What a surprise

We have some big and exciting news......Sydney got engaged!!! Now for the exciting news, she wanted to get married in 2 weeks!!! So we have been very busy running around looking for dresses and picking flowers but the big day was on May 20th. It was a beautiful day and it was pulled off without a hitch. We had been having a lot of rain and when we went into the Temple it was raining but when we came out it was blue sky and perfect. We wereAble to have her photographer there and everything I am hoping to have pictures soon. They will be staying here for the summer and then going back to school this fall. We will enjoy getting to know Justin better.

Hayden got himself a dirt bike and has been having lots of fun riding it, he seems to come home after every ride and tell me of some other thing that he broke because he crashed!!!

Joce has her seminary graduation last Sunday and her high school graduation this Thursday, I can't believe that she is all done with her high school career, it seems like just yesterday she was beginning kindergarten. Now she is all grown up:)

We have to get a new camera so I will get some fun ok ethers and get them downloaded soon.
I have my marathon on the 11th of June too. So we are keeping busy as usual.

Our wonderful dog:)

This is our wonderful dog Star we got her for Christmas 1998. She would walk to town with the kids and wait outside of the store to walk them back home, she would chase fireworks on the 4th of July, she would hide from thunder or beg to come in the house, she loved to go for rides in the truck, she had the most beautiful smile (that scared the mailman!!!)she loved to run along and while the kids rode bikes, she hated to go in the water, she had the softest ears, she would put up with kids pulling on her lips, or mom giving her kisses! But most of all she loved us as much as we loved her.

Our sweet Star passed away March 14,2011

Some of our happenings.....

Palm Springs!!

This is the mountain that Nath "ran" more on that at her running blog seesistersrun.blogspot.com

We had beautiful weather, 78-80, we were there over Valentines Day so Shawn counted that as his big plans!! It was great to just sleep in and sit by the pool, read some books, shop and just be together!

The view from the pool, this was during the 30 minutes of clouds we had all week:)

I want an orange tree in my back yard, this is at Shawn's brother's place in Southern Cal.

While we were there Nancy put Shawn and Bill right to work building a fence, it turned out great and makes a big difference in their yard, well worth the effort (not that it took much effort for those 2!)

It was actually me, Nancy and Clay that did all the work, Shawn and Bill are more "supervisor" material!!

Seattle trip

I find it pretty cool to see Elk on the side of the road just a little way out of Seattle!!

Josh, Dad, and Mom went to Seattle for a few days, we saw Mt St Helens and Mt Rainer, the weather was a perfect 55 and sunny, you don't get that much in the northwest!!

Just a couple of pictures from above the river.

Nashville Trip

This was part of the roof to our hotel!!

Jane Deer Girls

Luke Bryan

Shawn and I had the chance to go to Nashville in January, it was so much fun. I have always loved the South and jump at any opportunity to go that direction. I had never been to Tennessee before so again I was very excited!! We went to a few civil war sites and Shawn being the camera happy guy that he is took way to many pictures for me to post, but we have a great collection to keep the memory alive!!I would love to live in a plantation house!! We were the only ones on the tour so we got to go to the areas of the home not open to tourists, it was amazing. This home was turned into a hospital and had over 700 soldiers in it for several months. The location is one of the bloodiest battles of the war, over 10,000 men were wounded, died, or MIA in just a short 5 hour time.
This is the backside of the house, are those porches the best or what??
We stayed at Opryland it has something like 25 acres of land all under this glass roof! The balloons were up as part of the Christmas display and it was mostly gone by the time we left.
Shops and restaurants were all under this one roof, really no reason to even leave, except of course for all the great music and dancing and of course the Ryman theater where we saw Steele Magnolias, Eric Church, Jane Deer girls, Easton Corbin, and The Band Parry, and Luke Bryan!! We went dancing at The Wild horse and found some real southern bar-b-que, which we find every time we go to the south:)

I've decided to try and update by finding a picture,telling about it and then moving on, since I can't seem to be able to figure out how to post and then write!!

Ok so if you have not been able to tell yet, I have no idea how to download pictures!! These are our pictures from our Christmas with our family from Holland, begining with their departure!! We had an amazing 3 weeks with them. They arrived Christmas Day and stayed until the 13th of January, we went skiing and snowmobiling in McCall, watched fireworks on New Years morning, went to a hockey game, they took a van trip through Yellowstone, swimming in Riverdale resort, SHOPPING and of course the Hardware store!! Just great to spend time together and enjoy one anothers company.

Shawn on his dream bike, which I hope he gets soon (can't you see me on the back of this??)

Troy after playing our new favorite game, he was a good sport!!

Enjoying a break from the slopes at Tamarak, Tante Ger, John, Joce, and Sydney.

Okko wondering if we will be able to dig our way out of the cabin!!

Tante Ger and Jan digging us out of the cabin in McCall, they had to earn their keep somehow!!

We picked them up in style from the airport, John has always wanted to drive a Hummer and I just couldn't find one to rent here so we did the next best thing and rented a Hummer Limo!!

There were 14 people in the house and when Sydney's boyfriend came we had 15 it was so much fun, crazy and oh so quiet when everyone was gone!! So glad they made the trip it was a Christmas to remember for sure:)

Some pictures

Had our first snow day today. Here is Chubba playing with the dogs in the back yard, they all had so much fun!!

Dylan having just fallen off of the sleigh behind the 4-wheeler!

Joce and her artistic self showing through with this AMAZING snowman! I stayed inside and did laundry and cleaned the house, mostly I just tried to be warm, I thought we had moved away from all of this?? Although it was funny that we had a snow day when there was only about 7-8 inches at Preston it would have been just another storm!! It was a fun day, the boys were outside ALL day riding 4-wheelers and playing in the snow:)

Joce went to sadie hawkins dance, they decorated their shirts and had a great time!!

Just an example of the fun the boys have been having this fall with our new dog, aptly named "Birdie" Shawn has the best reciepe for cooking all kinds of game birds so we really have been enjoying them!

Crazy Dayz!

I know I am such a slacker on this blog, but I will try to do better! I am also blogging for the marathon so I figured I can always do 2 right??

AmyLynne's funeral was on the 16th and was very beautiful and touching, she and her family are some of the best people around! We had dinner and everything then went back to KL and Troy's place to hang out for awhile, about 5'oclock there was screaming coming from the tramp, it was Chubba he was on with the big boys and came down on Hayden's shoulder with his chin. I pulled him off and had him come sit by me for a few minutes and before long he was off again. About half an hour later he came and told me he had a headache so I had him sit by me again, about the same time Shawn was going to run back to our house for a few things and Chubba asked him where he was going, Shawn told him and then went into the kitchen for a minute, came back out and said good-by again. Chubba asked him where he was going, Shawn told him, almost word for word, then Chubba looked at me and said "my head hurts", he had just said that 2 minutes earlier so we began to question him on other things, he could remember the Prophets name, his birthday,his family, but not why we were at AmyLynnes' house.

I wanted to know if he could still read so I handed him a program from the funeral and asked him to read it for me, it was the most horrible part of the day. He read it silently looked at me and burst into tears, he didn't remember that AL had passed away!! I proceeded to burst into tears as well for his pain, it was awful. It lasted about 2 minutes then abruptly stopped. I asked him why he was sad and he just looked at me with a glazed expression and said "I don't know, my head hurts." We gave him a blessing and headed to the hospital, I had a flower from one of the arrangements in the car it was a lilly, he smelled it and I asked him what it reminded him of he told me AL, I said "why?" he said "because she is beautiful" Then I asked if he remembered what had happened that day, he said no. We went through the grieving 4-5 times that night, until his memory began to return. He had a concussion and had forgotten the entire past week!! Thankfully as his memory returned it all came back so we didn't have to go through it again.

What I found amazing was the episode with the flower, we had never had these flowers before, he had associated then with her even through his injury. The mind is an amazing thing.

The pictures are of him in the hospital and with him all dressed up for the funeral, he was a pall-bearer.

On the run!!

My sister KayLynne and I are going to run a marathon.....stop laughing it's true!

check out our "jog blog" at seesistersrun.blogspot.com

This is just in case anyone out there still stops in here!!