Memories . . . Pictures in time . . .

I was looking for  some pictures for a slide show tonight.  Looking back through snapshots of our lives over the last several years.  So many memories.  Good ones.  Sad ones.  Things that are funny.  A little boy with missing teeth. New puppies. Branding calves. Building a deck. Raking leaves. Sending balloon messages heavenward. Mongolia. Thanksgivings. Painting. School. Funerals. Visits. Trips. Whales. Lego's. Museums.  Rodeos. Lasts.  Gobi Desert. Pigs. Class projects. Christmas. Building. Snow forts. Sledding. Firsts. So many memories captured.
It is so true that a picture speaks a thousand words.  My son just put together a 5 picture collage of the fire we had a few weeks ago to enter in the fair.  It is a good set of pictures and truly captures what he found most intriguing from that fire.  The helicopters. 
I looked through these pictures seeing things that have changed so much.  People that have come into my life and mean so much when not so long ago I never knew them.  People who meant so much in my life that are now gone from me.  Life brings so much change.  Things happen.  Life Happens.  Sometimes it would be so nice to just be able to push pause.  Sometimes rewind or fast forward on life.  To see what is a bit ahead.  Or to be able to go back and say or do something different.  But we can't.  The wheels continue to go around.  What are the things that we will look back on in a few years and smile, cry or laugh about.  Life continues to happen.  Enjoy! 

 

..... Love Truly ..... Hug Tightly ..... Life Fully ..... Kiss Slowly .....

Sand . . .

Sand Blasted rocks.  People travel thousands of miles to see these truly spectacular and amazing works of art.  Created by sand blown and blasted for years at these enormous rocks.  Hollowing them...cutting them...wearing away at the weak spots... creating new cracks...working and wearing them down.  A thing of beauty.  A work of art.  All done with sand and wind.  No wonder we use a sand blaster if we want to get something truly clean.  Truly abrasive. We got to travel to Arches National Park near Moab on our way to a friends wedding in Colorado.  Our first true American Road trip.  It was fun.  We stopped where we were when it was time and we saw some incredibly beautiful country.  Impressive!  Spectacular.  Amazing! 
Another stop on this road trip was my favorite though.  We stopped at what is now a reservoir out of Vernal, UT and hiked about 1.5 miles in really hot weather to see big dinosaur tracks.  They were footprints left over from some bygone time when these huge creatures roamed the earth.  Talk about something you would not want to meet in the dark!  Or the light either for that matter!  Obviously they had walked through the wet sand which had then hardened and turned to stone and these tracks remain and the bones remain to bear evidence.  These were impressive to look at!  A bit scary to think of these creatures walking around right here.  But so cool!   


Kind of got me thinking though... Scary these days!  :)  Sand and wind are what wore away these great stones and while making them more beautiful also made them weaker.  What is wearing away at me? What sand and wind are beating on my life.  It seems there has been plenty of that lately.  Life throws interesting things at us.  How do we hold up to them?  Sometimes well.  Sometimes not so much.  But keep on going.  Knowing that this verse holds truth about how important we are to the one who created us . . . and the dinosaurs!

¹⁷ How amazing are your thoughts concerning me, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.    Psalm 139:17 & 18

He already knows what life is going to throw at us.  And what our reactions will be.  He knows when we will fall.  He knows when we will stand.  And is right there to help us up or cheer us on!

Birthday

I celebrated my 29 and still holding birthday this last weekend.  It was a lot of fun.  We went to a park party with friends whose daughter was celebrating her birthday as well.  So much fun.  Kids played and played in the water and on the slide and just had so much fun.  The adults had a great time visiting and getting to know each other better.  We had BBQ and yummy birthday cake.  Having good friends with which to spend your birthday makes the day just all that much better!  Thank God for fun friends! 

Fire . . .

View from my deck at 4 a.m.



 

From my driveway

During one of the hottest weeks I remember we got some added heat to our lives.  Monday night there was a dry lightning storm that started a fire.  The wind was blowing so hard that night with gusts of 50-60 mph.  The fire traveled about 5 miles that night growing, spreading, jumping, and skipping.  It crossed the river and kept on coming kind of dividing into two separate fires.  That was a little scary as it was rolling along very fast.  The road below us was closed to go further up the canyon.  Many of us had short nights as we figured out what all needed done and what our best plan for dealing with the approaching fire was.  We ended up taking up some fence that we had been planning to rip out sometime this summer but not this week, in order that we could bulldoze the huge sage that was in the fence line. 


The fire grew rapidly and was over 50,000 acres and 0% contained 36 hours after starting.  The weather was not helping either as the high on Tuesday was 111.   The fire fighters started showing up on Wednesday morning.  The weather was miserably hot!  And the fire just kept growing.  As locals we had been up at 4 or us most of the night and we were all tired.  Our ditch rider had spent the night in his truck and was waking people up at 4 when the wind picked up and the fire was making huge headway down the hill and we all wondered if our neighbors house would make it through the fire.  It did.  We all made it though the fire.  The crews had the fire contained by Wednesday evening.  What a nice relief to know when the fire was no longer raging. 

 

 A couple of neighbors had packed up their valuables in their trucks.  I packed a suitcase.  It is hard to know what to think about this sort of thing.   What do you  take?  What do you leave?  How much time do you have?  Will the fire really make it here? Makes you really realize that things really are so temporal.  We can not take them with us.  If I had my family with me, I would have all that was important.  All that really mattered.  Yes, I have some important things in my house.  Some irreplaceable.  Some valuable.  Some worthless. Some treasure memories. But my family is what is important and that is my greatest treasure.