Rachel Marie's first Christmas pictures...
Zebulun Malcolm's first Christmas pictures!
Christmas is coming...and so is my family! We are very excited about Christmas coming and all of the kids are going to be here (even Zebulun who arrived 12/10/09)! I will have lots of pictures to post and update everyone with once they all get here.
Rachel's first ice cream cone...being assisted by Grampie! I think she liked it, don't you!
Eden eating her ice cream...with a little on her nose!
Asher enjoying his ice cream, but trying really hard not to get any on his hands!
I would say by the looks of her face...she enjoyed hers the best of all of them!!
We took Eden to Lake Isabella camping, and she had a ball. We had a fun time at camp and at the Lake. She made friends with the kids that were camping behind us and loved playing in the water!
Doesn't that look like a happy face! She was goofing off for the camera like Eden does. This was taken at our camp site after swimming!
This was our camp site...we had a really nice, big site. Grampie was getting ready to cook us some hot dogs for supper and boy were they good! :)
We thought this was really cool. Along the shore down at the lake we found this line of ledge sticking out of the ground. It was so cool, just a straight line sticking jaggedly out of the sand! We saw several places like this on our little walk up the beach.
Grampie spent most of his time at the water....panning for gold!! There were little gold flakes all over the place. It was floating in the water and washed up all over the sand. It was pretty cool!
Grammie and Eden got to play in the water for a while. It was nice and refreshing! The water was warm and you could walk out quite a ways, so Eden could play and swim by herself! We had a great time!
Asher, Eden and Rachel came to help Dillon celebrate his second birthday this past weekend. We had great fun and of course had to have pictures done. They all just get cuter and cuter every year!
This picture here they just look like they are having way too much fun!!
We also threw in Rylee and Makayla to make the group complete! We are just one big happy family!! They make quite the crew, don't they?
There was lots of building going on...in the sand. This is the sand castle that Donnie built one day, which Asher later knocked down. We had fun playing in the sand!
Joanna is very carefully making a face out of sand! It was really cute!
Asher ran right into the water, he was so excited, but he found out that it was colder than he thought! It took some work to get him back in, but Livvy and Sonora got him to go back in!
They took him by the hands and talked him into going back in to play. Once he got wet he was fine and loved it!
This is one of the many creatures we found in the tide pools! They were so cool, lots of living creatures to touch and observe. We had a great time walking along the shore just looking for star fish and watching the dolphins.
We went camping at Dove Springs over Memorial Day Weekend and had a blast. We rode quads, ate lots of great food and just relaxed! There were several different families there and we all had fun, even Carol-Ann who ended up with a broken leg. I will post a little story about that later! Dez and the boys came to play with us and I think they had a blast! The boys were very busy and Colton got to ride all he wanted. The little boys were only able to ride when someone wanted to take them in the big three seater with seat belts, but over all I think they enjoyed themselves.
I know Dillon had a blast riding quads (pretend style) and getting a quick ride with Grampie now and then. Dillon, Dusty and Rylee all had fun going from one quad to the other and pretending to race. Sometimes they would all climb onto one and ride together. There was no time for sitting still for them. However several adults sat around camp alot and just relaxed. That is what vacations are all about, right?
Dez got to drive a quad for the first time, and finally got underway after many instructions from Grampie. Then she went on a long ride with the group and had fun. Colton just rode and rode and rode!! We all look forward to many more outings this summer in Tex's new camper!! Thanks Tex!
This was taken the night we went to the Adult Prom at the Stake Center in Lancaster. We had a dinner and dance. The Stake Center was decorated lovely (since they had the Youth Prom the night before) and the food was pretty good, but the music was boring and not very good for dancing. They must have really thought we were old, since they played pretty much all "slow...waltz type" music. But it was still fun to dress up and go out together. Even though it wasn't that good, we would do it again! 
Our friend Desiree went with us too. Donnie had the two prettiest women in the building with him! Lucky Man!!
Just thought I would share this with everyone, Dillon thinks that no matter what Grampie is doing, he should be doing it. I came home from work yesterday and Grampie was washing motorcycles so I started to help out. Carol-Ann and Will came by to drop off Dillon before Will's softball game and so Dillon went straight into the garage to get his "motorcycle" and started to wash his! Of course before we were done Dillon soaked everything in site at least twice with the hose. We had fun and actually got all 4, counting Dillon's, motorcycles washed.
Wow, what a day! Do you realize that it all began on April 21st in the year of 1976? If I could only imagine where it was all headed. That was the glorious day that Donnie and I started officially "going steady". (my first sign that things would be a little strange should have been when I got him a ring and he didn't get me one) This was the beginning of a life time of experiences. And now 33 years, two children and 4 grandchildren later I definitely would do it all over again!! Not to say that I wouldn't change a few things along the way, but it would be so worth going through everything again! Who would have thought that all those years ago when a young boy (age 17) asked a young girl (age 15) if she was ready to settle down with the man that she would eventually marry and have a family with, that it would actually happen. I have the most amazing family!!
To start with I have the most loving spiritual giant living in my house with me. My husband can do just about anything with just about nothing. There isn't any job too big or too small for him to tackle. He really has blossomed into the most wonderful man that I could have imagined to be able to spend the eternities with. I love to watch him interact with our grandchildren; he is so good with them. It's funny that it seems we enjoy our grandchildren so much more than we did our own children, but I think it is just because we have more time to just sit back and watch how amazing they are. And when you are raising your own children you are far too busy to actually see what wonderful little people they really are. Donnie has this new hobby to help occupy his time...which he likes to refer to as "spending time with his girls". I’m not sure how I feel about this, but hey if it makes him happy...oh let me clarify that...he is raising pigs! He really enjoys the time he spends over at the pig pens with "his girls". And they are really cute when they are babies, but they do grow into these big, ugly, smelly things that make a lot of noise (when they haven't been feed yet) and jump up on the fence (which scares me to death) and then just lay around like a bunch of lazy PIGS!! (ha, ha) This sounds a lot like our dog Mac also!
Next in my amazing family would be my daughter, Carol-Ann Thomas. What an amazing woman she grew into. She simply impresses me and amazes me daily! She is a walking book of knowledge. (some totally unusable, but some very usable) I have learned so much from her. She would always ask me "who is the adult here" between she and I, and I think that she probably was and still is. She is a wonderful wife and mother to her family. Who would have thought that the annoying teenage girl that talked too much would end up being my very best friend in the world? I couldn't ask for a better daughter, although she sometimes still talks too much. (but at least she is getting a taste of her own medicine, her son talks almost as much as she does and he isn't even two yet) She married a gentle giant...Will. He is a sweet, wonderful son-in-law. I tease him that he is my "favorite son-in-law" because he is my only one, but I think he probably would be my favorite anyway. He plays many roles in his life - husband, father, son, brother along with many others, even including personal weight lifting trainer (mine). We have many things to be thankful for were Will is concerned, our move to California for one and also sharing his wonderful family with us! We someday look forward to being an eternal family with Tex, Dorothy, Jimmy, Tia, Rylee, Makayla, Gramma, Monroe…the list goes on and on. To wrap up this little part of my family would be Dillon, our miracle baby! What can I say about this beautiful little spirit? It only took him so long to get here to us because his great grandfathers on the other side of the veil didn't want to let him go! He, like his mother, amazes me daily. He is so smart it is almost scary. But if you have read much of my blog then you have seen and heard about Dillon already. He has already accomplished things that some of us adults haven't even done, like breaking bones! He is very much a part of our daily lives. We only hope that they can add another special little spirit to this already amazing family!
That leaves Donnie, my miracle baby. This is the child that was just meant to be...no matter what I did to try and prevent it, he was coming! He along with his beautiful little family lives in Arizona, which is close but not close enough! I really liked it when he and Andrea lived with us! Anyway, he is such a wonderful father to his three children and so gentle for a big man. Life wasn't always perfect and Donnie got thrown a lot of curve balls, but what a ball player he was. Whatever life threw at him, he always made the best out of it. He is talented in so many ways that I couldn't even list them, and he is successful in whatever he chooses to do. He married a girl from Utah, who he met in Maine (another story for a different time) and she has been a wonderful addition to our family. Andrea is always good for a laugh, she has a great sense of humor and she knows how to keep the men in OUR lives in line, especially her father-in-law. She, like her husband is multi-talented and together they make absolutely beautiful children. We are all grateful for family gathering and Andrea pulling out her hair clippers. Asher, our first grandchild, is a wonderful mix of both his parents. He has the calmer more serious side to him, yet can be full of fun and laughter at any given moment. He is a very handsome young man with a huge future in front of him. All he will have to do is bat his gorgeous eyes to anyone to get just what he wants out of life! Next would be Eden...what can I say about Eden...Donnie I told you one day you would get a child just like you...welllll, there you go! She reminds me so much of her father when he was little, always having you right on the edge of your last nerve, but so dang cute that you can't do anything but love them! Eden will always keep life full of fun and excitement; I believe that we will all be waiting on pins and needles to see what she will be doing next! And last but not least, Rachel Marie. What a little angle. She is just as cute as her siblings, but so unique. She, so far as I can tell, is a perfect mixture of Asher and Eden...but time will tell which way her personality will lean. Maybe Andrea will get her little dainty princess after all!
Well that pretty much wraps up our amazing family that we have developed over the past 33 years! I think that for two young kids, who knew absolutely nothing about life, we did pretty dang good!! Thank goodness that a higher power stepped in to help us out. (there is a huge story here that will have to be told another time) Thank you for all the lovely memories honey!!!
I love you so much Donnie!
