Fathers Day 2009

Boyd and Dale Lake

Father's Day 2009

For Father's Day we had a big Family Dinner. We wanted to celebrate Boyd Lake and all of the fathers in our family. We had three of Don's brothers (Blaine, Brace and Bryan) and their families as well as three of Don's children (Scott, Val and Brent) and their families. We had quite a group (about 30) and it was so great to see how well everyone gets along. All of the kids were having a blast and the the adults enjoyed visiting with each other. The older kids would look out for the younger ones and the young adults, well, let's just say they love to hang out together. Our backyard worked well. We brought our easy up canopies and tables from work and it turned out very nice. 

Don took pictures of the kids with Grandma and Grandpa Lake and then took family pictures with them as well.  Some of the kids were missing, but they turned out really good. Here are just a few.

Don & Michelle with Dale & Boyd

Blaine's Family with Boyd & Dale

Brace's Family with Boyd & Dale 

Bryan's Family with Boyd & Dale

Scott's Family with Boyd & Dale

Val & Tony with Boyd & Dale

Brent with Boyd & Dale

Madison Lake with Ryan Brown (Madison is Dana's daughter and we were so glad she came. They left before Don took the formal pictures.)

Green Garden

All of Don's hard work preparing our garden is paying off. We have a lot of planter boxes and pots that we are growing in since our neighborhood is infested with gophers.

We have green stuff growing everywhere and we love it.  Don did a lot of research on the internet and even did "refrigerator incubation" on the spinach seeds to get them to sprout.  I just water, fertilize and harvest.  It's been great to have food from our garden every day.It was so wonderful to come home from our trip to Utah/Idaho and have everything going strong.  Our tomatoes have reached the rooftop. Click here to see how they used to look.

On the side of our house Don built a planter box system that grows all of our lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, chives, green beans, snap peas and some of our strawberries. Ethan helped plant our lettuce when he was here the beginning of March.  We haven't had store bought lettuce since April. 

This is the planter box that Don designed, his dad built and Don painted.  It is lined to lengthen it's usefulness and even has a drain system that Don installed.

This is the view from our back door. Totally green and mostly edible. It looks almost like a park until you get up close and see that the greenery is really edible stuff like tomatoes and squash.

Idaho Trip

We dropped off Brent in Provo (BYU meetings) and got a "free" hotel room thanks to our points. In the morning we got up and Don said, "Let's go to Idaho and see Julie."  Thank heavens Julie didn't mind our barging in on their weekend and changing their plans.  

We had a blast with Julie and Aaron Thursday and then Friday evening we drove to Boise and picked up Athena. We got a great view of the Boise Temple on our way to pick up Athena. We stayed at another "free hotel" and then on Saturday we drove up to Idaho City to visit Isabelle, Dale and Annabelle Hope. Isabelle is one of Don's converts from his mission in France and Switzerland.

  Dale and Isabelle Hope

Annabelle with Athena and Julie

We went to lunch at the cool place called "Trudy's". 

Here we are with Trudy.

Annabelle, Athena, Julie, Aaron, Dale, Isabelle, Michelle, and Don

We visited over lunch for quite awhile before heading back down the mountain. We had a wonderful time visiting. Isabelle and Don called one of his former missionary companions, Elder Cornette and the were able to visit for a little bit. Don even got to talk to Isabelle's mother in France, whom he also baptized. We are so grateful that we were able to take a couple of extra days to visit family and friends in Idaho.

Wedding Family Pictures

Don walked Melody down the aisle.

 SISTERS and BEST FRIENDS

   

                                Brent (favorite step-brother) and Melody

      Melody's Family (Sammie and Laci were getting pretty tired by this time.

Mark and Cass, Kiana, Kasen and Kamron

Wedding Guest Pictures

Braden and Jen and Tyler came to the wedding to give support to Melody and Bryan.

Jen, Braden and Tyler

Tyler pushing Melody's Chair

Of course, Don made Tyler very happy with Smarties.  By the end of the evening Tyler was calling us grandma and grandpa.  Such a cutie!! This was our first time seeing the three of them since he was adopted in March 2008.

Melody and Bryan Clayton Married on May 27, 2009

Melody and Bryan Clayton were married on June 27, 2009.  

Melody is a beautiful bride as you can see and very happy to be married to a wonderful man like Bryan.  Over and over again she told me that she is so happy.

Family Time at Cass and Mark's House

On Saturday, May 23rd we headed up to Ephraim Utah with Brent to help prepare for Melody's wedding on the 27th. We had a great time visiting and traveling with Brent, he kept asking us if we wanted him to drive. We finally relented and let him drive for awhile later in the evening. It was fun to see Cass and her family and Melody and her family. We got to spend a lot of time with all of them together at Cass' house.  

On Monday, Cass planned a FHE on prayer and had everyone participate.  It was a lot of fun.

Bryan and Melody  

                                                                                            Mark and Kiana

                                  

Cass and Kiana                    

   

  Laci, Kamron, Kasen, Sammie          

                                                                Michelle and Brent

And of course, the man behind the camera - Don.  

Beach Time

On Wednesday, I took KJ and Kasen for another day of Grandma Time. First we went to visit Great Grandma and Grandpa Lake. They were so excited to get juice from grandma and have grandpa show them his garden. Then we got out their scooters and went to the park behind their house for some scooter riding and playground time. 

After awhile the boys were ready to go so went to say goodbye to grandma and grandpa and of course . . . grandma gave them some more juice.

Then off to the beach. I took the boys to Huntington Beach. This is the same beach that Don and I went to the first night we met.  

It was time for lunch so we walked all the way to Ruby's on the pier to find lunch. We asked the fishermen along the way if they had caught our lunch, but no one had any catches. Until right at the restaurant a guy was pulling in a little bat ray. I asked the boys if they wanted the bat ray for lunch. They each looked at me and with the innocence of a child, said "NO".  No they didn't order fish and chips for lunch. They chose hamburgers - plain. No nothing on them - just plain.

We had a great lunch at Ruby's and even got a corner booth where we could watch the fishermen fish while we ate. It was fun to watch them and the boys would count how many fish each one caught when they'd reel them in.

After lunch we stopped on the pier to watch the surfers for a little while. It's amazing to me to see how much the boys noticed of what was going on around them everywhere we went.

We got to the beach with our towels and sand toys (Thank you Christine for letting me borrow them.) I didn't really have to worry about they boys. They wanted to be far away from the water. Smart. So we hunted for seashells and gathered quite a few to make a little jar for them to take home.

 Kasen loved playing with the dump truck in the sand. 

KJ loved building mountains of sand.  At one point he did what every kid loves to do in the sand - he buried himself in it.  Too fun!!

Then we got the call that Kiana was home, so after a little while longer we packed up our stuff and went home. It was so cute to see Kiana respond to her brothers. Waving and wanting kisses.  She was so happy to home and have her family around her.

The next two days I watched Kiana while Cass and Mark took the boys to California Adventure and Disneyland. We watched cartoons over and over again, but it was nice to have some Grandma Time with her even if she was in a body cast.

California Science Center - Admission is FREE!!!

I took KJ and Kasen to the California Science Center.  They loved playing the instruments to create their on MIDI music file.  There was a guitar, piano and drums.  It was a lot of fun to be in a trio with them.

Then we went to the solar skateboard exhibit.  Definitely their favorite.  Two controllers move the lights onto solar panels on the top the mini skateboards that go around a race track.  It was tons of fun to watch the boys get their skateboards to "go".

Then we went into the Discovery Room.  This is a special area where they have activities, computers, art supplies, toys, etc. set up and instruction sheets for parents to play with their kids.  It's a great place.  We played airplanes at an airplane table.  We each got our own plane and pretended to take off, land and park at the airport.   

Another section had a bunch of puppets and yes, you guessed it - we put on our own puppet show.  No audience, but it was even more fun to hide behind the puppet stage and watch the boys choose their animals and play.  It was a lot of fun to play with all the toys and enjoy the imagination of the boys in this special area just for kids from 2 - 5 years old.

Last stop was the gift shop to find that special "memory toy" for the day.  It was the airplanes that the boys liked.  They sold the same exact airplanes in the gift shop that we played with upstairs.  KJ chose United and Kasen chose Southwest.  

It was a very fun day and we had a blast together. I love Grandma time.

Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

This is an awesome museum and has free admission on the 1st Tuesday of every month.  The boys were so courageous about showing grandma all of the animals in the dark rooms.

We saw lots of dinosaurs and even got to see the dinosaur lab, where they work on excavated dinosaur bones.  I took this picture when we first walked in, but after that they didn't want any more pictures with dinosaurs.  So we took pictures in front of the animal exhibits.

KJ's favorite was the giraffe and Kamron's favorite was the elephant.  They were so good about pointing out the butterflies in each exhibit and telling me how many babies there were.  (I like the babies.)  

Wild Week in LA

Thanks to the swine flu, the cruise that Mark & Cass were going on for their 10th anniversary got cancelled.  So they packed up all their children and came to visit for a week.  They arrived late Sunday night and the next morning while we were loading the car to go to Disneyland Kiana tripped and fell.  Mark picked her up and cuddled her and then we loaded her in the car, drove to Disneyland and put her in the stroller.  We were there for a couple of hours when we decided to let her walk for a bit.  Unfortunately she wouldn't move her right leg.  She just let it hang there and fussed a little bit.  Long story short, we took her to the First Aid Station, Urgent Care and finally CHOC Emergency.  She had a spiral fracture of the femur and a mild concussion.  Poor thing had to go under anesthesia to have her leg set and put into a "spica cast". Cass spent two nights with her in the hospital.

In order to keep some resemblance of a vacation, I took KJ and Kasen on our previously planned excursions.  I told them that we were going on an adventure and that we would see lots of fun things.

Butterfly Exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

KJ pointing out one of his favorite butterflies.

Here are my little angels, sitting on the bench in the Butterfly Exhibit.