Galen & Julia's Wedding

This past weekend my entire family traveled to Snowflake, AZ for my older brother's wedding. Galen married Julia Mitchell on Saturday, May 29th at the Snowflake Social Hall. My parents and both sisters, Christine & Denise and their families, along with my family all stayed at my parents cabin in Heber/Overgaard, AZ. My brother Doyle and his wife, Jody stayed at a hotel in Taylor.

These are pictures we took of the families while we were waiting to be called for the official wedding pictures.

The Macdonald Family My sister Denise Perkins and her family.

My brother Doyle Hastings & his family.My sister Christine Merrill and her family.

(As you can tell they are the photogenic ones of the group!)

The entire Hastings clan. Siblings photo

My Parents, Stan & Janell Hastings with Julia & Galen

Trying to keep all the cousins occupied by looking in the pretend well.

Jared & Tyler. They both seem to have the goofy smile down.

Jacob, Aaron, Jared & Tyler. Waiting for the wedding photos to be done so we could go into the social hall for the wedding. Trying to keep them clean and from going crazy was tough. We took lots of pictures.

Waiting for the wedding ceremony to start. Bishop Evans conducted the ceremony. The best man was Mark Caldwell, my brother's very good friend.

Julia and her son Sheldon

Exchanging rings

The cookies tree. My sisters and sister in law and I all made the cookies for the reception that followed the ceremony.

Banana Cream Pie!!! The best ever!

Root Beer floats

Jacob took my camera and occupied himself and all the cousins by taking pictures. Here are a few of my favorites. There were many to choose from.

Snowflake Graduation

This past weekend we went up to Snowflake for the High School Graduation ceremonies. 2 of my nephews, Austin & Trevor Hastings were graduating. Austin will stay in school for at least another year, but their parents decided he should walk through graduation with his brother, Trevor.

Trevor and Austin are picture here walking together. Austin has his cane. It was very windy and everyone had to hold on to their hats.
One of the speakers had all the graduates turn and look at the crowd. It looks like Trevor is looking right at me. Austin stood, but didn't look of course.Here they are headed up to the stage to get their diplomas.
Austin walked across all by himself. The pictures I took were blurry, plus I kept stopping to watch as Austin stopped by every person to pose for a picture.

Here is the cap throwing. Pretty cool.

This is my brother, Galen with his 2 oldest boys. Happy Graduates...Proud Dad!

My Parents, Stan & Janell Hastings with the graduates.

It was a fun trip up to the mountains. I need to be better about taking pictures. My sister, Christine and her family were there with us also but I have no pictures to prove it. Oh well.

It's a Party!

Ok, it's late and I really should be in bed, but I wanted to post the pictures from Aaron's birthday before tomorrow comes and I get too busy doing other things. So these pictures are all out of order. We had all the Hastings' cousins and one friend from the ward over for Aaron's birthday party. We ate pizza, broke open a tank pinata and ate cake and ice cream. The kids all seemed to have a great time. The Dad's all watched the Suns' game and the Mom's sat around a visited. Not too bad of a night. Aaron had a great time and that's all that matters.

This was after the pinata was open and they were picking candy out of the little bits of grass we have in the back yard.This is before the pinata was broken.
Cake time! Cousin Dusty loves to blow out the candles, so Aaron had to be quick. Presents! Aaron lined them up on the toys boxes behind him as he opened them so that everyone could see them.

The triple chocolate cake. This chocolate cake had chocolate chips in it with chocolate frosting and M&M's for decoration. It looked fun and the best part was it tasted great.

Happy 5th Birthday Aaron!

We love you.

Happy Birthday Aaron!

Happy 5th Birthday to my most mischievous boy! Aaron was born today, May 19, 2005 at 7:30am. He has developed into a fun spirited child. He loves to tease anyone and everyone. He is a great helper and will stay until the job is finished. Aaron is very smart, can write his name and is looking forward to going to kindergarten this next school year.

Happy Birthday my blue-eyed boy!
Aaron 3 mos old
The Macdonald boys on the day Aaron was born.Aaron walked into my bedroom at 6:20am today, completely dressed and wearing his birthday hat that I gave him yesterday at preschool. He wanted to make sure Dad knew it was his birthday. He even asked for his birthday spankings! What a kid!

A loose tooth = a lost tooth

15 mins after getting home from the piano recital, Jacob and Tyler were wrestling in their room when we thought the world must be coming to an end. Some how, some way Tyler got his loose tooth knocked out of his mouth. And with all the screaming and crying going on, you would have thought he lost his eye. Tyler's teeth have a way of just holding on forever. We have been waiting for this tooth to come out...forever. Well, it's finally out.

WARNING: The following pictures have some blood. If you can't handle it, don't look. It's just a lost tooth, but I know there are a few of you out there that can't handle it...so don't look.

The before picture... And the After...
Nice hole! It's about time!

Once we got him all cleaned up and calmed down, we found that the adult tooth is coming in. You can't see it in this picture, but the new tooth is right behind where the old baby tooth was holding on. Yeah Tyler!

Paino Recital

Jacob and Tyler had their piano recital today. Grandma and Grandpa Hastings came to watch their performances. They both did a great job on their songs. Thank you to Kristin Farnsworth for teaching them. This was Jacob's 3rd year with Kristin and Tyler's 1st year. We are sad that she will not be teaching next year but are grateful for her patience in working with our boys.

This is before the recital. Tyler was excited to perform.

Jacob...not so much. But he did well. Kristin Farnsworth with Tyler and Jacob.

Here are their performances.

Recorder Concert

This school year Jacob was invited to be a part of the Recorder Team. He has been going every Friday to early morning practices. This past Thurs, May 13, 2010 was their concert along with the school choirs. There are 6 members of the recorder team. Jacob really enjoys it. The boys standing next to Jacob is in our ward. They performed 2 songs and I'd have to say they were very good. Jacob seems to enjoy going to Recorder Team, so we hope he keeps it up.

Trying to keep the other boys busy before the concert always involves a little picture taking.
If only Aaron would stop with the bunny ears and smile!

Cute Boys!

$9000!

That's right....$9000 worth of damage on Joe's truck. That's the estimate that came in. The good news is the Police found the car from the accident, located the owner and we are now in the process of collecting their information so we can go after his insurance. The bad news for that owner, apparently he left the car in Queen Creek in front of his brother's house and was out of town so he doesn't know who was driving the car during the accident. Just more mess to add to the already messed up accident.

Joe's truck is supposed to be fixed and returned to us by May 19th. Here's hoping because we need it to go to Snowflake that weekend. Hopefully it will all work out.

With Distinction

Joe recently finished all his classes through the NAU online school. Thus completing and Graduating from Northern Arizona University with a Masters' in Education. This is his 3rd and final Masters'. We didn't attend the graduation ceremony because Joe didn't see the point. But one of Joe's teachers was at NAU for a relative and brought back an extra program that listed his name. He is in the middle column "With Distinction"! That means he got straight A's. I wouldn't expect anything less than straight A's from Joe. We are so proud...and hoping he now takes a very long break from school.
It is very small. But almost in the middle, Alexander Joseph Macdonald. Congrats Joe!