Matthew wants to be just like his Daddy. The other day he sat on a stool next to the stove and watched Jamie cook dinner. I know he will be just as good as his Daddy is at cooking one day.
Yum Daddy, that's good!
Jamie got a call on a Monday saying that his new custom made catering trailer was completed. On Wednesday we left spontaneously to pick it up in Indiana. We drove through 7 states and back in 7 days going about 55mph. It was exhausting, especially with a toddler. The good part about it was that we took a 3 hr detour and stayed at Jamie's mom's house a couple days and got to go to his step brother Chris' wedding to YoungChi. Sadly I don't have any pictures of the wedding because my battery was dead. Matthew had a great time at Grandma and Grandpa Gums house. Their house is a wonderland for little boys.
4 wheelers and waterworks
More 4 wheeler tricks
Sand boxes and tractors
Ducks and ducklings
Ponds with ducks, turtles, and jumping frogs
Big trucks to climb on
The pond has so many frogs and they blend in so well. This picture alone has at least 6 frogs in it.
We took a trip to a rumage sale and fair in a nearby town with Jamie's sister Jessica, Dan, and her 3 girls. It was a lot of fun. I am so glad Matthew has been able to hang out with every one of his cousins in the last month. That is not something that happens very often. I hope we can do it again soon.
Payton is so funny. She was trying to put on a face for the cameras here.
Jamie said that when he was a little boy his parents had a cub cadet tractor just like this one he would ride around on as a kid. Jamie wanted to buy it and throw it on the trailer but he had self control. Who knows, this may be the actual trailer.
This is Jamie's new custom built catering trailer. It has a porch on the front for his cooker/smoker. It is 26 feet long and brand new. Jamie plans on putting stainless steel on the walls and finishing it himself with the electric and plumbing. I will be excited to get all the cooking items out of my garage and into the trailer. Finally we are getting going on this catering business. Hopefully soon we will have it up and running and be catering events every week.
Some day Matthew will be selling items from this window.
Order up!
Meagan invited us to the Alpine rodeo but it turned out different than we thought so we took off. We decided last minute to follow them up to their campsite and spend the evening with them. We went way out in the boonies. The kids had a lot of fun roasting hotdogs and hiking.
Matthew was getting into everything. He loves the outdoors.
Superman Seth took the time to roll some big logs up a big hill so we all had a place to sit around the fire. He is such a sweetheart.
Wold family around the fire.
Like I said before, Jamie loves fire and he is really good at making them.
This was Matthew's first attempt at baseball. He had a lot of fun playing with Jake.
My sister in law Jackie puts me to shame. She puts on the most amazing partys at her house with party favors, themes and awesome decorations. It makes me not want to even try. The party was great. It was nice to have Matthew meet his cousin Dominic and to mingle with Joanne and her family.
Matthew found the kid's picnic table and enjoyed just taking his own time out there and watching all that was going on around him. I thought it was really cute.
He and Dominic had fun together.
All the Lucchesi family cousins. Left to right top to bottom are Ben, Sam, Cassie, Matthew, Jacob, Dominic, Jacob, Eden, Abigail.
Jasper and Joanne, Dad and Denise, Me and Jamie, Jackie and Dave.
Jackie made this amazing watermelon basket. I thought it was a beautiful centerpiece.
Jamie set up his buffet like he will for his catering so we could get some pictures. He cooked beef and pork.
Jamie's set up.
We had a BBQ in our backyard for Grandma and Grandpa Lucchesi, Jackie and Dave Davenport and their kids and Joanne and Jasper Vaccaro and their family. Joanne's family couldn't make it because they were sick but we make the best of it. We decided to roast marshmallows in the back yard and let Matthew spend more time with his cousins. It was nice to have everyone over for the evening.
Jake really liked roasting the marshmallows.
We found Jake and Matthew sharing a chair and watching his movie. They were really cute together even with the difference in age.
Grandma and Grandpa Lucchesi came out to visit us in July while Jamie's sister Joanne was in town. They stayed at our house and we had a great time. They brought Matthew's cousin Jacob with them and the two of them had a blast together. We spent an afternoon up at Castcade Springs exploring and hiking. It was a nice afternoon.
My grandmother (Grammy) on my mom's side lives in Lake Tahoe California. She has been living alone for a while there since my grandfather passed away and it is a lot of work for her. The winters there are very difficult and she needs to move. She has a lifetime of accumulated stuff that needs to find new homes and so myself along with my mom and sisters took a plane out there to help out. She had a yard sale. I was surprised at how much actually sold. She made I think about $500. She has a lot more to go through and another sale I believe is on the horizon. It was wonderful to be able to go out there and visit her. Jamie watched Matthew so that we could be uninhibited in our work. It was great to see Grammy again. Hopefully we can help her move so that she can have a little more support possibly closer to us.
This is what the yard looked like at the beginning of the sale.
She had a lot of clothing to sell.
This is the view of the yard from the deck. A lot of it had been sold already.
I decided to bring along my jewelry and see if it would sell also. I actually had quite a few of my items sell. Sadly I even had some stolen.
Mom Stayed for a full 2 weeks and helped Grammy a lot. I don't think we could have done the sale without Mom's help.
Every year Grammy spends countless hours and a lot of energy raking pine needles from her yard. Meagan was determined to rake them for her. Amy and Shelby helped out too. It was amazing how many there were. I think they filled up 20 bags.
Here we are stuffing the rolls and wrapping them in foil for the oven.
Mom said she would be very upset if this picture ended up on a blog. I guess I am in trouble. Mom, you are pretty even just after a shower with ice cream in your mouth.
Grammy went all out buying us cartons of ice cream so that we could all have banana splits.
Lounging around the house after a long day at the yard sale.
We all pitched in to clean up after dinner and had a great time joking around.
Grammy had been complaining of a lot of back and hip pain during the yard sale. One night I spent about an hour giving her a massage.
I started out massaging her in her chair and we quickly moved to the floor so that I could give her a full massage.
She was so much better afterwards. I am glad I was able to make a difference for her.
