The One Where I Am Pretty Darn Special

ATTENTION: I started writing this post this past summer and never posted it because I am not sure why I wrote it. I found it today and I thought it was sweet. Since writing this post six months ago I was inspired to take a family history class at BYU and President Monson has asked that we bring our own names to the temple. I have a strong testimony of genealogy and I know that temple worship is so much sweeter when you have family names. This is a long post. Sorry about that. You can skip around, or don't read it. It's about my grandmas. I have SIX of them.




My Patriarchal Blessing tells me that I am a descendant of noble heritage and that I should stay caught up on current technology to be able to help with my family history work. I have not really done that in my life. I've been pretty busy.

 Last Sunday I was late getting into Sunday School because I was talking to the Bishop after Relief Society so Alyssa and I just kind of scampered into whatever room we found, which happened to be Temple Prep. We were talking about family history work. I saw that it was pretty easy to do family history work with the new familysearch website.

 The next day instead of watching the Bachelorette I decided to play around on the website like we had learned in class the previous day at church. I ended up finding 3 males that needed their work done, 6 females, and 5 couples.

You have to understand that my grandma Jean, my dad's mother, is a convert to the church. She joined the church when she had a young family after she and my grandpa were married - he was already a member. She is the only member in her family. Her siblings and her parents never joined the church in this life. That made it fairly easy for me to find names because a lot of the work for that line of my family had not yet been done.  I sent my mom a text and I asked her for their information so that I could find them and add them to our family tree. From there I was able to find myself some names. Most of them are harsh, Danish, and difficult to pronoun, but they are my family.

Why am I special? I was realizing as I was doing a little bit of genealogy that I have six grandmothers - two regular ones and four great ones. I know what you are thinking - EVERYONE has two grandmas and four great grandmas. But I KNOW mine. All of them. Don't you think that it is a little bit cool that I was sent to earth to a family where I would know and have a relationship here on the earth with all six of my grandmas?

Growing up I could not even call my two actual grandmas by "grandma" and their last name (I called them by their first name) because I had TWO grandma Christensens'...My grandpa Ted's wife - my Grandma Jean Christensen, and my Grandpa's Ted's mother - my Great Grandma Lucy Christensen.  The same thing with the Harmer side of the family. Is this confusing?

At one point I even had Tic Tac Toe - "Thee Grandmas in a row." You could come across my Grandma Jo's house, where my grandma Jean's mom lived, then my grandparent's house, where my grandpa Ted and my grandma Jean still live, then my grandma Lucy's house, where my grandpa Ted's mother Lucy lived in a line on the same road. On Sunday nights we would just make the rounds - one grandma by one grandma by one - cookie by cookie by cookie. Lucky me.

My Grandma Ruth Magleby is my grandma Marilyn's mom. She was the first to die and it happened when I was still a fairly little girl. I remember it well though because it was my first real experience with death and my first time attending a funeral. I remember my parents explaining the whole thing to me. It was a hard concept to grasp - her just laying there in a box like that without her spirit.

 I wish that I could remember my grandma Ruth's personality a little bit more than I actually do. She is the most fuzzy to me. I think that when I die and am reunited with her in Heaven she will be much more familiar to me than I realize because I spent so much time with her incredible daughter, my grandmother Marilyn.

Her husband, my great-grandpa Ward, wrote curriculum for seminary so they moved up to Salt Lake from Provo in their later years. They lived close to my Grandma Marilyn and my Grandpa Gary. Ward died right before I was born, but we used to go and visit my great grandma Ruth at her home. She lived with my great aunt Boosie and they used to knit me slippers for Christmas. I remember her face and her hair very clearly and that she was a warm and soft person. Read her obituary HERE

My Grandpa Gary's mother is Wilma Bearnson Harmer. My grandma Wilma was just the sweetest lady. She died when I was a teenager. She lived in a cool OLD house in Springville, Utah and when we would go to Salt Lake to see Gary and Marilyn we would always take a day and drive down to Springville to see her.

She was a teacher and she was very kind. She always wanted us to read to her and she had this book that was a "look and find". We would always look for this little green bug together. I remember her voice. I remember playing in her yard with my brothers. She was full of praise and smiles. Read her obituary HERE

Not only do I remember my great-grandmas Jo and Lucy, but they really shaped my childhood in a way because we lived so close to both of them. My grandma Johanne came to the Unites States from Denmark when she was a young woman. She learned to speak English very well because she spent most of her 100 years here in the States, but she still always had that slight Danish accent that makes me smile to this day when I think about it.

She  had very curly hair like me when she was young and she must have hated it because she never liked my hair. She would always say "Poor Katelyn with those curls" and my pat head. She was a funny lady.

My grandma Jo was also convinced that everyone loves Three Musketeer candy bars. She would always give us one when we went to her house to visit. Let's be honest, nobody even remotely likes Three Musketeers. My mother would buy her Snickers and Milky way candy bars so that she could hand them out to the grandkids, but she always insisted on three musketeers for one reason or another. There was a three musketeer wreathe at her funeral.

She was a hard worker on her farm with her husband. She never complained about it. I remember once someone was interviewing her for an article about pioneers in The Basin and my mom and I were at her house while he was asking her about her journey to the States. He kept trying to get her to tell him how hard it was moving here and starting the farm, but she didn't have anything bad to say about it. 

She carried salt and pepper in her purse when we took her to lunch at Judy's Deli. She called at eleven o clock at night and asked us if were still coming over for lunch in a few minutes. She was awesome.

 She moved into a nursing home when I was in high school and was there for about a year or so before she died. It was hard not having our weekly visits. She was and continues to be a character in our lives and make us laugh. I miss her. I was able to go to the temple and be baptized for her a year after she died and it was a sweet experience. Very tender to me.

My grandma Lucy is my grandpa Ted's mother. She was also an amazing woman and she lived to be 101. Her husband died of cancer when he was only 40 or so and she and her sons had to start working on the farm. She even wrote a letter requesting that her oldest son Jay be sent home from military service so that he could help on the farm. She never remarried, but she was always surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

Grandma Lucy had the cutest little bottom lip and the most infectious laugh, both of which I am proud to have inherited. She made the single best cookies in the history of ever and they were always frozen when she gave them to us. I miss those days. She was incredible and extremely sharp up until her final months and could always talk about current issues and all kinds of amazing topics. She taught us all that life goes on, no matter what.

My grandma Jean is an incredible woman. She is my dad's mom. She lives in Washington with my grandpa Ted. I have never met a woman that has more self control than my grandma. I have never heard her yell. She sighs. That is as angry as she gets.  I can tell when she gets frustrated with people and especially with grandpa. She never makes anyone feel bad though and she knows how to be classy and kind and bite her tongue.

She is so kind and she is the best cook you will meet. Her Christmas gift bags are the most amazing and delicious thing you could possible imagine. She is so accepting of everyone and everything and has an open door policy. She is thoughtful and always wants to help. Recently my Utah grandpa became really sick. He loves my Washington grandma's homemade bread. She sent him loaf after loaf all the way to SLC because that is one of the only things he could eat and enjoyed eating. That's the kind of gal she is.  Sunday Nights at grandma Jean's house are some of the single happiest memories of my childhood. I loved visiting her and my grandpa at Ensign Ranch when there were on their service mission. She was also one of my very best writers on my mission.

Last we have my grandma Marilyn. What can I say? Growing up there were few people I loved more than this woman. Going to Utah to visit her was my absolute favorite thing to do. As the oldest grand daughter she has always spoiled me. She spoils everyone. She is the cutest little lady, but she is a feisty one.

She is the most immaculate and organized amazing housekeeper I know of. Her house is a sanctuary for me and has kept me sane through college, She is a perfect hostess and each friend that I bring over wants to go back for more. She cares so much about everyone. She has the biggest heart. She is very involved in each of her grandchildren's lives and loves going to games and graduations and plays ect. She is very wise and I could talk to her for days on end.

I cannot wait until the day that I get to meet ALL of my cousins and my grandparents and my ancestors from the beginning of time. What a glorious day that will be. You should totally start on family history work. GO! www.new.familysearch.com