If She Could, So Can I



Ellen Matilda Ash my Great Grandmother

The washer flooding the laundry room caused me to come across some family history records I had never seen or read before....

I have heard many stories about my Great Grandmother Ash from my Grandma Beena and my dad, but I have never before read her personal account as it appears in the "The Daughter's of Utah's Handcart Pioneers - Logan Camp" her personal account as told to her daughter  Ada Peterson England (my Grandma Beena's sister).

She was a toddler who sailed across the Atlantic on the Enoch Train and then came across the plains with her Parents, infant sister and Grandmother. In the very first Mormon handcart company (Edmonds Ellsworth 1856).

Grandma Ash rode in the hand cart, with her mother carrying her infant sister the whole way. "Mother said that being out in the sun, wind, storm and wading through streams for weeks, the skin peeled off her face, her feet and her legs would bleed to her knees".

After arriving in Salt Lake City they eventually settled in Richmond....

"Several times while living in Richmond we went to Salt Lake to Conference. With an ox-team it took several days for the trip both coming and going.One time we camped in the canyon in the place now known as Dry Lake. The oxen were turned loose to graze and strayed away. Father looked and walked until he was tired out. Mother had a pair of beaded moccasins made by the Indians. She took them over to a cabin near by and offered them to a boy, who had a pony, if he would ride and find the oxen. This he did and we were soon on our way again."

Grandma Ash's family was well acquainted with tragedy, losing two sisters and a brother in the few short years after their arrival in Utah. But Grandma Ash's biggest heart break was losing her mother...

"In November 1863 another baby came to our home and in one week my mother died. Well do I remember the events surrounding her death. She knew well she was going to die and shook hands with friends and bid them goodbye just like she was going on a journey. I shall never forget how she hated to die and leave us children. I remember going up to her bed and she straightening my bonnet and said "My poor girl, what are you going to if your mother dies." She gave me her wedding ring and asked me if I knew the hymn "The Resurrection day" ...When I told her I did she asked me to always it and whenever I sang it to think of her"

Life changed drastically for her after her mother died. At thirteen she was sent to Salt Lake to live with a family....
" Father thought I would be well taken care of . They took little interest in me. I had to work hard and did not go to school. The family lived on State Street and I remember seeing  hundreds of loads of Granite being hauled by oxen and mules for the construction of the Salt Lake Temple."

Construction of the Salt Lake Temple 1875

She returned home after a year and her father remarried at that time. She said her step mother was a good woman and wife to her father. Life improved.

Grandma Ash's adult life was full of triumph and tragedy, she was married twice, raised eight children and lived to be 99 years old.


I love family history. I have found great strength and wisdom in the stories of my pioneer ancestors. I will never complain about driving an hour and a half to attend Stake meetings when Grandma Ash spent weeks travelling by handcart.  Or having to sit in a stake center or my living to watch conference, when Grandma Ash travelled for days by oxen team to do the same thing.

I know the heart ache of losing a mother, but not that of a child or sibling and not in such a short amount of time. Grandma Ash's strength sustains me in my worries, heartache or trouble even generations later. What an amazing example of faith and fortitude.

I can feel of the importance of the temple to a young girl then and know that the temple is just as important now. What a blessing it is in my life.

Ultimately as I read the pages of Grandma Ash's personal history my thoughts are, If she could  persevere with courage and faith SO CAN I....Who knew so much help and hope could come from 150 years ago? Thank you Grandma Ash.

Resuscitating the Washer

We should be one of those test lab places...The kind consumer reports uses to test the longevity and durability of stuff. Cause if there is one thing the Kramer family knows how to do its break stuff. If something can last longer than six months around here, its probably worth the money.

In the last few days....the living room window cracked during last weeks wind storm (so not really our fault), then Bailey's masterpiece fell off the wall and put not one but two holes in the drywall, and on Sunday morning my washer conked out and five minutes after that I realized that said washer had actually flooded the laundry room.....{Of course I would never do laundry on the Sabbath, that's the washers job;)} Don't judge :)

If there is one appliance I simply can't go a minute without, its the washer...I instantly had visions of myself being consumed by Angry mountains of laundry resembling Jabba the Hut. Then all I saw was dollar signs and tried to wrap my brain mystical art of making money appear out of thin air. Stuff never breaks when its convenient, its always the day after all the monthly expenses drain out of our account. SIGH. I'm thirty seconds into my full blown panic when the Superman tells me  "knock it off, I'll look at it after conference..." {I would never over-react ;)}

So the Superman pulled the front panel off the washer.....30 SECONDS LATER....my washer is once again running."The drive belt just fell off, its fine. See all the panic for nothing!" my Superman  would never say I told you so, now would he.

Grateful that the Superman is kinda handy....Grateful that the flood forced me to totally clean my most hated room....Grateful that our washer was resuscitated :)

Birthday Blessings

I guess you never truly understand wanting something until it is just out of your grasp. My parents prayed for, planned for, and paid for parenthood for years and years before that blessing became a reality in their lives. I don't know if I could have stayed the course the same way they did, but then again parenthood became my reality before it was even planned for or prayed for.

My sister and I came more than eleven years into my parents marriage. From the beginning we knew we very much wanted, that we were miracles, we knew that there had been countless procedures and fertility drugs, we knew about the bed rest and a precarious pregnancy and the blessing of two preemies.

I surely will never understand the patience and heartache the must have endured. But what I do have is a great respect for the sacrifice they made to become parents.

So on my birthday I say thank you to a Mom and a Dad who gave everything they had for a blessing many of us take for granted. Because of you I am a Quirky, irreverent, happy, funny, mother of five who will joyfully continue the tradition of embarrassing my offspring and always remembering the blessings of birthdays.

I'm With Stupid

Dallyn wasn't feeling well last night something about his stomach, no head, no back okay so this bad busy mother doesn't remember... Dallyn actually feel asleep on my lap{that never happens anymore} So when I was ready to go to bed I went to move him to the couch and happened to notice this....

I'M WITH STUPID (with an arrow pointing up) written in sharpie on his leg. He did it himself....the rest is self- explanatory. SIGH.

BINGO! It's Confernce Weekend

This is General Conference Weekend...As a kid I didn't like this weekend much. It meant going to the huge Stake Center, sitting on cold metal chairs and constantly trying to avoid the "behave or die" glare my mother was a master at.....

Thanks to the advent of modern technology, we are able to watch General Conference in the comforts of our home. Today we decided to take a laid back approach and bribe encourage our rug rats to watch with us.

The Superman and I were up early so he could check on the broadcast equipment at the Church, as we were driving home I said donuts, Grant donuts....that'll get them up!

We stopped and picked up a dozen of still hot honey glazed and I grabbed skittles and nibbs for Conference Bingo.  The fact that the candy was fruit flavoured made at least me feel better...If I had known how quickly donut deprived kids will bound out of bed, I would have tried this a LONG time ago!!!

Conference Bingo, the game is simple but the Kramer kids can make anything compicated.....

We had to tell them that playing the game during the opening and closing prayer was prohibited.

We had to stipulate that the words had to come from the speakers in conference and not from "Alex say atonement, Alex's says atonement, Dallyn yells bingo"

The could eat the candy whenever, but once it was gone it was gone....Then the could use the write-on markers.

We had to prohibit using the markers to colour Tater.

Tater is not a big fan of hymn singing....a howling dog is really disruptive, funny, but disruptive.

Buying nibbs and skittles is a bad idea when your dog has a fruit flavoured candy fetish. Tater kept sneaking around and stealing the nibbs off the kids bingo sheets. Which was amusing until Maddie "Yells, Tater ate my Jesus!" right in the middle of President Monson announcing new Temples.

Okay so the bingo game was less effective than I had hoped but we did make it through the entire two hours all in the same room and nobody stormed off crying which is an improvement over last year....

What I did LOVE was  the announcement of new temples, Elder Packer's talk specifically directed to our youth, the arrangement of I Am A Child of God the choir sang and President Uchtdorf closing words. I am not sure that my kids as of yet appreciate Conference weekend , I never did at their age. But I sure do now, so many answers come from listening to the words spoken at conference. I always come away with a renewed since of hope and confidence. 

Toque Overload

So I asked mini Superman to sort through the winter box and match up and fold everything....

Twenty minutes later, this is what I find....SIGH! And you wonder why he still needs adult supervision. I think he is just trying to keep his remaining brain cells in. I did make him finish the job which took WAY too long. And they wonder why I'm krazy!

Awkward DNA

Not even sure what I think about this..... The fact that this is the  same unnamed child who wants to marry a HAWT, Italian, vineyard owner, who loves Jesus (please appreciate the "where have I gone wrong as a mother", sigh) worries me..... Not sure what I should be more concerned about...the fact that she thinks its hilarious to write this as an answer on a biology exam or the fact that Holly's (oops, let it slip) teacher shared her creativity with the entire class or the fact that she actually got a mark for this answer.

Clearly my soon to be adult daughter is taking life very seriously lately. She wants to be a nurse when she grows up. It might take a while, the growing up and the degree...Unless her professors have the same sense of humour has her high school teacher :)

On a positive note she did spell AWKWARD right, something I still can't do without spell check :)