Family Reunion at Our Home

In October the Jim's side of the family decided they wanted to come and camp out at our home. So most of them showed up and we had a great time. Here they are on a walk in the forest behind our home. The hole in the ground was put they decades ago. We are not really sure if it was a root celler for a home.

The grandkids had a lot of fun. Trying to carve pumpkins, and working on the tree house. Along with swinging on the tree swing and moving the wood to make them a fort.

After dark we played games. I actually got someone to play games with me. They usually don't play games they just sit around and talk. So I was really excited to teach them Hand and Foot. We only played it once and then wanted to go out and enjoy the fire that Jim had built.

Turtles

If you remember last May we found the turtle that Jim had come to his home for the past 4 years. We waited all summer for the babies to hatch. We had just about given up hope when our neighbor found one and told us about them. For the rest of the day we looked for babies. We ended up finding 5 alive and helped them across the road to the stream. We found three smashed in the road. It will be fun to see if she come back this next year and we have more babies.

Yearly Trip

This last summer Jim went with most of his family on their yearly canoe trip. They have been doing this river for the past 17 years. They had a lot of fun and there were about 20-30 people this year. This is their camp site. The gang

They had lots of fun, face painting, dancing, playing baseball and of course eating.

Jim and Lisa's Dad at the camp site.

Headed home.

Cliff Island with Missy and Family

We were invited to go to Cliff Island off the coast of Maine for a visit when Melissa and her family rented a house there for a week. This is a picture of the kids waiting for the ferry boat to arrive. They were so excited to see us that they starting yelling Papa Nana. Everyone on the boat said boy are you guys loved. We of course said yes we are. It was Melissa, Bob, Abby, Ryan, Matt and then Bob's sister Carolyn's family. It was really fun and I look forward to next summer.
Bob, Melissa's husband jumping off the pier he was the first one to do it. It is the thing to do after the ferry boat leaves. The piers are really high and I thought way to scary to do it. But everyone tried it at least once. Even Matt (Melissa's 7 year old)
Melissa jumping off the pier.
Papa jumping off the pier after the ferry boat left. It looked like fun but I didn't bring another change of pants so I just took all of picture. Everyone waiting in line.
This was the first time that I collected sea glass. I had a hard time seeing it among the rocks but Missy helped me to pick them out, and soon I got the hang of it. We have this picture in our bathroom along with the sea glass in a shell.
The sunset was so pretty what a fitting end to a wonderful day. I am so glad to be here on this beautiful earth. It is nice to be at the ocean again and hear the waves and smell the salt air.
The grandkids and papa took on Bob and Jon with some of the other grandkids in badminton I am not sure who won this game or if everyone just got tired of playing. Some of the grandkids are really good at this sport.
They also played croquet. It was just about time to head to the boat so we only played a short game. But I think Papa was winning at the time we had to leave.
When we left they all came to the dock and told us good-bye. We had such a great time with all of them. It was fun to get to know the grandkids better. I love the island and look forward to next year.

End of Summer

Ben called Jim and wanted him to come with Lucas and try out their new canoe. So they are fishing. They didn't catch anything but sure had a great time. It was Jim's job to paddle the canoe while they fished.
Lucas was so tired from a hard day of fishing that he fell asleep on the way back to shore. I thought this was so cute of him. He is such a loving little boy.

This is the Mayflower II I am not sure what happen to one. But it is a lot smaller that I would have thought it should be. They say that its size is like the size of the boats that were used at that time.
We went to Plimoth and saw the Mayflower with Jim's brother George and his wife Jeannie. We had spent the night at their home and played cards all night it was so much fun playing games with them. I didn't even have to teach them how to play. They new Hand and Foot and Golf. It is so much fun having them up here. They go to Florida in Nov. until May. I miss them when they are gone.

I was laughing here because Jim told me that really about six years ago some people got together and decided that they would take a big rock stamp a date in it and say that this is where the Pilgrims landed and charge people to come and see it. What a money maker that would be.

Here we are at Plimoth rock. I told Jim that I thought is was funny that the Pilgrims landed jumped off the boat and hammered the date on the rock where the boat hit. I was laughing so hard that I couldn't stop. People were looking at me funny.

The rest of our summer

The Thursday before my b-day Melissa and her kids (Abby, Ryan and Matt) came over to build a tree house. They stopped by and picked up Lucas (Ben's boy) It was great to see Jim, and the kids build the tree house. Now every time they come over they want to put more up on it.

This is the falls that Julie and her family and us went to this last spring. At that time they were frozen now people slide down them and jump off the rocks that are there and swim all over the place. I didn't know we were going here or I would brought me suite. The water wasn't even very cold. So it would have been fun to jump in because it was also very hot that day.

We went for a drive one day Jim wanted to show me the bridge of flowers. It was so pretty and it smelled wonderful. This bridge was right around where we took Julie and her family when they were here.

We had the some of Jim's grand kids over to camp out. Jim and the boys spend the night in a tent in our backyard. They really had a great time. We went to a lake just around the corner from our home and then went for ice cream. We had the boys several different nights at our home.

The Trek

Here we are getting ready for the trek it was the greatest thing to see all the youth excited to start out and get going. They were ready to take on the world. We didn't have to take on the world just hills, valleys, rivers, and small streams. The wagons weighed about five hundred pounds. We had been put into families. We had two families from our ward because we had so many youth go. By the end of the trek we were tired and ready for a hot shower, but so appreciative for the opportunity to do this trek. We learned so much about ourselves and about our pioneer heritage.

Jim and I were the ma and pa for our family of six youth. It was fun being the ones in charge of the youth. When we started I thought that I would have to push the youth to help out not only each other but the other families on the trek. We were so impressed with how they acted and helped out not only our family but the other families on the trek.

The stake had eighty-five youth and 20 adults. It was so neat to see the youth get together from all over the area.

We had such a great group of young men and women in our group everyone helped out and took their turn in pushing and pulling. It was such a wonderful experience. I will never forget.

This is the bridge that Jim went and cut down the trees and placed them over the river. We were one of the last families across the bridge. They called this the sweet water river bridge.

The last big hill until we are able to make camp for the night.

The day is at a end and it looks like we had gone 100 miles instead of only 13 miles. What a day we got a great respect for the pioneers.