{"id":7316,"date":"2016-09-19T01:19:17","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T07:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=7316"},"modified":"2016-09-19T01:19:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T07:19:40","slug":"she-was-really-here-and-she-really-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/she-was-really-here-and-she-really-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"She was really here and she really lived"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I want to pay tribute to an amazing woman named\u00a0Iris who happens to be my Aunt. Aunt Iris would have celebrated her 98th birthday this week, but sadly\u00a0on Friday\u00a0we got word that Iris had passed away.\u00a0On the one hand I am incredibly sad to\u00a0see Iris pass from this life because she was such a joy to be around and she was such an inspiration to me. On\u00a0the other hand,\u00a0I am so happy for her to finally\u00a0be reunited again in the heavens with her handsome husband who passed away many years ago.\u00a0 Iris lived an amazing life. She lived every moment of her life to the absolute fullest. She didn’t waste a single day and she constantly proved that we can accomplish anything in life we set our minds to.<\/p>\n

\"aunt-iris\"<\/a> \"iris\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

To pay tribute to Iris\u00a0I thought\u00a0I would repost a blog I wrote back on August 17, 2015. The blog is titled “I was really here and I really lived”.\u00a0\u00a0To\u00a0Iris I would say “God be with you til we meet again my adorable, sparkling, amazing Aunt. I love you dearly! Thank you for your example and your\u00a0legacy of being brave and teaching us to live life to the fullest.”<\/p>\n

~Amy Rees Anderson (see\u00a0re-post of August 17, 2015 blog below):<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for sick neighbor children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone\u2019s garden. I want to be there with children\u2019s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -Marjorie Pay Hinckley<\/p>\n

Last week when I was in Idaho I was able to visit my husband\u2019s Aunt Iris. Aunt Iris is 96 years old. She is one month shy of her 97th<\/sup> birthday. Iris has lived a truly amazing life. She has done everything from being a Rosie the Riveter during World War II, to becoming a pilot and flying small planes, to being put on the cover of\u00a0Life Magazine in 1957 for being the top woman in business. Iris is a painter and an amazing sculptor. And at nearly 97 years old she still has her driver\u2019s license because the DMV was forced to give it to her when she got nearly a perfect score on her driver\u2019s test, missing only one of the questions which she contends she got right and the instructor got wrong \ud83d\ude42 . Yes Iris is a force to be reckoned with. And she is, without a doubt, one of my heroes!<\/p>\n

Iris has spent her life using every talent and ability that God has given her. She never shy\u2019s away from a challenge and she has no fear whatsoever. While she was in her 80\u2019s she climbed up on her roof to clean out her gutters. When the ladder fell down she stood up on her roof waving at people driving by to help her but they didn\u2019t understand her predicament and simply waved back and kept driving. Finally Iris decided it was time to take action herself. She looked at the different angles she could jump from and determined that if she jumped just right she could break her fall with the fence nearby. And sure enough off she jumped and as planned she used the fence to cushion her fall. Yep, that is Iris.<\/p>\n

When we pulled up to visit her last week she was out in the front yard using a walker because she had broken her leg the month before but she walked on it for an entire week before she decided to see the doctor thinking it was only a sprain so the healing process of her break has been a slow one. Iris was in the front yard with the walker bending down to try and transplant flowers in her flowerbeds by herself. We jumped out of the car and immediately insisted she let us help. Her determination is incredible.<\/p>\n

As I sat talking with Iris she showed me the extensive work she has been doing on her family history and genealogy. As we talked she shared that she doesn\u2019t want to die until she finishes doing her family history work for her family. Again, she is giving every ounce of service she can right up until she takes her last breath.\u00a0\u00a0 That is why Iris is one of my heroes. I hope that when my life is done I too will let the Lord know I was really here and that I really lived!<\/p>\n

Here is a photo of Aunt Iris on\u00a0Life Magazine:<\/p>\n

\"FullSizeRender\"<\/a><\/p>\n

~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I want to pay tribute to an amazing woman named\u00a0Iris who happens to be my Aunt. Aunt Iris would have celebrated her 98th birthday this week, but sadly\u00a0on Friday\u00a0we got word that Iris had passed away.\u00a0On the one hand I am incredibly sad to\u00a0see Iris pass from this life because she was such a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7009,168,395,501,500,46,7008,251,60,63,935,4821,970,224,163,1083,1170,4915,5602,7010,41,67,83,51,93,7,30,364,29,55,788,493,629,11033,6474,478,64,7007,35,7014,7012,53,3703,1132,6639,7011,112,1416,145,3704,149,98,7013,7015],"class_list":["post-7316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ablity","tag-adversity","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-attitude","tag-aunt-iris","tag-balance","tag-beautiful","tag-blessings","tag-brave","tag-businesswoman","tag-challenge","tag-confidence","tag-courage","tag-courageous","tag-determination","tag-determined","tag-dmv","tag-drivers-license","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-experience","tag-family","tag-fear","tag-future","tag-gift","tag-goal","tag-god","tag-happiness","tag-hero","tag-heroes","tag-inspiration","tag-iris-anderson","tag-leave-a-legacy","tag-legacy","tag-life","tag-life-magazine","tag-love","tag-magazine-cover","tag-marjorie-pay-hinckley","tag-motivation","tag-no-fear","tag-old-age","tag-rooftop","tag-scrape","tag-self-improvement","tag-serve","tag-service","tag-shy","tag-success","tag-talent","tag-tussy-cosmetics","tag-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7323,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316\/revisions\/7323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}