas dropped off to the MTC last week for his final week of packages. It was a little shady how I did it, so to protect the innocent I will not go into detail but thanks Derrald (my son in law). I guess it is time to "cut the apron strings." Let Caleb grow up. I did get a bunch of missionary thank you notes. Caleb said his apartment was the food place, if anyone was hungry they stopped by. His favorite was home made rolls with real butter.

I went up to Salt Lake to tend the twin 4lb granddaughters for a bit while Frances went shopping. They are like little kittens and sooo tiny. Frances said she thinks one baby would be easy. She is right I was feeding one and the other one started to cry. All my hands were full and If I stopped feeding one the other will cry, what's a grandma to do?

Alice (2 weeks old) is in Primary Children's hospital for 10 total days, this is day 3. She has a gastric intestinal infection from being a preemie and eating fortified formula supplement,her stomach wasn't ready for (instructions from the hospital). Frances is nursing. This will be hard but they moved out of their temporary city apartment. The cabin is closer to this hospital anyway.

a time for every purpose under heaven

We have pictures of our Omaha grandson Aaron Lewis Chappell. He was born 5 minutes after Rachael arrived at the hospital. Her fourth. My fourth was the same. Rachael beware..... if you are like your mother, the next one will be born at home accidentally. Ethan, Sean and Jenna were very welcoming... sometimes too welcoming.
The funeral of my brother-in-law Paul Lusk is over, we stayed to make sure Leah knew what to do about paperwork etc. We went with her to the temple, social security office, grave marker stores, cemetery, Paul's office etc. We were able to stay longer because she had a friend that let us use her mom's home while the mom was in China and she actually moved out of her home for a few days where we stayed at the beginning of our trip. Kay and I drove Caleb's car from Omaha to Salt Lake and picked up the casket at Delta Cargo in Salt Lake City, picked up Janell and went to Sugar City. Kay said "if we get into an accident with this casket on top of the car we WILL make National news." Kay bought the casket on line and saved a bundle of money and got what Leah wanted, a cherry wood casket which the funeral home did not offer.

The viewing was as large as the viewing from the Sugar City resident that was killed in the Pentagon on 9/11. The viewing line went 4 hours and Leah felt renewed after the viewing. The funeral was put on by Paul's family. Several brothers spoke. He has 8 brothers who were "Paul bearers" and lowered him into the earth. One of them said it was a nice way to have closure instead of letting the funeral home lower the casket later.

Paul took care of the family financially, they will be fine so that is a relief. Kay called on an expired life policy they replaced and found the life insurance local office forgot to inform the company of termination, the payment was still coming out of automatic withdrawal, so she was double covered! They said their mistake was a blessing!

Paul's brothers follow the Bible taking care of their brother's wife. They have called her and helped her.

We are at the hospital with Frances's twin girls born last Sunday, Claire and Alice. Claire will be released tomorrow and Alice should follow shortly. They have both lost a little weight but are over 4 lbs. This is my way of multiplying and replenishing the earth.

I went to the all men meeting... Priesthood session and saw Caleb singing in the MTC choir. A joyful grandmother and mother here. Janae

Twin girls arrived today Sunday Sept 28th!!!

Frances and Marc Inman (our daughter) had twin daughters today at 12:40 PM, we are in Idaho attending a funeral and Frances called Leah who texted her son during the sacrament who told us they were on their way. We called 20 minutes after they were born. They were c-section, one weighed 4lbs 2 oz and the other was 5 lbs 2 oz.

She will be in the hospital for 4 days and hadn't seen them yet when I called. From what we hear, everyone is doing great!!! We have tripled our grandchildren this week!!! We will stay a few days in Idaho after Paul's funeral and go see the twins the end of the week.

Omaha to Sugar City Idaho

We are in Omaha right now with Baby Aaron Lewis Chappell. I have been taking the kids on morning adventures, bring a lunch, then we go to Rachael’s so grandma can take a short nap… Jenna too and then we go off to a park in the afternoon. Yesterday we did the children's museum and chuck-e-cheese. Aaron is a cry at night baby so Rachael is grateful for the kids being out of her hair.

The kids are great, fun, cute and enjoyable. I brought them to Kay’s because we were in the area. Jenna was touching everything. Buttons, screws etc. She turned the burners of the gas stove on and carried around little nails. Ethan and Sean were intrigued with the battery stuck between two boards in the deck. It was really stuck and their fingers couldn'’t do the job. I handed Ethan a screw driver, he figured out how to make it a lever and stepped on it several times really hard and got it out. He carried it around with him for a few hours, very proud of his accomplishment. Sean picked up several screws and screwed them in a cardboard box (fun activity for a 4 year old).

Today is Friday and I will take them to a tiny town village in the morning, tomorrow we will do the zoo, I will pick up Kay we will drive Caleb's car out to Idaho to Paul Lusk's funeral.

Kay's sister Leah and her husband Paul were taking a walk Tuesday night in the neighborhood. A car came really close to them in their lane and Leah was freaked out and got out of the way. Paul kept walking where he was and was struck by another car. The driver was an18 year old neighbor down the street. He was driving to soccer practice, he was grabbing something in the back seat and veered into the wrong lane, like we all have done, and hit Paul. Paul flew in the air and came down breaking his neck and was dead instantly. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Leah said she has no animosity towards him and forgives him. Paul would want it that way.

This has been a huge wake up call for all of us. Life is short. We all want to be more like Paul.... forgiving, kind, do gooder

The viewing will be on Sunday night and the funeral will be Monday at 1PM.

We leave in 3 weeks for our cruise and we just added Erica so Leah, Jana and Erika will come with us. Leah said she does not want to go but I said that is good timing for needing to do something fun. Good therapy. I told Leah we were making them go and I don’t care of Erica isn’t excited, she is going. Leah said Oh,Erica is excited.

This has been an emotional week. I know Paul is in a better place, I know he is waiting for his family to come and join him, I am sure he will be there for his family and will be able to see special moments in their life. They are the ones that need to work hard here on earth to see him again. I know we lived with our Heavenly Father before we came to this earth and I know we don't die but continue to live after death. Love Janae

My new house (just an organized one)

Janell is settling into school. We have a girl living with us in the basement so when I go visit Kay, Janell will have someone here with her.

I have hired another girl from Tajikistan (next to China, a break off from the Soviet Union) who is going to school at UVU, to help me organize. She is cleaning and organizing my house from the attic to the garage and is very good. There are things that haven't seen a cleaning rag in the 12 years we have been here. I love to take people to show off my storage rooms which were disasters before. I feel such a relief and freedom. She doesn't read English so some things are not where they should go and be, but everything is neat and tidy, I realized with her here, I do more and am inspired to organize.

With my shopping addiction (I just came out of the closet last year) I have things organized and I can see some of my follies. She speaks some foreign language and Russian and is Shite Muslim. It is Ramadan now so she is fasting. We have had a whole new world open up.

For Janell 's birthday in July, we gave her a Disney Cruise. We go next month and are getting excited about that. Janell will miss 4 days of school. She enjoys band and pep band at the football games.

The multiplying and replenishing commandment in the Bible is really cool when your offspring have offspring. Rachael in Omaha is having a baby boy this month and Frances in Salt Lake will have her twin girls next month. Rachael's boys have been calling the unborn baby 'Chester Jack-Jack' (the latter being the baby from the Disney movie The Incredibles) Rachael likes to keep names a secret until the baby is born so we will see if we get Chester Chappell or not.

I went to Omaha to visit Kay and the grand kids and had a great time at the zoo and Children's museum with them. Going to Omaha to visit is nice, I stay with Kay in his apartments and spend the days while he is working with Rachael and the kids. I am not in Rachael's hair and have a car to go where I want. We are anxious to have our Kay back, hopefully in the spring. Meanwhile I will see him at the end of the month and for our Disney Cruise.

Sept 5, 2008
It has been a while since I have written. Caleb is in the MTC and I continue to send him packages of cookies, a Costco birthday cake for his companion, and anything else he wants.... jump rope, lighter for fixing his ties....etc. We enjoy his letters. His companion's mother got on the same site as me, missionarymom.com so we have communicated. She said she appreciated having Caleb in the recovery room after her son's surgery (she is a nurse and got permission to come), Elder Singleton woke up speaking Korean! Caleb translated.

I am leaving town next week and have had to figure out how Janell is getting to all her after- school activities. We rode our bikes to her Tahitian dance class Wednesday and we took a practice run on the bus for her BYU dance class starting next week. Hey, she can go to Brazil by herself, she should be able to ride the bus! The only problem with the bus is she kept falling asleep. This is a good habit that I have encouraged when kids get in cars they sleep. I had to wake her up to see landmarks. I hope she makes it.

I will have her take the bus from now on so I don't have to wait 1 1/2 hours for her plus the drive which is another hour. I just need to get someone to take her to her flute lesson while I am gone and we are set.

School is going well for her. She didn't understand her math teacher who is part time and leaving for 2 months to have a baby. We moved her to an old football star from BYU, Eli Herring. She understands him and we are thrilled.

For Labor day holiday, Janell and I went to Logan to visit Grandma and Grandpa Cope with the Neilson family, we had a good time and on the way home stopped at Frances's to help her move bedrooms and set up the cribs for her twin girls due on October 14Th now. Her babies are now 3 1/2 pounds each and she looks great! She measures 40 weeks ( the measurement to delivery for 1 baby) now. Another woman her Dr. sees is due after Frances and is measuring 56 weeks!
Caleb's mission blog is a link I have to the right. http://calebander.blogspot.com/ Check it out.

houseboat

Dear Family,
We usually spend two different weeks a year at Lake Powell, sometimes three. It takes 5-6 hours to get there and we share a houseboat with 6 other families. This is the first time I have been without Caleb and we missed him. We wanted him to not feel bad so this letter is telling everyone the things that went wrong. Things always go wrong, we just laugh and still have fun.
Our air conditioner isn't working in our suburban so we left an hour earlier at 3:30AM to beat the heat. We thought we had some extra people coming and were going to have to put people in the back but someone decided to drive themselves and we had room to breath. We had one night of bad rain and wind. We saw it coming and decided to sleep inside the houseboat instead of on top so we hauled most of the sleeping pads inside and slept sardine style. Lauren, her husband Derrald, his brother Han and Lauren's pre-missionary (going to the Netherlands) friend Ashley decided to sleep on top in the storm and felt prepared. They attached a blue tarp to the 2 foot high wall around the houseboat and put a lawn chair in the middle. They started out fine but the rain came and went several times and each time it stopped they removed the tarp getting them wetter when they rolled it back on themselves. They ended the evening using the blue tarp as a blanket and just sleeping under the wet sheet. We heard the water come off the tarp several times when a huge bucket sized clumps of water came off the top occasionally. They finally decided it was time to awaken us at 6 AM so Lauren and Ashley came and climbed into our sardine bed with us. They were freezing, of course the girls were on the ends. They laughed and laughed about it and took VERY long naps that morning. We had a couple of nights of wind but we were able to sleep on top.

The ski boat broke down with a day and a half to go. We usually have "white trash" moments at Lake Powell and this was a classic. The boat was having problems and we slowly took the group of 15 across the lake to go on a hike. Two more were on the wave runner. Something snapped and we were no longer able to use the motor. Kay had to get on the wave runner and pull the boat made for 7 across the lake with 16 people on it. We looked like refugees. As we neared our camp we came by an island and a bunch of us decided we need to have a Cuban moment and jump off. Since the boat was being towed slowly, about 10 of us took floating noodles, jumped off and swam to the island pretending we were making a boarder run to get to America. We always seem to have fun.

The wave runner pulled the 5 man water weenie and water skiers. We played games. "scum" and "five crowns" card games were favorites along with a dice game that kept getting rowdy. I am sure people around us thought we were drinking (Mormons don't drink alcohol), we were very rowdy yelling and screaming and carrying on.

We had 4 copies of the popular book series Twilight. This was the 4Th book in a series that just came out. I couldn't stand them but others were avid readers. We missed Caleb but wanted him to know it wasn't the perfect trip. Love, Janae