Danny

This month has indeed been full of happiness and sadness all within a couple of weeks. On March 12th, my younger brother Daniel Raymond Monsour passed away due to an accident at work. It still seems unreal. He was 26 years old and a welder, iron worker. He was working on a new hotel at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah on scaffolding 4 stories high connecting steel beams when it seems he somehow lost his balance and fell suffering severe head trauma. They life flighted him to the UofU but pronounced him dead once he arrived there. He leaves behind a wife (Kami) and 3 small children, Nicky 10, Karan 3 and Johnny 1. It all still kind of feels like a bad dream that we are going to wake up from. That is how it feels to me, I can imagine how it must feel to Kami. She has been very strong thru all of this. I hope she can remain that way, for her and the kids. Danny and I were not raised together. We have been a little closer the last few years since he as lived in Tooele. He is the son from my Dad's second Marriage to Karan. They adopted him when he was almost 2 years old in Riverside California. My Dads job took them all over the world from Germany to Carolina to New York I didn't get to spend much time with him while he was growing up, just a visit here or there. My biggest memory of him is that he was very, very smart and loved to watch army movies on the history channel and play GI Joe. He was a very good and quiet kid. They adopted Danny because Karan had severe Type 1 diabetes and couldn't bare children of her own. He was her greatest love. Because of her diabetes she (Karan) passed away when she was only 36 and Danny was only 8. Poor kid had a rough life from beginning to end. After Karan died, my dad wasn't much for raising kids on his own, so he (Danny) was passed from my aunt Lanie to his aunt Karm then to his Grandpa and Grandma Garcia thru his teen years, then eventually he tried things on his own. He made some bad choices and has always had terrible luck that he made on his own sometimes, but I believe he had finally found his happiness with his wife and kids and they were making a life when this happened. I hope he is happy and at peace now with his Mom and Grandmas that passed on before him, he sure deserves a happier afterlife then he had a life here on earth. Please keep his family in your prayers as we all will do.

Steph's Baptism

Pics l to r above....Grandpa Lloyd, Our Family Tay, me, steph, Chris and Zach, Jason Stats and Addison, Ron Coleman, Beautiful Steph, Steph and Mads and Shilo Christensen and me

First of all, I can't believe Steph is 8 years old. Secondly, I can't believe it is the end of March and I am just writing about Steph's baptism, but here I am and it is good. I have to say though, it has been a pretty crazy month, but more on that later. Steph turned 8 years old on February 18th and she was baptised on Saturday, March 1st. It was a beautiful day, but pretty cold as most of this winter has been. She looked like a princess in her beautiful white dress and got to be baptised on the same day as one of her best friends Maddie Keith, so that was pretty cool for her too. Most all of our family was able to attend with the exception of Grandpa Z, he isn't really mobile these days. Things went smooth with the exception of Chris almost breaking into tears while saying the baptism prayer in the water. You know, he is pretty grough most of the time on the outside but he is a softie at heart. We had quite the lunch here at the house afterward, it was very nice. Seeing Steph so beautiful and growing makes me feel really old....She says she wants another beautiful white dress, I told her the next one she will get shouldn't be for another 15-20 years I hope.... :)

Pics below.... Grandma Lillie, Uncles Ray and Gary, Steph and Chris, Preston, Grandma Linda and Aunt Crystie, Uncles Mike and Brandon with Aubrey (Ashley's baby) and bottom is Scott and Sierra with Jessica and Jim off to the right.

More Christmas Pics

Here are some more Christmas pics. We went to the Zoolights at Hogle Zoo. They had a special Clear Channel party there for our families and we got in free, so it was even better. There were tons of really neat lights but most of the animals were inside asleep, but the lights were cool. Really the only animals we got to see where the Albino Allegator, a mountain lion and bear.

I thought this pic of the Albino (sp) Alligator was especially cool because you can see Stephs reflexion in the glass. There were quite as few really cool lights but my favorites were the dragon and train. The bottom pic is of the Christmas loot before the kids got a hold of it. It was a very fun Christmas.