Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Family pics and summer time!

We recently got our family pictures done by a good friend who did an amazing job. It is really difficult to take photos of two moving targets and get good pics but she did it!!

We have had a busy but fun summer so far, first week of july was spent with both mine and Troy's families in Gooding. We had a good time with the families, had a couple stressful moments and sad ones too, losing our family dog Fletcher was really hard.

Two weeks ago Troy ran his first marathon in Missoula, MT. The kids and I were there to cheer him on. He did a great job and suprisingly wants to do another one soon. CRAZY!!!!

Below are some of our favorite family pics taken!!





Guess how this ends up!



Kamryn -1 Rylan - 0 (although it is usually opposite)!


Troy here. Thought I'd share a bit of what happened with Fletcher. As Katie mentioned above, we did suffer a very tragic loss while in Gooding on vacation. Fletcher had been in Gooding for over a week without me there - Katie, the kids, and Fletch went down a week before me. He was staying at my parents' house which is bascially dog heaven - 20 acres with a little river, quail, deer, pheasants. Fletcher loved that place. For a reason I'll never understand, after being there for a week, he got lost or decided to wander off, or both. Despite hours spent looking for him, we were unable to find him. A few days after he disappeared, a person saw a sign we had placed in a local grocery store. He called and told me that he had seen a dog matching our description laying in the grass on the side of a highway near town. My brother and I drove out there, and it was Fletch. He had obviously been there for a while, leading us to believe he likely got hit the day he disappeared or the day after. Definitely one of the saddest days of my life. For those of you that met Fletcher and know me, you then also know that the term "man's best friend" was made for this dog and me. Fletcher was almost 8 and he had a great run (often literally) in that time. It was devastating to lose him the way we did, but it is very fortunate our kids aren't old enough to have the emotional connection or understanding of what happened. That would be unbearable. They know he's not around, but they just think he went "night night". We'll definitely get another dog and it too will become part of the family, but it will take a little time before I'm ready for that.