Enjoying the Fruit of Our Labor

We had a small window of opportunity to take a last minute quick trip to Montana to see the newlyweds, and we jumped at the chance. 

 We had such a great time.  We talked on the way up there about how we are to handle ourselves now...as parents, to a married child, as in-laws to the man that married our daughter.....new role for us, so we had a 12hr trip to talk about it.  We decided on this approach.."We are going to keep our mouths SHUT!!!  We are going to come and serve and encourage...we are just going to enjoy them and encourage them in their new life.  We are NOT going to say a word if the toilet paper is stored in the kitchen and the dishes are washed in the shower, we are going to just enjoy them and DO whatever it is they WANT US to do."  

Sooooo....here's how it went....we didn't have a thing to say....they are doing awesome.  They had their house set up perfect...they are thriving....they are going to church, they are working hard, they are having fun, they are laughing, they are learning, they are DOING AMAZING!!!!  I sat there one morning thinking....this is soooo much fun, I'm not even having trouble keeping my mouth shut, I have nothing but NICE to say.  So I decided......this is awesome, we are getting to enjoy the "fruit of our labor"...we are done raising her and now we just get to ENJOY her PLUS an added bonus of a wonderful son-in-law and enjoy this couple that we love so much.

We packed in a LOT of fun stuff while there...

THE MEN, and Charsie moved some cows and doctored and separated.  They had several young and greenish horses for this task and they all did AWESOME....everyone came back in one piece and got the task done.  Chaney knows the property well, and did a good job keeping everyone lined out.  The "women"...that would be me and Lashae, cooked up a storm...we had so much fun cooking in the kitchen together with all her new wedding gifts....you know we made A LOT when Kole had to leave the table, he was so full and somewhat sick.  We high-fived...Kole does NOT say he is "full" EVER, and when he does you know you have worked yourself silly in the kitchen.

Here's the work crew acting silly as usual.  Chaney suggests we take a mean picture, so Kole instantly goes for Chaney's throat.  Whatever...Chaney's suggestion.

We had competitions in the evenings and YES you are witnessing the finish line of  100yard dash, and Chaney is beating Kole.  Oh man did we have to hear about THAT...from Chaney we got to hear what an amazing stud he is...from Kole we heard 50 reasons why he lost TWICE!!!

This is the crew being shown around by the happy couple.

This is some of their wood for the winter...and the wind took their roof right off the shed that keeps the wood dry, so Charlie and Kole put a roof on the shed.

The girls built a dog-kennel, for my grand-dogs, and they were in the thistle  so they put these attractive socks on to complete the task.  DORKS!!!!

Lashae requested a door for her bedroom. Old farm houses rarely have doors on the bedrooms.  Charlie built her the prettiest door EVER out of some old barn wood that was there on the place.  Lashae says she is taking it with her wherever they go.  It was a labor of LOVE.  Charlie worked on that door for about 5 hours, if you know my man you know he won't just slap up any door, it has to be perfect and beautiful, he built it from SCRATCH, and then Esther put the finishing touches on it and painted it with a sealer.

Charsie took the kids swimming in the creek right by the house,  it was FREEZING!!!

This was the final activity of the trip.  We got a flat-tire on the job trailer on the way home.  Nobody was in the mood for it, I can tell you that.  We were tired and had been in the car a LONG time and had a ways to go, so it was serious business until Reece, stopped running around in circles long enough to notice what Charlie was doing...and he paused, got HUGE eyes and RAN up to Charlie, grabbed him by the underwear and yelled at the top of his lungs, "WEEDDGGIE".  Oh we all just had to laugh, I thought I might go into labor on the spot it was soooo funny and it lightened the mood PERFECTLY.

Confession:  There was ONE thing, I just couldn't keep my mouth shut on....they are not using real butter, they are using that plastic stuff that looks like butter.  I could not figure out why Lashae had told me her cookies were not turning out, when I was sent the recipe that she loves more than anything...well, IT WAS THAT STUPID PLASTIC FAKE STUFF THEY CALL BUTTER....**I simply suggested the cookies might turn out better and they may live to be older if they quit eating plastic.**  I hope I didn't overstep my bounds.