The secret to longevity

A cute little old lady from Georgia just celebrated her 116th birthday, making her the oldest person in the world. When asked what her secret to her longevity was, she answered, "minding my own business and not eating junk food."

At the lake with the Halladays.

All the cute little cousins.  The kids had a great time out on the knee board.  Enjoying breakfast on the boat.:)  I think the boat was really relaxing for Ruth because she slept in her little nest of towels most of the morning. Fun on the tube!   Karen and I tried our best to throw the guys off without killing them. We came close a few times doing both! It was a good thing we went first or we would have been in trouble!   Jeremy and I even gave water skiing a try after all these years. :) It was a really fun morning on the lake...thanks Tim and Karen!

Off to a great start!

This morning I went to Wal-mart for some groceries with the girls after dropping Luke off at school. I had Ruthy in her car seat perched on top of the cart...which makes it really hard to see what's in front of you....can you see where this is going?  As I came to the end of an isle I plow head on into a giant display of boxes and boxes of chocolate chips and a garbage can. I must have screamed...I don't know? I don't really remember but Ruthy started crying as I  awkwardly used my body to brace the falling boxes. It was really loud... the crash and baby crying. Luckily not many shoppers were there that early in the morning and luckily a sweet shelf restocking kid came running to my rescue so I could thank him and get my red face and crying baby the heck out of there.  ...And luckily my morning had gotten off to a much start. Ava and Luke woke me up with breakfast in bed. I thought I had overheard them talking about "doing something really nice for mom" as they were getting ready for bed last night. It was the sweetest thing, they made my display trashing day a happy one. They brought me: barely toasted bread with a lot of butter and sugar on it, a big glass of orange juice and two peaches placed neatly in cupcake wrappers. Oh and two cute pictures and six dollars, doesn't get much better than that.:) Maybe they had overheard me complaining all week about all the stuff I had to do and they felt bad for me or maybe they are just really sweet little kids. I love them!

Ruth at 9 months old in Karen's cute little galvanized tub, to add to my bathroom wall next to these two:  Luke at 9 months old in same tub.  Luke at 9 months in same tub.  Ava at 9 months old in same tub.

Grandma's Surprise Party

 We celebrated Grandma Patsy's Birthday with a fun surprise party at Karen and Tim's. There were cute decorations, a big flaming cake, Tim smoked yummy chicken and corn on the cob for dinner and we all visited and ate. It was a fun evening before Grandma had to fly back out to Virginia.

Lagoon...courtesy of new tires on both cars.:)

Luke told us we should just get new tires every year so we can go to Lagoon and not have to spend all that money on tickets.:) We really had a blast! Jeremy told Luke we could leave when it closed if he could ride all the "big" rides...so ride the big rides he did...all of them: the Colossus, Wicked, Spider, the old White Roller coaster...this crazy upside down airplane one that even made me a little sick. He was so much fun to go with, he would just grab my hand after he and Jeremy got back from one of the cool rides and have to take me on it. We would run from one ride to another...just like I used to do with my dad. Jeremy and I took turns one of us would go with Luke while the other one followed Ava around as she jumped from ride to ride. The park wasn't that busy so some of the rides she had all to herself. She thought it was pretty cool when Luke was to tall to go one one of the rides she could.:) She loved the cars, this fun water squirting octopus ride, Rattlesnake "rats":), and the Bat. Little Ruth rode the train, carousel, Puff, and Dracula's Castle. We finished off the day with a gigantic slushy and a little late night burgers and fries and headed home.

 Notice the serious face and the leg kicked up.:)

 Jeremy took the kids on Rattlesnake "rats" as Ava called it and then she corrected herself with Rattlesnake "rabbits". They loved getting wet in those "rabbits" :)

 coolin' off with a little bubble gum ice cream

 Luke's third time on the Colossus.

 We finally found a roller coaster Ava could go on and she was so excited! I know for a fact she would have ridden everything too if she was tall enough.

A little of this and that...

 Holding cousin Ryan's awesome pet lizard that Sarah was babysitting.

 GG and Carl came for a visit.

 Swimming with friends Cyd and Sadie.

 Ruthy finally started crawling right before she turned 10 months. This is a picture of her first attempts at it, she would crawl backwards and get herself stuck under the furniture. I remember Ava did the same thing when she was a baby.

 

 First pigtails....sort of-kind of.:)

White box. Still can't figure out how to get rid of the stupid thing!

It's been too long!

 

It's been about 4 years since the last time I was up this far North.  I love the drive out the East Yellowstone entrance:  We tried to find the pig, elephant, goose on her nest and the lady by her cabin, in the  rock formations as we drove through the canyon...could see the creepy old cabin at the top of the hill as we came into the town of Wapiti...watched the sun getting low over the Beartooth Mountains as we came to the Cody Dam....told the kids the legend of Spirit Mountain and we all tried to hold our breath through the long tunnel... could see the rodeo was getting underway as we drove into Cody... grabbed a bite to eat and hurried on to Byron... Aunt Julie and Uncle Ed were waiting up for us. It's so fun staying with them, in the morning you are always served a huge grand slam breakfast by Uncle Ed and their home used to be my Grandma and Grandpa's, so it's full of lots of wonderful memories. My cousin Shayla brought her 3 darling kids over that morning and it was fun to see her sweet little Rylee for the first time, she is just about three months younger than Ruthy. Of course I didn't get a single picture of the two of them together. We also got to see Jenna and Justin and their two beautiful girls and their new home in Powell. They treated us to lunch at their favorite Mexican restaurant, which was really good!

We let the kids goof around for a while. I'm still just amazed at how little kids are just instant best friends, it's really sweet.

We grabbed an ice cream cake for Uncle Ed and Aunt Julie to celebrate their wedding anniversary that we so nicely planned our trip over.:) After stopping to see Mark and Shayla's new home in Lovell, which Mark did an awesome job building, we headed back to Aunt Julies for a big family dinner. My cousin Jeff came with his wife Kim and their cute little boys and Aunt Linda and my cousin Joe even stopped by. It was really fun eating, visiting and watching the kids play.

Aunt Julie making snow cones for the kids.

Aunt Julie and Aunt Linda taught the kids how to make hollyhock dolls and earrings.

The next morning on our way out of town I snapped a few pictures of a town I love. So here's a quick trip down my Byron memory lane....Grandma Doty's old house. The people that own it now painted it blue.

I loved going to the post office with grandma to pick up her mail.

And this was the little store where Grandma let us buy penny candy and ice cream.

 

And of course the oil wells.

Then we stopped by the cemetery to see Grandpa's head stone, it looked really nice...I miss him, his stories, his laugh, the adventures he would take us kids on. He had this cool old bronco that he would take us out to the sand hills in to look for arrowheads. Good memories.

Aunt Julie told us about this cool place to stop at on our way home. (Oh and she showed us the right way to follow the dinosaur tacks. Hahaha... I love you Aunt Julie!) It was out in the middle of no where and it was really cool.You can actually walk on the tracks! Luke loved it.

We stopped to have lunch in Worland with Aunt Jorja, Jill, Sylvia, Heather and all their sweet kids. I love them. Jill's little baby Sally is just over a month older than Ruthy and it was fun to see how much she has grow and how good she is doing.

We ended the day in Riverton, Wy. with our good friends (practically family) the Richardsons. We got to hold Preston and Megan's new sweet baby girl and stay up late and eat and visit. In the morning we headed for home.

I also got to see my sweet friend Kami and her two girls. Her husband past away from cancer last year.

 

Ruthy loved Alec! She cried when we took her away...this almost never happens!

It was a great trip!