July Part 2

  Jazlyn challenged me to finish up writing about July tonight, so here we go.  I realized looking back at photos that I did not do a good job of taking pictures at Wes's family reunion.  But we got a few good ones.

  We all had a great time playing fun family games at the park.  Kelston and Wes were the experts at balancing the dice on a popsicle stick in their mouths.

 Between all of Wes's relatives that were there for the reunion, there were over 800 temple ordinances done!  The Manti temple is beautiful!  It was my first time going there and it reminded me of a castle.  It is one of my new favorites.

  After our fun reunions, Jazlyn and Matsen drove back to Washington with Wes's parents.  They made another vacation out of it and went to Yellowstone and visited more relatives.  Then they stayed with my parents for a week after that.  They had a BLAST!!!  Then both of them flew back with both sets of grandparents for Matsen's baptism.  Although, they arrived the day before Shelten's birthday, so he thinks they all came for his birthday.  He got spoiled and LOVED all of the extra attention.

 I loved the expression of pure anticipation on this picture below as I'm cutting the cake.  Doesn't he look just a little bit excited?!  I can't believe our baby is 3!!  A little bit about Shelten:
 
  He is by far the most outgoing of our children.  He is very social and can talk your ear off.
  He is also adept at sharing his emotions.  One minute it's, "I love you, mom.  I love you, Dad."  The next minute it's, "You're mean!  I'm mad at you, mom!"  He loves to make people laugh is so hilarious that it's really hard for us to not laugh, even when we shouldn't.  I do a preschool group with a few other moms twice a week with him and he LOVES IT.  Every morning when he wakes up, he asks if it's a preschool day and is quite distressed the 5 days out of 7 when it's not a preschool day.  He's very strong willed, but oh so adored by all of his family.

On his birthday we went to the Arboretum that has beautiful gardens with all of his grandparents.  The deciding factor of going here is that there are some trains, and typical boy he is, he loves anything transportation!

  The day after the birthday celebrations was Matsen's big day.  He was very happy and beaming and said he felt warm inside after his baptism.  Matsen is very conscientious and really wants to do what's right.  He is such a thoughtful sweet boy and we're so proud of his decision to be baptized.  Both of his grandpas were able to speak at his baptism and the spirit was very strong.

A picture with our bishop.

This is one of Matsen's primary teachers.  Matsen has a very large primary class.  There are about 10 kids and his teacher has come to every baptism.

  Afterwards, we went to the Arabia Steamship museum where we saw literally tons of recovered treasures that were dug up after it sank 150 years ago.  It was amazing that it was in pristine shape after they cleaned it all up.  One of the men who helped dig it up was there and they said they would still be cleaning up their findings from inside the boat for another decade or two  [everything's in large freezers now to preserve it].  Many of the pioneers from our church went on this boat before it sank, but none were on it when it went down.

  We have a young peach tree in our backyard that we CANNOT keep the squirrels out of (IDEAS PLEASE!!!).  While we were in Utah, the squirrels ate every single peach off the tree and I was LIVID!!!  A few weeks later, I found this one peach I hadn't spotted that the critters couldn't reach.  Isn't it beautiful!  I was so excited for this one peach, yet it just whetted my appetite and made me mad we didn't get more.  Next year, the squirrels are going down!

  Wes's parents stayed to visit for awhile and we went up to Omaha and visited the Winter Quarters sites there.  How inspiring it was to learn about some of the things they went through, yet they stayed so positive, didn't complain, and just kept going.

This mill below is one of the only original things left standing about Winter Quarters.  The church doesn't own it, but the lady who does was very gracious and lets anyone come in and look around for free.  She has relatives who are members and spoke very highly about our church members.  You could tell she knew it was very special to our history and it was really touching to see how much she went through to preserve it for us to enjoy.

Another momento we enjoyed was this violin from one of our ancestors.

 
I feel so blessed to have pioneer ancestors to sacrificed so much and paved the way for a beautiful legacy for us to pass on to our posterity.  What a blessing it is to experience church history up close.