Grandma Dorothy/Jacob comes home

I wanted to include a pic of the girls at the library because we spent a TON of time there this summer. It was a quick go to if I was wearing thin and we all needed to get out of the house.  The kids love going there and never get bored of it.  On July 28th, Tuesday, Michael called me and told me his grandma Dorothy had died in a car accident on 14A east of Lovell.  It was a huge shock and tragedy to the family. 

We have really fond memories of gma Dorothy.  When we lived in Lovell, she babysat for me quite a bit.  It was nice because she lived just in town and right by the school so it was super helpful to me.  She worked at the library and it was fun seeing her there.  What I loved about gma Dorothy is she was always happy to see us and cheerful and super fun with the kids.  Whenever we drove by her house they asked if we could stop by.  She had a tea party set she used to get out for the girls.  She always had picnics in the living room floor when they came.  She had a closet full of all sorts of fun trinkets for the kids to play with.  Never a dull moment at grandma Dorothy's.  It was super sad for us to watch Jan go through this as she spent the most time with her.  

Jacob came home from his mission to L'Viv, Ukraine about a week later.  Me and the kids drove to Cody Aug 5 where he was supposed to land, but he ended up landing in Billings.

It was great to see him that night though after Stan and Jan brought him home to Lovell.  Uncle Jacob is the greatest and all our kids LOVE him, even Stahle.  Its been fun to watch her go to him.  She is pretty selective of who she'll let hold her but she's always been friendly with Jacob.

He brought home all sorts of neat things for everyone!  Below you'll see Daniel, Michael and Christian proudly displaying their new ties.  The girls got dolls and the little boys got some cool hammer things.

This is the whole Asay clan at the cemetary after the services for gma Dorothy which were very nice.  Her sister, Bernice gave the life history, the grandkids sang "My Heavenly Father Loves me", Lauren Busteed and I sang "I know that my Redeemer Lives and Stan gave the sermon which was so nice.  Such a spiritual experience for me at least.  A reminder of how wonderful the gospel of Jesus Christ is and how grateful I am for our redeemer who made it possible for us to see our loved ones again.

Cowley day/cannons farewell

We came back to the Basin for Cowley's day and Cannon's farewell.  We stayed at gpa Simmons and Brenda's this time.  It was fun to be home and see lots of family, including out of towners like Morgan, Fallon, their kids, Matt, Rebecca and their kids.  We spent lots of time at Todd and Emily's in their spacious backyard with lots of fun watertoys and cousins!

Michael will not pass up any opportunity to do this trick that puts fear in the heart of Stahle's mother

Uncle Matt, Todd and Morgan shredding the meat for Cannon's open house

Morgan and Fallon

Cannon was called to serve in the San Antonio, TX mission.  He left Aug 5, the same day Jacob landed in Billings.

I don't have pics, but Kandace and Stetson performed at the Cowley's day variety show and rocked it!!  We started practicing months ago.  Stetson and I did a piano duet, and Kandace sang Castle on a Cloud from Les Miserables.  I found the sheet music in my garage like a year ago and thought maybe I could learn to play it well enough to play it for her.  She actually sang it for her school talent show in May, as well.  It is definitely something she is good at.  She doesn't seem to have nerves when she gets in front of a crowd, her pitch is good and of course she's pretty darling if I do say so myself.

Summer time/visiting Michael in lovell

I am really late in posting all of these so some details are foggy, but we're still where Michael was doing his Lovell rotation.  I knew it'd be easier to take care of the kids in Billings, since we have our home, regular schedule and resources there that we're used to, so we spent probably 1/2 the time in Lovell, 1/2 in Billings. I'd made a riddle like 3 years ago including clues of what fun things we could do in the summer time, and I finally gave them the riddle this summer.  For the month of July, we were supposed to wash the van, make sugar cookies and goo.  We luckily got to do all of them.  Doing crafts (especially messy ones) always seems like a great idea until you actually make it and then you get overwhelmed with the mess and wonder what you were thinking.  This "goo" was just corn starch and water but the kids had fun with it.  They mostly had fun with hose at the end when they were "cleaning up."

L-R: Daneesha, Melinda, me and Cathy.  Melinda was my saving grace while Michael was gone.  She had us over all the time for dinner or whatever.  Even when my mom was here she had us over for a bbq at the last minute because we were having a rough day.  Her son Henry is Janelle's age and Janelle calls him "Honey" and they are pretty great buds.  This pic was at the mall.  One of our girls nights.  We were all actually in a book club together but we never did talk about the books much.  This particular night we went to the mall and TJ Maxx where I picked outfits for our family pictures.  While mom was here in June, Daneesha and I went to Cafe Rio and then met Daneesha at Kohls where I spent way too much $ on clothes. It was SO good to be out though. :)

the 3rd week in July was Cannon's farewell and Cowley's day, so we headed over to the Basin and one of our activities was checking cows in Dryhead.  We stopped at Red apple and got some fried chicken and other treats so we could picnic when we got up there.  It was super fun to be together as a family and out for a drive.  Hotter than blazes though.

A visit to Lovell

Michael's last rotation was in Lovell (started the 2nd week of July)  Jan told us to come whenever to stay and visit Michael so on the Tuesday of his first week, we drove to Asays to stay for a week.  We went to the splash pad, to grandma Dorothy's and the kids had a blast jumping on the tramp and playing with the lambs.

My very favorite thing we got to do was go irrigating with Michael.  I have lots of good memories of driving around the farm with Michael to go check fields and irrigate.  Its makes me so proud to be married to this guy.  He comes from a tremendous heritage of hard working farmers and I think what they do is just great.  I love for my kids to take part in any of it.

4th of july

for the 4th of July we wanted to do some local hiking trails in Billings so we packed out bags and drove out towards Phips park only to discover that they were all closed because the police didn't want people shooting fireworks off on these trails so we had our lunch at North Park downtown, went swimming at Rose Park and then went to Castle Rock park up in the Heights where the Great Harvest church put on a big production of free kid activities and a firework show at the end.  We don't usually stay up this late for fireworks but this year I talked Michael into it.  It was a dream having Michael home for a little while.