Family Photo

Hello everyone, I will upload this photo now, and some others when I have time (school starting) I think it came out pretty good, hopefully you guys think so as well.

Tanner

Thank you for a great time!

I just wanted to thank all of you for coming to the reunion. We had a great time. I hope that it was as fun for you all as it was for us. I know the kids had great time. I was looking through my pictures and the kids seemed to love the slip and slide, the sandbox and the swing set. We look forward to next year! Here are some of my pictures. Love you all!

Here are all of us girls at that YUMMY ice cream place! It was so fun! We were really loud and obnoxious and goofy and it was really frickin late...boy that root beer ice cream was delicious...oh, sorry gettin' off topic, anyway...I ate my ice cream with , I dunno, twelve spoons or something! It was SO fun!!

Here are more pictures

These are more pictures of the cabin to get you all excited to come. There are 2 bathrooms with showers sorry no tub. But only one water heater :) For the babies we just bath them in the kitchen sink :) or in a cooler with warm water in the shower. Whatever you want to do. lets see, There are lights outside for at night, thanks to my dad for fixing them last weekend! We do have a fire pit. There is an outhouse that you can use but I never have. We call it the 3 bares house! See picture on the side. I hope you all are getting excited!!!

Welcome to the Cabin!

This is the Cabin. There will be plenty of room for tents and cars. We are very excited to have all of you up there! It was beautiful weather. We were outside most of the time. I am going to send out a packing list and a map next week. We are only four weeks away can you believe it? Have a great Fourth of July and we will see you next month! I will add more pictures on the side and then take them down after the reunion.

Ethan is 4!

We celebrated Ethan's 4th birthday yesterday. Ethan has been so cute about being 4 years old. He asks me every night when I'm putting him to bed, "Mommy, am I still 4?" He thinks that he is all grown up now. It's the cutest thing!

I forgot to bring something to light the candle with but Ethan was really good about pretending to blow out the candle.

Cupcake eating is serious business!

"A Speed Yaysa (racer) Car!"

More candy than they could possibly eat!

Time with Daddy.

Brian being, well....Brian :)

Everyone had a good time. Yes, even Lara if you can believe that! :)

Nana's favorite place to be!

Hello family!

This is Bridport! And it was awesome! I loved it here. It was so beautiful.

Well, England was awesome! I will post a few pictures here for you but if you want more go to my blog. Anyways, we are getting excited for the upcoming family reunion. We are headed to the cabin this weekend in fact! So, I will take pictures of it and post them Sunday or Monday. Then you will have a better idea of where you all are going! Also, we will be sending a map of directions out soon along with a list of activities that we can do up there. I also don't know if you all want like a schedule made up or if you want it more laid back, I am fine either way. We are just way excited to get you all here. Hope you all have a great day!

Cheerio!!!

Dear Family,

I have been thinking about you all a lot lately. We are leaving tomorrow for England. I am very excited. Especially to get to Bridport where our ancestors are from. I have been in contact with a fellow by the name of Paul. He has helped me locate some Ostlers (which are in our family line from England) that are buried in Allington cemetery. I am not sure if we are related to them or not. But what I am going to do is get all the information I can and bring it back and hopefully put together some of the pieces that are missing. I thought that we had found a relative but I haven't found a connection yet. Paul has been very helpful and I am going to meet him and he will show us around the cemetery when we get to Bridport. From what I can tell, it's a pretty small town, but so beautiful. I hope to capture it on video and film and be able to show it to all of you at the family reunion the summer! I will hopefully have copies if you want it too. I am humbled to have this experience to go where my ancestors came from. To walk where they walked, it makes me want to cry! I have felt closer to them and I hope that we can further or genealogy work though what I find. We will be in Bridport June 6th and 7Th. Then the next week we come home on Wednesday. These pictures are up on my blog but I will post them here too. Cheerio!

Reminded me of Grandma Hawkins

I got this email the other day and it made me think of Grandma Hawkins...

How To Dance In The Rain

It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80's arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb.

He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would to able to see him.

I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound.

On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound.

While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.

The gentleman told me No, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife.

I inquired as to her health. He told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer's Disease.

As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late.

He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.

I was surprised, and asked him, 'And you still go every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are?'

He smiled as he patted my hand and said,

'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.'

I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, 'That is the kind of love I want in my life.'

True love is neither physical, nor romantic.

True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.
The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything;

they just make the best of everything they have.
'Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.'

I love you Grandma!!!!!

Reflections

My mom wanted me to post this link. It's a website called Reflections of Christ. It has a 5 minute slide show of pictures to one of my favorite hymns Come thou Fount. I hope you all enjoy it and my mom sends her love. I have to go over and show her all this Blogging stuff!