Summer Reunions Just Get Bigger and More Fun!

 

WOW!  We have had from 25-35 at our Bear Lake house for most of the month of July.  This week was our big family reunion and we have all 31-34 of us together for four days!  That's about 100 meals a day which is pretty hard to keep up with but we're having a fabulous time!  How fun it is to see the cousins together, tell ancestor stories and then visit their graves, go on hikes and just enjoy being together.  Because the Internet here is sketchy and slow I'm adding just a few pictures to give our Valuesparenting family a glimpse of what's going on here.  More will come later when we get back home.  Hope you are all enjoying a wonderful summer or winter if you're down under! 

 

Here we are at Grandma Elizabeth Petersen Jacobson's grave

She lost 5 children and walked 1000 miles pregnant once they got

to Nebraska!  What a SAINT!

A bouquet for Charity!

The end of a long hard day at Bloomington Lake for Isaac and Hazel!

 

Camden's secret hiding place!

What fun summer is! 

The Fourth and "Our Tribe"

Another Fourth of July has come and gone again! Oh for the love of Home Town America!  How blessed we are to be living in a free country which we can only appreciate fully when we visit countries that don't have that freedom! I count among my greatest blessings growing up in a little town in Southeast Idaho named Montpelier, near our beloved Bear Lake.  Farms and good folk reign!  One of the best little programs in America on the 4th of July is held in Paris, Idaho at the historic tabernacle that some of my forefathers helped to build over a hundred years ago. It was so great to feel that patriotic surge and to see the wonderful "salt of the earth" people there pouring their hearts in to their beautifully prepared program!

The parade is always a highlight. The oldest person in the valley is usually the Grand Naster of the Parade. This year his name was Junior!  Next is the Kids' Rodeo where kids from 4 to 14 barrel race, ride sheep and catch chickens! /Amazing!  The fireworks around the lake, beginning at dark and going until midnight add the icing on the cake of an Independence day spectacular!

Our grandchildren then descended for the beginning of our family reunion which takes place most of July at Bear lake with the

epicenter being from July 23-27. Twelve of our 17 grandchildren are here with the others arriving shortly. More on that later.

 

 

New Arrival!

We hope our Valuesparenting family is enjoying a fun summer, whether you're sizzling hot or soaking wet!  We got a letter this week from a reader in England and one in Indonesia. It is so inspiring to know that good parents all over the world are "tuned in" to Valuesparenting. 

 

Richard and I have spent the week in New York City with three of our sons who live there, along with two wonderful daughters-in-law. We were joined by another son from Arizona and we had a grand party!  It was so fun to be together but our first project was that of "construction crew" to help our son Noah finish remodeling their bathroom which he was doing to surprise his wife Kristi, who desperately wanted their dismal bathroom in their upper east side 450 square foot apartment finished by the time their new baby, due July 18th, arrived.  She had been visiting her mother for eight days in Houston with their little 2 1/2 year old son and our whole crew were feverishly working to get it finished by the time she arrived home last Wednesday!  Not only did Noah pull off the surprise with the bathroom, much to Kristi's delight, but they also got another surprise at 4 a.m. this morning when Kristi's water broke.  Luckily Uncle Josh was sleeping on the hide-a-bed on his vacation to New York City and Noah and Kristi caught a cab at 4:30.  At 7:19 a.m. Flibitgibit (Richard's pet name for her while she was still inside) burst into the world after three pushes! We are floating on air!

 

Nine hours later Uncle Josh sent this picture of our new 7 lb. 8 oz. new little granddaughter!  Thought you'd like to have a peak at our 17th grandchild (our oldest is 11) with the 18th due in November. JOY! 

Here she is (official name still pending):