good times in the cool weather...

hey, so we are in such a great and changing time with all the coolness of weather and what's going on in the family that i just had to write today. 
things in this varied and large family life are happening in such good, hard and strange ways.  a new babe in colo, a loss of jobs for three more of the men,  girls going to girls' camps, trips being made to florida and some of the kids visiting others of the kids. neat stuff and some very hard stuff.   AND...dave going to China for 5 wks when their new baby was just a few weeks old! this is the couple they were and still are, only with 7 added to their group. dave gets home tonight and will there ever be a celebration in colo! good for them.


i want to write about the neat stuff for a while here. it has been such a privilege to know and spend time with our grown kids and then with their kids!! i love sporting around visiting them. the ones who are living right here in the same valley with us we see the least i think. they are all so busy going to school, serving in their wards, building security for their families futures that we just don't have the chance to see them as much as we'd like right now.


last year's family get together in a small panoramic shot: 
we hope to do this again this year if steph and russ are able to bring their family out again for the Fourth of July.
it's been really great to have them come almost every year at that time. and this is the last year for Ian to be at home since he will go on a mission for our church soon and be gone for two years, then college, then marriage, then end up who knows where-Timbuktu?
when our group is together Roy and i just kinda sit back and watch all the fun and activity, joking, playing games, getting wet, jumping on the tramp, and listening a lot to what they all have to say to each other. it's great.  LOVE THEM ALL!!

during the two months of travel to colo and calif i did miss the spring blooming of the daffordils, bleeding heart, the beatiful blues and purples of the ground covers, and the fruit trees in blossom. so, i am so glad to have these photos of previous year's springs to remember them. lovely Nature. so bright and cheery. 
notice Mr. Bumble Bee there in the purple ones. he knows they're sweet also. what a smart guy!
i regret sometimes not to be in depression. i feel that i am a better more honest and down-to-earth writer when i am in the introspective moods of depression. i don't miss it for a lot more reasons than that one good thing about it tho. yea! no more of it. can't really relate to it now. 

this is an intense and sunny moment. can't really see it well enough? well, i just had to use yellow right now anyway. love it

one of my fave blossoms on the planet-the simple and sweet little sunflower:

 

 i'm thinking of doing a river raft trip again. my last was too long ago when my sis and i went on he Payette together. great times. we'll go to the mts and plains of colo next month and maybe see some red, red river somewhere and i'll just go raft it. or wait for the calmer waters of late summer and drift down the local one from Barber Park. whenever and wherever i do it, i will think of wetness and cool and all the times i needed a drink after the hot heat dried out my mouth and body when i was a kid on my uncle's ranch and all the cousins would take on the long day's horseback ride to check cattle was one quart jar of water. us city kids had to wait until they decided it was time to drink-which was arbitrary, let me tell you. those were the days. days of happiness, fun, scary times in the barn at night,  heat in the NM sun, fascination with cattle work, the screw worms in their eyes, the small life of a cow and her calf, the excitement of branding and castration and then ending up with the big Cattlemen's Assc. picnic right on my uncle's ranch with the huge pits that were dug the day before and half beef pieces put in to cook and smoke overnight. the greatness of the taste of that food has lasted this lifetime so far. it was really the congeniality that has been a fond memory i'm sure. but the food was really something. on a ranch if a neighbor from two or twenty or more miles aways brings a dish of food or a cake or pie-it's just natural to fill it up and return it: double-fold to them. i loved being in the midst of all of that in the summers there. good, good times. this is the current generation of cowboy and cowgirl in that family:

         and maybe the rafting will happen...

home again...

well, i'm home again after being gone for two months. and quite the two months it was:  i was there in one state welcoming a new grandson into the world on April 15, then flew to California where my dad died on May 15, so they almost passed each other coming and going! what a surprising journey for each. lots to learn on both sides-the beginning is very hard to figure out, the middle will be full of finding themselves, and the end will be their final destiny-for the one it will be eternity and the other it will be the end of earth life. wow. how exciting for both. i think of the whole plan and circle of life as a book that has no end and endless possibilities. to explore is their determination; to fathom with the likeness of a sponge in the ocean is their tool. so very exciting and enchanting for both.

in the eternal scheme of things, when we are all finished here on this mortal realm, then we can look back with relish at the vastness of all of our lives on this, the earth of our learning, and the beginning of our grasping the knowledge to do all our Father has promised us.