Sweet Mary Belle

The day before Mary was 2 weeks old, my sister's sister-in-law, Amy Dana, came and took some pictures of Mary for us. Here are a few of my favorites:

Didn't she do a great job? I can't believe how much Mary has grown since then!!!

We wanted her to take a family picture of us that day as well, but Josh was NOT in the mood. Oh well, what can you do???

My Parents Are Golden!

Today is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary! What a wonderful couple they are.

50 years ago

Either early married life or while they were engaged...I'm not sure which

1984 or 85...not too long after Kayla (their 13th) was born

On one of their many trips

At the White House

At my wedding reception...relieved to fenally have their last unmarried child married off :)

Dancing at my niece's reception, just a couple of months before Dad passed away

Their posterity at the time of my wedding (this is the most recent family picture we took--now there are 7 more grandchildren + 4 grandchildren's spouses, and 2 great-grandchildren)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM & DAD!

One Year Later

I wrote this post on Tues. 6/9/09, but am just now getting around to getting the pictures uploaded. I didn't bother fixing the date references, but we went down to the Capitol on Monday, 6/8/09. Also, most of this is for my journaling purposes, so don't feel obligated to read on...

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my dad's death. So many people have done so much for our family this past year and we are so grateful. I'm especially grateful for the peace Heavenly Father has blessed my family and me with, as well as my knowledge of eternal families and the opportunity I have to see my dad again. I'm also grateful for my mom's example of faith and strength and being happy even through sad times...she is wonderful!

Yesterday down at the Capitol the Senate and House passed a resolution honoring Dad, and they also unveiled a bust that Rusty Bowers sculpted of my dad and will soon be cast in bronze and displayed at the Capitol somewhere. Mary and I were able to go down for the event, along with several of my brothers and sisters and parts of their families. Corinne was nice enough to watch Josh for me...I didn't think it would be fun trying to chase him around and/or try to keep him quiet, especially after he was such a stinker on Sunday at church. Of course Mary got fussy and wanted to eat right before the unveiling, so I had to miss that, but I did get to see most of the other happenings.

After the resolution was read at the Senate, the House read and passed it, then our family got to go back to the Senate floor and get a close-up look of the sculpture, which is really cool. Rusty also had all of the grandkids that were there (and old enough) take a little piece of the extra clay and roll it into a ball, then press it into the base of the sculpture, so that they could have their fingerprint on it. I thought that was pretty cool.

Here are a few pictures:

The screen they had up on the Senate floor during the reading of the resolution:

Some of the grandkids putting their thumb prints on the base of the sculpture. From L to R around the bust they are Peyton, Tori, Sydney, and Trey:

Mary and me getting to stand by Dad.

Here is the Resolution:

Branding

For Memorial Day weekend we went up to Snowflake for a fun-filled weekend. We got up there Friday night (packing for kids takes me forever, by the way), then late Saturday morning Josh and I went and "helped" with the branding while David and Mary went to visit Grandma Wiltbank.

It's funny because our branding days now have more people than calves (maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not much). Back in the day we would have several--probably 6 or 7, if not more--different locations where we would brand around 200 calves at a time, but now we only have about 35 calves...a much smaller scale! But at least we get to let our kids experience some of the things we grew up doing. Josh wasn't to into the whole experience this year, he was more interested in playing with the other kids and in the dirt...maybe next year! Here are some pictures to document our fun:

Josh and Trey are deep in conversation about the intricacies of branding calves:

A line of cousins watching the action. From L to R they are Taden, Manasseh, Trey, Trevin, Josh, Bryant, Spencer and Addie, and Taryn is on the ground. You can tell that Spencer is really enjoying the pleasant noises:

Rend, Tori, Travis and Crystal working hard...don't mind Travis' hands:

Uncle Brandon was nice enough to take Josh for a little ride on Bizness:

I even participated a little:

Back in the day we would often ride the calves out of the chute. Here Kayla is getting ready to re-live the memories:

She didn't quite make the 8 second mark:

Josh found Aunt JenMarie's drink sitting on the trailor and decided to help himself. Nice position there buddy:

Back at Grandma Flake's we went for rides on Chester--the favorite horse who is getting really old, so he probably won't be around for much longer. :( You can tell that Mary was really having a good time.

And just for fun, I swiped these pictures taken in 1999 from Mindy's blog. We were branding at Monument Hill and I would have just graduated from high school:

My nephew Louis getting ready to ride a calf out of the squeeze. Louis just graduated from HS this year:

Tyler manning the chute:

Darin keeping tally and me doing vaccinations...this was my usual job after I graduated from putting ear tags in the taggers:

Wynn and Mindy running the squeeze:

Wynn and Brandon dehorning a calf:

Kayla putting up a good fight with Wynn and Tyler as they try to throw her into the drinker during the lunch break. I think she kind of started a water fight earlier:

Mindy posing for the camera:

Here was Mindy riding a calf out of the squeeze, but whoever took the picture didn't get the calf in it:

Smiles!

Mary started smiling every now and again a couple of weeks ago, and now I can usually get a pretty good grin out of her and have even caught it on camera a few times:



I think Mary looks a lot like my dad did when he slept in this picture:

Josh Likes His Vegetables!

Who says kids don't like to eat vegetables? Josh certainly likes them, especially tomatoes (okay, not technically a vegetable). If he has finished the tomatoes on his plate, he is known to not eat anything else until he has bummed tomatoes off of others' plates, until they are all gone too. I love my crazy boy!

He snatched this off the counter while I was preparing dinner recently.

This was a leftover potato from dinner a couple nights previous. It was in the fridge and David had taken it out when he refilled the water filter pitcher and left it on the counter. Apparently he reached up and snatched it, because I later caught him eating it in his room. He ended up eating most of it. Mmmm...delicious! *


But don't worry, he definitely likes the sweets too! He scored this cookie from Aunt Janice while we were in Thatcher this past weekend.

*I realize that many of the pictures I post of Josh these days are of him in only his diaper. He likes to run around practically naked (I'm sure he would love to run around completely naked if I would let him), so sometimes it is literally a wrestling match to get him dressed. Being the super nice mom that I am (ha ha!), I often don't get him dressed for the day until we are getting ready to go somewhere. And it just so happens that he does a lot of funny/cute stuff while wearing only his diaper!

Mary's Blessing Day

Last Sunday (May 3rd) David blessed Mary and gave her a beautiful blessing. We were able to have several family members from both sides come to our ward for Sacrament Meeting, and many of them stayed for the rest of out meetings as well. I've had a few people from our ward mention to me that when we bless a baby attendance at our ward doubles. Not really, but when you have two big families get together like that it sure seems like it! I especially missed having my dad there in the circle with the rest of the men, but hope that he was able to be there in spirit, at least. I'm so grateful to belong to two such wonderful and supportive families!

After our block of meetings we had a luncheon at Celeste's & Jeff's. They are so nice to let us use their home for pretty much every function we "host", and we are so grateful to them for that. It just wouldn't be pretty trying to fit that many people into our condo! I did take my camera with the hopes of getting some pictures of the luncheon crowd, but I forgot to actually take any pictures. Oops! Thanks to everyone who was able to come and share this day with us!

Pretty Mary all gussied up.

Sometimes Josh loves Mary a little too hard.

Josh thought using the timer on the camera was pretty funny. At least it made him smile!

Mother and daughter.