dad's retirement weekend

My sister just emailed me, "sister, there is no pressure here only want you to know i have checked your blog 5 times today and i stare at Sedum.  i am craving pictures from our weekend!  but i am also the sister who told you to relax and rest today so there's that, too."

Well, Annika, here are my top twenty favorites. Could have easily posted forty.

In the words of my brother-in-law Jedd, this weekend was epic. Dad, and the ministry he has led as a pastor was celebrated. Mom, the woman behind the man and the one who held everything together on the home front was celebrated. And our whole family was together. We celebrated our family all weekend long.

Here's Simon. I love this kid. He faithfully pulled these little ones around in the wagon two days in a row. Ivar adores his big cousin and we even got to have Simon Friday night for a sleepover. As we drove back to our house with Simon in the backseat Ivar kept saying, "This is fun Simon. Right? This is so fun."

Simon took a little walk through our field on Saturday morning. And he really did a number on his shoes.

We got to go and visit the kittens at the neighbor's house. And some got to go and see the horses too. A perk of living where we do!

You'll notice Sonna has a broken arm. Clearly she is in a cast. But I think she missed the memo. The girl doesn't act any different with that cast. She was tying water balloons (it's waterproof!), canoeing, jumping off of things that made me nervous, but she is not nervous. It's basically an accessory.

And here's the man of the hour. Dad preached at all of the church services for his last time. It was a momentous weekend...I'll have to expand on this another time...you know, with twenty pictures and all.

Oh how we miss our Seattle family! Claire is getting so tall. I just love her to pieces. And so does Elsie.

And Nellie is a joy. She is four and very determined to learn how to do the high monkey bars. Right now she just does the low ones. She told me all about it.

Mom was in her glory with all of her family around. We spent nearly every moment of the three days we had all together. When it was time to all say goodbye, these four older girls tied themselves together so they couldn't be separated. I love that. I wanted to tie myself to them too.

Today we are feeling full and grateful and so sad that it all flew by so fast.