Precious Time...

At Gram and Pap Wray's house...

With so many little ones in the Wray family, there is never a shortage of toys...

...or cousins! Brooke, Marlee, and Aunt Stephanie!

Can you believe I allowed this???!!!

It seems that Brooke does her most courageous things when Aunt Stephanie is involved!

These last two pictures are a little blurry, but I took them from the truck as Zig and I followed Scub, Stephanie, Marlee, and Zoe with Brooke in the tractor wagon! They rode from Gram and Pap's, stopped to get mail, then up the lane to their house!

I only suffered a MINOR heart attack watching them ride away!

Check this out!

Gram Wray pulled this out for us to see...

Uncle Scub and Daddy - now we know where she got her chubby cheeks!!

My precious time as a stay-at-home-Mom is quickly dwindling away! But we are making great use out of the time we have left!

We spent our weekend with family!

Friday night, we packed up for Belletown after supper for a visit with Gram and Pap Wray! Pap isn't doing so well, as he's also battling with cancer. Even though it was hard for Zig to see his Pap getting weaker, we really enjoyed spending the evening with them - visiting and seeing him smile!

Uncle Scub, Aunt Stephanie and the girls rode down on the tractor and wagon from their house, so Brooke got to play with her cousins! Pap watched them play and giggled as they crawled around the floor with each other! How wonderful it must be for him to watch his great-grandchildren playing in his house!

Since Aunt Stephanie insisted that Brooke take a tractor ride, (Yikes!), she was snatched from my arms and loaded into the wagon with all of the other crazy people (Stephanie and Zoe!)! She was perfectly safe with her Aunt, and I experienced a large amount of nervous laughter as I watched them bump and bounce all the way up the lane!

After a great night's sleep (Woo-Hoo!!!), we awoke bright and early with anticipation of Aunt Meg, Josh, and Uncle Jason's arrival! They came mid-morning, Zig and Jason headed out for a morning of golfing, and me, Meg, Josh, and Brooke headed to my Mom's for lunch and the rest of the afternoon! We spent the day in the 100 degree weather, sweating in the garage, while Josh played in the water and Brooke napped. It was too hot to do much of anything!

Sunday morning, most of the Richard clan met at church for my cousin Jeannine's ordination! "Neen" was a large part of my wedding ceremony, as she was still in the process of becomming an official pastor - but now it's official and we are so proud of her and all that she's accomplished! It was so cool to watch her be ordained as a Pastor in the Brethren church - and even cooler to get to stand with the Richard family and sing some special songs that Need requested! Stacie and baby Anna ventured out to church for the first time, so it was a very special Sunday for our family. Hot. But special.

After a thrown-together supper of Guss's pizza at Mom and Dad's last night - we settled in to prepare for yet another week of summer.

2 weeks. That's it. That's all that's left before I head back to work.

My Mom and I worked at washing and ironing all of the curtains in my house this morning, which has turned into an annual 'August' job. We finished our afternoon by heading to my favorite country store that was decked out in all of the orange and brown of the fall season - so I'm starting to feel the urge to decorate for fall and get myself in gear for this next season of our lives.

This passed year of my life has been so precious to me.

Time spent with Gram and Pap Wray, Aunt Stephanie, Uncle Scub, Zoe, Marlee, Nana, Pap, Aunt Meg, Uncle Jason, Josh, Stacie, Anna, Jeannine, and many others that we spent our weekend with...so precious to me.

Being a Mom and wife to Zig...more precious to me than anything in the entire world.