Lest We Forget!

Saturday, June 12 we hosted our annual Flag Day Breakfast. Adam and I use this patriotic event held on the Saturday in June closest to the 14 as an opportunity to thank our clients for their loyalty, support and referrals.

Britton and Adam conducted our flag ceremony and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Here the children line up for the fish pond. We also have a bouncy castle and the playground nearby to entertain the children.
The weather was awfully chilly for June, so even the cooks needed jackets to keep warm. It rained before and after our event but we were blessed with an absence of rain and wind for a couple of hours.

Our crowd was a little lighter because of the cool weather but we had a great time visiting with our hardy friends. This year we also accepted donations to the local food bank and had a generous response from our clients.

Many thanks to all who came and to those who worked hard to help out including Adam, Hilary, Britton, Steve, Jen, Taylor, and our head chef, my brother, Steve.

Korinne loves pancake batter. She ate this whole bowl full of batter after the breakfast. To each his own.

Steve gets a smile from Will and Jenna during our clean up phase.

We finished up just in time for the World Cup Soccer game. USA tied and this group seemed satisfied with that.

The three Williams just hanging out.

The youngest William in one of his first attempts at standing up on his own. He's not quite 9 months in this photo.

Evening Storm!

I'm not much of a photographer so this picture doesn't begin to capture the majesty of a thunderstorm we had this past week. I took this from our back deck and Steve tells me that I missed the best part. It's been a cool, wet spring but we finally had a break in the weather last Saturday to get our flowers and our three tomato plants in the ground.There's been alot of flooding in some of the surrounding communities including our old neighborhood near Cottonwood Creek. We live on high ground now, but there's been a lot of sandbagging going on.

Saturday evening Benson, Sadie, Jeff and Libbie flew into town for a brief pit stop. In less than 16 hours, they visited, ate, trained on the treadmill for their upcoming race, slept a little, attended church and headed off to S. California to visit Jeff's family and attend a conference. It was fantastic to see them and fortunate that Jen and Will could see them too.

Super Benson and Princess Sadie get ready for bed after a long day of traveling. The next day they drove about 10 hrs to California. Wow! What travelers!Benson joins Will and Jen on a skype session with Taylor in China. We love to skype.

Jeff & Libbie eating on the run before they start their long drive to California.

Sadie wanted to be the baby for awhile so she climbed in the walker that Will uses. She tired of it fairly quickly but it was worth a few minutes of "baby attention." She wasn't feeling the best as you can see from her heavy eyes.

Here Sadie wants to hold Will.

Even though they were both exhausted from the long day of traveling both Jeff and Libbie forced themselves to run on the erratic treadmill. I didn't know how to re-program it, so they did their best to keep up. I have to give them credit for being diligent in preparing for the July 4th fun run.

Cousins have fun with grandpa and each other. Benson really got Will laughing.

The Rest of the Weekend...

We spent with Hilary and Adam's family. You know it's not a real holiday without a project. Here Steve supervises the planting of the garden. Note the little pots on the back of the hill. The kids loved planting 22 strawberry plants. That was something to get excited about. Now Hilary can try to explain why they probably won't get strawberries for a whole year. Ouch.

Britton, his friends, and Adam prepare the soil for some beloved zucchini, summer squash and cucumber plants. After the work, we ate lunch off the grill and then headed to our first ever Mountain Man Rendevous. This was one of the nicer displays of animal pelts and homemade clothing and trinkets. Did I say homemade? I noticed some of the trinkets said Made in China on them. There were some amazing leather clothes, nice beadwork, etc. The kids liked the candy shot from a miniature cannon and the fried Indian bread-basically a very thin scone with lots of powdered sugar.

It was fun to see but I can't imagine spending an entire weekend doing that. I loved the mountain setting though. Pretty, huh?

Here's our group checking out the wares.

Memorable ( Memorial) Weekend!

A visit from the Idaho grandkids is usually exciting. Here they join Jen and Will for a skype visit with Taylor in China.Quinn is standing by himself more often all the time and for some reason he loves checking out the garbage can. I guess it's just the right height.
While I was in charge of the kids, we made 2 visits to the "castle park" and one to the Heritage State Park. Anna loved the red swing.
But Elsie was almost obsessed with it. It took her a little time to get the courage to sit in it and then she didn't want to leave it. She was sad when other children wanted a turn.
The older kids loved the tire swing and really got it going.

It was chilly on Saturday and rain threatened occasionally but that kept the crowds down so we were really able to enjoy the Heritage Park.
The tee pees and hogans hopefully help the kids appreciate the comforts of their own home and their own bedrooms.

The miniature village was definitely a favorite.
Jantzen loved the baby animals and was so pleased that he caught this duckling by himself.
Here Tanner and Anna dipped candles. Brinley and Jantzen liked this experience too. Elsie and Quinn were often in the stroller together which really helped me out.