BRADFORD FAMILY NEWSLETTER – July 2024

DALLAS AND MARGIE BRADFORD

Dear Family:

This was a month of great family reunions. The Albion reunion was as good as it gets—could not have been better. Thanks to all of Kent’s family, who was in charge this year, for a wonderful time together. And a special thank you to Kim and Mark and their family for ensuring that everything was so well organized. And thanks to all the other family members who planned such great activities and meals. As always, Kyle’s photo show is a highlight. What a treasure we have on the family website. These family reunions need to carry on for many more decades.

We followed the reunion in Albion with our family spending a week at Bear Lake. All our family, except Chad’s family, was here at one time or another. Again, members of the family planned such fun activities and everyone, especially the little ones, loved all the water activities. In addition to ten condos, we rented a large house where all of us could be together for games and activities. We’ll still be here when this letter is due, but thus far it’s going great.

Unfortunately, Jex had to leave early because his brother is actively dying. We’re so sorry for their family; he has been ill for a long time. We had our annual 4 th of July BBQ and fireworks at Oakridge Country Club which most of the family attended. We had another great time together.

Dallas continues to make improvements with his various issues. He now uses his walker only when he doesn’t have access to something to hold. And his cirrhosis issues are slowly dissipating. So, life is getting a lot better for him. He’s even playing a little golf. Unfortunately, he and Glenn were partners in a match against another team at Oakridge while Dallas was in the middle of his recovery activities. They didn’t do well.

Elder Hileman returned home this month after completing a very successful mission. It was fun to be with his family to greet him at the airport. It’s great to see his growth that developed. Elder Brian Taylor of the Seventy and Elder Neil L. Andersen, both of whom are in the Hileman’s ward, were sitting on the stand next to him when he spoke in Sacrament meeting. Austin did really well.

And then a little later, Elder Gavin Bradford began his home MTC program. He was able to be with us in Albion as a set apart missionary and he was able to do his MTC assignments sequestered in our room while in Albion. He left Albion in time to catch his plane to attend the Mexico City MTC. He arrived safely and without difficulty. This may be our last missionary until our great grandchildren are able to serve. We hope we’re still around when that happens.

Callie and Sunda are the premier party planners. They put on a spectacular event to celebrate Leslie’s 60 th birthday. But it’s the 60-thing that bothers us. But we are planning to be around to celebrate #60 for each of our children.

On the Sunday that we were here in Bear Lake, we attended sacrament meeting in the most unusual place we’ve ever been. It is a chapel with nothing but a very large open area with folding chairs set up. They had three sacrament meetings for visitors—and the building is just for visitors. It was wonderful to see so many families on vacation attending Sacrament meeting in this unique building. Some of our family attended the 9:00 “ward.” We and some others attended the 10:30 “ward.” None of our family attended the 12:00 “ward.” The two speakers for the day spoke in all three of the “wards.”

Some of our early activities this week were really fun. Callie arranged an activity of decorating cookies. Everyone drew a name and then the person had to decorate their cookie to represent the person whose name they drew. And then Grandma and Grandpa judged the cookies. We have some really entertaining and innovative artists in the family.

Parker has a very interesting app on his laptop by which he is able to show pictures of places in the world and we as teams had to pinpoint that location on our phones. Unknown to us in advance, he picked 13 of the places where we have been on family vacations. How fun. Some of us were able to pinpoint within six feet of the spot that Parker had pinned. This kind of technology blows the minds of Grandma and Grandpa.

And then Alyse was able to use an app on her laptop to play a Family Feud game that she and Michelle designed. All the family feud questions related to some aspect of the family. It was so fun to participate and to use technology in this way.

We suspect that these three special activities enabled Brooke and Jordan to find out more about our fun and welcoming family.

Our children are taking such great care of us this week. A different family has us with them and their family for dinner each night and we’re invited to others for other meals. And they ensure that we’re helped walking around. They are so kind to us.

On Monday, we spent the day at the beach area of a home owned by one of Marissa’s friends. Some of the family members had a variety of water toys and we rented two wave runners. All these water toys made for a fun day. This home had a large back yard that allowed the kids to also set up other games and activities. It was a fun day.

On Tuesday we spent the day at North Beach which is a one-mile-long sandy beach. We’ll have most of the same water toys except the wave runners for the kids to enjoy. Grandpa even went out on a kayak with Vanessa serving as the “motor.” Everyone seemed to have a great time at the beach, but the day was cut a little short because of the winds that came up. It was so fun to watch the second cousins interacting with each other and getting better acquainted. One cute experience was when Emmett (Tanner’s) and Kendall (Troy’s) (five-year olds) making sandcastles. Kendall needed some more water for the masterpiece, and she called to Emmett, “Emmett, we need more water.” To which Emmett responded, “On it.”

Another fun thing for us was to watch some of our children and grandchildren playing a Frisbee football game in the water up to their knees. We love how well they get along together.

Later that evening, six of our granddaughters realized that they had independently bought the same sweatshirt in several different colors. The sweatshirt reads, “WAKE” (up), LAKE (go to the lake), and “SHAKE” (buy one of Bear Lake’s famous raspberry shakes.)

Being together with our own family and our extended family is one the highlights of our life. We love to be with our family and watch them interact with each other. What pure joy. We love each of you,

Dallas and Margie

KENT AND KAY BRADFORD

Kyle is writing this. My dad said he was busy and gave me permission to say something.  He wants everyone to know that he very much enjoyed being with so many of you at the Albion reunion.  He loved everything about it. 

Karen and my dad are without gas to their home for a little bit.  A leak was detected and they have run into complications in coordinating with a qualified person to resolve the problem.  Hopefully that will get resolved soon because without gas to the house, they can’t: take warm showers, cook on the stove top, run their clothes dryer. 

Many of you heard that my mom’s brother, Neil passed away.  He passed away the first day of the Albion reunion.  The funeral service will be held in the SLC area on Aug 24^th.  Karen and my dad will fly out for that. 

Hopefully I represented my dad ok in this writeup.  Oh, he also wanted me to inform everyone that I am his favorite child. 

HENRY & TRUDY BRADFORD

Dear Bradford Family,

It seems as if we spent most of the year looking at the calendar and planning summer appointments and trips around the Bradford Family Reunion.  And now it has come and gone.  Zip!  Thank you to everyone who organized, fed, entertained, and planned for the good time.  Thank you to the Kent Bradford family, especially. 

We stayed an extra day with Scott and Kaylene so we could attend the Hansen cousin’s reunion Saturday afternoon.  Just like the Bradford reunion, there were many missing this year.  We had a good visit, nevertheless. 

Friday we drove up to Cascade Springs in the canyon.  When we lived in A.F. we took the kids up a few times.  It used to be well-groomed but the new method is to let such sites return to a more natural condition.  There were nice trails and bridges built, but so much plant life that it has truly become “natural” and a bit overgrown.  There used to be fish in the clear pools, but there are no more fish, apparently, and the pools are not so pristine as I remember them.  There were lots of couples and families coming and going.  It is still a desirable destination for a pleasant day trip. 

As we started down the trail into the springs, a woman with a head scarf and wearing a The Chosen t-shirt stopped us and said “It is good to see you here.”  She smiled right into Henry’s face and all he could think was that she was sure a friendly stranger.  I recognized her, but without her temple dress and name tag, she was not so obvious to him.  It was Sister Stolworthy, from our Saturday shift at the Las Vegas temple.  She was having her own family reunion.  We enjoyed meeting her wonderful family and Henry (surprise) spent most of the rest of our time there getting acquainted with them.

Henry wanted to find Glen and Clyde Bradford Friday, also.  NoGlen, but we were able to find Clyde and Eva at home.  They had just returned from a Wyoming rodeo where they watched a grandson compete.  Clyde is still getting back on his feet following heart surgery a few months ago.  It is always a pleasure to visit with them and reminisce.  Henry hoped to take photographs of Clyde’s covered wagon, but it has been shrink-wrapped so they went downstairs and rummaged around for pictures of it.  He wants to make a replica of that wagon.  

We have seen and enjoyed visits with so much of our family this month. That always brings us great joy.  It becomes a bit harder when the grandchildren have their own plans and families and the demands of life spread everyone’s time thin, as you all know. 

This morning, early, the skies look like rain.  It is probably just smoke (from forest fires) drifting in our direction.  Maybe I will wash my windows - they need it and that is a pretty good way to get a rainstorm - kind of like seeding clouds for snow. 

Good to see everyone again.  Love - Henry and Trudy

JAY AND KAREN BRADFORD

 Did not submit letter.

DONALD & SUE BRADFORD

Did not submit letter.

DALE AND BRENDA BRADFORD
We've had such a fun month of July and seen so many of our loved ones. 

Right now we are at BYU Aspen Grove Family camp.  We had heard from friends about how great this camp is and if anything they undersold it to us.  We have our immediate family here and we are staying in a family lodge which houses all of us in one place, it's been so fun for the cousins to be in the same groups and share these experiences. The kids are all divided into age groups with counselors, and are kept busy doing fun things all day long, with a break for lunch with the adults in the cafeteria. This leaves the adults to do their own activities, such as hiking, guest lectures, arts, ropes courses, archery etc.  This has been such a fun week. We've done all-family activities such as going to Sundance Summer Theater to the performance of "Newsies" which was great. The camp provides so many fun activities for families, such as a Frontier night, escape rooms, water follies, and big group games and activities. Tomorrow is the last day-the week has gone by quickly as always.  We are delighted in being together and in the beauty of being up in Provo Canyon.  It's been a wonderful family vacation.

We really enjoyed the family reunion in Albion.  Thanks to Kimberly, Kyle and Karen for leading the reunion.  It was so fun to see so many.  We weren't able to fully participate in the last one, so we did a lot of catching up with many of you.  I was most impressed that there were 23 of 38 grandchildren in attendance.  What a wonderful legacy that the cousins want to get together and continue those fun relationships.  We're hopeful for the same result by doing things such as Aspen Grove for our children and grandchildren.

The next Bradford Family Reunion will be July 20-22, 2026 in Albion which has served us so well as a family reunion facility.  We hope to see you all there.

On our way west, we stopped in Lenexa, KS where we used to live and drove by our home, (which looks well-loved, which makes me happy) and our old neighborhood.  We were reminded why we loved living there so much.  Such a great area.  Sunday, we went to church in a building built after we left which would have been about 1.5 miles from our house which would have been wonderful for Dale while he was the Bishop.  It was a joy to reconnect with our friends the Boyacks. He was the Stake President who called Dale as Bishop and his son, who was a Priest when we were there, was just released as being the Stake President of the Olathe Stake.  It's so wonderful to see the strength and growth of the church there and seeing old friends is always wonderful.

Tomorrow Dale and I head off to our next adventure.  We're going to the Redwoods National Park.  Dale is such a tree freak and it has been a dream of his for decades. Then we head back to the east to Montana to visit with Gene and Lynda Goodsell at their family cabin and probably do some visiting of sites in Yellowstone, then we're going to the Badlands National Park, we head home by way of Minneapolis.  By the time we return, we will have been away from home for a month.  We'll have done lots of driving to cover a huge portion of the USA.  We've already driven lots of miles, it's interesting to see the topography change and notice regional differences.  We drove through eastern Colorado and noticed it was the land of white pick up trucks, and stopped at the town of Palisades where we purchased those most delicious peaches we brought to the reunion at a fun fruit stand. We were greeted with a sample of freshly-cooked corn still in the husk as soon as we got out of the car.  Of course, we bought fruit from them.  We drove through the Colorado Rockies and noticed it was the land of Subarus and amazing road construction, it's always nice to be on the other side of the peak elevation though.

Sending our love and gratitude for all.

Brenda and Dale

ELAINE & VAUGN HUNTSMAN

Dear Family, July 2024

We could name this month, “Family Month”. And what a month it has been! We loved participating with The Bradford Reunion! Thank you to Kent’s family for doing such a wonderful job! Kudos to all of you! Such a joy to see and visit with all of you. We truly are blessed with a wonderful family and legacy. I’m sure dad and mom were watching with big smiles on their faces, to see their family together loving one another!

Then we finished off the week by having the Vaughn and Elaine Huntsman family reunion. It sort of started at our house before the Bradford reunion and we finished it in Twin Falls, Idaho. Some of us had never ventured into Twin Falls so we took in the sites there; The Shoshone Falls, swimming at Dierkes lake, and the Evel Knievel jump site. Who in their right mind would ever think of doing something so crazy?!? We also played pickleball in the mornings and went bowling. It’s fun that our older grandchildren like to play pickleball with us, and they are getting quite good at it! And just for the record, I, Elaine, won the bowling game. I only had 45 points in the seventh frame and then bowled three strikes to beat everyone! I even shocked myself!

During all of the family fun we still fit in our missionary work, temple service, bishop storehouse, stake missionary correlation, and district meetings. We had some wonderful visits and lessons with good friends. We are so grateful for the wonderful people in our stake that we have met! We have been truly blessed!

I, Elaine, had a momentous thing happen this month, I had to have cataract surgery! I was surprised that I needed it already? I felt that I was too young, especially since Donald and Dale haven’t even had it yet and they’re older than me. <woozy, dizzy emoji>|<laughing, crying emoji> I do remember mom having cataract surgery several years before she passed so I guess I’m following after her. Anyways, both eye surgeries went extremely well! It just amazes me of the miracle of these bodies that we have been given and of the medical technology that is available to us! Again we’re truly blessed!

We send our love to all. We missed those of you who weren’t able to attend the reunion, please know that you were missed. Praying for all of you, especially those missionaries that are serving around the world! May the Lord bless you all!

Love, Sister & Elder Huntsman- aka Elaine & Vaughn