On Wednesday evening, sweet Grandpa Taylor ("Grandpa T.") passed away at the age of 94. I am so grateful that I was able to visit him last Sunday with Mom and Dad. He wasn't doing very well then, and I'm not sure if he knew I was there, but I hope that he did. I told him goodbye and thank you for being such a wonderful example to all of his posterity. He had such a fun sense of humor, and I will miss him very much. I have so many happy memories of Grandpa, but some of my favorites are from the trip that Mom, Dad, Rich, and I took to Palmyra, New York in 2002 to visit Grandma Cathy and Grandpa on their mission there. One of the most special experiences that I remember very vividly was hearing Grandpa bear his testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon at the Grandin Printing Shop where the Book of Mormon was first printed. And one of my favorite funny memories is of when Grandpa took all of us for a wild ride through the Sacred Grove in a golf cart :) He was such a good person and spent his life in service to others.
I love this picture of Grandpa as a park ranger at Bryce Canyon. That was a special thing Grandpa and I had in common--we were both park rangers (I think it's funny that the uniforms still look the same as they did in Grandpa's day!). One time Grandpa told Greg and me that the National Park Service issued him a gun so that he could protect himself from rattlesnakes . . . and communists :) I will miss Grandpa so very much, but I am glad that he doesn't have to suffer anymore and that he can now be with Grandma, Uncle Richard, Aunt Susie, and many other people who he missed very much. I look forward to seeing him again someday. I love you, Grandpa T.!
On a more lighthearted note, I had a bit of an adventure coming home from work on Thursday. I was riding the FrontRunner train, and we were almost to Lehi Station, which is my stop. We were going through the Jordan River valley just north of Lehi, and suddenly the lights went out in the front car (where I was sitting). The train then started to slow down and soon came to a stop. The train operator said that the train had lost power and she didn't know how to fix it. She pried the side door of our car open, jumped out into the snow, and hiked back to the engine to see if she could get things running from there. The only problem was, the doors she had opened wouldn't close . . . and it was about two degrees outside (see picture above--the view out my window)! So we had no power (no heat), and now the door was stuck open. Finally some other passengers got the doors closed, but unfortunately the operator's sojourn to the engine was for naught. So we sat there for about an hour and a half (45 minutes without light and heat) until they sent an engineer to fix the train and rescue us. I was talking with Mom when the train started moving. I said, "Hey, we're moving!" But then I looked out the window and said, "But we're going the wrong way!" For some reason the train could only go north, so they took us back to Draper where we all transferred to another train that then took us back down to Lehi. I finally made it home three hours after leaving work. It was quite the ordeal, and we even made the evening news!
