Guest Book

As part of the online version of Cathy's Obituary, there is a guest book. When I went on this morning to write on it, there were already 2 entries. Anyway, the guest book will be up until May 10th, and I thought some of you might be interested to go look and see what people write to the family and about Cathy. Here is the link http://www.legacy.com/saltlaketribune/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=107332393

I think you can link to it from either the Trib or the Deseret News, I just happened to go through the Salt Lake Tribune on my link.

Cathy's Obituary (as printed in the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News)

Cathy (Catherine) Evans

Cathy (Catherine) Evans 1957 ~ 2008 Cathy (Catherine) Evans, 50, died in Salt Lake City, UT on April 8, 2008 at 7:08 p.m. so she could see the Jazz beat the Hornets. She plans to take up residence at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and be our friendly haunt as we visit there.She was born December 24, 1957 to Lynn Bird and Georgia Kanell Evans. She died after a courageous battle with cancer surrounded by her loving family. Cathy graduated from Olympus High School in 1976 and attended CEU and SLCC. She had a lifelong love for children, Disneyland, the Utah Jazz, clowning, and good clean fun with friends. She worked hard at everything she did, whether a child care position, at the food service counter, or helping children on rides at Lagoon. Her favorite job was putting up Christmas lights on Temple Square. Cathy has a playful spirit and a delightful sense of humor. One of her favorite alter egos was Foofy-Goofy the clown. Though she never married or had children of her own, she has a true "mother's heart" and enjoyed nothing more than taking care of and entertaining young children. She was a second mother to her many nieces and nephews, a favorite aunt to all of them. Aunt Cathy was always interested in everything they were doing, and encouraged and supported them in all their pursuits. She especially loved to give them gifts of video games, movies, and Disney memorabilia. She had a special relationship with her youngest nephew, Spencer with whom she attended numerous Jazz games over the years; he was like a son to her. She made friends with everyone, everywhere she went. An active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she provided many years of service. The family wishes to thank Dr. Gordon Watson, Dr. Nasfat Shehadeh, and Michael Cole (and their staffs) for their loving care. Cathy is survived by her parents, her sisters, Rochelle (Stephen) Enderton, Marylynn, Kristine, Julie (David) Fairbourn, and Angela, and also by many loving nieces and nephews. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. at the Wilford Stake Center, 3080 South 1765 East, SLC, UT. Family and friends may call Friday, April 11, 2008 at Canyon Road Towers, 123 East 2nd Avenue, SLC, UT from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and at the Stake Center one hour prior to the service on Saturday. Interment at Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to your favorite charity or the LDS Church Perpetual Education Fund. Published in the Salt Lake Tribune on 4/10/2008.

Cathy

It was just shy of a year ago as we were preparing to move from Omaha to Spokane that we received the phone call from Salt Lake telling us that my aunt Cathy had been diagnosed with brain cancer and given a mere 3 months to live. We were lucky enough to have Cathy with us almost 4 times longer than they originally gave us, but last night we received the call that she had passed away.

Cathy made it clear that she wanted me to speak at her funeral, but as I am stuck in Spokane on bed rest, I obviously cannot travel to Salt Lake for the funeral on Saturday. So, I just thought I would at least write a few things about Cathy here that I might have said had I been able to be there.

First off, many of you reading this did not know her and so I will tell you a bit about her. Cathy was the 2nd of the 6 Evans girls. My mom was the first, and Cathy is just 11 months younger than her. She was born on Christmas Eve in 1957. This last Christmas eve we were able to, as a family spend her 50th birthday with her. Cathy was very loving and kind to everyone. She was a true child at heart-a bit like Peter Pan (those that know her know what I mean). She loved Disneyland, Lagoon, her Utah Jazz, and most of all her friends and family, and always wanted to share her love for those things with everyone. Her life was about having fun and enjoying life all the time.

Once I had a boyfriend that collected Pez dispensers. He would buy them for me sometimes, and I thought they were pretty awesome, so I started my own Pez collection. However, when that boyfriend left on his mission and I started dating other people, as you might expect, my collecting of Pez dispensers began to fall to the wayside. Cathy would not let that happen. Cathy began collecting the Pez dispensers for me. Up until the recent couple of months I would still get phone calls from Cathy "I am at the dollar store and they have a new bunny Pez dispenser. I don't think you have this one yet, so I will get it ok?!" And every time we visit Utah, she has a whole new group of dispensers to add to my collection.

That is just the kind of person Cathy was-the kind that never forgot any little quirk about you. And the kind of person that tried to make sure that you held on to those seemingly unimportant childlike little things even amid the daily stresses of life. The little things do matter-you do need to remember what it was like to be young and carefree, and Cathy was the queen of making you remember that.

Much time over the past year was spent on family trips to Disneyland. Even in her pain she kept a sense of humor. The first trip to Disneyland, we were all sitting eating dinner, and Cathy started to choke on some food. After a stunned second Tiffany (my cousin) jumped up and gave her the Heimlich maneuver, dislodging the food. Cathy looked up at everyone, smiled a huge smile and said "Wow-for a minute there I thought I was going to die at my favorite place on Earth-that would have been pretty cool."

Not so cool for all of us, but she loved it there so much that she thought having her last few moments there would be amazing. She was able to go to Disneyland with her family many many times, most recently only about 2 weeks ago. And in the end of her life, she had chosen how she wanted to go-in her home, with her family around, and that is how it happened.

We will all miss her terribly, but she is free of her pain and is now in a better place. I am so grateful for my faith and testimony of life after this because I know I will get to see her again. I am grateful for a wonderful husband that was able to really bond with Cathy and to help her choose to go to the temple a few years ago. What a blessing for Cathy that she did that and was able to go back often and learn from the great work done in the temples of the church for the last few years of her life. She was given a blessing yesterday that said that the Lord wanted to heal her, but that He has work for her to do. I am sure she is anxiously pushing to get that work started already! We all love her and already feel the weight of losing her, but are so grateful for her life and for being able to be part of her family.

Note from above...

Last night Wes and I were sitting downstairs watching TV about an hour after we put the kids to bed. Suddenly a mysterious note fell from the staircase above. When we picked it up, we saw that it said on one side "To mom and dad from Sol." We turned it over to find this: ("I didn't eat dinner. Can I have a drink of water?")

We laughed and laughed-and brought her a glass of water.

Ender's party

Well, on Saturday was Mr Ender's 4th birthday. He had a "dinosaur pajama party." We made breakfast for everyone first, then we played pin the nose on the triceratops, then we used fabric markers to draw on shirts for the kids to take home (and they each wrote something on a pillowcase for Ender). After that we played a cake walk-type game to do the presents, and capped the whole thing off with cake and ice cream (Carrot cake from Costco as per Ender's request). Here are a few pictures from the party. (As a side note, Ender got a kids digital camera for his birthday that he LOVES, and has taken tons of pictures with already-I will upload and post some of those later today or tomorrow) My mom and brother Spence were here to help, and Wes basically cooked the breakfast and ran the party. They were all very good at keeping me down (as I am still on bed rest). Thank you for all the help!!!

Those Johnson kids the night before. The table (before we put Breakfast on it.)
The birthday boy before the party!
Little Brother
Big sister
The best birthday boy picture!! (taken by dad of course)
My mom, brother, and the kids ready for the festivities to begin!
The kids at the party waiting to pin the nose on the triceratops.
Ender's turn pinning the nose...

Blowing out candles.

Eating the cake and ice cream.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ENDER!!!!

Yes, I am HUGE!!!

As per my sister Andrea's request, here is a couple of huge belly shots. If you didn't like me in high school and are still harboring resentful feeling toward me, these are probably the pictures you wanted to see-me at my worst, messy bed rest hair, a fat huge belly, glasses, really the works...enjoy!!!

Solace wants me to let you all know that she took these fine photos!

The Cat in the Hat visits our house...

This post is a bit late, but...March was Dr Seuss month at the kids school, and as part of that, Ender's class took turns taking home the Cat in the Hat and his book. They were supposed to read his story then keep him at our house for a couple days and then write a story of our adventures with him. With mom being on bed rest, you can imagine that our adventures were limited. For his story he wrote that it was just like the book-he was stuck in the house, and the Cat helped him make messes and clean them up. Then Ender wrote that the Cat did get in trouble once, but we worked it out. Here are some pictures of the great adventures with the Cat. If you want to know what it was like, Ender says to read the book-it was just like that!