My Grandfather

This morning my Grandpa had a stroke. He is 89 years old and has always had really good health. I went and saw him today at the Mayo Clinic. He is in ICU right now and is paralyzed on his left side. He is alert and does try to talk to us. It is hard to understand him, but he is doing fairly well for what he has been through. If you could remember him in your prayers, I would greatly appreciate it. He is one of the most sweet and loving men that I know. The nurse was putting a feeding tube down his throat and I was just outside his room waiting. I could hear the nurse telling him I am so sorry, please don't hate me. The nurse came out and told me what a sweet man he was and that he told her that he could never hate her. I love this man!!! He is a strength and light in our life and has always been a great example to me and my family. He truly lives a christ like life.

Clement Family Reunion

How many men does it take to put up a tent??????

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go just outside of Flagstaff for our annual family reunion on my Mom's side of the family. My mom is one of 11 children. There are 64 granchildren (I thought there were 62, but I guess I lost count) and 110 great grandchildren, with more on the way. Talk about a fertile family :). We have had an annual reunion since I was little. We used to do it with my Grandpa's entire family, but the family became too big to fill just one campground, so we only do my mom's immediate family now. We always enjoy ourselves, but this year it rained alot, so we didn't get to visit as much as we would have liked, but we still enjoyed seeing all of our family that we don't get to see as often as we would like. My cousin Barbara has been my best friend since we were little. We have always been like sisters and said we needed to marry guys that got along. To make a long story short, she married David's best friend! We always enjoy our time with them. She is the one that taught me to drive a stick shift when we were teenagers. We still laugh about the night it took me 30 minutes to get out of her drive way and how I left her transmission in the middle of the road. It didn't help that my cousin Steve was in the backseat laughing his head off. Well at this years reunion they brought their 4 wheel joyner up and she took me for a ride. On the way back she had me drive, it is a stick shift and I am a little rusty, but anyways I had a little trouble at first and we laughed so hard all the way back. It brought back alot of great memories.
Cherish has been taking a summer computer class that our school offered this year, so she got to borrow the video camera to record all of the excitement.

My girls doing what they do best, laying around.

They played so hard that poor Savannah fell asleep in the RV.

Ariana was bored at first, but re-connected with her cousin Nicole and they were constantly by each others side.

Our poor little doggy got so tired, I think she enjoyed the outdoors, but definitely missed her life of luxury!

This is my brother's dog Daisy. They have had her now for over six years, she is the best kids dog. She loves the outdoors. The girls love to walk her, or should I say Daisy loves to walk them!

My nephew Hayden has got to be one of the happiest babies I have ever met. He is the mini me version of my brother Brian. I always tell my sister-in-law that Hayden brings back so many memories of my little brother Brian because I was almost twelve when he was born and I carried him everywhere and my Mom called me his second mother. There is a running joke in the family because when Brian was four I was sixteen with a job and he would always convince me to take him to the store, or to McDonalds and he would always say, "Charlene I never had one of those before,' and of course I would buy it for him. I told my sister-in-law that in following tradition I have to buy Hayden his first happy meal.

We always end our adventure at the Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff.

Backyard Fun

A BIG thankyou to Jamie Bangerter for the great backyard fun idea. My girls had a blast today with our little slip and slide. Please excuse my ugly backyard that is a work in progress :(

Meet Elder Diaz and his Companion

We have two nephews who are currently serving missions in Arizona. They are twins, Eduardo is serving in the Phoenix, Arizona Mission and Andres is serving in the Mesa, Arizona Mission. Eduardo got permission from his mission president to come over for dinner to our house with his companion. What a wonderful experience. We had some of our nieces and nephews over as well as David's brother Jorge, who are all less active. Elder Diaz and his companion gave a wonderful message and Elder Diaz challenged them to come to church. The next day they all came to our Ward. Thanks Elder Diaz for being such an awesome missionary!

Elder Diaz got to meet the newest edition. My niece Yesenia just had her baby last week.

Mommy and Vincent

Vincent with his "big"Uncle Zach!

Cupcakes Anyone???????

Cherish loves to cook. My sister-in-law let Cherish borrow some cake decorating supplies. She is always thinking about her future and wants to have her own business. We had a surprise party for our nephew Zach, who is a senior this year at Tolleson. He plays on the football team and had lettered in Varsity already. The family all pitched in and purchased a letterman jacket for him. (This is something he secretly wanted and was soooo surprised when we gave it to him :) Cherish customed designed these cupcakes for Zach. I think she did a great job. She made over 40 cupcakes. Way to go Cherish! It was so funny because Zach didn't know we were getting him a jacket and when he first got to our house he saw the cupcakes. We thought this might give him a clue, but he later said he just thought that we were excited about Chelsea going to Tolleson and that this family had Tolleson spirit!!!!

Our beautiful model!

A great moment, he was totally surprised and said it was his best birthday ever!

Go Wolverines!!!!!!!

Our Ballerina

Ariana has been wanting to take ballet now for a couple of years. We just joined the YMCA this summer and they were offering ballet classes. The classes are really reasonable, so we signed her up. Today was her first class and she was excited to say the least.
This is before the class started. The parents have to wait outside the room and look through a glass window, so I apologize for the next few shots that were taken through a glass window ;)

She really enjoyed the class and is going to start practicing her graceful moves.

Happy Fourth of July!

We went to my grandparents place in Pine, AZ for Friday and Saturday. My grandmother was raised in Pine and this is the property that she lived on. It is right off the main highway. The house she grew up in is no longer there, but they put a 3 bedroom manufactured home on their four acres and they use it as a summer home. There is also a little cabin that was built for my Great-Grandmother, who used to live there. My Grandpa is 89 and my Grandma is 84, they continue to grow a big garden on their property. I think that is what keeps them so healthy and young. They stay in Pine from May to October (they have a home in Phoenix), but do come down to the "valley" often for baby blessings, baptisms, etc... I am one of the older grandchildren, number 7 to be exact, but there are 62 grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue to climb. I forgot to ask my grandma how many there are now, but I believe it is in the 100's. My grandma was so cute this weekend because she was telling me different stories, but was having trouble remembering all of the great-grandchildren's names, she said "I can't remember them all", I told her she was doing great because I mix up my own childrens names :) We really enjoyed ourselves and my grandparents enjoyed the kids so much. They didn't go with us to the fireworks in Payson because my grandma has trouble getting around because of a bad hip, but they waited up for us and enjoyed the stories about our adventures.
This old workshed is original to the property and use to be right behind the old house. They use it now for food storage. They don't build structures to last now like they used to!

My grandparents have some old apple trees on the property, so I decided to take some photo's of the girls. Ariana's picture was taken at the park because she was too afraid to sit on the limb of the apple tree.

The honey man has a stand right next to my grandparents property. This honey is the best. I highly recommend the whipped honey. It comes in different flavors and is delicious on toast or pancakes.

We waited about 3 hours for the fireworks. It is packed in this park in Payson, so you have to come early in order to get a parking space.

It rained off and on while we waited, so my brother Sean pulled out his rain cover for his tent and we put it over us to keep dry. I'm sure people thought we were crazy, but we got a good laugh out of it!

It was beautiful at the park and we enjoyed watching the fireworks right over the lake.