Saying Goodbye

It has been a rough couple of weeks, that's for sure.  There have been some issue's with the company that my husband works for, but I'll expand on that when all is said and done.

and...

Two weeks ago today I received a text from my dad saying that my Grandpa (my mom's dad) was diagnosed with pneumonia.  At 85 years old, that's never a good prognosis.  He had been in a rest home for a couple years and has slowly been getting worse.  He was in the hospital and then soon moved to hospice care early last week.  I received a phone call Sunday evening saying he gone home to Heaven.

A very bittersweet moment.  We are happy that he is no longer suffering, but man, it just sucks to have to say goodbye.  To put it bluntly

Saturday will be a huge celebration of his life.  All of our family will be together.  His wife, his 4 children and their spouses, his 12 grandchildren, 5 of their spouses, 4 great grandchildren and one on the way. Each and every one of us loves the Lord all thanks to him who was the foundation of our incredible family.

Grandpa, we love you and you will forever be missed!!

Can I get an AMEN?

Hunting season is almost over and I will have my weekends back with my husband so maybe we can get some work done around here.

I can't do it all by myself.

One more weekend.

Distracted & Some Family Pictures

I have sat down several times in the past few weeks with an intention to blog, but there always seems to be a reason it just doesn't work out.  Either Caylob wakes up from his nap & wants to eat or play or go outside and see the 'mama seep" or another load of laundry needs to be moved along before I forget, someone calls...and now 15 minutes later I'm back.  Chris just called me to come outside and brainstorm with him as to how we are going to try and fix our [already falling apart] back fence that the dog has figured out how to escape out of.  See what I mean :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Our Christmas present to Chris's Grandma was a group picture of all her grandchildren, including their spouses and her great grandchildren.

So...there's 14 total and it's pretty hard to get 14 people & 5 different families together at the same time and same place.  The Sunday after Christmas seemed to work for everyone.  We met at a central location that was going to have a nice background.  To be honest, I didn't know how it was going to all work out, but we ended up having a pretty good time!

Here we all are...

This is the silly one...we did take a serious on too, but this one is more fun!

Just the cousins

The hubby & I

For Christmas I had asked my parents for Photoshop Elements.  I don't take a ton of pictures, but the ones that I do take, I don't want to have to send them to my sister for her to edit them and then send them back.  So I've been playing around with my new software for a few weeks now and it is amazing!  I haven't mastered it yet and there is a lot of "undo's", but it's fun to play around with.

The original picture from my Canon Rebel T2i of the silly cousin picture is this...

And after...

Just from a few experimental changes, the colors look more vibrant and not so dull and cloudy looking.

I have a lot more to figure out, but it's been fun learning and experimenting.

December Birthdays

For some reason, a lot of people we love were born in December.  My dad, our good friend's two kids, my wonderful cousin, Chris's dad, myself and of couse...Jesus! March was a popular month, evidently... ;)

So along with Christmas, we have a lot of other purchasing to do.

DJ & Shyanne belong to good friends of ours.  They call us aunt & uncle and we love them dearly.

Shyanne turned 1 on Dec. 10th.  I can't believe it has been a year already, considering I was in the delivery room with her mama late that night and into the early morning.  

She is just the sweetest little girl.  So easy to care for...except when she's tired...and just loves to do everything with her brother.

1st birthday parties are always fun to go to and hers was definitely all about girls!

Her brother's birthday was 11 days later, just 4 days before Christmas.  

Our December is full of parties, so it's a busy month for us...but we love it!