Family Connections

Why is it that things seem to come in bunches?  There are days in my life when absolutely nothing is happening.  Then there are times when too many things fill my days.  This past week was one of those.  Our granddaughter, Rayne, became officially engaged in California, as her British man was visiting and presented her with a beautiful engagement ring.  This weekend our Gendreaus were due here once again, on their way home from a southern Utah and beyond vacation.  We were determined to visit Rayne and meet her future husband, Dominic.  So we flew to California on Wednesday and had fun meeting and visiting with Dom and bonding with some of the family.

Here are Dom and Rayne.  We found Dom to be bright, pure-hearted, motivated and extremely keen on Rayne.  He lives in England, but plans to immigrate here.  They seem very compatible.  I think they will be happy together.  

The engagement ring.  Of course you can see every detail from this photo....

While we had a good visit with Rayne, Dom, Audrey and Cliff, Reed, Dorothy and two of their sons, we missed seeing Ben and Jessica and I didn't get to visit my Uncle Mike's grave. I was sad about that.  

We had to hurry home as the Gendreaus were expected on Saturday. So we flew home on Friday.  We managed to miss the birthday party for Audrey (she turned 50 on July 27th!), held before we came and Rayne's engagement party on Saturday, after we left. 

Chris and Jessica arrived with their gang on Saturday, as expected, on their way home from a traveling vacation.  They came to us full of stories about their adventures and a visual tour of the places they visited, presented by Miles.  He is keen on photography and took some extremely good pictures with his phone...and everyone else's too.  Peyton turns 13 on July 3rd, so we celebrated her birthday with a dinner as close to her requests as I could muster, and a birthday cake. 

Our visit was all too short as they had to leave on Sunday morning.  It has been a week of family connections, which is always a good thing, even if there were some things we had to miss.  That, I suppose, is the price we pay for living away from family.  Here's our departing Gendreaus, with Vincent included.  He went with them on all their adventures.  He and Miles are great friends as well as cousins.  Love those boys.  And the rest of them too.

On their way home, here is Vincent, Gemma, Miles, Peyton, Jessica and Chris.