June: Living in the Moment, Catching up on the Blog

I feel like I'm always playing catch up with the blog.  Life is so good.  I am enjoying the moments as they come and not worrying too much about "catching up."

June 7th baby Eden and Liza were dedicated together at Faith Chapel.

You can watch the dedication in the link below starting at about minute 23:

https://vimeo.com/130048094

After the service we celebrated Eden's first birthday at the Yellowstone Family Park.  Jenny made her an adorable cake, hot air balloon theme.

Thoroughly enjoying her smash cake.

June 13th we traveled to rural Montana to a beautiful ranch for the Kluver wedding.  Tuff is long time friends with Kourtney Kluver, the groom.

Grace wore her veil for the occasion.

The dance floor was hopping.  Grace found an adorable dance partner for about 10 songs in a row before we told her it was time to go.  She later told me that he was the kind of boy she'd like to marry someday.

Liza learned to stand on her own June 19th!  I'm writing this July 14th and now she's taking several steps too.

The Caton's, our cousins and landlords came for a visit toward the end of June.

Here is Grace and Audrey, their youngest, playing at the splash park one of the days.

The Caton's dog Haus and Liza.  This dog really loved Liza.  Seriously.

Breakfast one morning.  We failed to take a group photo like last year but got to spend some really great quality time together.  Miss these guys.

And finally on June 28th Tuff and I celebrated 7 years of marriage.  In sticking with our tradition of taking a photo together each year on our anniversary, this year we selected the sage field near our home for the location, with the rimrocks as a backdrop.  We also included the Wright family for the photo shoot, since they have been living with us the last six months.

Here is our anniversary shot.

And the rest of the shots.  Our friend Jason took the photos and I thought he did a fantastic job.  It was sunset and the colors could not have been more beautiful.

Probably my favorite of the photos if it wasn't for Luna's butt.

And we finally ran out of patience....

California Trip

Sorry I've been a blog update slacker.

At the end of May Tuff signed up for a new adventure with Faith Chapel as one of their connections pastors.  Around the same time we flew to California for the Foursquare Connection Convention.

"Sent" was the theme.

Held at the Anaheim Convention Center.

So tired from the kids zone the four days of the convention.

Sweet sisters.

Jerry Dirmann was a keynote speaker at the convention.  He created OSL, the discipleship program we've been going through.

At the Native American connection breakout session.  In the middle is Pastor Ken PrettyOnTop of Spirit of Life Foursquare Church in Crow Agency, Montana.  He brought Tuff to the convention last year and was Tuff's first introduction to Foursquare.

While we were there someone blessed us with tickets to Disneyland so we braved a day there with Grace and Liza.

 Ah Zabenya!

Our little chipmunk.

"Creepy I am."

Although quite strenous with small children, at the end, while Grace and I rode the last ride, the flying Dumbo, she turned to me and said, "Mommy, I will remember this forever."

Also while we were in Anaheim we met up with the Jordan family.  They were the Chaplains for the Steelers while we lived in Pittsburgh and now are with UCLA.  We loved seeing these amazing people!

As an added bonus we went to Chik-Fil-A!  None in Montana if you didn't already guess that.

Jenny and Mary.

Tuff and Kevin.

We spent time with the Handall family in San Bernadino, California as part of our trip.

They took us to the Saboba Reservation where they are doing some of thier ministry Arise-Native American Youth Leaders.

Crazy foliage there.  We picked the best grapefruit there right off the tree.

Our final day in town we traveled back to Anaheim for church at The Rock, where Jerry Dirmann is head pastor.  Afterwards we got a chance to meet him.  Grace got to know Jerry right away by asking him to 'throw away her trash please!'  Haha.  For someone who travels with personel this was a moment we won't forget.

After church we spent the rest of the day at Newport Beach.

Those are mountains in the picture below (through the smog).

Liza ate several mouth fulls of sand.  Yuck.

Traveling via airplane was pretty easy this time.  Upon arriving in California Grace noticed all the pretty flowers and she pointed at a palm tree and said, 'look at that giant acorn in that tree.'  It was the top of the tree just before the branches spread.  So cute.

Layover in Salt Lake City.

Sweet baby rest.