I am the newest within the Tyler sibling in-laws. I married into the family about 10 years after Kate did and have been part of the club for about 14 years. One of the things I always noticed was when Mike and Kate and Alison and Andrew arrived at a family gathering, the decibel level seemed to go way up. Mind you Alison didn’t contribute much to the noise. It all just blended in. In Kate’s case, the contagious laugh and the hands and arms flying when she got excited telling a story were all part of the joy and fun we were experiencing. Today we are all devastated that Kate is gone, but what I hope we can do today is celebrate her life. I love the pictures that are posted because they really illustrate how she lived her life. She loved to travel to new places and experience new things. Sharing those things with her family only increased her joy. I remember the first time I met Kate… When Becky and I were engaged I was a road rep for a Christian music company. I was working an event for the Logos Bookstore in Bloomington, and this was the weekend I was to meet Kate and Mike. Now keep in mind we are a lot different. All they really knew of me was that I was a right wing conservative who planned his lunch breaks to hear Rush Limbaugh’s first hour monolog. That might have scared a lot of people. But that didn’t really matter. The only thing that mattered was welcoming Becky’s fiancé to the family. More importantly, it illustrated that Kate didn’t just marry Mike. In a very large sense, Kate was married to the whole Tyler family, and we to her. She loved us, and we loved her. Kate was clearly a strong, independent woman. At the same time, it’s difficult to separate Kate from Mike in the context of family. It was a blessing to observe their marriage for so many years. It is a great model to follow. I saw early on how Kate sacrificed for Mike’s career, then Mike for hers. I saw how she was able to balance both a successful family and a successful marriage. And I learned the importance of parenting with the kind of consistency they parented with. I know there are specifics of how Kate impacted everyone else in the Tyler family, and I’m sure each one could stand with something similar. Even though we don’t have the privilege of enjoying her face to face anymore, these are the high impact things that we will continue to carry on throughout all of our lives. Kate was truly a blessing to all of us. My hope is that we were able to give back the same blessing to her.