Grandma Gets Re-Married!

We never would have guessed at the beginning of the year that we would be attending a wedding for Grandma Betty. I don't recall when she decided to start dating again after the passing of her husband, John, but I know that she put all her faith in God to lead her to the right person. The Lord did just that and we are all so happy to see her happy and excited about life again!

Our family met her new 'mate in July when the 7 of us took a hike up Morrell Falls. This was where she expressed to me how much in love with him she was, and that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him! John later confessed something similar to Perry while they were out grilling. A few short days later, we received a call announcing that he did in fact propose and they were planning on an October wedding, a little over 2 months away. We had spent one more weekend with John and Grandma in Washington when he was introduced to Em and Colin before their wedding.

They planned the wedding for October 15th at Rich Ranch near Seeley Lake, MT. It was a beautiful ranch! Though the weather hadn't been favorable all week, the rain held off on Saturday and was a nice warm-ish fall day. 

In the morning after every had breakfast, most of the wedding guests loaded into the wagon for a horse ride around the ranch. I hung back at the lodge so I could work on assembling and decorating the wedding. While I would have had time to get it done after the wedding, or even after the wagon ride, I preferred to work on it when there was a lot less to distract me. Like kids... 

 Everyone that went enjoyed the little excursion - HD especially because he had to ride up front to make room for everyone in the back! He loved it!

 While we originally weren't expecting Cameron, Erin, and Stevie to be able to come to the wedding, because Erin just had sweet little Addyson only several weeks prior, we're so happy they made it after all! I was so anxious to meet the newest member to the Dustin family!

The wedding was short and sweet and turned out just perfect. She looked so pretty in her grey dress. At the end of the ceremony, John surprised her by singing her a song he had written for her. So sweet!

There was lots of dancing going on throughout the afternoon that was entertaining to watch. Little Stevie sure has some killer dance moves! Perry joined in and showed off his stellar moves, in hopes that Stevie would copy him. That was fun to watch! Perry has some serious moves! I danced only a little - I had to lead the group in the "Chicken Dance" only because it was too painful to watch them do it wrong! 

After dinner I brought out the cake for everyone to enjoy. I love how it turned out! She wanted a simple cake with three red roses. I messy frosted the outside to make it fit into the rustic decor and the wooden slab fit in perfectly! She loved it!

There were a couple toasts to the bride and groom and then they cut the cake and each had a turn smearing it in each others faces. 

Perry and I made a quick trip into town to stop by one of my former co-workers' wedding, but I didn't realize the reception was somewhere else, so we missed out and headed back to the ranch earlier than planned. We brought Ms. Gail with and she fell asleep in the car on the way back - worked out perfectly! 

Dancing was winding down when we came back to the lodge from putting Ms. Gail  to bed. HD managed to sneak a dance with Grandma before the night was over and JP caught a few pictures of Perry and I dancing together too. Pictures of us together (other than selfies!) are far and few between! Thanks JP!

I'm going to wrap up this post with a few little out takes of Ms. Gail and I. That girl... All mom wants is ONE good picture!

And in her best pose, she blinks. *face palm*

We did manage to find one decent one out of the bunch Perry snapped :)

Camping at Grandma's House

On Friday, while Perry was working from home, I asked if we could set the tent up in the backyard for the boys to sleep in that night. We hadn't been camping yet this year, and I thought this would be fun for them. He responded with a, "why don't we just go somewhere to camp?" After a busy few weeks, I thought this would be the last thing he wanted to do. We hadn't discussed where we'd camp, but agreed to go somewhere. At dinner with Grandma that evening, she told us how she was planning on going to Whitefish to unload a grill for the house, without any help, so we volunteered to meet her there to help, and then go camping after. 

We scrambled around Friday evening and Saturday morning to get everything packed up. It *barely* fit! After a long drive to Whitefish with a lot of traffic, we met up with Grandma and had lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza before we went out to the house. Although the house had a ton of mosquitoes, the kids enjoyed running around for a few minutes. Charlotte enjoyed running/scooting/rolling down the hill off the deck. SO cute to watch! I would say she's walking 50% of the time now!

Before we left Whitefish, we stopped at Whitefish Lake to meet up with a mutual friend of mine and Perry. Unfortunately they were out on a paddle boat when we arrived which caused us to miss out on seeing them. (I'm hoping to take the kids back up there this week to see them again though!) We finally made it out of Whitefish around 4:00 and planned on camping somewhere in the Swan Lake area, about  2 hours away...and once we started exploring the area, we found every spot was taken. At that point we decide to just camp out at Placid Lake outside of Seeley...when we arrived there, we discovered every spot was taken there too.... So we camped in Grandma's backyard by the river. Basically we spent a total of about 6 hours in the car thorough the entire day, and ended up camping 50 miles from home...

 Camping at Grandma's had a couple big perks though! For one, we were able to use the tractor to haul everything back and forth. For two, it had a bathroom. Enough said. 

Before Perry and I could even get our stuff down by the fire pit, the boys were already playing in the river. Hunter was crawdad hunting and thought he found one. 

 Charlotte was a trooper the entire trip. She hardly fussed at all. She napped for a total of maybe 2 hours throughout the day. And missed out on her morning and afternoon snack. 

 The boys were awesome too! They also missed out on an afternoon snack and kept their attitudes in check throughout the day even though dinner didn't happen until close to 8:00p. 

 After a little arguing, we finally had the tent set up. Perry hates reading the directions...

 Once the boys finished eating, I told them I had a surprise for them - Glow-in-the-dark bubbles. Except they either didn't work, or it wasn't dark enough. I bought glow sticks and dump the insides into the bubbles, and the container was glowing, but the bubbles didn't. 

 Luckily I brought other glow sticks to play with. 

 Like these glasses. Hard to keep on, but fun in the dark!

 Charlotte had her fun with the glow-in-the-dark stuff too!

 JP probably had the most fun though!

 We all crawled into bed around 10:30 and despite the few rocks we were laying on, we all fell asleep fairly quickly. Charlotte woke up around 1:15 and cried for a while. She was probably out of sorts being outside in the dark. After about fifteen minutes of bawling, she finally calmed down, and slept with me. She did the air sucking thing that people do after they stop crying for about half an hour. Does that have a name? 

Just as she was sound asleep, it started sprinkling...Before I knew it, we were in the middle of a down pour with flash lighting and LOUD thunder. It woke Perry up (which is hard to do) and even though two of us were talking in our normal voices, it was still hard to hear each other. Charlotte and Hunter slept through it all. JP woke up at the end of the thunderstorm. He came over to me and told me he was scared, and asked to snuggled with me. Before I could even get a word out, he was snuggled up on my pillow, asleep. Once Perry and I were done laughing about it, I woke him back up to go get his sleeping bag and bring it over next to me. After he was laying there for a while, I asked him how he was doing. "Not good mom!" He then scooted to the bottom of his sleeping bag and plugged his ears for a while... I was just glad JP and Hunter didn't wake up during the storm and need to go to the bathroom! Perry left the tent for a while so he could watch the storm, and there was no way I was about to leave the tent, let alone my sleeping bag!

 I did get to wake up to this cutie though! Actually, it was the sounds of her and Hunter giggling, as he had crawled into the pack-n-play to play with her before we everyone else woke up. 

By the time we left the cabin, we had a lot of tire people! And I'm the only one who hasn't napped yet! Not fair!

4th of July in Seeley Lake

It's clearly a tradition now! I don't recall one 4th of July in the past 5 or 6 years that we haven't gone out to Seeley Lake. This year was no different! 

We headed out to the cabin around 10:30, a little behind schedule, but since Perry and I stayed up until 1:30a the night before playing Dominos, we opted to sleep in a little bit. Can you blame us? When we arrived, we had a quick bathroom break before we piled back into the truck with Grandma to head downtown to reserve our spot on the side of the road. We were in the same area that we were last year, but on the opposite side of the road. Since we still had about 2 hours before the parade actually started, we walked to The Ice Cream Place for lunch, and ice cream of course! Like usual, the place was swarming with people so it took about half and hour just to get our food, if not longer! We made it back with a few minutes to spare. It was a super long walk with 3 kids...

. 

Before the parade started, Hunter and JP sat eagerly in their chairs with Grandma waiting and waiting for the parade to begin. 

Charlotte was a trooper! It was 2pm before she finally had a moment to take a little snooze! Knowing that she would be exhausted, we brought the swing for her, and within minutes she was out. I wanted to join her!

  The forest service handed out frisbees again this year. The look on JP's face was priceless when they handed him a yellow one, as the guy had an armful of green ones. He went from excited when he saw all the green frisbees to a solid pout when he was handed a yellow one and then right into pure excitement when he realized it was a frisbee. All within 10 seconds. He is so animated!

 This was his face when the *green* Shriner's cars were racing around in circles. Excited they were green, but what are those old guys doing on those small cars?

 Hunter kind of kept to himself during the parade and wasn't too keen on picking up candy. But JP loved the majority of it. The Blackfoot suburban had their back wipers going so the flag was waving. JP thought this was HILARIOUS! And "Look! Santa is strapped to that truck carrying the watermelon!"

 When Hunter and JP (and mom, dad, and Grandma) saw this coming, we ALL took shelter so we didn't end up soaking wet like last year!

 The adults stepped back by the truck, Hunter climbed into the back of the truck, and JP hid behind my chair. One of the first entries in the parade was a fire truck, and he hid behind me when he first saw it, 2 blocks away... Needless to say, no one got wet on our side of the road this year. Woohoo!

 The boys came out of hiding when they saw "Mater". 

Charlotte woke up around the time the boys were fussing about the fire trucks. But she woke up just in time to be thrown popsicles. How did she she get away with two, and the boys only one? Easy - green popsicles were the *cool* thing.  

 I was so glad to get back to the cabin because I was exhausted, and so was everyone else. The boys napped for a little bit, Grandma had a short nap, but Perry, Charlotte and I didn't get up until 6:30! At that point, we all headed down to river to have a campfire. JP was excite that his hot dog actually had his name on it! Charli ate a ton and I somehow caught her mid-blink...

 The weather was perfect for a campfire. Not too hot, not too breezy. Just perfect. 

 Once the boys finished eating, they went down near the river to whack some stuff. They would do this all day if you let them. 

 We pulled the jeep out of the shop for the first time this year to take down to the lake to watch the fireworks. Charlotte had fun playing in the front seat as we gathered up everything we needed.

 Before we left, I insisted I get a *decent* picture of the 3 of my kids. I was thrilled one turned out!

 This is how they usually turn out...

Why can't you all look at the same time?!

 Before marking our spot on the lake shore, we hit up The Ice Cream Place again and bought a few fireworks for the boys for when we got back home. 

 There were TONS of people there! I think this is the 2nd time we watched the fireworks over the lake. The boys spent their time before the show running up the hill and rolling down. Hunter could really get rolling! JP could also get rolling pretty quick but it took him twice as long to get down because he would end up rolling across the hill instead of down. More in a zig-zag pattern than anything. They were fun to watch!

Hunter is in the green jacket, and JP is at the top of the hill in the grey jacket. It's a little fussy because I couldn't see the screen on my camera very well, but you get the picture!

The boys snuggled in with Grandma to watch the show. I was nervous about Charlotte not liking the fireworks because she typically doesn't like loud noises. She surprised the heck out of me! She laid between my legs and talked and giggled the whole show. It was adorable!

 The boys were *very* eager to light off fireworks at the cabin once we got back. They were thrilled about sparklers!

 And were very good about shouting cautions to dad. "Don't touch it dad! It's on fire!"

In the morning they did a few more sparklers before Perry lit the snake, also known as the "snakeler". Hopefully we'll be able to carry on our tradition next year!