Happy Birthday Livy, you are one today!

Today is Livy's first birthday and we were able to celebrate it with her. This is of her trying to blow out the candles and eating her bites of her princess cake. It was fun to watch how daintily she started out eating her cake and then she had to rub her eyes and the cake was soon all over her face. Jaedon had as much fun with her presents as she did I think. We are glad that we have a princess amidst all of the Prince's that we have as grandchildren, she is a very cute Princess.
We stayed our first night at the Oberg's and had fun getting to know Ashden and Mayce and want to thank them for their fun hospitality. Mayce loved Grandpa and even wanted to sit on his head while he was sleeping. Ashden showed us all of his favorite toys and his athletic abilities in his jumpolene.
Bennett came home the next morning and we couldn't resist a man in uniform. They decided to come with us to meet Mel in Gettysburg so we spent the day playing and trying to get more historically smart about the civil war. It was a fun day and we enjoyed being all together.
This was our group picture at the Oberg's while watching the football game.

Grandma and Livy trying to figure out what I was trying to do with the camera.
Becca, Mayce, and Mel atop the Pennsylvania memorial.
This was probably the highlight of the kids day we finally stopped at McDonalds so they could play, it is pretty hard to get two, one year olds to sit still.
Grandpa enjoyed the history I think.

Grandma Shaw and Livy at Gettysburg.
Livy, Mel and Jaedon at the Gettysburg museum.

On our way back to the car to take the auto tour through Gettysburg. It was a very fun day and good to be with those we don't get to see very often. Thanks everyone for the great day!!!

Happy Birthday Rachel!!

This first picture is of Kace because he had a birthday too and we celebrated it last Saturday but today is Rachel's birthday and we want to wish her a very Happy Day!! Her birthday is a little overshadowed by Kace's because we celebrate her birthday with Kace's usually and she gets a little overlooked but hopefully she will have a great day today and because BYU has a game today I am sure it will help to make her day. Hopefully they win because if they don't she will be miserable. WE just want her to know how much we love her and we are so glad that she takes care of Nate, Kace and Tydon so well. We love you Rachel!!!

This last picture shows how much she loves her husband, she let him buy this float boat so he can go fishing more than he normally does. So Nate what kind of "boat" is she going to get?

I'm home right now later I will be here!

It has been a year since I have been out to Hershey town and today I will be there again! Well I will be in Baltimore and we will actually be there tomorrow, Olivia and Jaedon have grown since then and the pictures I will take will show that I am sure. I am excited to go and spend some time with the Bassett family. I will be going with my Mom and Dad, they have not been out there yet and we will get to see Bennett and Becca as well so I am getting ready to leave so see you all soon!!!

Brandon and Chelsea are married!

On Saturday my neice Chelsea and Brandon Tracy were married. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful day for the weather, it cooperated and they couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. We enjoyed going to the temple to witness their sealing and then spent the day at Carolyn and Kevin's having a wonderful lunch and a beautiful reception outside. I made a new friend Shaylee's daughter Kaeda, she liked my ice cream and then we were dancing partners. In the slide show you can see some of her dance moves she is just adorable. Thanks for a great day we were glad we were able to share it with all of you.

Brandon and Chelsea's wedding

Forgiveness

Today I was reading the church news and came across this message of inspiration from President Monson on forgiveness. I liked it so much that I typed it up and put it on my fridge. It made me think about how we in the world treat each other and how we should be treating each other and I thought to myself, " I have a long way to go." Then I got on the Internet and realized that it was 9/11 and thought, okay do I forgive those that did that horrible thing a few years ago? Then I thought of the Amish when they were attacked and their little girls were killed and how they responded to the family of the attacker. Instead of concentrating on the hate they concentrated on the forgiveness and surrounded that family with love. They knew that their lives could not be happy if they let the bitterness of hatred canker their soles so they made food and showed their love and sympathy to those who had wronged them. I hope that I can show that much love for someone who has made me sad or wronged me in some way because I don't want to break the bridge over which I must pass if I ever make it to heaven.

boys, boys, boys...

Well, since no one else is posting anything..., I guess I will. If you haven't heard, first of all, Isaac and Mary are expecting a little kiddo in January. They found out on Sept. 2nd that they are adding to the football team. That's right they are having a boy!! We are so excited for them, but wish that little Livy could have had another little cheerleader to cheer with. :D Maybe Livy will just have to join the team I guess. Congrats you two, and we love you!!

It was a LABOR day

Happy LABOR day! I remember when I first met Ryan that whenever there was a holiday I would ask him what he was doing to celebrate and his answer was usually"working, it's just another day." I thought how boring is that because our family always celebrated in some way and had a picnic or went camping or had fun with our cousins down at the camp ground. Well today we celebrated the holiday like Ryan did when he was growing up and we worked! It actually started raining last night and we are so glad to see the rain because it has been so dry. I love it when it rains, thunders, and lightnings especially when I am inside and am in my bed reading. This morning it was still raining so I decided to clean the house and Ryan went up and fed the animals and came down and said we should do apricots and plums today. Now when he says that he usually means lets dry them on the food dehydrator but today he wanted to do jam and his idea for the plums was to pit them and put them through the Victorio strainer so that we could make plum jam. I thought the apricot jam sounded okay but doing the plum jam that way sounded like a little too much work even to do on a Labor day. So I went over to Preston to see if I could find a new steamer, juicer because the one I had has pretty much seen it's last days. So I went to Alco and then to Stokes and there was nothing, so I went over to the Preston's own Bob's Mart. Well because it was labor day it was closed but I noticed that King's was open. I had gone down almost every aisle when I found the place where the stock pots were and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a real steamer juicer. When I looked at the price I thought, "wow, the price has really gone up on these canning gadgets." It was priced at $89.99.. I pretty much had two choices, to buy it or to not buy it and go home and pit all of those plums. So I thought," well it is time to get a new one." When the cashier was ringing it up I mentioned that these steamer juicer things had really gone up in price and she then asked, When did you buy your last one?" Me: Umm lets see that would be about 30 years ago... wow do I ever feel old. The cashier just smiled and said,"Yes they probably have gone up in price."

I took my prized possession home and started making the apricot jam and then when Ryan came in with the bucketful of plums I opened the box and was pleasantly surprised to see how nice it was. After doing one batch of plums we found out that it made 5 1/2 quarts of juice and it was a beautiful pink color. Mel, it doesn't look like prune juice. I even felt older after talking to Mel and she mentioned that we were making our own prune juice. It tastes pretty good and now that Ryan saw how fast we made 5 1/2 quarts of juice he is up picking more plums.

The apricot jam was very good and I used my Grandma Shaw's recipe here it is if anyone else would like to make some:

Grandma Shaw's Apricot Jam

12 cups of ground apricots (I just pulsed them in the food processor until they were the consistency that I wanted.)

11 1/2 cups of sugar

2 oranges (quarter them and take out the seeds and cut off the stem on the end then put them in the food processor and chop them until they are very fine, leave the peelings on it makes the jam taste like apricot marmalade.)

2 lemons ( do the same thing you did to the oranges.)

3- 20 ounce cans of crushed pineapple

Mix it all up in a very large bowl because it won't fit in one large pan, and then divide it into 2 large pans. cook it on medium high and then when it starts boiling turn it down a little and stir it until it gets thick and then put the jam in pint jars and process them for about 10 - 15 minutes. It is delicious and just how I remembered it.


This is the new steamer, juicer. It works great!
These apricots are almost ready and if you would like to come and get some just let me know.

This is the little red hen or I guess rooster who planted the tree, watered the tree, picked the fruit, washed the fruit, put the fruit into the juicer, filled the bottles with the juice, sealed the bottles and will then drink the juice, I am sure he will share if you ask him.

It was a good LABOR day.

A trip down memory lane

I have been using my scanner to the best of its abilites this last week so I have been having lots of memories about all of my little kids who now have little kids of their own. This first picture is of Nate holding Mel in our house in Provo. This is Rainee watching over her baby sister Mel.

This is a little later sorry these pictures are not in order but this is Isaac and Mac when we went on our trip to Washington.
This is in the living room at our house in Taylor. Jamie, Rainee and Mel are on the back row and Shaylee, Nate and Kerry are on the front row.
This is Mel in the snow and I can't remember ever seeing this picture.

Remember "Wally" this is a picture of Mac and Caitlin just "chillin" with the dog.
Mac showing his tonsils and Caitlin and Isaac hiding in the background.
Here is Dad with hair!
Mac and Isaac on one of their many hunting trips.
Mac, Mel, and Isaac showing off the fish we caught on one of our camping trips.

This is Grandpa Shaw with Tydon, no it really is Nate but it sure looks a lot like Tydon.
Mac showing his jumping abilities.
Nate with a fish.
Here is a little more normal picture but they are still making strange faces.

Rainee on her first day of school, I think Grandma Shaw has a picture like this when she was going to school too.
Rainee with puppies in the back of our station wagon.
This is Rainee, Mel, Emilee and Nate in front of Grandma Shaw's which is now Carolyn and Kevin's house.
Rainee and Nate dressing up as their favorite characters. I think I have seen some spider man costumes on some of the little boys. This was one that I made for halloween one year.
Mac with the big white tent on one of our camping trips.

Nate giving Mel a kiss.
This last week Mac was cleaning out the shed and their was the old filing cabinet that had been in their since we moved, you can tell how often I have needed it. He was going to throw out all the stuff that was in it but I told him to let me go through it first. Well their were some real treasures in there and some of them were old pictures and old negatives that I thought I should scan so they would be on my computer. Many of the pictures I have copies of or my children have copies of but some of them I could not remember or I may have lost the picture. These are some family pictures that we had taken minus Dad because he didn't get back from a hunting trip. I decided if I had all of the kids ready to go that I would just go anyway. Mel is just 10 days old in this picture and after waiting around for Dad we all got in the car and had our picture taken. These are some of the proofs that I saved because if I remember right we only purchased one 5x7 and I am not sure where that went. They scanned pretty well even though they were only about 2x2 in size.

This picture was after church in Provo. Mel is the baby and Rainee doesn't want to look at the camera.
This is a picture of Rainee that I can't remember ever seeing but I must have because it was in the file.


This one is of Dad with a little puppy that they had, Dad is 3 years old.

I sure am glad that I went through the file, I love looking at old pictures the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is more than true because you now have a real visual image in your head and you can see the family resemblances in all of them.

Happy Birthday "Igick"!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! We love you and hope you are having a very fun and special day! ;)How can you not love this crazy, silly kid!!?

24th Of July

I know that it has been a couple of weeks since the 24th but I am just getting around to getting these pictures posted so sorry about that. It was a busy few weeks and we sure had a bunch of fun with everyone here. Every year they have a 24th of July celebration at the Mapleton ward and they invited the Cubriver ward since we used to be part of them. It is just an old fashioned celebration and we did not invite PETA to this year's celebration so yes they still chase all of the animals and the kids who catch them, take them home with them. Layne was sad that he didn't catch any thing but Rainee and Doug were glad or I should say Grandma was glad because it probably would have ended up at our house. In the egg toss Doug and Layne went forever and I think the egg bounced about 10 times on the ground and it still didn't break, it eventually broke when Layne was trying to catch it, we should have called it super egg! We had a firework show on Saturday night and Nate was the fireworks expert and showed all of the boys how fireworks should not be handled. We all enjoyed it though, I think Nate enjoyed it the most, he was able to do what his Mom and Dad told him not to do when he was younger. We had a great time and thanks to all for being here!!

July 24th Celebration

Happy Birthday Layne!

Well we celebrated Layne's birthday finally. He had an army birthday party. I filled up 250 water balloons and they set up their 2 slip n slides. They also had snowcones, pizza, cake, and ice cream. They had lots of fun. But knowing me I only remembered to take a few pictures.