Harvey's 80th Birthday

Warren's dad, Harvey Fast, turns 80 on June 5.  Sunday, May 30, we celebrated with family and friends at the Glasgow Evangelical Church in Glasgow, MT.  About 130 people joined us for great visiting, a delicious array of  cheese ball & crackers, nuts, 3 flavors of birthday cake, ice cream sundaes, punch, ice tea and coffee.

Once the party got going, we didn't take time out from pouring the drinks to take pictures of everyone.  I think maybe some others did, though.  Here are some pictures taken before:

Harvey & Gladys with their kids

Joan Unger, Jean Joiner, Gladys & Harvey Fast, Warren Fast, Shirley Nasner

The Kids

 Joan & Keith Unger, Jean & Ken Joiner, Gladys & Harvey Fast, Duane & Shirley  Nasner, Warren & DeeDee Fast

Brothers & Sisters

Florence & Dale Funk, Gladys & Harvey, Shirley Funk

 

Harvey & Gladys with some of their grandkids and great-grandkids.

Picture table with photos through the decades

May Showers bring June Flowers?

I have to share the view from my living room window, along with some of the flowers.   With all the rain, it is nice and green here.  It smells heavenly when you walk outside as all the lilacs are blooming.  We have hedges of lilacs around the lawn, and rows of lilacs in the shelter belts around the yard. 

Here are some of the flowers and trees blooming in my yard.

I love these petunias.  They are a bright, cheerful magenta with a green edge.  Very cool!

May Rains

We have had more rain in May than we ever imagined Northeastern Montana could have!  We are used to occasional rain, lasting for maybe 20 minutes.  We have had rains this spring that have lasted all day or longer.  We are very thankful for the moisture - very thankful.  It has set us a bit behind schedule, however.  Seeding was halted for 2 weeks earlier in the month, and last week we were able to get into the fields for a short time.  Last Wednesday it started raining again, and our monthly rain totals really went up.  In just the last week, Tony has gotten over 7 inches in Fort Peck.  Here we have gotten about 4-5 inches for the month. 

Along with the rain, comes a bit of flooding and raging creeks.  Here are a few pictures.

This is the road going from the high school to the Nashua hiway.  It used to be a paved road years ago, but has been graveled for several years now.  The water washed over the road, taking the gravel from the road, along with the ditch, along with it.

This is the bridge on the same road, just a mile or two away.  Normally the creek is a calm, very small creek.

taken from the bridge

This is the creek crossing we use all the time when we take the shortcut to town.  The water on the near left hand side is actually the road, and you can see how far the water had been up on the road on the opposite side of the creek.  Normally this time of the year there will be a bit of water in the creek, and it will dry up during the summer.  We won't be using the crossing for a while!

Along with the rains, we had fog.  It was kind of eerie this time of the year.

Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

This Memorial Day I am thinking not only of  soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for our freedoms, and loved ones who are no longer with us, but it is also my Mom & Dad's anniversary.  They were married May 31, 1949.  Today would have been their 61st anniversary.  Really, it IS their 61st anniversary, as I'm sure they are enjoying a wonderful, heavenly celebration together.  Dad passed away in 1998, just a few months before their 50th anniversary.  I love ya & miss ya, Mom & Dad.

Enjoying the wet weather

The last week has been cold, wet, and windy.  We're loving the wet, but the cold and windy are getting old.  I've been taking advantage of the bad weather by spending a lot of time in my scrap room.  Here are a few of the pages I've gotten finished.  Tony is in the 6-9 month old range in most of them.

 above is Tony's first graham cracker.  Obviously he enjoyed it, he was a mess.

the photo looks funny because the layout is in an album and didn't lay flat.  

Debbie's 40th Birthday Party

Debbie Lenihan, who is married to our pastor, had her 40th birthday yesterday.  It was to be our regular monthly meeting of our WMS ladies group - prayer, Bible study, business meeting, etc.  Instead, we had a birthday party for her here at our house.  Each of the ladies brought 40 items as a gift.  Among them were pennies, q-tips, candies, ziplok bags, marbles in a mug, stamps, dollars, etc.  There were some really funny cards too.  I don't know that Debbie was really surprised, but we tried.  :)  After all, just a couple of years ago, the church threw a big surprise bbq and potluck for Pastor Frank on his birthday.  With the meeting on Debbie's birthday, I'm sure she was suspicious.  She was a good sport, and it was a fun evening.  After gifts, Lisa had a very good devotional and then we had Dairy Queen blizzard cakes, punch,  and coffee.  The weather outside was a bit frightful, big snowflakes, muddy roads and a cold wind, but inside it was warm with much visiting and laughter.

Lisa gave a devotional

Debbie, Renee, Kellee & Carla

Jean, Jeri & Julie

Bonnie, Lisa, Trisha, Lavonne, Yvonne

Joy & Sherri

Debbie with one of the DQ birthday cakes

 Jean serving the cakes

NSD

National Scrapbook Day was on Saturday, May 1.  I went to Scobey and scrapbooked at my freind, Connie's.  She has a fabulous scrapbook store in her basement - and I mean fabulous.  I have been to many scrapbook stores when we have traveled, and Connie's is better than most.  We are fortunate to have her so close.  I am trying to get back to scrapping chronologically from the time Tony was born.  I have done a lot of layouts from years in between, but I really need to get these old photos scrapped.  I am having problems getting prints made from these old photos as some have discolored over time.  Not many places make prints from negatives any more.  You really have to plan ahead or maybe we'll have to look into getting a scanner to make them into digital pictures.  We'll have to see.  Here are the layouts I got done on Saturday.  I am doing one album for Warren and I, and Tony & Craig each have albums as well, so I do multiple sets of pages from each set of pictures, thus the duplicates.

This one is for Tony's album and has pictures of summer time friends and family who visited us.

 This one is for our album.

I made duplicate layouts of these next two layouts.  This one is of his first combine ride.

This one is of some of the mischief Tony got into once he was walking and getting into things.  I had forgotten about some of them - good thing I had written them down in his baby book.  Hint: if you click on the photo, you will get a larger version and can read the journaling.  He was a little bugger sometimes!