Nieces and Nephews

This last weekend we had fun watching our great niece Lydia and great nephew Teddy dancing at the An Ri Ra Irish music festival. It is amazing how much progress they have both made in their dancing skills this last year.

We had the added surprise of our nephew Eamon and his wife Pam and great niece Rishan from Portland also showing up at the festival. Elaine, Jim and I had a nice dinner with them on Friday evening.

Lydia is the cute red head on the far right. She fits the Irish bill to a T.

Her grandpa Dave, great grandma Rose and Auntie Jen would have been so proud to have watched her dance.

Teddy is a little easier to pick out. He is the only boy in this photo. There were several other boys but they are not in the photo. In about 15 years, he will hope to have this many cute girls around him.

Rishan is such a cute little girl with all of that curly hair. She just turned 2.

I also got to see Jennifer’s cousins from the Cleary Clan. Danna and Maron and their families were at the festival and then as I was walking back to my truck. I ran into Ed and Sue as they were coming up to the festival. So got to see the whole clan.

Saturday evening we had a nice visit from my Mom’s cousin Molly Niven from Golden, Co. She spent the night at the ranch on her way to the Bob Marshall wilderness for a 7 day backpacking trip. She is such a dynamo and real inspiration on how a person should age (which she does not). She brought a wonderful BBQ dinner (brisket and pork and fixings) and a whole bunch of tasty Colorado peaches. We had a wonderful visit over the tasty food and she gave us a good education on Bob Marshall. He was quite a guy that was born way before his time. If you don’t know anything about him, Google him and you will be amazed.

Martha and Dwight got into town yesterday evening and we had a nice Lasagna dinner at Elaine and Jim’s last evening. It was a very nice evening reminiscing about the Benner kids growing up in Butte and stories about Jennifer and Ryan battling as the two youngest of the families.

Jennifer and Ryan would fight over control of the TV and who got to sit in the front seat of the car. Jennifer would want to watch MASH and Ryan wanted to watch Pooh’s Corner. Ryan would tell Elaine that Jennifer acted like she was the boss of the TV. In the car, Ryan would run out and jump in the front seat and lock the door. Well Aunt Jennifer was having no part of that. She would snatch him out of there and throw him in the back seat.

However, Elaine pointed out that when Jennifer had her Senior high school photos taken, who did she take with her, it was Ryan.

Ryan also came up to Mesquite and took me to dinner the night that Jennifer passed, which was extremely nice of him, especially since it was Caron’s Birthday that day.

The Galbavy’s made a quick trip to Spokane this past weekend to attend a wedding reception for our Cousin Matthew Cortner. It sounds like they had a grand time.

Summer is quickly ending, before long the kids will all be back in school. The days are quickly changing, the days are getting shorter and the weather was cooling off. Friday and Saturday felt more like October than August. However it is supposed to warm back up this week.

Anyway to make a long story short Jennifer and I were both blessed with good nieces and nephews on both sides of our families and it is nice seeing the “greats” and interesting to see them growing like weeds.