Luana and Joshua's Easter Weekend Memorials

'Easter' is a time to remember Christ's Atonement and his resurection so that we may all have eternal life. So, it was only fitting that this weekend we met as family and friends to remember the lives of both Luana Elaine Boyce Denning Fennemore
 and Joshua Joseph Denning.


Luana (Joe's mother) passed away peacefully on March 17th, 2010.
But, because her children (7 of them) are very spread out, they opted to hold off on a funeral until everyone could be together. Coincidently, we had also been making arrangements to move our late son Joshua's body from the cemetery in Ririe Idaho to Bountiful Utah to be near his family when we received news of Luana's passing. With all of the family gathering together we opted to consolidate both occasions into one day and hold both memorial services the same day so that everyone could participate in both events.

 We started in the morning with a lovely graveside memorial for Luana at the Bountiful Cemetery.  Joe's siblings all participated in the service and even with the cold weather that day, the turnout was amazing!  (The viewing was held the night before at the mortuary where we all said our final goodbyes).  Following Luana's graveside services, we then went to a luncheon provided by our ward (Mueller Park 7th) for anyone attending the services.
* (A special thank you to all our ward friends that helped with that! We so appreciated all the hard work and efforts!) 


Following the luncheon we went back to the cemetery and held a lovely 'Welcome Home Memorial' for Joshua.  The turnout was awesome! We had many of Josh's friends attend that weren't able to come to his funeral, which meant so much to us to witness so much love and support in his behalf. 
 A few thoughts were shared by Josh's siblings (Cory, Zach, Ashley), I read a poem I wrote for the occasion and the mother of Josh's best friend growing up spoke a few words. We  then played some recorded music of Josh singing and finally released yellow balloons (in significance of  his welcome home) while we played a favorite gospel song. It was a truly touching tribute and we are so grateful that we were able to bring Josh home.
  Another special thank you to all of our family that helped out, to Eckersell's Funeral Home for helping us coordinate this extensive undertaking, to our ward for the support and prayers on our behalf to keep us emotionally stable during such an emotional and challenging last year.

We will be posting some pics of Josh's memorial very soon. (Ashley's boyfriend, Paul took some nice pictures and we are waiting on those to post).  We did capture his arrival however.  (They were able to move his vault undisturbed because we had opted for a sealed vault initially)

A temporary marker that Karen Denning so thoughtfully made

 for Josh's grave until  his headstone is finished.Both Luana

and Joshua's headstones should be in place by Memorial Day.