Baby Shower, Baby Lucy and Unveiling

Great-Grandpa Pack turned 95 in January.  John, Bob and Brent hired an artist, Jeff Hein, to paint a portrait of Great-Grandpa Pack.  The portrait was finished and on February 21st they were having the unveiling at the Hein Academy in Salt Lake City where Bob has been studying art.

We left home on Saturday  morning really early because Courtney and I were invited to a baby shower for Jessica that started at 10:30 a.m. in Pleasant Grove.  The weather was great and the roads were fine, so we made good time.  Bryan and I talked for long time and then switched drivers so he could work on the computer while I drove.

The baby shower was a lot of fun with good food and a lot of laughs.  Courtney and I went with Grandma Pack while the boys (Bryan, Ethan, Grandpa Pack and Andrew) went to BYU's art museum and saw an origami display.  They said it was really neat.

 We met up at the hotel after the baby shower (which actually was a baby snow because it started snowing during the party but it didn't snow very long).  Grandpa and Grandma needed to get to the art gallery so they took off and we went to David and Jenny's house to pick up some disks of photos that Grandma had forgotten there.  So we got to see Lucy!!  She is so tiny.  We got to hold her and it was fun to see the kids with her.

Here is the oldest grandchild holding the youngest...

 Courtney holding Lucy:

When we finished with our "baby fix" we took off for Salt Lake for the unveiling.  They were actually doing 2 unveiling ceremonies because there were family members who had different schedules but who wanted to see the portrait.  I was surprised of was how young the artist was when we met him.  I expected him to be quite a bit older.  He was very nice and a bit surprised to see all the people who had come to see his painting.

We all crowded in Bob's studio with Great-Grandpa Pack sitting front and center.  Bob gave an introduction and then pulled the cloth off the portrait and this is what we saw:

It was so silent while we all stood there looking at the painting.  Great-Grandpa Pack sat for 9 hours (3 hours at a time with only a few minutes for a break once-in-a-while) for the portrait.  They kept commenting that he was one of the best models because he was such a trooper.  I don't know what I expected but this was much better than I could have imagined.

When we had all finished ooh-ing and aah-ing over the painting, we went to Little America for dinner.  At 7 p.m. it was time to go back to the studio for the second unveiling.  Bob did his same introduction but this time when he took the cloth off the painting there was a collective hushed "WOW" from everyone and then silence.  I haven't ever heard awe like that before.  It was great to be a part of something to honor Great-Grandpa Pack.

We then went back to the hotel where Bryan took Courtney swimming and Ethan and I went to bed.

Sunday morning we went to Church in Andrew and Jessica's ward where we heard her parent's give their farewell talks before leaving on their mission.  We changed clothes, checked out of the hotel and were off for home.  They were predicting really bad weather and we wanted to beat it so we took off as soon as we could.  The roads were wet and snowy in just a few places but it wasn't too bad.  The slowest we had to go was 55, so that was good.  After we went through there was a huge storm that hit Cedar City and closed down some of the smaller roads.  I couldn't believe photos they showed online of the area we had been through just hours before.  We were very blessed to get through when we did so we didn't have to  mess with snow because I hate driving, or being a passenger in a car that is driving, through snow.

Here is more info on the artist, if anyone is interested: Jeff Hein