Wedding Bells…

What an emotional, wonderfully great last week.  How can parents have such a wide array of feelings?  So happy for the next step of their lives but mixed with a twinge of sadness.

Life is bittersweet…

The littles and the boys with GG

Em and Garrett all dressed up…

The girls getting some pics before the wedding…

Handsome Teigen…

Beautiful Samantha with her sister…

Giving the groom away, awfully hard on me…

A quick kiss…

Father and son…

Rings…

 

Official…

Yeah!!

Handsome guys…

The girls hiding from the wind…

The Dads…

Papas…

My mother-in-love, Aunt Abigail and Uncle Jason…

Cold little girl…

“Happiness”

A little rain and a slight breeze but no snow!

Headed to the hay shed…

My mom and dad…

The official paperwork…

Sawyer with his Grammies, my mom on the right and my husband’s mom on the left.

Sawyer with his Papas, Mark’s dad on the left and mine on the right.

The littles…

Sammy with her dog Oakley…

Sawyer trying to embarrass his sister…

Brother and sister…

Grammy and Garrett dancing…

Madeline and Sawyer…

Brother and Sister…

Sammy with Hayden…

A little dance between buddies…

A little dance between buddies…

 

Father Daughter…

Sammy and Garrett

Hayden

My parents…

Tori and Hayden

Love this one of my kids and my parents…

❤

 

My beautiful girls…

All too soon the evening came to a close and the new married couple drove away…

The day seemed sort of like a fuzzy dream.  Totally wonderful but in the same thought how did it come to this so soon.  Very surreal.   It was just yesterday…

 

The boys started moving into his room and found a couple of treasures…

 

A blanky with only two corners of silky left on it. A blanky a boy carried with him everywhere and was the ultimate comforter…

His little Teddy that followed him everywhere…

 

How can a mommy go from crying tears of pure happiness and being excited for her boy and his wonderful new wife to crying tears of remembrance all in the same minute?

 

Linking up with…

Linking up with friends at:

LITTLE THINGS THURSDAY

Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop

20 years ago…

How can it be that 20 years ago today that we brought home this adorable little guy…

We were young (16 and 18) and scared to death…

Many, many people said we wouldn’t make it…

(Reserve Champion market steer and Grand Champion Showmen)

(Shooting at Nationals for small bore pistol in 4H.)

But, oh how love grows…

By the good grace of God.

Happy 20th birthday wishes to Sawyer!  We are so proud of the young man you are…

Woohoo…

What could be more fun?  Especially for a rambunctious, little 4-year old boy…

All grins, the whole way!

Whew!  That was too much fun.  🙂

A Hunting We Will Go…

Don’t worry.  The only thing “shot” in this post are the pictures.  😉

At age 19, Sawyer is all about hunting.  Very serious about hunting!   He has been hunting with my father 3-4 times per week since hunting season started.   With the weather perfect weather the perfect weather coming up on Friday and all the sheep sorting and farm chores caught up (mostly), we decided to go hunting.  This was my first outing for the year, so I was more than excited to head up to the ranch for a little peace and quite and just soaking in all the natural beauty around us.

My father-in-law’s ranch…

Normally, Sawyer, my husband and I are up here at least every weekend, cutting wood/hunting.  This year though  my father purchased a logging truck full of logs and had it delivered to our place, so going and getting wood has been knocked down a notch on the priority list and we haven’t been hunting this year, yet.  That and my husbands new job has had him gone quite a bit too.

Tall grass along the creek…

Logs crossing the creek…

Oregon Grape in its fall color…

The tracks…

We did see lots of does and one little spike a gazillion yards away.     So we were unsuccessful in our hunt but had a wonderful day together.  Our first son/mother hunt.  Lots of laughs and talking ~ maybe that’s why we didn’t see much!   😉

The sun setting on a perfect day!

Linking up with…

Zayne’s new do….

Zayne’s sporty new hairdo….

Isn’t it just dashing?  Poor guy ran into a door at church last night before the hymn sing.  Mark and I were out talking and one of the children informed me that Zayne had hit his head pretty hard and was hiding under a pew.   Zayne getting rolled around didn’t concern me too much, being the youngest of 5 boys~it seems some one always has a war wound.  When I coaxed him out from under the pew the side of his head all red and was sporting a nice sized cut.  I took him out to have Mark look at it.  It was decided between Mark and the many onlookers that he definitely needed a stitch or two…

We were very blessed to have the best care in Kalispell and were able to have him stitched up in no-time and even made it back for the end of the hymn sing.

8 little stitches…

Zayne is a  tough little boy and only fussed when his cut was numbed up before the stitching.

Before long he was back to his mischievous ways!

Thanks for your prayers, he kind of had a rough night trying to get  and stay comfy.

We would like to extend an invitation to our friends and family whom might be in town to the Christmas Eve service at Grace Church at 5 pm and Christmas morning service at 10:30 am.   Wonderful fellowship and some of the kids and their very talented friends will be singing…

A preview :0)

Sorry you have to click to an external web page to listen.

grace

Trying to get pictures…

With 8 wiggly kidlets it seems like mission impossible to get a descent Christmas picture…

One of very many pictures...

 

Two out of very many pictures...

 

Number three out of very many pictures...

 

Number four out of many pictures...

 

 

Seven?

It only seems like a short time ago that this little man decided to make his debut 13 weeks early, with his little fists clenched tightly he let out a cry and made his presence known.

Hayden hours old with Mark's hand on his back.

Hayden's little hand.

Through many ups and downs Hayden made his way.  By his first birthday it felt as if he had been a baby forever, it felt as if he would never make it to the next stage of life…

 

Hayden is 7!

…and now I wish he would slow down a bit.  I can’t believe he’s seven already!

 

~*~Happy Birthday Hayden~*~

We love your wonderful smile and your witty sense of humor!

Hope you have a fun filled day.

Wow…

{Speechless Mom}

 

 

Sawyer and his Ford

 

 

Behind the driver's seat

 

Busy Zayne…

What more could these two wish for?  Zayne worked sooo hard and had soooo much fun that the tractor eventually lulled him to sleep…sigh.

Multitasking…

Zayne doing a bit of multitasking...

Zayne just couldn’t stay awake a second longer while enjoying his granola bar, yogurt and hunting catalog!  He’d take a little bite and then his head would start bobbing, finally he was sound asleep.