The Turks : The Purple Couch Foundation

This weekend is my mom's 80th Birthday Celebration…

We have many fun events planned.

We started this morning with a temple session…

It was the perfect start to an exciting weekend.

Tonight we had a dinner and program at the Country Club.

We had giant cardboard cutouts of her throughout her life

placed all over the room...

We couldn’t celebrate our mom’s 80^th birthday without letting you

take a peek into her bedroom

This was her sacred purple couch … her lilac painting that was on the wall above it

And the chandelier that hung in the middle of her room for many, many years.

We have so many memories of things that have happened in our home…

specifically on this couch….

We have memories sitting on the floor next to this couch as my mom put rollers in our hair…. with nine daughters that is a lot of heads of hair to curl through the years…. All of us slept on this couch at one time or another if we had a nightmare or a wet bed. We couldn’t get in bed with my parents… but we could sleep on the couch. My mom has read thousands of books to us as we surrounded her here.. And as we got older this is where she would sit and wait for us as we arrived home from dates and events so that she could ask us all about them. This is where she would read and study her scriptures. We have each seen her weeping and praying next to this purple couch. This couch represents all that is good and great about my mother… she is spiritual, she is a nurturer, she is educated, consistent, she is selfless and she is pure love.

These are the every day unextraordinary things that happened that make up who we are as human beings… they might be the mundane things of life

But I can guarantee that nothing was ever boring in the Farnsworth household.

We had a beautiful older couple that lived across the street from us…. The Ledbetters. They didn’t have any children. One morning as my mom was out in the front of the house… she had already been to aerobics at 4:30 am, fed an army of children, dressed, bathed, read scriptures, prayed and got children out the door to school with lunch money and backpacks…. she had nursed a baby, changed diapers and now was watering the flowers in the front yard… she stopped to talk to our neighbor Mrs. Ledbetter… Mrs. Ledbetter was still in her nightgown going out to pick up the newspaper… My mom waved and said… How is your life this morning… and Mrs. Ledbetter said… Oh hectic, just hectic! My mom chuckled and loved her response because she knew that the hectic was probably caused from looking out her front window and watching the craziness that lived across the street. You can only imagine what this couple witnessed through the years as they watched our family who had twelve children, thousands of friends and hundreds of cousins, ward members, home teachers, missionaries, boyfriends, fiancés, pizza delivery guys.. and so many more….

constantly going in and out of this home.

And yes …..Our home was hectic just hectic at times…. But we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Each one of us has precious memories that took place in our home with our mother.

Our mother gave us life and then gave us happiness as she was in the crossroads of all the important moments and events of our lives… and thankfully she still is!

We would like to share a few of these moments with you…