Gita's Utah Trip: Logan Temple and City Cemetery

After sleeping in as long as we wanted, we watched General Conference as we got ready to head out the door. I asked Karina to curl Gita's hair and had to laugh as she struggled a bit. Every day I'm styling at least four heads of hair- five if I'm feeling motivated and do my own! Katrina is a bit out of practice. I think she had fun though.

Remember those brightly colored balloons in the pictures with the Up house? I wanted to deliver them to my dear friend who has been quarantining like crazy. She didn't want a full on visit so I thought I would just leave them at her door. However, her sons were outside so I asked them to take them to her. They looked at me funny, it's like I could hear the 'Stranger Danger' screaming in their heads. Then when I pulled out the balloons that had been in the trunk, they just sunk in a depressing heap. I couldn't have looked more creepy. Slowly the entire family came out to say hi and we had a quick socially distanced conversation. It did me a lot of good to see them, even for a short time.

We needed some ribbon for the flowers we were taking to the grave of Kathrine Birgette and wouldn't you know we ran into another Katrina while we were there? My sister insisted we take a photo with her which is such a Katrina thing to do! Gita and I also grabbed a huge pack of flavored chap sticks because our lips were drying out no matter how much water we drank. 

Because the Chicago temple was closed for renovation, Gita didn't get to take her baptism photos there. I packed her dress and we set aside some time to walk around the Logan temple grounds. 

Of course the gates were closed and locked, so this is as close as we could get!

Let's look at that a little closer:

 Katrina made sure to get photos of the two of us, which I always forget to do! Nuzzling noses:

Cuddling:

Gita booped me:

Brent's parents were married here as well as Adam Noah and Kathrine Birgetta. She also did a lot of temple work here so this is a special place on both sides of the family.

Katrina wanted Gita to reach as high up on those gates as she could so she lifted her up and they ended up laughing a lot about the whole thing. It was cute.

Our suitcase was so full, it didn't make sense to also pack a pair of Sunday shoes just for some quick pictures so I let her go barefoot. Somehow that is so fitting for this little girl.

Gita loved being able to feel the cool grass on her feet.

Just a couple more photos from the back side of the temple. This one is my favorite! Gita swung her barefoot back...

...and forth.

She finally got her photo shoot in her baptism dress at the temple!

From there we headed to the cemetery to visit the grave of Brigitta's (and Katrina's) namesake. Thank heavens for Katrina who has dedicated herself to family history research! She knew right where it was and brought all the appropriate cleaning supplies to tidy up the plots.

Gita really put in some elbow grease making everything as clean as possible.

I have to hand it to her, not many little girls would find this kind of thing fun but she was so excited to be where her namesake was buried.

We did red roses for Adam Noah Nielsen and pink roses for Kathrine Birgetta

Katrina suggested Gita bring a rock from Illinois to leave on her grave but we accidentally left it in the hotel room. Katrina promised to leave it another time and encouraged her to find another rock there in the cemetery. I think Gita found the biggest rock she possibly could- you can see it there on the corner of the headstone.

When my great-grandmother died and was laid to rest, my great-grandfather immediately took a dislike to the pine tree near her grave. He just knew there would be pine needles and sap dripping on her plot and man was he ever right! But he never got around to cutting down the tree so here we are, a few generations hence and we are cleaning up the pine needles and sap. But Brigitta and Katrina gave the tree a good kick nonetheless.

Final love pats to say goodbye to this kind and incredible woman for whom both of these ladies are named.

Before we could leave, we stopped by the grave of my Dad's cousin Robert and we had to take the picture of someone people who actually have a worse last name than Wuehler. 

I wonder if they ever had any progeny and if so, if they decided to change it to something simpler... they way I think we should change Wuehler to Wheeler...

We called our dad and he gave us directions from memory to his old house, describing landmarks along the way. Since we were in Logan, we had to take a picture with this and send it to our brother Logan. If memory serves, he's also a fan of the movie Hogan's Heroes so it was particularly fitting.

The foliage in the canyon was stunning! While I paired the Bluetooth in the rental car with my phone, Katrina took some pictures of Gita.

Katrina squatted down to get the best shot of Gita with the mountain in the background and inadvertently... farted!

Pretty loudly, from what I understand.

And then Gita couldn't stop giggling.

Which I think makes these pictures even more funny.

One of the many things I love about Gita...

...is that she loves to laugh.

It was so fun to watch these two connect. At one point Katrina started to go into a family history tale but was interrupted when General Conference started up again. From the backseat Gita said, "Oh good because that sounded boring" to which Katrina guffawed and I hid my smile. Katrina can really spin a yarn when it comes to our kindred dead but she was gracious about it. She's always been so kind to Gita and taken a special interest in her. I love her for that.

We enjoyed the colorful drive and I hope I never forget singing Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 at the top of our lungs.

Before dropping Katrina off at home, we stopped by Aunt Suzanne's home. She's not actually our aunt, but she and her husband are such close friends of our parents we just called them Aunt and Uncle. We had a really fun discussion about how she came to be friends with our mom when Brigitta started looking more and more beat and we finally said goodbye. We didn't get to physically go to General Conference, but I think switching gears and doing this day trip to Logan was just perfect.