Great Grandma's House, Goodbyes, & Burraston Ponds

It was hard to have to say goodbye to The Cousins--it never seems like long enough!!  We get along and have so much fun together and Natalie and Stephen can't get enough of playing with their cousins and feeling so treasured.  This is the picture of one happy boy!  After a quick breakfast, we peeled the kids away...

Here's a picture of my practice plate...makes me laugh to see it. 

On Sunday we met my parents (and my brother and his family) over at my Grandma Hawks' house. This is my kids Great Grandma! She was SO thrilled to get to see them.  I had told her on the phone how Natalie remembered picking cherries at her house and was SO excited to go to Grandma Hawks house to pick more cherries.  Since my Grandfather passed away and my Grandma has lots of trouble with back and leg pain, she doesn't get out there to take care of the tree.  She told me that the person that mows her lawn noticed that there weren't many cherries--very picked over by bids.  I hoped she was wrong, but it turned out to be worse than she described.  How sad!  The house I lived from the time I was four until I was eight had a HUGE cherry tree and all summer long we climbed the tree and ate cherries--those are great memories for me and I was hoping to get a chance to pick some cherries again with my kiddos. 

I couldn't believe how big the trees in Grandma's yard had gotten since I was last there.  I don't think these trees were there when I was a teenager- I think my Grandpa planted them when they moved there.  We used to have an amazing view of just mountains and then a complex of condos was built that made the view not as pretty--the trees keep you from even seeing those condos now.  Wow, what a difference--they are giant trees now--I guess that means I am getting old!!

I LOVE THIS PICTURE!

The ONE single cherry Natalie found--literally!! 

David helped Stephen- he found two but one was half gone from the birds.  So each kid got one cherry:)

Sweet Grandma bought cherries just for my kids since she knew her tree wasn't good.  Our first delicious cherries of the year. 

In talking to Grandma I got caught up in her showing me some of her old photos and things.  She found some old family history documents, including a history written by her Father that was VERY precious to her.  She only had one copy of it and her printer ink wasn't working.  I convinced her to let me take it and scan it and send copies back with my Mom.  It took some convincing and she was VERY nervous, but she let me do it.  It was so cool to scan these amazing stories in and get copies of them for myself as well. 

This file here is a box old maps that my Grandfather had collected and organized.  They were SUPER important to my Grandfather and something my Grandma hated and didn't have much respect for.  I looked through them and found some really cool maps from the 50's.  It was neat for me to look through that and remember my Grandpa.

This picture of my Grandpa was one I had never seen before.  I have seen pictures of him as a young man, but for some reason this picture elicited a HUGE emotional response in me.  It made me cry.  What a handsome man he was.  Look at the youth and hope of life in front of him. 

After leaving my Grandma's we headed for the car for the four hour drive to my parents house in Nevada.  Plans changed and my niece and nephew were coming down with us, so we were pretty packed for the ride.  David bought the kids a drink at the gas station and Stephen drank 30 oz of gatorade in just a few minutes.  It was strange because he NEVER drinks like that.  But the fallout was miserable and funny at the same time--he literally had to pee (and in a rush) every five minutes for a while.  He would literally go and be needing to go again.  We decided to save time (there was almost no traffic) to let the kid pee on the side of the road and he thought it was the coolest thing ever!  I think that will be a memorable drive! 

On our drive down we stopped in a town called Goshen Utah.  This town was settled by David's Dad's family and there is a system of ponds down there called Burraston Ponds.  David and I have never been down there, but I thought it would be cool to stop and see it since we were going past.  David has a picture of his family standing in front of an old sign from a trip his family took to Utah when he was 11 or so.  It was actually a really impressive conservation area and there were a lot of ponds.  I was wishing we had our fishing gear--maybe that would've been the perfect place to break our bad luck of not catching a fish!!  The sign was really cool to read too--it had a lot of information that I did not know. 

Stephen just wouldn't do a normal picture:)

You can see a bit of the pond in the background here...

The highlight of the drive was this AMAZING sunset...