Happy Birthday Jase ! ! !

Grandma and I Want to wish my nephew Jase a very Happy Birthday! He is the first son of Ina's (Denice). He is the second Grandson of Clyde and Nadine. Those of you distant cousins out there that don't know him, he was in a small group picture at my Dad's funeral that Sioux posted back in April of 2007. He was born 9 days after my son, Christopher. He too lives in Montana so visits with him are few and far between. He's always been such a handsome young man, and I'll let all of you determine if you think he looks a little like Tom Cruise or not. I hope your wonderful little family will spoil you rotten today! Again, Happy Birthday Jase! We love you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLYDENE ! ! ! !

A Happy Birtday to my Sister!

When she was young, what a blister!

She would pretend she was Maye West,

To "come up & see me sometime" was her request!

With her white hair she was called "Whitey",

Although she doesn't know her lefty from her righty!

She likes to have things "Her" way,

In most cases she can't be swayed.

She is the baby of the "Spencer" clan,

Her three sisters and Mom are her favorite fans ? ? ?

From that white haired little girl she grew and grew,

To a beautiful, talented women thru' and thru'!

We love you Sister with all of our hearts!

You have such an array of all your arts.

But the best of all "those" you have created,

Is the love and devotion to all those related.

Not only your husband and children galore,

But all of "Us" others we know you adore!

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! ! !

Happy Birthday Tracy!

Grandma Spencer and I wanted to wish our beautiful Tracy a Happy Birthday! (and 'yes' folks, November is certainly the Spencer's month for birthdays). Grandma and I called her up to sing Happy Birthday to her tonight. We sang our hearts out, but guess what? It was Cimber that answered the phone and not Tracy. So after we sang she said, "now do you want to sing it to my mom?". Ooooops! But actually I think we sang it better the SECOND time around anyway. Tracy and Bill with their children live up in Dell, MT so of course we don't get to see them often enough. She just recently graduated from college and made us all very proud of her. She is certainly a very special young lady, not to mention crafty and a wonderful mom and grandma! She has more patience than anybody I know except for her Aunt NaNa of course. Tracy is the second daughter of Cheryl Young and Steven Hess and the second grandchild of Clyde and Nadine. We hope your birthday was a fun filled day and one of the best! We love you Tracy!

This was a Davis County Clipper newspaper article which shows Tracy as one of the winners of the logo contest for the Knowlton Elementary School in Farmington, UT. In case you can't read the top of it, the picture was in the October 8, 1980 edition of the local newspaper when Tracy (second from right in front row) was in the 4th grade. I found it in my box of treasures and wanted to share it with you. Dave and I were back in North Carolina living at the time, so Cheryl sent this to me when it was published. (I thought you would be able to double click on the article to make it bigger, but it's not going to work.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTOPHER ! ! !

Today is Christopher's Birthday, my firstborn! We were living at Ft. Devens, MA at the time when they still had Army OB/GYN's, so my care was at the Army Cutler Hospital. He was born on November 14, 1973 and was a BIG baby (not my biggest tho') at 10 lbs. 9 1/2 oz. and was 22 1/2 inches long. He had very dark brown hair and he was perfect! My mom flew in to MA to help before having him and then afterwards of course. I had just gotten out of the hospital when Dave had brought her home from the airport. I had developed pre-elampcia and was drugged up plus I had been having gull bladder attacks the last two months. Those were awful! I kept telling Dave that if this is what having a baby is like, then I don't want to do it! I was 3 weeks late having Chris and had been put back in the hospital. Fortunately within a day or two I went in to labor and so the work began. He was born a little after 5 p.m. on a Wednesday and after the trama of the doctor trying to give me an epideral and getting mad at the nurse because she kept yelling at me to "hold still"! the doctor tossed the tray across the room and told her more or less to keep her mouth shut. What an awful experience that was, however every bit of it was worth it when I saw my baby boy for the first time. My mom was there with us for a total of 6 weeks. But because of my bad gull bladder, she came back when Christopher was 3 months old. I had my gull bladder removed on February 14, 1974. She stayed that time for 4 weeks. I don't think I ever told her how much I appreciated her for doing what she did for us. Not only did she make sacrifices for us, so did my dad because he was home alone all that time. I can hardly believe he is 35 years old! Happy Birthday Christopher! I hope you had an enjoyable day. Love you!

Happy Birthday Ashley ! ! !

Today is your birthday
It’s been twenty-five years
We couldn’t believe it
When you happily appeared.
Mom and Dad were so happy
Your brothers were too
Don’t want to get all sappy
So Happy Birthday to YOU!
It’s hard to believe that our little girl has turned 25 years old today. It seems like yesterday when we were calling all the family and friends to let them know we had her. She was born at the University of Utah Hospital on November 11, 1983 (our Veterans Day baby) weighing 8 lbs. 15 1/2 oz. and was 21 1/2 long. We were living out at Dugway Proving Grounds at the time. Dave had brought me in for an appointment and they ended up keeping me. They admitted me to the hospital around 11 a.m. and “started” me, however come 10 p.m. I still hadn’t had her so the doctor told the nurse to stop the medicine. He expected to come back in the next morning and “start” me again. Well, funny thing about that medicine and much to the surprise of Dr. Kochenhour ….. once it got me going, there was no stopping. She was born around 5 a.m. that next morning (Friday). While still in the “birthing” room waiting to be taken to our hospital room, Dave turned the television on to the BYU channel. There was an exercise program going and he thought he could talk me in to getting out of bed and start doing the “jumping jacks” and “sit-ups”. Yeah, right! Ashley, we just wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday and let you know that you have been the sunshine of our lives and such a joy to us!

We love you !

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANA ! ! ! (TEN YEARS OLD)

It’s hard to believe that our beautiful grand daughter Diana is already 10 years old! I can remember the day Chris and Laura told us they were expecting. Laura was already 6 months along when she was told by the doctor they were going to have a baby. There were circumstances that did not lead anybody to believe that she was pregnant. She wasn’t even showing that much. So needless to say, we didn’t have a very long wait. Diana Crystal Sprankle was born on August 19, 1998 in Layton, UT. I keep telling myself that God gave her to me as a belated birthday present one week after my birthday. I have given birth to three children but was never really witness to another’s birth until Diana was born. Both Ashley and myself were there for the blessed event, along with Laura’s mother, Marsha. In case any of you didn’t know this, Chris and Laura named her after Princess Di because of the geneology and us finding out that we, the Spencer’s come down the same lines as Princess Di. Diana was so pink and beautiful. And she has flooded our lives with so much joy. It has been so special to have a grand daughter like her. As far as her Grammy is concerned, she is a perfect little girl. I love to hear her laugh and giggle. Her eyes are so big and are a beautiful combination of colors. They sparkle, and people are always commenting on how beautiful her eyes are. She loves us all and has wrapped us around her little finger. We try not to spoil her too much, but c’mon! Who doesn’t spoil their grandchildren a little bit. Most of you have probably seen this poem I wrote about Dad and him reading a “Winnie The Pooh” story to her on Easter Sunday, April 15, 2001, the same day he passed away 6 years later. Hopefully you can click on it to make it big enough to read if you haven’t read it yet. When Diana was trying to learn how to crawl, Ashley and I made up words to go with the music, “I Believe I Can Fly”. Some of the words were, “I believe I can crawl, I believe I can touch the wall. I think about it every night and day, bend my legs and crawl away”. You would have to of heard us singing it to appreciate it, and we had a lot of fun doing it. One of the things I remember about Diana is that when she was about three years old, we had Great Grandma Sprankle's 3 great grand daughter's pictures taken. Diana was having a fit and would not sit to have her pictures taken with Dezi and Kasha who were just babies (we had brought 2 or 3 outfits for each of the girls to wear),....... that is until Aunt Sylkie, Aunt Suesie and I showed her a pretty little pink dress we had brought for the pictures. Once the photographer took pictures of her in the dress, she let us change her in the other outfits without a problem. Ever since then, she loves to get her pictures taken. Diana, we want to wish you a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY. We all love you so much! Grammy

Happy 80th Birthday Dad!

I was going through some pictures last night and found this one of Dad. This was taken when Mom and Dad were having a yard sale in July 2005. Kyle,....my nephew,.....yeah you know the one (with the shirt) made the sign and put it up behind Dad. I named the picture "Dad for sale" and the sign says "Bitter Old Man For Sale". I'm not sure if he knew the sign was behind him or not, but maybe Kyle can verify one way or the other. Anyway, it would have been Dad's 80th Birthday yesterday. It was a hard day to get through but I think he got the best birthday present ever when he looked up and saw Kelpie running towards him. I am very sad for Kadie and her family,....especially Spencer because he lost a "best friend", but I hope some day when he is older he'll understand his Great Grandpa got his "best friend" back to keep him company "up there". Dad,.....I hope you heard us all singing happy birthday to you. We Love Ya'!

Happy Birthday Dave

Happy Birthday to my Hubby!
Tuesday, the 17th of June was Dave’s birthday. We decided that we wanted to return to the Boston, MA area to re-visit some of the places we got to know really well while he was stationed there in the Army at Ft. Devens. We normally go camping and fishing for his birthday every year but Nathan knew we were thinking about going to Boston so he booked us a flight and we were on our way Monday the 16th. It ended up being a full travel day. Since we were flying ‘stand-by’, we didn’t make reservations for a rental car. We thought we would just get there and worry about a car then. However, we landed in Boston about 4:15 in the afternoon. We made our way out to the front of the terminal and got on the Avis Shuttle. When we got to the rental place, we were unpleasantly surprised to find out Avis did not have any cars available. We thought that wasn’t going to be a problem,. So we hoofed it over to Budget (no cars),…..then to Dollar Rental (no cars there). They did us a big favor at the Dollar place and called all the rest of the car rental places that were left at the airport, and guess what? NO CARS! So Avis shuttled us back to the airport. We then hopped on the Silverline bus which took us to the subway. The subway took us to the commuter rail. We took that train out to Fitchburg, MA which was west of where we lived at Ft. Devens. It was also the last stop on the train. We got our bags and hopped of that and went in (with rain pouring down) and made arrangements for the taxi service there at the train station to take us back to Leominster, the next town going east. That is where we stayed. We got to our room about 9:15 p.m. that night. In the morning after we had Enterprise bring us a car over, we used the rest of the day Tuesday and all day Wednesday to do our visiting and sight-seeing. On Tuesday we went to see our friend who worked with me at the Officer’s Club at Ft. Devens and her significant other. She was totally surprised when I gave her a call and told her we were in town. After leaving her place we went over to Ft. Devens (which has been closed down as an Army installation) and drove around to all the familiar places there and went and found the place we lived in Ayer, MA before we got quarters on post. Wednesday we went and turned the Enterprise car in then took the train back to Boston and drove around there and then to Concord, MA. We took pictures of both hospitals where the boys were born (Chris at the Cutler Army Hospital and Nathan at Emerson Hospital in Concord). We went to the “Old North Bridge” and stayed there for a while. Later on we headed back towards Leominster but going the old Route 2A and drove through some of the small towns we use to go through when we lived there. Thursday was another travel day. Both travel days we were up at 3 a.m. and on the road to the airports by 4 a.m. It was a quick trip but we had fun and I loved going back to the New England area. One of these days I really want to take the kids back there, especially the boys so they all can see the places they were born and learn of all the history in the area. Ashley would enjoy it also. In this post will be a few pictures we took.

1) Dave standing on the lot where our government quarters stood.
2) If any of you know Dave at all, he loves to frequent the old cemetaries. This picture was taken in the town of Harvard, MA. (We had to look at all the writings on all of the grave stones, it seemed. Some old old ones in there.
3) These are wild flowers on our lot where Dave was standing. I thought they were cute.

4) Janette standing at a marker at Ft. Devens in honor of the World War II and Vietnam veterans. In that same corner was the cannon that was shot every morning and evening. Dave was part of that. The flag pole was there also. They have that corner fixed up really pretty.
5) The Minute Man statue at the old North Bridge in Concord, MA.

I am going to close this post out for now. I have some other pictures on my computer at home that I want to share, however, I am finishing this up down in St. George at Ashley's and don't have "My Pictures" available here. (By the way, this is now Saturday, ..... not Tuesday when I started this post.

I would say this was a fun Birthday trip for Dave and myself.

Have a good day!