Family Reunion Vacation Pictures (late June)

Hello Bloggerland. I have survived the summer of '10; this one goes down in the record books. Here is a post of my favorite pictures we took on our family reunion trip to MT at the end of June. I started this post on 7/10, six weeks ago.... Just FYI.... (eye roll) It's been crazy around here! Stay tuned for the story. ;)

In the interest of time, I have again chosen to post these pictures in no particular order. With this number of pictures it would take me literally another hour to get them in chronological order, and I'm not willing to do that at this time.

Enjoy!! Hope these pictures give you a whiff of that fresh, cool mountain air...! *sigh* We had an a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y outstanding vacation seeing so many loved ones in such a relaxing, beautiful environment. -wow-

Campfire singing, Wednesday.



We had a big campfire devotional on Wednesday. The weather was nice, and Wednesday was the day for everyone to be there. Lovely, lovely, HEAVENLY evening.



Dad, Justus, and Rhys.



Bailey. Quite the little server!!




My favorite of the family pictures that were taken by the Foldings' camera.... Justus missed the "smile now" memo, and was still going off the joke Jeremy was playing on the picture-takers, about "no smiles 'til we have to smile, so DON'T SMILE!" And, I just have to say, Natasha TOTALLY CRACKS ME UP in this picture. hhhhhhhhhhhhha!! SO ELEVEN!! Aah, to be eleven.



SINGINNNG!!! Mom, Jared, Pam, Aunt Ann, Priscilla, Aunt Betty, little Bethany.



Sayler and I model dandelion rings Jeremy made for us.



Pam and Gaven.



Natasha, Hannah, Dacia, Shelby, Dylan, Justus, Sayler, and Rhys.



Natasha, Hannah, and Beverly.



The girls played hours-upon-hours amongst these rocks.







Natasha got to present her painting to Mom and Dad. :)



Natasha had a B-L-A-S-T playing with these amazingly precious girls all week!!!!!



Jeremy napping in the double bed he and I shared that week, ha! I took this picture more for his benefit than y'all's, but ... it's pretty funny so I'm posting it. lol










My cousin Pam's son, Jared, with his son, Gaven.



Some of us older folks had a relaxed 'game' of volleyball with the little kids one afternoon while the majority of the serious volleyball players were on various outings. Justus started learning to serve!





Here are a couple pictures of three of the four John Free male grandchildren in their Montana "Got Mud" t-shirts. :) :) Toby has grown out of his already, so we didn't shoot him with the other three boys for these pictures....






Justus and Sayler have a good thing going. :) Their temperaments seem to mesh very well.



These are pictures I took only two hours into our trip. We were almost to the IA/NE border when we hit this storm. Thankfully we were able to drive, basically, around the southern and western sides of it, but it was a mite scary; it took up something like 280 degrees of the sky. If I remember right I think we heard it actually did drop a tornado or two, but they damaged only fields.... You have to use your imagination 'cause our little camera can't come close to capturing the 'awe'someness. The following four pictures are in backward-chronological order, so this is the fourth picture I took of it:



Storm, picture 3



Storm, picture 2



Storm, picture 1




Jeremy took this picture. Hayven smiled at him way better than she did at me. :( I pray that someday she will be able to know me....



"The Cousins"; sixteen of us were there. Seventeen were unable to attend, and we have lost three cousins already, one as an infant, one in her early twenties (car accident - she was hit by a drunk driver), and one recently due (bad health). :( We have a lot of cousins.



I really like the flag. Thanks Tim and Jaden! My biggest purpose in taking this picture was to catch Ranne's fascination with the 'raising' process, but once it was up he'd seen what he needed to see; I didn't get the camera to cooperate with me in time to preserve Ranne's intent focus and happiness in the previous moments.... gr



On the way home...






Beth & Teresa. :)



We took these special "Father's Day" pictures with Dad; this is the first time the three kids have been together for Father's Day in nearly 15 years.



Dad's two sisters who attended this reunion: Bernice and Betty.



"A Camp Scene"



(Clockwise from Dad): Uncle Ken, Aunt Bernice, Aunt Betty