Aunt Hazel's 100th Birthday Party

Hazel Reiff at her 100th Birthday Celebration!


Rowen's aunt, Hazel Reiff celebrated her 100th Birthday on May 30, 2009. Her birthday was actually on May 20th, but a weekend made attendance at the celebration more likely. Hazel and her husband, Marvin (deceased), pastored many churches in their ministry together. They had three children, all of whom were in attendance at her birthday party. Eight out her ten grandchildren were there, many of her great-grandchildren, and several great-great grandchildren were in attendance.

You can see in the background of the pictures below, several of the beautiful quilts that Aunt Hazel hand-quilted in her lifetime.

Our family with Aunt Hazel

We enjoyed seeing many Reiff relatives and several friends that we had not seen in many years.

Neil and Esther (Reiff) Hartman and their daughter, grandson, and great-grandchildren that were able to come.


Wayne and Mary (Macy) Reiff with their children and their spouses that were able to come.

Wayne Reiff with his son Gerald, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren


Harold and Bonnie Reiff with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren

A few more garden pictures

More pictures were on the other camera: Emily planting the flower pots.

Some of her handiwork:

We always plant marigolds along the edges of the garden.

Hope's graduation from Kindergarten

What is more cute than a kindergarten graduation?

Hope is one of the children that Beth babysits from time to time. She is Lincoln's sister. Beth and Emily went to her kindergarten graduation this week!
Here Emily caught Hope as she was being silly, but very cute!

This is Dr. Matt and Dr. Cara, Faith, Hope, and Lincoln. They are some of our favorite people around here! We feel really blessed to have them for our doctors and to get to babysit their precious family!

Park fun; preparation for TLC Boot Camp

The kids have been going to parks several nights a week and getting exercise. Jeffrey, especially, is trying to prepare himself for the obstacle course at TLC boot camp, which is coming up in less than 2 weeks.

After this time on the monkey bars, Jeffrey developed blisters on his calluses and they came off. Now we are trying to get his hands healed up before he leaves!

Jason is a great brother to Jeffrey and participates in all his training exercises.

Garden planted

Well, we finally got our garden planted on Tuesday evening. We added manure, rotated the crops, and left out anything that had not produced the way we wanted it to. Behind us and closer to the lilac bushes are spagetti squash hills. Jeff, Beth, and Janet planted 10 rows of bush beans.

Rowen planted 13 tomato plants where we have usually planted the zucchini. The zucchini is on the other side of the green beans (behind Jeffrey in the picture).

Emily put pretty flowers in all of the pots that sit on the pond and line the back of the yard.

We have 2 clematis plants, one purple, one red, that have lots of blooms already. There will be more color showing when the potted flowers grow and the rose bushes and clematises bloom.

We enjoy hearing the pond and mountain stream going. The bees seem to love having the water available. They don't bother us, just get the moisture they need.

Reynolds' Family

Last Friday evening, Ben and Marlene Reynolds and their precious children, Kassie and Titus, came up for supper and game playing. Rowen preferred playing with the kids over the game playing. Here he is singing "Stop and Let Me Tell You (what the Lord has done for me)."

Kassie liked the stories Rowen read to her.

Titus loves tractors!

Marlene and Kassie had fun jumping on the trampoline.

Beth, Emily, and Titus watched their antics.

We only played one game; the evening was too short! We were playing Dealer's Choice that the Reynolds had brought and we must have been slow learners, because Ben won.

We need to get together again soon. It was a delightful evening.

Helping out at our friends' Kids Church

On May 3, we went to Federal Heights to Ben and Marlene Reynolds' Kids' Church. We had been there in April and started the story of Joseph and his brothers. This time only Jeffrey helped act out the Bible Story. He was Pharaoh and Ben was Joseph.

This is when Pharaoh put Joseph in charge after Joseph interpreted his dreams.

Joseph got a new royal robe to wear since he was in charge!

We have enjoyed helping out, even though we don't do that much. We will probably keep going down to Federal Heights when we have opportunity.

Teddy Roosevelt visits Johnstown

On Tuesday evening, President Theodore Roosevelt visited Johnstown. Johnstown was founded in 1902 while he was in office, so it was only appropriate that he come and make a speech here. He said it was 1909 and told us his life story.

He had a lot of good things to say. We just wish we had a statesman like him for a president in 2009!

His second wife, Edith, and son, Quinten, were also present for the occasion.

Our daughter, Emily, was honored to be pictured with Ethel Roosevelt.

These reenactors are dear friends of ours, Mathew, Nicole, Phoebe and Ethan Hinkle. Mathew is a history enthusiast and enjoys reenacting several people in different periods of history. His favorite president is Teddy Roosevelt; he has studied his gestures and voice inflections, besides memorizing many quotes and facts from his life. He does an excellent impersonation. We were glad the Johnstown Historical Society hosted the Roosevelt family for their History Alive Quarterly Meeting.

Mother's Day weekend 2009

Here is an updated family picture of us Albertsons! This was taken Mother's Day evening. It was a blessing to be with all of our children and my parents for Mother's Day weekend!

Last week, I was pondering about how long it had been (for everybody besides me) since seeing the rest of our family. Thanksgiving was the last time we had all been together! We see them occasionally on video chat and we talk on the phone regularly, but a great desire came into my heart to have everybody together! On Thursday morning, both Randy and Joy called and asked, "Can you come this weekend?" Being Mother's Day weekend, it seemed an appropriate time to go. Rowen was able to get off work. So being the spontaneous people we are, we took off at 9:45 am Thursday and arrived in Joplin about 11:30 pm. We stayed at my parents' house.

At breakfast Friday morning, a violent storm came up with winds over 85 mph and rain. The electricity went off and was not back on again until mid afternoon on Saturday! Daddy lost a couple of big branches from his trees, but we were thankful to not have any tree or limbs fall on the house. A lot of people were less fortunate with smashed cars or roofs.

Tim and Brenda did not lose their electricity, amazingly, because most of the town was without. Many stores were closed and the traffic signals did not work. ABE Painting was still able to work with indoor painting to do--even without electricity--because of the bright, sunshiny day we had after the storm was passed. Rowen, Jeffrey, and Jason got to work with Randy and Tim and their other workers on Friday and Saturday and enjoyed the fellowship of working together.
This is the uprooted tree where they were painting:

Tim painting inside the great room in that house.

A picture of Tim and Brenda at church on Sunday. He does clean up nicely!

Brenda and Emily playing a violin duet with Jason accompanying them on the piano.

Randy and his second son, Micah

My precious Mother and me on Mother's Day morning.

The Albertson clan with Grandma and Grandpa Scoles

Sometimes Quil is silly:

I bought this Bumbo seat for Micah. Something like this was not available when my children were little!

Emily enjoys time with her nephew, Quil.

Quil seems to be fascinated with Jeffrey's braces.

We made sure to get pictures of each of the CO kids with Micah this time! Here's Jeffrey:

Emily and Micah:

Beth and Micah:

Jason and Micah:

Randy, Joy, Quil, and Micah on Mother's Day

Grandma and Grandpa Albertson and Micah at Tim and Brenda's for supper:

We had a good time with our kids and were thankful to be safely home again Monday evening.