Meet Your Relatives!

On the 16th day of June in the year of 1932 a marriage took place in the town of Florence, in the state of Montana.  This marriage joined together R. Dewey Erath and Christina Wagner.  From this marriage, three boys were born, starting this line of descendents.

If you received notice of this posting, that is because you are one of these descendents, or married to one.

Since some would like to know who is who before we all get together, I am including pictures that I have received.

The oldest son was Philip, (PD) who had a daughter and a son.

This is daughter Marty and her husband, Carey Zoeteman.
If you want to hike the Grand Canyon, Carey will be your guide.

                 Son Ralph and his wife Tara are not going to make it but Marty and Carey are working on getting Ralph and Tara's son, Austin, to come.  Here he is with Marty.     

The second son was named George.  His wife is Marlies.  (I think everyone knows this.)  I think that this is a great picture of them.

George and Marlies have two kids, a boy and a girl, Robert and Tasha.

       Here is Robert Erath and his dear wife, Shannon.

                         

They have two girls, Amanda and Savanna.                                         

Amanda















                                                                Savanna    

 

 Daughter Tasha and Ronnie Osgood with their oldest son Gus. The following picture is of both their boys, Gus and Abrahm.

The baby of the family of Dewey and Christina is Robert, or Bob, or Bobby as he was called growing up.

Do I need to put in a picture of us, Bob and Elaine?   Bob says yes, so here we were last year at Grandson, Trinceton's, graduation.

 

 Following are our four kids, Brenda, Leah, Warren, and Byron, and their families. 

          The Sparrow clan:

Burkley and Rone in back,  Brenda and Corinne with Phoebe in front.

        

         Second child of Bob and Elaine is Leah, married to Bryan Brown.

                            Trinceton, Tasker, Leah, Kiana, Tayre, and Bryan.

 

 Third child is Warren Erath.  He is married to Collyn Justus.  They do a lot of swing dancing and dress for the era when dancing, hence the outfits.

    The fourth child in this family is Byron Erath, married to Leigh.  

                              Their son is Baden. 

We are looking forward to seeing each of you in July.

Ellis and Liberty Islands Field Trip

I got to go on a field trip with P while I was up in NY.  We went to Ellis and Liberty Island.  P had been there the year before with her class but it was a first for me.

The day started out cloudy and over cast.  This is before we boarded the ferry with the city in the background.

 Ellis Island main building that all went through.

 After looking around in the building and seeing as much as the kids, P and a class mate, wanted to see we went outside.  On one side there is a large circle made up of large slabs of stone.  On both sides, listed in alphabetical order, are the names of those who entered this country through Ellis Island.  We decided to try and find our last names.  This is one that I found.

I am not familiar with this person, and will need to research it, but I do know that my Dad had a cousin by the same first name.

The skies cleared but it was hazy as we headed over to Liberty Island.

One of the things that all the kids wanted to do was to go up to the base of the statue.  So that was first on the agenda.  There was an elevator but it had a long line so up the stairs we went.  P was good and went slower with me and encouraged me.  We made it up the well over 100 steps to the base.  This is what liberty looks like from here.

The width of this area is only about two people wide.

This is looking back at Ellis Island, which is about three times as large as when it was first a fort. Over the years, it was enlarged with fill.

The ledge up at the base of the statue is where we came out after climbing the stairs.  We only went down part of the stairs, then we came out onto the area just above the star, down a few more stairs on the outside and onto the star, where this picture was taken.

We went into the museum where there is information on the statue.  This is a life size replica of the face.

At the last we decided to get a picture from down on the ground.  It was a fun trip and we didn't get rained on as they had predicted.

I had to include this last picture.  It was loaded with people so I am sure it is for taking people out.  There was a nice breeze all day which picked up before we went back across to go home.

Dining Room Carpet

We are finally to the point of putting down some rugs.  We have been looking at this one for some time, at Home Depot, and finally decided that for the money we weren't finding anything we liked better, so we bought it. 

So here is what it looks like.

We even tried it out with the missionary Elders the first night it was down.

Christmas Time

Christmas in our new home was enjoyable, mainly because we had family with us.  We were so glad that B, R, and family came to share it with us.  Warren and Collyn were also with us most of the time.  They didn't stay with us as they live just across the river.

We had fun opening gifts and also had a little time for tickles,

  for trying on new socks,

  and to model new clothing.

The real question here is, how many people does it take to put a 4" X 4" puzzle together?

 Warren had the kids pick out a picture.  Then he met them at his school to show them how the laser cutter worked.  He bunt the picture on wood, cut it into puzzle pieces, and then backed it with more wood.  They turned out very well.  He made one for each of the kids for Christmas.

Unfortunately, we had cloudy weather most days, but it did clear the Friday after Christmas.  So we went down to the river and walked the 4 Railroads bridge.  We told P that she could tell her friends that she walked all the way from Indiana to Kentucky and then back again.

 Grandpa was put to work on the Kentucky side.

                                                         
      R relaxed.

 
    And some just hung out enjoying the sunshine.

One evening we went to the Mega Caverns and drove through the Christmas light display.  It was impressive.

We had a great time with all and are so glad that they were able to be here.  Our house was way too quiet when everyone went home.

Hope that you had a great Christmas also.  We are looking forward to everyone being here in July.

Some Progress

 Byron thinks it had been a while since he posted.  It has been many months since I did.  I keep thinking I will wait until we get a little more done.  However, I guess I should show some of our accomplishments.

Bob has been wanting to build the lift for the truck canopy.  He talked about doing it before we went to get our things from storage, but decided to wait.  He finished it about a week ago and now the truck is in the garage.

The first shows where he pulls on the rope to lift it.  The second is as it goes across the ceiling to the lift area, and then the actual lift.

 This is what it looks like with the vehicles in the garage.

 

 This is the work saver for next summer; or at least to make it easier.

This is just a size comparison of how little the car is compared to the truck.  It is amazing how roomy it is inside.

 Just two pics of inside the front door and looking into the dinning room.

 More pictures to come as things progress.

Spring Travels West Part 4

As I started to work on a new post, I realized that I never posted this one after writing it, so here goes with it.  Warning, it is long.

After going through the cliff dwellings, we went on north to stay at Moab, Utah so that we could go to Arches National Park.

What an area.  B made the comment that even if there weren't any arches here, it would be worth seeing because of all the formations.

Before we got to Moab, we saw this along the road.  It is called Church Rock.

As we got closer, we also saw this, Wilson Arch.

 

We got parked and headed for the park.  I should have taken some pictures of the way up into the park, but didn't.  It was up a cliff.  These are some of the ones we first saw after reaching the top.

This one makes one wonder if it moved in an earth quake, and if so, I don't want to be near if there is another shake.

Just looking through and across to more of the park.

Looking out at more rocks with arches and the view beyond, Cove of Caves.  It was in the mid seventies where we were.

Double Arches

Two old people at Balance Rock.

I loved some of the old trees in this area.  There were lots of twists and wrinkles to it.  You could tell that it's life had not been easy; sort of like our wrinkles.

The above does point to an arch.

We drove on to two areas where you could see Delicate Arch in the distance.  I was able to zoom in on it.  It is all that is left of a rock wall.

In this area, we observed a layer of rough rocks.  Looking closer at them, one noticed that they were not sandstone like everything else.  It reminded us of agates or chert.  There were different colors in the rock.  Wish I knew my rocks better.  It was a park so I didn't take any samples. 

Looking out across the area, we could see soil that was green colored.  Makes one wonder if there is copper in the soil.

You can see some spring flowers in the above picture.  There were others in this area too.  I thought that maybe this one is related to the Primrose.

I'm not sure what the other purple one is but the red is definitely a cactus.

 We drove on into the park, enjoying the view.

 

Then we came to a sign that explained this area and the valley that we were looking over.

This explains that the area had been a salt bed.  The water entered, eroding and washing away some of the salt, the surface dropped and sank, forming the valley in the following picture.  These cracks in the sandstone, formed by the rain, freezing, and wind is what formed the "walls" that are now being eroded into arches.

This really shows the slabs or walls. 

This next area doesn't look much different than several other areas, but there is a sign that says there is an arch back in there, so we went to find out.

This is what we found after filling our shoes with sand getting there.

 

This is the view as we came out.

Another arch.  This one looks like it could break in the middle.

It was about this time that B got a bright idea.  If we hurried, we could drive back to the RV park in town, get something to eat, a flash light, and get back out to Wolfe Ranch; the area where a fellow tried to make a living long ago.  There is a spring there and an old log building.  "We could hike out to Delicate Arch, a mile and a half up hill, and be at the arch at sunset."  It was a good thing the hardware was out of my leg, or there is no way that I could have done it.

By the time we got to the area to start hiking in, the sun was going down behind the west hills.  But we hurried in and were there before it got dark.

They say that seeing sunrise here is also great, but we didn't bring anything to spend the night.  We didn't stay long, as it was hard to find the cairns marking the path across a large rock face.  However, we made it down to the well marked trail and back before having to use our flash light; I do have good night vision.  

So the next morning, before leaving the area, we went back and did some more hiking in to a few more areas which are seen below.

Pine Tree Arch

Sand Dune Arch

Then we arrived at the area that is shown in pictures of this Park, Skyline Arch.  The first shows it on the left and another on the right.  People hiked up under the one on the left.  You can no longer hike under the Skyline arch.  Back in the late 90's some people were under it when small rocks started coming down.  They took off and were not injured when a large area collapsed.  The rubble can be seen on the left in another picture.

On the way out we got to see another part of the park.  

As we listen to the Christmas Story, we hear of the men from the east.  It doesn't say that they went back east, but it is assumed that they did.  I'm not so sure.

It also looks like that could be one of the camels on the far side towards the rear.