Funeral

We had so many people reach out to us wanting to come pay their respects to Paetyn and we are so grateful for all the love and support. We know that we would have had hundreds of people in attendance to support us, however, we elected to have a small service with immediate family only. We wanted to be able to share our personal experiences, thoughts, and testimonies with one another in a very intimate setting.

The day of her funeral we went to the funeral home, Myers Mortuary, to dress our sweet baby girl for the last time. We were able to spend a really good hour and a half with her and make her look so beautiful in her white blessing/burial dress that Mommy made! We were so grateful for all the help that our funeral director Michelle gave us and the wonderful way she treated Paetyn's body with so much respect and care.

After we dressed Paetyn and spent our last few moments together alone with her body, we were then driven to the church in the funeral home's limo with Paetyn between us in her beautiful "Treasure Box" that Grandpa Gillett made!

At the church we were all able to share thoughts, memories, and our testimonies with one another! We watched the slideshow of Paetyn and also had beautiful songs played on the piano by Aunt JoLee and Uncle Josh. We also got some great pictures of all the cousins together!!

Grandpa Allen gave a wonderful family prayer and we closed her Treasure Box and put a cute lock on it that only mommy and daddy have a key to! We then went to the cemetery. Myers Mortuary offers free plots underneath tree's for infants and we were able to pick out our favorite tree, a beautiful Colorado Blue Spruce. Daddy has always loved blue spruces so it was perfect.

Once at the cemetery Grandpa Gillett dedicated the grave. Daddy hated the thought of leaving the cemetery with Paetyn's body sitting in the middle of a field alone as we all drove away, so he insisted that she be lowered into the grave and the grave be closed while we were still there. It was a really neat experience to let everybody shovel in a scoop of dirt and it's something none of us will ever forget. After we finished closing the grave we did a balloon release. We thought this would be a fun thing for her cousins to do which would be a special way they could remember her!!

The day went better than we could have hoped. In fact, looking back on some of these pictures we found ourselves surprised at how happy we all seemed to be.

One of our favorite parts of the day was cousin Brooke explaining where the balloons were going!

We are so grateful for all the love and support we received and how well her service went. We are especially grateful for the wonderful people at Myers Mortuary who donated their time and services to make sure everything went perfectly.