July 2017

Hello everyone! Here is a post about our July. On July 1st, 2017, my brother Jason married his sweetheart Karen Olson. I did a detailed post with lots of pictures of the wedding in a post before this one. It was a beautiful and God-honoring wedding! We thank God for how He has brought their lives together!

A few days after the wedding, we had all the rest of our family with us, which was really special! Here are four of Randy and Joy's kids ready to head to church on Sunday morning.

Sunday dinner, after church, we did buffet style because of having so many people.

Jeffrey, Lesa, Quil, Micah, Charissa, and I sat outside and enjoyed the warm sunshine.

Everyone else sat inside. We also had Joy's great-aunt and uncle over for dinner, who were visiting our church that Sunday.

Sunday evening after church, we had another meal with everyone and ate outside. We've had a lot of gorgeous evenings to enjoy being outside this summer!

Daddy and his youngest grandson, Mishael

Brenda with a bunch of the kids

The wedding was on Saturday, then we spent all day Sunday together, then on Monday morning Randy and Joy's family had to leave to go back home. Tim and Brenda's family, and Jeffrey and Lesa spent a couple more days with us. Here J+L are looking at photo albums with Charissa.

Monday evening Tim and Brenda were out to dinner with Brenda's sister, so we took Jeffrey and Lesa to Chick-fil-A, where Elizabeth was still working.

Eating at Chick-fil-A

Some very interesting trees that we discovered this summer.

Charissa and Felix on the 4th of July!

Mother enjoying being a Grandma at the breakfast table.

I had to work some on the 4th of July, but got to enjoy breakfast with everyone first.

That afternoon after work, we all had fun playing with water balloons. We don't have pictures of that, because we were all enjoying it so much! For supper we had another picnic on the deck.
Felix <3

Fourth of July

In the evening we played some games while we waited for it to get dark.

And then, for the first time ever in my life, we set off a few fireworks! It's illegal in Colorado, so we never did it, but it's legal here, so Tim convinced us to do it, in celebration of us moving here. 

Jeffrey and Lesa watching from their front porch seat.

Everyone participating in the sparklers.

Tim and Daddy

Our family time was such a blessing!!

On July 10th, we had a rainstorm and a beautiful rainbow!

On the 10th of July, we had friends from Colorado stop by as they were traveling. It was good to see Augie and Kathy again.

July 11th was our church young ladies' Bible study at the Stroud's house. We enjoyed a meal and visiting before the studying time.

 We had yummy tacos! -me, Charlie, and Heidi-

On the 16th of July, we had the Byers and Shelly Carey over for Sunday dinner. They've been in our Care-N-Connect group at church, and we've really enjoyed getting to know them better.

Daddy and Elizabeth saw a mama deer and these 2 fawns in our backyard bushes on the 22nd of July! Daddy got these pictures from our kitchen window.

July 19-25 I spent in Colorado, visiting friends. I have a much more detailed post on that trip coming up next, including MANY photos. Here's a picture to represent that trip in this post. This was in the Rocky Mountain National Park, on Trail Ridge road.

Someone in our church gave us some tomato plants that she had extras of. We planted them in pots on our deck, and didn't know how they'd do, but they grew well and now we have lots of green tomatoes!

On the 29th, we had Byron and Melissa Manners stay overnight with us. We enjoyed playing some rounds of Chicken-foot with them before bed.

They are missionaries to Taiwan. They spoke in our church service on Sunday morning, then they and the Stetlers came back to our house for Sunday dinner. We decided to do buffet style again.

 We had delicious food and delightful fellowship the the Manners and Stetlers!

We enjoyed going to several evenings of Carthage Camp, where Rodney Loper was the evangelist. Here's a bunch of the young people from our church on the last night.

Hope ya'll have a wonderful August!