A week of Joy….

Ryan and Rachelle and our grandchildren….Ida, Alden, and Wilder spent the last week with us.  We all had a blast!

Our dear family on the Mogollon Rim with a view of our little hamlet of Pine in the background…..

Every one of us had projects to work on….Alden, Wilder, and Grandpa started building their model airplane, bicycle, and cars bright and early the first morning after their travel day.

Ida started on a log cabin bird house….

Wilder quickly put together a bird house, so he could get back to building his B-17, the Memphis Belle, with just a little help from Grandpa. 

Every morning Ida, Alden, and Wilder arrived at 7:30 AM.  They would have come to our Love Nest earlier, but Grandpa and I needed our “beauty sleep”….or maybe it is our “old Grandma and Grandpa sleep.”

Ida made breakfast every morning.  I was her sous-chef.   She is an amazing cook.  

She has learned from the best—her Mother.  Rachelle brought loaves of homemade bread that Ida had cooked.  With the cream cheese, pickles, yogurt, cottage cheese, kippers, and pork mix that Rachelle made and Ida’s bread, the lunch sandwiches were amazing!

We took our family on our favorite Strawberry Mountain loop hike.  They loved the macrame of hikes on Strawberry Mountain so much that their whole family together and our grandchildren alone hiked on the mountain several times each day.  We had forgotten how much energy we had when we were children and were young parents.

On the family Strawberry Mountain hike the boys discovered that the elk carcass Uncle Owen had found several months ago still had an intact head, so of course, we had to take a photo….and the boys needed to take the head home with them to add to their collection of animal skulls and bones.

Alden placed a heart shaped rock on the Heart Tree.  We’ll keep an eye on it for him.

We had monsoon thunder storms with downpours off and on for the first several days that our family was here.  Grandpa and Ryan invented a great way to keep “sort of” dry while barbecuing hamburgers and chicken during one of storms.  

They look kind of like a couple of boys having fun playing in the rain.

Out of our fifteen grandchildren, we have six granddaughters and nine grandsons.  We “girls” are a minority, so every chance we get, we take a photo of the girls together.

We went on a horseback ride through the pine forests at Mormon Lake—just south of Flagstaff.   Ryan had  never been on a horse before.  It was beautiful.  The wrangler gave us a running dialogue of all the intriguing history of the area that we were riding through. 

By the end of ride Ryan was a cowboy….just like all the rest of us!

Ida just about finished an intricate and beautiful doily that she was crocheting.  She is multitalented and is accomplished in every thing that she puts her mind to learn.

I worked on the blanket I am knitting and Ryan has a unique hobby of hand polishing rocks.  He turns an average looking rock into a piece of art!

Making 6 quarts of ice cream…..for the third time this week.

Yes, we seem to be able to eat 18 quarts of ice cream in one week!

Marina, who is an accomplished singer, sent us a video of her performance in the Spring Concert Setagaya Ward Office Kamiyoga Art Hall in Japan.  We all gathered around to hear Marina’s performance.  She is a soprano and accompanied by a talented pianist, it sounded like an angel singing from heaven.

Of course we went on a hike to the Rim where we all found numerous shell fossils.  Because of the recent monsoons the wildflowers were blossoming.  The views were spectacular!

Rachelle is an avid gardener and was able to collect a few plants for her herb garden.   

The picnic on our hike included some of Ida’s homemade bread loaded with Rachelle’s tasty pork mix.  

Swimming at the river….

Robert’s birthday party….

Our last day together….

Wilder made the red car, and Alden made the bicycle and yellow car in the photo below. 

They gifted us with these two cars, the bicycle, and the bomber B-17, Memphis Belle, that Wilder had made. 

They asked Grandpa to display the cars and bicycle in the display case at our home in Mesa, where Grandpa has most of the cars that he has made. 

Then I had the brilliant idea that we should hang the B-17 from the ceiling in our bedroom……just like Grandpa did with model planes that he had made as a child.  Alden and Wilder thought that would be very special, and can harldy wait to visit us this winter to see their models at Nuestra Casa.  We expect they and Ida too can hardly wait to see us too!

What a gift…..we will treasure these creations made by our grandsons forever….

Off we go on another hike….through the Pine forest on the Mogollon Rim that brought us to a viewpoint high above Springs Wilderness.  

We all piled into the our 4-wheel drive 4Runner on the forest road to get over the rocks and to the trailhead.

 

Wilder and Alden each found a small cactus to add to their cacti collection. In the photo below Wilder is balancing his cactus on a rock to avoid the thorns.

Mila’s birthday is at the start of August, and unfortunately, Ryan, Rachelle, Ida, Alden, and Wilder won’t be here….so we had a big family celebration for Mila’s Thirty ONEderful Birthday!

As Grandpa’s father (Ida, Alden, and Wilder’s great grandfather) always used to say when their family left, “We wish you had never come.”  He was expressing how sad he and great grandmother were to see them go and to be far apart from his family.

So we will keep the family tradition to say, “We wish you had never come.”  But we’ll also say, “We are so very happy that we had this time together….come back soon….and we love all you very much.”