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Because we were tired of telling Jenny’s story over and over we decided to take a vacation to Disneyland, California. On the way we stopped at the Idaho Falls temple and took pictures. In Provo, Utah we visited with my brother, Jay and his wife Dana and family. We showed the kids Brigham Young University where Frank and I had attended college.

We were all still grieving for the loss of our daughter and sister. We were sometimes irritable and would verbally lash out at each other because of the grief.

We stopped overnight in Las Vegas. I remember it was 106 degrees at nine o’clock at night. We left early the next morning traveling through death valley. We kept a cooler full of ice in the back seat of the car. Every fifteen minutes everyone would drink some of the cold water. Going through Death Valley was like driving through an over-heated furnace. We were relieved when we arrived at our Disneyland destination in Anaheim, California.

We stayed in a Holiday Inn and loved the swimming pool. It was August 31st when we arrived at Disneyland and all the local kids in that area were back in school, so there were no lines for the rides! We rode our favorite rides over and over; the Matterhorn, Splash Mountain, Wildlife Safari, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

School was starting and we all needed to get back into normal life; not that life was normal with Jennifer gone from us. Frank suffered greatly with depression for the following two years. He went to her grave each day still wondering what he could have done to prevent her death. It was a very difficult time for our family. One day I was making chocolate chip cookies, an activity that Jennifer had loved. All of a sudden tears were falling into the cookies. I realized that the grief had finally caught up with me. I wish we had been prepared for this experience in our lives, but whoever is prepared for untimely death.