Fun with relatives

Four of the five Morley sisters visiting on the porch of the dining hall. (Iva couldn't come) Gabriel is here as well, and Dorcas's daughter Esther and baby Fletcher.
Baby Hannah meets Grandpa Morley for the first time. (Grandma was out here in CO for her birth.) Hannah won Grandpa's heart right away. Whose doesn't she? She sure won ours!!!

I had to capture a picture of the three oldest girl cousins working in the kitchen. They are shredding cheese and getting lettuce ready for taco salad. We had to make lots. There must have been about 52 people to eat!

Chris managed to get off work early Friday to join Kezia and us at Crest Haven. They had a late lunch together. And then he unloaded the hit of the weekend: his and his father's two four-wheelers!

I wanted to get at least one snap of the lovely little bouquets that Joella and her family had put together to brighten the tables. The zinnias and other flowers are from their beautiful flower garden across the lane. I also managed to get Elizabeth and her two little boys in this picture!

Reunion Activities

Every morning at the reunion we had devotions, usually on the wooden benches around the fire place. Friday morning Craig Bradford is leading worship in this picture. This is before Gabriel's family, Kezia's, or Grandpa and ma's have arrived. We had fun singing songs and choruses and being together.
This is from another direction. The dining hall is in the background.

Now it's dishes time! "You do those dishes just so!" Fain " cracks the whip" over the younger girls as they do the breakfast dishes. The children split into three groups: the younger girls, the older girls, and the boys. They took turns doing dishes and sweeping and cleaning up after each meal.

Kezia and Gabriel and Elizabeth's family finally arrived. Grandma Morley had been with Gabriel's family the last two weeks, and traveled back to Illinois with them in a motorhome borrowed from Elizabeth's sister. It broke down at the Christian Aid Ministries campus in Ohio, where they visited Wednesday, and it took them a day to make repairs. We envied them getting to travel in a motorhome, but not getting to spend a day stranded because it didn't work right!

Craig and Fain directed the game of Kick-the-Can (another version of Capture the Flag). Dorcas's boys sure could run! Jesse was a good player, flying across the line and kicking the can before anyone could catch him.

It was in the middle of this game that Grandma and Grandpa Morley arrived from their home. It didn't get captured on film, but Dorcas and Anna, the two oldest daughters, both came across the grounds to greet and hug their gray-haired dad at almost the same time. Neither of us had seen him in person for about six years, as he was in Florida when we were at Kezia's wedding. Then Grandma came over at the same time, with tears in her eyes, to hug us as well. It was great to see their joy in seeing their children and grandchildren again. It was worth the many weary miles and hours of travel to see so many together again.

It is our fervent prayer, when life's journey is ended, to all meet again together with the Great Heavenly Family!!

More pictures to follow!

Morley Family Reunion

After a grueling trip, we arrived at Crest Haven Family Center in Illinois at about three o'clock in the morning. Our family stayed in a little cottage on the campground. Above is everybody that was able to come to the reunion, except for Grandpa, who had gone home before we were able to take pictures. Gabriel's family came from Pennsylvania, Dorcas's from Vermont, Fain's from Texas, and us from Colorado. Kezia and Chris and Grandma and Grandpa came from about twenty miles away. Joella's family lives just across the road, as they are presently care takers for the campground.
Here are all 29 grandchildren present. Had all the grandchildren been present, there would have been 43! ( The 44th is on it's way to Craig and Joella's family!)

Here are all the girl cousins, 15 in all.

All the boy cousins (except Dorcas's baby Fletcher who did not care about pictures) - ready to run, jump, climb trees, and tease the living daylights out of their girl cousins!

Dorcas's family (Dorcas is the oldest of the Morley children and has the most children) was the only one we managed to get a picture of as a family! Sorry! The time sped by dreadfully, and we only got these group pictures because we decided it was more important to take pictures than eat the supper that was waiting all ready for us in the dining hall! We wanted to get the pictures before it got too dark and before Dorcas's family left the next day. We were all so glad the Barths could come. They brought a lot of love, and also some Vermont cheese and a half gallon of real Vermont maple syrup for each family. Their oldest son, Peter, was the master photographer of the reunion, snapping shots of almost everything you could imagine.

Visiting Old Town Museum in Burlington, Colorado

On our way to a Morley family reuion,we stopped at the Old Town Museum in Burlington, Colorado. Mom had ordered a kit with free tickets, so we got to go in free. Here we are on a brick street in an old town display. Each building, such as a barber shop, harness shop, church, schoolhouse, prison, print shop, soda shop, bank, and general store, contain artifacts and antiques related to the building in the 1800's and early 1900's.
Sorry this picture turned out crooked. This is a sod house and schoolhouse in the old town.

Sam in front of an old fire truck in a building that had old wagons and antique farm machinery in it. There was an enormous yellow and green threshing machine, similar to one Pa Ingalls may have used. There was a white hearse for children's funerals. There was a medicine wagon too. Also there was a chuck wagon display and a tepee display.

The girls looking at a covered wagon display.

Fifteenth Anniversary

Our fifteenth anniversary, August 26, 2009

Fifteen beautiful years...

Seven beautiful children...

One beautiful love!

Isn't God good!

The best part of our anniversary was in the morning--at home, our favorite place to be. The photo above was of our favorite breakfast --ham and cheese omelets with lightly sauteed mushrooms and salsa on top. The girls helped decorate the table nicely with tablecloth, candles and little vase of flowers from the flowerbed. Sam took the picture. Didn't he do a nice job of catching Rose in the background, who had caught the kitty, who had jumped up on Jonathan's arm just as we were getting ready for the picture? (How would you like to diagram that sentence?)

After breakfast, since Jonathan was actually home for a couple hours in the morning, I decided that part of my anniversary gift to Jonathan would be to clean his truck for him. (It didn't need any cleaning, of course!) So I got Sammy busy helping, and we cleaned up at least part of the truck. We had to leave all the piles of papers and other things that I didn't dare disturb, but by the time we had vacuumed the floor and scrubbed the dash, console and such places, that truck looked good enough to sit in. I also got a seat cover that I had bought a couple years ago but hadn't had the courage to try to alter to fit that seat. The seat belt was presenting a problem so that the cover wouldn't work. On this day, however, I decided to dare to cut a long slit in that brand new seat cover, stitch binding around the edges of the slit, and then sew four laces (from a dark blue shoestring I found and cut into four equal pieces) in place to tie the slit together once it was in place with the seat belt through. I was just amazed that it worked and looked nice in the end. (Sometimes things work, but don't look nice, so the goal is to make things work AND look nice!) Jonathan was so amazed when he came out and looked, that he said, "My goodness! I won't know how to act!"

I had to drop the children two different places before going out to eat with Jonathan in the evening. Here the children are making cookies (or intensely involved in watching) to take to Grandma's to help out for supper.

"Don't you dare take a picture of me licking cookie dough!"says Crystal.

Carrie, a different personality entirely, licked some on purpose for the record.

I dropped Sam and Rose at our neighbors, the Bookmans, so they could walk home through the fields at milking time to milk the goat and do the chores. I really appreciated them being counted on to do the work so their dad and mom could go out for the evening.
The other children stayed at Grandma and pa Lucas's. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa! They had to try to get the baby happy, and Grandma miraculously got her to take a few ounces of goat milk in a bottle.

So Jonathan and I were able to slip away for a couple hours. We first got into that truck (was I ever glad I had cleaned it!) and went to a lovely German restaurant, Edelweiss. Jonathan had purchased a $25 off coupon for just $4 off an internet offer last Christmas time, and we finally had a chance to use it. We asked for a quiet corner and got one. I ordered a chicken dish, and Jonathan a combo dish including bratwurst and mushroom sauce. My favorite part of the meal was the lovely plate of several kinds of German salads. And then, as you can see in the photo below...

The waitress, who had found out it was our fifteenth anniversary, surprised us by bringing us a complimentary plate of German chocolate cake and whipped cream with two candles! She offered to take a picture for us. What a lovely evening!

After that, Jonathan apologetically wondered if I'd mind if we stopped in at Home Depot before going home, as he had things he needed to buy for work that needed to be dropped off yet this evening for his guys to start work early in the morning. (Try diagraming that sentence, too!) I laughed. Boy, isn't Home Depot a great place to celebrate your fifteenth anniversary!! But I said, "The main thing is for us to be together!' And so Jonathan and his devoted wife went sailing into Home Depot together to finish out the evening! I admired how he walks along so resolutely and sturdily, with a straight back and skilled mind, knowing just where to go and what to buy in that great store of millions of items. (He said he was in that store almost every day for a year while working on two big jobs, so no wonder he knew just where to go!) I admired his shirt and his boots and his figure and his face and his beard and just everything about him. Boy, am I glad I married him 15 years ago! I still can hardly believe someone like me ever got married. There are so many prettier, smarter girls, but I, of all things, got married! Maybe it wasn't so much that I was so great, as that I showed Jonathan that I thought HE was so great, and he just fell for it!! Ha ha! Well, it just proved to me that marriage isn't about looks or smarts or things like that. It is about love, devotion, care, choosing God's will, looking for the best in others and--being willing to do things like spend part of your anniversary evening in Home Depot!

So, we checked out, and started outdoors, and then Jonathan groaned, "Oh, I forgot some things!" Yea! More time in Home Depot! I told him let's just go ahead and go back in and get them. It was good exercise. And that is exactly how we have been able to spend 15 years together and still be happy--we try to think of the other person, choose duty over pleasure when it's necessary (which is most of the time), and try to maintain a good attitude (or gain the victory over a bad one) even when things don't go the way we plan. Thank You, Lord, for giving us a happy marriage!

Odds and Ends

When Dad comes home with a trailer we children like to run to to the end of our dirt road and ride home on the trailer. Here we are in a trailer the night Dad brought home three bales of straw for the goat and a bathtub for one of his jobs.

Kitty seems to find Hannah a tasty plaything!

On Wednesday we had an outing in town. There's a candy shop near our church that gives free tours during the summer. We were not allowed to take pictures in the manufacturing plant, but we got this one in the shop with all the pretty candies. We are listening as the tour guide gives us a little history of the shop, which is called Patsy's Candies. This is before the tour. The lady gave us samples of caramel popcorn, saltwater taffy, and two kinds of chocolates. She explained how they made saltwater taffy. They had a huge popcorn popper but it wasn't being used while we were there. That would have been interesting to watch.We watched a worker put pieces of toffy on a rack on a conveyer belt. The peices of toffy went under a machine that covered them in chocolate. Then they went under a machine that covered them in crushed almonds. We saw another machine eat pieces of chocolate, then spit them out wrapped neatly in gold foil, with crimped edges, the way they are when we buy them. There were rolls of foil advertising different businesses. The tour was very interesting.

Free airplane rides at Meadow Lake Airport

Hello this is Sam. On Saturday Dad took us to the Meadow Lake Airport ten miles away from us. They give free rides 7 times a year. We heard that it is the busiest airport without a control tower in America. Here I am in a RV-8. The pilot, Lee Lesher, showed me how to go up, down, left, right, and let me steer a little by using a "stick."

This is Crystal. Here we three girls are before getting into our plane.
Crystal on the wing getting ready to get down after the ride.
With our pilot, Patricia Kelly, in front of her plane, a Piper Archer. Garret, a young man who works for Dad, works here too. He told Dad that the oldest pilot at the airport was seventy-two, but someone else said this lady was eighty, so we don't know for sure. It wouldn't be polite to ask her! Last year we came for a free ride, and Carrie and I went with her that time! Children under eight have to go with an adult other than a pilot, and Mom wasn't ABOUT to risk her life riding in an airplane (Dad was at work), so only we four oldest could ride.