Stock Show

Our daughter-in-law sent a picture of our only grandson, Elijah.  He was learning how to tie a tie. He is growing up!  It was his great-granddaddy's funeral this day so he was dressing up.  We were in Colorado so we were not able to go celebrate Les' life.

Here is a picture when Al was showing Josh how to tie a tie!

I got a picture of my husband having his devotions.  I love that he loves the Lord and loves reading and studying the Bible!  He is truly a godly man and a dear husband.  I couldn't ask for better!

We are all KU fans!  We went to school there.  We were anticipating a good game this afternoon. Unfortunately, this day the game was not worth watching.  Ugh.

After Tenley woke up from her nap, we went to the Denver Stock Show.

It was terribly crowded!!

But Tenley was so happy to be able to pet the animals!

Tenley is still a little too small for this ride on the ponies.

This one will have to do for now.

And here's one for Nana.

It ended up being a fun day!   They'll have to come to the Pretty Prairie Rodeo in Kansas!  I found this picture when we took our oldest 2 granddaughters to our annual hometown rodeo!

Our trip to Colorado

I have been without a computer for about a month!  My old one broke suddenly!  It has been a long journey ordering a new one, getting it set up and me figuring it out!!

Speaking of journeys, we took one to Colorado last month to go visit our daughter and her family!   The kids were missing us!

Actually, I think they were missing their daddy who was on a work trip when Mindy took this picture.  She said she had to laugh or she'd cry too.  I can remember days as a young mom when my babies and I were all crying!  Being a mommy is hard some days!!

Bear missed me too.  I have 4 granddogs.  I used to be so very scared of dogs.  Still am a little afraid of some. (Maybe even a lot afraid!) I've been attacked or chased by dogs more times than I like.  But my granddogs are nice and friendly.

It was iffy if we could go.  The day before we went, Highway 70 was closed.  A call to a KDOT in the morning confirmed it was open.  There was plenty of snow in western Kansas and eastern Colorado!

But the roads were clear.

As we drove closer to Denver, our maps app showed the road was closed.  We had heard that 9 semis had gone into the median!  

Maps wanted us to take an alternate road; highway 86 which is a hilly 2-lane road.  If Highway 70 was closed due to snow, surely taking that road was plain dumb!  Luckily, maps was wrong and it was smooth sailing to Mindy's. 

We were so excited to see the family!

The next day, while Jason worked, we did various things, like reading books.

Even reading to Bear.  No wonder he likes me!

Papa even did some cooking without any help (he might say "interferance") from any of us!

We went to the Asian market.

We even went to a "Papa store".

Tenley is very leary of having any man besides her daddy hold her.  We were all so excited that she finally let Papa hold her!

Papa and Jason did some fixing.

Kaia was getting sleepy.

She and Papa took a nap.

That evening, we went out to eat at a Chinese place.

More fun to come...

The farm

Josh's had to leave Saturday morning to get back, but since Jill's were not leaving until the next morning, they wanted to go to the family farm.   Wish Josh's could have come too.  The kids have good memories of times there.

Josh's left and then Adam and Jill went to visit friends.

Meanwhile, the kids watched the old version of "Robin Hood" on our VHS.  Yes, we still do have a machine that plays them!

After lunch, we drove to Pretty Prairie.  We first stopped at the cemetery to see both of our parents' graves and other relatives too.

Many of the old grave stones are written in German.  The services were still in German when our parents were growing up, when they switched to English.  It was not an easy thing for the older generation at all.  

Then off to see Uncle Sid and Aunt Gayle who had us get in the back of the pickup to help feed the cattle.

There were a couple little ones.

Taking a walk to the bridge.

The "crick" had been dry until recently.  Allen and Sid said they had never seen it totally dried up before.  Drought for sure around here.

Explaining about the electric fence.  Stories were told of growing up.

What a sweet time!  (Literally as Gayle had baked some blondie brownies!!)  We took the family for a drive through Pretty Prairie to show them where the parsonage where I lived for a time was, where Grandma B., Grandma Schlusser, Grandpa and Grandma Voran lived (all within a block).  

Then we drove to Hutch to visit the Crosspoint Church.   The pastor, Andy Addis, has spoken at Adam and Jill's church a couple of times and he had invited them to drop by anytime they came to Kansas.  Andy took us on a tour of the church before the service.

Afterwards we went out for dinner at a "hole in the wall".

We got back quite late, but the kids packed up their van as much as they could so they could get an early start back to Wisconsin!