Memorial Day Observance #2

l. to r.: Hans, Bret, Elli, Meg, Tait, Ben, Zach, Anna, Mikan, Lila, Tam, Katie, Laura, Finn, Anders, grandpa took the picture.

This is Heber and Sarah's grave. What special memories I have of this cemetery and those buried here. When I was a little girl it looked more like "Boot Hill" with dirt and tumbleweeds. Aunt Laura did such a wonderful job of decorating all the family graves.....from brothers and sisters graves to great grandparents. Bless her heart!

We then drove to Paris, Idaho to visit the graves where my mom and dad are buried. When dad died mother planted three white birch trees by her family plot. There are still two of them alive. I showed the grandchildren the pictures of the people that are buried at this cemetery.

Bret with his family standing next to mom and dad's grave.

I think mom and dad would be very proud of their posterity!

Memorial Day Observance

For Memorial Day we all decided to go for a drive to Bear Lake and visit the graves of our family members who are buried there.

Bret and Mikan and families had never seen the memorial that was placed in the town park last September in Laketown, Utah. Their grandfather/great-grandfather Kenneth's name was engraved upon it along with three of his brothers that fought in WW II. One brother, Earl, was killed while learning to be a fighter pilot. Dad went on to serve in the Pacific as a fighter pilot

I loved the saying inscribed on this bench. I wish every American felt the same way!!!

All the grandkids loved swinging on these wonderful, old fashioned swings!

l. to r.: Katie, Finn, Elli, Ben, Tait.

Have you ever seen a two year old that wanted help? I don't think so. It is always, "Do it myself"!!!!

"See, Dad, I can do it myself!!!", says our little Ben.

Bret and his beautiful family.

I think Bret thanked me about three different times for having all of us make the effort to go and pay tribute to our family that has gone before us.

Mikan and her beautiful family. She also thanked us for going to Bear Lake for Memorial Day even though it was a full day with a couple of babies to care for. Notice the red stone building behind. This was once the only store in town and I used to walk down there as a little girl and buy penny candy or an ice cream bar.

After stopping and picking up Aunt Laura, which was a surprise for her, we went up to the cemetery where the Myers/Watson family are buried. This cemetery has the most beautiful view of Bear Lake.

I brought along a geneology picture sheet and we spent some time showing the grandkids where each family member was buried and a little about that person.

I can remember visiting this cemetery as a child and hauling up water in milk cans on the back of a trailer that was pulled by grandpa's tractor. It was always alot of work to pull all the weeds and water the plants.

We would always bring up lilacs and irisis and place them on the graves.

Memorial Day Work Project

For our Memorial Day Weekend work project we decided to see if we could find the time capsule that we buried in the year 2000 for our family reunion. We had placed an engraved rock with our last name and "Open 2010" on the top of the place we had buried it but because we had some fencing put on the property and the boys that installed the fence said they had ran into it and moved the box, it was not an easy project to find it. But after alot of proding and probing it was found and dug up.

But what we found was a box half filled with the stinkiest, dirty water...........ever smell a sewage plant?

Well we continued with our other project......

of cleaning up some dead trees that we had cut down. We are also landowners who are dealing with alot of beetle killed trees. Does anyone know someone high up in the Bureau of Land Management that actually cares and could do something for us in the western USA and save our forests? Good Grief!
See the time capsule in the back of the Ranger? Mikan and I got the fun job of seeing if anything could be salvaged. All the pictures were ruined but we were able to save the paper with writing on it. I don't know if anyone will be able to hold the paper long enough to read it again becasue of the stink but we did our best to save a ten year old memento for the families that had put something in the box for posterity sake.

The kids mostly played...they did help but you all know how work projects are.....

The guys do the most,

The little tykes think they are really helping.........

But the best part of any project is always the transportation.

Tait is getting to the age where he actually accomplishes something......

And in the end it is about being together and working...........

together as a family!!!!

Of course we could only have half of a good day......... But at least we didn't loose our power from this hail storm!!!!

Well, Winter was determined to hang around for a long time. This is how it looked the day after Easter. Needless to say the Easter Bunny had to be very creative for ten grandchildren who came to visit.

We spent time coloring eggs!!

There were a couple of grandchildren that were having their first experience at this egg dying stuff. Check out the stickers that didn't end up on the eggs!

The whole crew!!!!

The Easter Bunny had to get very creative where she hid the eggs,

But don't you think she did a good job?
And isn't she just adorable?

"Our Girls"

The hens seemed to do just fine through the winter even with all the snow. We kept the heat inside the coop just up enough so the water didn't freeze. They spent a lot of time outside in the run even on the coldest of days. Neil changed the water and feed each morning and I was the pooper scooper. We use pine shavings inside the coop and after several experiments I came up with scoopers that would collect the poop and let the shavings fall through. Pretty slick! We get between five to seven eggs a day from eight hens. Our one hen, Queenie, lays the biggest jumbo egg you have ever seen.

MEET: "OL' DUSTY"

One day, in the middle of winter, a cat showed up on our covered back deck. It was a beautiful cat....But.....I did not want to take care of a cat!!!!

I refused to feed it for about ten days, hoping it would go away, but it was determined to stay and live under the plastic sheeting we had covering all our deck furniture for the winter. Well, you know how the rest of the story goes.....I gave in and started feeling sorry for it and so I started feeding it. It was such a sweet, nice cat I was sure it was not a wild feral cat but some domesticated cat that somehow, unbelievably, found it's way to our house through five feet of snow.

There was a problem! It just got fatter and fatter and we were convinced we had a pregnant cat on our hands and we were scheduled to go to Hawaii for a week and did not want to come back to kittens!
Well, we took the cat up to the humane shelter and told them our problem and said we were sorry but we just didn't want a bunch of cats on our hands. Later that night they called to tell us it was not a pregnant cat but a neutered male!!!

We had become pretty attached to this cat so we told them if they had not found a family for it when we got back we would come and get him. Well, we went to Hawaii and one week was not long enough. I think three months would have been even better! Yeh think?

Well the end of the story is we now have a sweet, kind, gentle, fun loving, outdoor cat named "Dusty" He plays as if he thinks he is a dog. He will even follow me like a little puppy on my walks in the morning to the barn. I noticed he kept killing too many birds so he now has a little bell around his neck...but he is a hunter. He can have all the mice he wants.