Another Finish

A second finish in under a month feels a bit like overachieving after so many months of not sewing.  I finished it with hours to go before the baby shower, so I felt even  more accomplished.  

I used this stitch because it reminded me of the chevron patterns in the fabric.

Chevrons and Airplanes

 Tis the season for baby showers!  I put together a baby boy quilt using some airplane blocks I had made way back in Oklahoma.  They finally had a good use!

A Baby Girl Finish

 Stella wanted to be in the pic with the quilt...

Baby Girl Quilt Top

 I was looking for a fun way to use scraps, and I came across a picture of this quilt.  It looked rather straight forward, so I whipped up a quilt top for a baby girl.  There's something really satisfying in digging into your scrap pile and created something with it. 

It amused me that my walls perfectly match the background fabric of this quilt.  I have a couple of days until the baby shower, so I've got to get sewing to finish this in time!

Book Hoarding

In most instances it brings me great joy to throw things away.  I'll watch an episode of hoarders just so it motivates me to clean out something.  I don't usually get overly sentimental about objects, because I prefer a picture to bring back the memories.  The one exception I am finding to be true is books.  I have a really hard time donating or getting rid of books that have sentimental value.  There are several books that my children have "loved" in a way that the books are now completely falling apart and/or are missing pages.  

As the kiddos get older I know they don't need as many picture books anymore, but I still can't bring myself to get rid of most of them.  I even have a few of mine from childhood that should have been long since thrown out, but I can't do it. 

I love that my old land line telephone number from Clovis, California is written in the book.  My mom used that book to put together a Strawberry Shortcake birthday for me back in the day.  These 4 books all have bindings falling off.  Little Lady loved on them, too, when she was younger, but she's well out of the Strawberry Shortcake phase.  I admit I still put them back in the bookshelf. 

I guess I'm just going to have to clean everything else out, so that I have enough room for the books. 

Finally a Finish

It's been a really long time, but I finally finished a quilt.  This is one of the do.Good Stitches quilts from last Spring.  Wahoo- it feels good to finish one of my projects, but I have so many quilts on my list that keeps getting longer.  

The fabric for the back is a nod to my childhood.  Anyone else remember this adorable fabric that was so popular?

Dedicating the Grave

The grandchildren chose flowers to place on his grave.

Mom and her siblings (missing Uncle Ron - he had Covid).

The Funeral

I love that my dad had his grandchildren sing one of his favorite songs. 

These were some of the thoughts I wrote down for the eulogy.  This is an old version, so it's missing some of the stuff and changed a little, but I still wanted it put it down.  This probably won't mean much to most people, but I want them for my own remembrance:

Hobbit
“Nobody wants a Snooze Fest”
He was born as Raymond Kent Stuetz, but he always went by Kent, because his grandfather was Ray. Kent was born on March 2, 1954 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California to Donald and Ora Irene Stuetz. He was the youngest of two children. Sherry and Kent lived an idyllic free ranged childhood. My dad was a force to be reckoned with even at a young age. His escapades with his cousin are a thing of family folklore. They hunted for tarantulas in the hills and would catch them in little cages. His favorite story that he liked to tell was freezing insects in the ice cube trays, so they would melt when his mother served drinks at her parties. My aunt recounts him being on a first named basis with the elementary principal. Much to his disappointment the principal graduated with him to junior high.
An aside: Once a California boy always a California boy: growing citrus trees, melons, and he loved the sun/sunbathing in the back yard (cheapest form of therapy), didn’t like to travel, but he was more likely to come if it involved a swimming pool or a beach)
Kent attended Lowell High School and graduated in 1972. He was the captain of his football team. He generally played the entire game both on the offense and defense. His yearbooks are littered with pages of friends writing “Kent you’re such an animal!” I don’t think you can get purer 70s than that! He was a handful. He had so many stories of his high school escapades including he and his friends taking a buddy’s car across the border to Tijuana without telling anyone and getting robbed. The most interesting thing about his highschool years is his baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There aren’t very many 17 year olds who are concerned with the deeper meaning of life, but my dad was one of them. It was a decision that would profoundly impact his and the lives of his family. He chose to do it on his own. His mom sat in on the missionary discussions just long enough to make sure it wasn’t a weird cult. Supportive – financially supported him on his full time mission in Denmark. He served from 1974-1976. His older sister and her husband joined the Church while he was on his mission, and that was something that always meant the world to him.
Kent first attended Ricks College in Idaho and then Brigham Young University where he met his future wife Deborah Hales. They met through a mutual friend. He was a bit of a ladies man, so it feels fitting that he had to actually pursue after the one he really wanted. Mom stood him up for Valentine’s Day (she had another date), and very early on my dad was certain he was meant to marry her. His only problem was that he had to convince my mom. My mom wanted to study abroad and then get married, but in his usual intense flare, hesaid he couldn’t possibly wait. My dad won that round, because they got married on May 13, 1978 in the Oakland California Temple. Kent graduated from BYU with a degree in General Studies the following year of 1979.
Upon graduation Kent and Debbie moved to Los Angeles where Rebekah Lynne Stuetz was born. This only lasted for a couple of months before friends convinced him the place to be was Missouri. He felt called to go to the Ozarks. The California city boy became a farm boy. At one point they had goats, a cow, chickens, and pigs. Those were difficult, lean years. Kent was laid off when the company went under. One of the only good things to come out of Missouri was the birth of Adam Kent Stuetz. My parents returned to California but this time to Fresno. Kent owned a California Closets franchise, and they eventually built a house just outside of Fresno in Clovis. Both Angela Beth and Christina Ann Stuetz were born during this time. Things seemed to be looking up, but again my dad was restless. He felt like he needed to go back to school. It must have taken quite a leap of faith to do this when they had 4 children all under the age of 7. He had a choice between Fresno State and Penn State, and he chose PennState. This started the great Stuetz adventures on the East coast. While living in student housing in Pennsylvania, Daniel Hales Stuetz joined the family. (Chicken Pox)
Kent received a Master’s degree in American Studies at Pennsylvania State University in 1990. He worked for a short time on a railroad project for the Pennsylvania State Archives until getting a job with the New York State Archives. His office was located in Utica, but he felt really strongly that his family should settle in Liverpool, and that’s where he and my mom would remain for 30 years. He was the head of the Central New York Regional Office of the New York State Archives from 1991 until his poor health made him decide to retire in 2016.
Kent always had a magnetic personality that drew people to him. He was well liked. He had a quick wit with some of the best one liners. He had a killer sense of humor, and the most infectious laugh and smile. He rarely called anyone in the family by their real name. This extended to his sister, nieces and
nephews and his grandchildren. The weirder the nickname the better: pork chop, bunko, fish lips, wiggle butt one and wiggle butt two, kumquat. He never answered the phone like a normal human being: El Papa Burro Supreme …Hi, Dad. Pus, Pus, Pus…Hi, Dad. He answered this way hundreds and hundreds of times, but it didn’t matter – he laughed every time, and the more exasperated you were the harder he laughed.  If you could get my dad to a party he was the absolute life of it, but he would have much rather been at home.  He loved people, but he most content up in his office doing family history work. Sometimes his sense of humor was also very understated. He could have the most amazing spiritual experience or fabulous time doing something and when you asked him how it was, he would give you a knowing smile and say, “Very pleasant.” 

He was intense about most things in his life. He gave 100% to everything he was passionate about. He was really proud that 4 out of his 5 children had a perfect attendance to early morning Seminary.  A month before graduation, Daniel threw up right before seminary, so dad sat in as proxy for him, so that Daniel could keep his perfect attendance.  

He taught himself German, so that he could effectively research his German/Austrian ancestry. He traveled to Austria and Germany multiple times and spent days painstakingly microfilming every single page of parish records. He ended up collecting records of over 10,000 of his ancestors. It was a labor of love for my dad. He loved gardening. As his children moved away, he would help build grow boxes at their homes and was always giving advice. Kent’s father was an executive of the grocery chain Vons, and he passed that love for food down to my dad. He loved a good grocery store. When he visited any of his children for the first time he always requested they scope out the best grocery store and then he would tour it. We traveled an hour and a half once when I lived in Ohio just to go to Jungle Jim’s. He facetimed his dad and it’s funny, but we would do the same thing to him. He watched all the YouTube videos on all the different methods of the best ways to grill meat. His frequent Wegmans donut runs are a thing of legend, and he always referred to Diet Dr. Pepper as the “nectar of the Gods.”

It's rare to find someone so good natured, who loved to joke and laugh and yet could be so deep. He loved studying, particularly the Gospel. He was known to send out a family email about a particular topic he was currently studying. He loved doing devotionals with his grandchildren. He was wise and the best listener.
He lamented his bad temper and yet he was so patient with the really big stuff and very forgiving. He gave a 100% to his many callings in the Church. He was completely dedicated: my dad wrote this a few months ago:
“Since my baptism at age seventeen, and more particularly later in life, my time, efforts, dreams and love have focused on three primary objectives – to assist in the redemption of my kindred dead, to serve in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in an attempt to bring my brothers and sisters to Christ, and to raise a righteous family. In retrospect, everything else in my life has simply been a means to accomplish these three purposes. This is where my heart has been and how I have spent the greater part of my adult life.”

Story of the Prostitute – completely genuine – he loved my mom and he loved “his Jesus.”
Kent was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Prostate Cancer in 2016. From the beginning the prognosis was bad. It was Stage 4. It was a huge blow to the entire family, but he continued to serve faithfully at Stake President until his health would no longer allow it. He flirted with death multiple times, but always seemed to cheat it. His doctor told him that if he ever got sick he was going to have my dad pray for him, because he seemed to be connected to a higher power. Toward the end, my dad was tired and ready to go. He began praying to know what he needed to do to be released from his body. He had an impression of something that he needed to do to lift a burden off my mom’s shoulders. The task was completed on Thursday and my dad passed away on Sunday. Even in death by Dad was intentional. He died August 28, 2022.
He leaves behind a great legacy of love. He was known for pulling a grandchild aside and saying, “How come I love you so much?” I overheard a grandchild say, “I don’t know, but you do.” He will be greatly missed, but I know he "has fish to fry" on the other side.

The absolute hardest part of the day was when dad's casket was placed inside the hearse and the door was shut.  There is something so final about it.  Until then you're just celebrating him and talking about him, and then all of a sudden it hits you hard that he's gone.  My aunt (who lost her husband 7 months ago and then lost her only brother- my dad) whispered, "It's too much," and my heart tore into a million pieces all over again.