Fidler's pig roast

We are at the home of Tom and Lauree Fidler good friends of ours from church. The DJ is set upon the wagon in the background.It is a beautiful Saturday afternoon and they are having a pig roast. You could not believe all the food.

This is a picture of their beautiful barn.

This is Tom and Lauree's daughter, Christin, and Nate with their new little one.

This is Tom and Lauree's son, Jared, and his fiancee, Christina.

Their home is just lovely and has a porch which should be featured on Better Homes and Gardens.

Now to the reason for this pig roast. It turns out that this year was a big year for Tom, Lauree and their daughter, Kassi, when it comes to birthdays so they decided to make a joint celebration this year.

Tom turning 60!!!

Kassi turning 21!!!

Lauree turning 50!!!

It was a lot of fun for everyone. Thanks Fidler's for a nice day.

Day with Izzy and Friends

Our granddaughter, Izzy, and family moved from Mechanicsburg to Pittsburgh PA at the beginning of the summer. I know Izzy misses all her good friends. She was visiting the area again and had a get together with her girlfriends at the farm. Wouldn't you know the day they were here was the first cloudy day all week. They didn't let it ruin their day.
Papa still loaded them all on the hay wagon and took them on a hayride.

They all went swimming in the pond though the temperature was only in the high 60's or low 70's. They said the water was warm.

It started to drizzle a little and the girls took cover under the umbrella.

The girls were watching the fish swim around and trying to decide if they wanted to swim with them or not.

What the heck!! Let's to for it.

Pizza was enjoyed by all.
Izzy is seated on the far right.

Riley family reunion 2010 Myrtle Beach, SC

This picture belongs below with those not in attendance below. This is Troy. I was unable to drag it down.

I think this is how we all felt by the end of the week (our grandson, Luke) . We all fit a lot of fun, sharing and laughing into a week.

We left here on July 24th in the RV with 8 family members. It was a long trip and towards the end the traffic was nasty. We're not used to summer traveling any more. It took us 11 hours to get to the resort. As you can see from the pictures above it was a really hard trip for the kids!!


Upper left hand corner we have Amber and Lauren. Amber is our granddaughter, Carissa's friend and Lauren is Darryl 's daughter. Then I have two pictures of Erica, our daughter in law, who is just so photogenic. Below is our eldest daughter Suzanne and our youngest daughter Karen. Next a picture of Karen and Brandon. The following are pictures of Suzanne and Karen deep in conversation.
My family being totally silly which they are really good at. Yes, that is me drying Dave's pants
he sat down in a chair on the balcony that was still a little wet from the rain the night before.In the upper left hand corner David is holding Izzy's hermit crab who made the trip with them.


The above is pictures of our beach time. The kids did fireworks on the beach at night.


We had cookouts, ate out once and had 9 racks of ribs one night. Plenty of food. Breakfast and dinner were at Nana and Papa's place. We celebrated Luke's and Hollyn's July birthdays. I wish I had recorded all the conversations around the dinner table.

Also worth mentioning is that Myrtle Beach is Krispee Kreme headquarters. When you go past the store they let you know with a sign in the window when they are just coming out of the oven. Let me tell you right now --- there is nothing like a glazed donut right out of the oven.

From left to right above: Karen with son Mike, Michelle with boyfriend, Darryl, Karen and Husband Mac.

Below: Karen outside restaurant we ate at, our son, David, his wife, Erica, and their daughter, Isabella, then Brandon, our youngest son.

A night of shopping and Bangui jumping for the grand kids and dinner out. The pretty plaque in the middle was given to me by Mac and Karen.

To help you keep everyone straight I'm going to list the children and families for you.

Our eldest daughter, Suzanne, and her daughter, Hollyn.
Her husband and 2 sons are missing from this picture. Will explain later.

Next in line is Michelle and her daughter, Carissa, and her son Steve, below.

Steve will be next year's high school graduate.

This is Michelle's boyfriend, Darryl, and his daughter, Lauren. He has a son, Justin, who was unable to attend due to a baseball tournament.

Next we have our son, David, his wife, Erica, and their two children, Isabella and Garrett.

Here we have our daughter, Karen, and her husband, Mac, and their two boys, Mike and Luke.

This is my 5 foot 6 inch baby, Brandon. Unfortunately he had the flu the whole time he was with us and felt terrible.

Here we have the nine grandchildren from eldest to youngest.
Keenan, Steve, Troy, Carissa, Isabella, Hollyn, Mike, Garrett, and Luke.

These are our 5 children
Suzanne, Michelle, David

Karen and Brandon

Here are the 5 of them.

Lee and I have seen a lot of beautiful things but I must say seeing all 5 children together having fun, sharing memories, laughing, loving and supporting one another tops the lists.

Not present at the reunion were Suzanne's husband David and her sons, Keenan above and Troy at the top of the blog.

Suzanne's family: husband, David, daughter Hollyn, and sons, Keenan and Troy

Keenan was at a required soccer camp for school. He will be attending Long Island University in New York and playing Division 1 soccer this fall.

Troy, who is at the beginning of the blog will be in 11th grade this year and he was asked to play in Houston, TX with U-17 Youth Division of Philadelphia Union MLS team. Quite an honor. These boys live and breath soccer.

We missed having them with us.

All the grandchildren had a great time together and we all decided at the end of the week that we should do it again in 2-3 years.

There is nothing more important than family except out relationship with our Heavenly father.

We're glad our children understand the importance of staying in touch and supporting one another.

Featured above are Jim and Tracy Tull who graciously offered to take care of Nicky while we went to the family reunion. We can't thank them enough --we are very picky about who watches child # 6 because he is a tad spoiled.

I hope this blog has given all of you an opportunity to meet our family. They are after all, the most important part of who we are.

Last part of July 2010

We had Ed and Janie Jenkins over for dinner. Ed is the pastor at the Peace River campground in the winter in Florida. Jim and Tracy Tull were also with us at this time spending a week kicking around with the Rileys.

This is Janie and Ed's dog "Miss Molly" This is what she looked like when she arrived.

This is what she looked like after 4 hours of playing with Nicky.

The two of them spent the day racing around the yard and playing hide and seek. They kept us laughing all day.

This is the RV pad we had Jim and Tracy parked in. It makes a pretty nice camping spot don't you think????

Jim and Lee spent most of the week working on rebuilding an old wood shed. Looked pretty good when they were finished didn't it?

We took Jim and Tracy to downtown Harrisburg because I told them I wanted to show them the most beautiful capital building in the USA.

Back side of the Capital complex

Isn't that incredible?

The capital was designed in the American Renaissance style by Philadelphia architect Joseph Huston (1866-1940), who envisioned the building as a "Palace of Art". Built and furnished at a cost of $13 million, the Capital features paintings, stained glass and furnishing by some of the best artisans of the day.

This capital is a National Historic Landmark.

The Senate chambers

The Supreme Court

The House Chambers

That is Joseph Huston's head (the architect) covering the keyhole.

The dome
Twenty years have been spent restoring the inside of the capital and renovations are now finished.
The outside renovations are still in progress and it will be a total of 25 years into that project.

The front of the Capital building.

Harrisburg sits on the east side of the Susquehanna River. This picture is taken from the west side of the river.

Tracy and Jim fixed us a Mexican dinner one night. Brandon, the youngest of our 5 children, happen to be there for dinner that night and Tracy and Jim sent him home with food for later also. Brandon works for Comcast and is presently helping them open up an office in Charleston, SC. What a great opportunity for him. He's already spent a month there and will probably spend another month there. He was leaving the next day to go back.

This is our eldest daughter, Suzanne, who lives in St. Petersburg, PA. This is in the Lancaster area. Every so often I have Suzanne come up for what I call a girls week-end. This time I had a brunch and invited 2 of her friends she has not seen in a long time and got them together. Those girls spend hours catching up and it sure was good for all of them. Later we spent an evening around the campfire talking.

My two boys were thinking--company is gone and we can just kick back and relax now. WRONG I told them it was now time to get that hall floor laid.

Lee worked hard all week. After pulling up the carpet, Lee found an area of the floor that he felt was compromised and needed redone. There had at one time been a water leak onto this section of the floor.

He also put new flooring under the furnace. He spent the majority of the week getting the floor ready. It only took him one day to lay the floor. I know he is glad that job is done.

Didn't it turn out well?

Our yard has been constantly filled with butterflies this year.

Our neighbor just started a bee hive this year and featured above is a jar of the first honey taken from the hive. The bees are really doing well and we are thrilled to have a source of raw honey.

Thought you would all get a kick out of this. This is Lee and I about a year after we were married. I always enjoy the old pictures Jane Rankin puts on her blog so thought I'd include a few also.

The Riley family in 1973.

The Riley family in 1976. This was Centennial year and I had made these outfits for us and told them we were going to have a centennial picture taken. They went kicking and screaming but I got it.


HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED LAUGHING AT THESE PICTURES.

Next off to Myrtle Beach for a Riley family reunion.

As you get older don't slow down, Speedup. There's less time left!!