OUR SUMMER

Somehow August seemed to pass by without me noticing! It's been a month of reunions, family, and friendships. On this its last day, we pushed the button to electronically send our information to our bishop. He will review everything, add his own thoughts, and send it on to the Stake president who will do the same. They will both interview us for our worthiness to serve a mission and President Leavitt will forward everything to Salt Lake. Then, we're informed, we'll receive our call in due time. We'll keep you posted as things proceed. We believe it will be a few months before this all happens.
Some have wondered why we are going on this mission and to some we could never fully explain, but we're anxious to give our time and talents to serve the Lord. Truthfully we'd like to go on a genealogy mission, but we've agreed to go where we're called whether it's Potsdam or Portland. We've planned this mission since we first met and we're grateful that the Lord has given us this opportunity. We want you all to know that we will miss each of you terribly and realize that some (the babies) will not know us when we return, but we'll be only an e-mail or phone call away. I'll keep my blog and, hopefully, update it as often as I can. We hope our mission will serve as an example to our grandchildren to help them know the importance of serving the Lord.
Our plan of right now is to leave our house empty. All the kids have agreed to help care for it. Jaime has agreed to be the caregiver of the cat! We are so appreciative of our wonderful family and hope everyone remembers to write to us!
Until we leave, we're planning to carry on as usual. We'll appreciate your visits and kind wishes. We're grateful for each other. It's been a wonderful summer for us. I didn't even miss school one bit when it started. Keep in touch.

PURSES AND MORE PURSES

Our house was full of girls on Sunday. We'd been trying to have a granddaughter/Grandma party all summer and finally did it. We had a ball! Marissa and Lyra made little purses and the older girls made tote bags. They made a great bag for me which I'll treasure. Grandpa retreated to the upstairs, but came down to admire their work and have a Smoothie. Enjoy the pictures.





Adara's handiwork is hard to see in the picture. She had used embellishments to make a dragon.

Angie and Meagan went for splashes of color!

Samantha and Nicole preferred the bright pink bags and made them prettier.

Marissa and Lyra were twins.

A REUNION WORTH REMEMBERING

Don't we have cute grandkids? This is DJ (Jaime & David's) and Kylee (Joe & Kat's). Kylee's fishing pole was a great source of fun, although, it appears that most of the fish were high up in the trees because that's where the bobber was most of the time!

We had a wonderful time at Ensign Ranch this past weekend. We really missed those who weren't there--Janeen and Greg in far off Ohio; Jennie & Ty who had to work; and Cynthia and Derlyn who were on baby watch as well as Lisa, Kjerstin, Nicole, Meagan and Andrew. We also sorely missed being able to have a campfire because of the statewide burn ban. And we missed the really good weather that we usually have although cool and cloudy beat rain hands down. Friday was nice and warm until evening and Sunday warmed up nicely as we were leaving! The campfire has always been an Ensign tradition--lots of great generational conversation plus hot dogs, S'mores and popcorn. We did plenty of talking but not around the campfire. We enjoyed a wonderful visit from our niece Wendy (Alan & Linda) and her family who were on their way to Leavenworth and points north into Canada. Sorry I didn't get a picture.

I think this hat was worn by every single Castleton (This is Dawniella) except Julirae.

Holding Dawniella ( in her eggplant hat), was a favorite pasttime. Here she and Dylan are waiting for breakfast.

Schmoozing with cousins was always fun. Lyra (Julirae & Brandt), Dawniella (hatless), and Marissa (Jaime & David)

Lyra and all of us were happy to see Steven. Here's he's engaging in the favorite pasttime of some of the adults--cellphone "fiddling".

Our craft this year was small birdhouses. Everyone wanted to paint birdhouses including the adults.

Jeff, Steve and Kat. Kat and I share a special bond--we're both always cold in such situations and we hate cold!

Julirae taught the kids the "candy" game which caused some cutthroat competition and which Aunt Julirae won a couple of times but assures us that she shared the candy. They played by lantern light for quite awhile. Then some of the teenagers who were close to Grandpa and I talked until the wee hours. The next night it was their parents who talked until the wee hours. Oh how we love to talk!

I included this picture of the waterslides so you can see how popular they are. Our kids are the ones with the light colored tubes. There was a very large Samoan group there who were very fun to watch.

Ensign was especially poignant this year because Garth and I probably won't be there next year so we spent some time talking about that. If you don't know already, we're preparing our papers to go on a mission soon. We'll be there in spirit, though. Jeff has many other great pictures on his blog. Other family members have promised to blog as well. We had a great, great time. Ensign is always a happy place for us. A great tradition.