The GREAT Scotts

It's Been A While..But I'll Just Do This Anyway!

2011-08-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

So I'm a loser...I was going to blog all summer, but never got around to it and summer is pretty much over once August hits...I'd like to do a quick summer highlight...so I'm going to post this one and some of my favorite summer ones and move on...Sadly these are Easter pictures and then it moves to end of the school year pictures...
We had quite the hunts. Sonnet really enjoyed her hunts. Peyton and Brock also had a lot of fun hunting. It was nice to see Sas leading the charge again...I think that bunny is coming back out of retirement. There were three hunts...a little kid hunt, a teenager hunt, and an adult hunt...which was my personal favorite...and which Pam and Ryan did not win everything in this year (Jake and Nancy did!)

These were Easter outfits this year! Cute, cute, cute...I had a heyday at the JC Penney's store. They have the cutest dresses and mark them down so I was buying all kinds of cute dresses like this for only 15.00 dollars...

This is Peyton finding his basket...we hid it harder than we ever have before...so he had to try pretty hard to find it!

Sonnet loved finding her basket and made short work of the candy!

Peyton's school did dress up days at the end of the year and he is fun...he dressed up every day. These were my two favorites....

Backwards day Crazy-Blue and White day! He looks awesome huh!

Peyton also had a dance recital to end the year. It was kind of bittersweet because Patty was retiring. We will miss her.

This is all of her clogging students. You can see Peyton on the front...

This is Peyton with his 1st grade teacher. He danced at her retirement party. We are sad she is leaving. She did amazing things with Peyton. He loved going to school and he learned so much from her. She made him feel very special!

We did a science day for the 1st grade students here. We started last year in kindergarten and then year we did it again. I think they really liked it. It is fun to see how creative these little kids are.

They are building styrofoam towers here.

Finally I have some pics of memorial day. This was by far my favorite arrangement. We had to do this solo though because my mom and dad were gone...so Pam took charge and we did all the graves we normally go to...This one was for my grandma.

These were all of the ones on her grave. Sonnet liked the pretty flowers.

This is Andy and Peyton decorating his mother's grave. Still very hard and we still miss her tons. What a wonderful lady.

Okay, so this was started June 1st and it is now August 2nd. This summer has been one big party, but I'm going to be doing a big long post (or maybe a few small ones to catch up and then I promise to do better! :-) )

Love is in the Sky, Love Shacks, Love Cookies, Love Valentine's Day Weekend!

2011-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

I love Valentine's Day and this year we did a whole weekend of celebration for it. We tried some new things and did some fun traditional things. All in all we felt the LOVE!
Andy started it out by being terribly creative and romantic on Friday night. He planned the whole date and I didn't have any idea what was going to happen. But we ended up going to a variety of place. His theme for the night was "For the Love" and at each place before we went in or did what we were supposed to do, he had written a poem that he read to me. Yes, he is pretty amazing. Each place was some place that was significant in our marriage and yes his poem are pretty amazing. I told him he can be chief poet laurete at our house now! I resign! I sure love that man...
Then Saturday I went to the cutest boutique/home sale. Paisley Pear Boutique is so cool. If you get the chance you need to find out where they are having a show. It is great! They have a little bit of everything and their prices are great. The cute little head wrap that you see here is one of my many purchases.
This was mother nature's Valentine's day gift the night we did our love shacks. How can you not be appreciative of all of the beauty we have around us. I love taking pictures out our backyard and seeing the different amazing sunsets. Also on Saturday we did love shacks. This was a new tradition and I've decided that I love it. Chirstmas was just too busy and is always too busy. I had leftover gingerbread kits that we just didn't get to. We just never found the time. So this year, we did them on Valentine's Day. We bought some Valentine's cand for the kids and sorted all of the red or pink or purple out from the kit and we made our love shacks. We did this while listening to the B52's sing the love shack...it as quite festive and fun.

Andy helped Sonnet and Peyton had his own ideas...

Peyton had a cute idea and then got bored as you can see, however he said on the other side there was a fire coming out of the roof. I asked him if it was my bedroom..he obviously didn't get the joke or think it was funny.

Sonnet definitely had the most colorful and cute...but she had some good help. He knows all about making a great love shack! (wink, wink).

Then it was onto sugar cookie making. I sure do know now why we only do this once a year. It is very time consuming. This year Peyton wanted some chocolate sugar cookies so we had a lot of cookies this year. I don't know if they are worth it, but they sure are good once you get done. I think we started at 3:00 p.m. and ended at about 9:00 p.m. But I decided to do different colors this year rather than doing just pink. Peyton, of course, had to do moose and cowboy hats...lips and hearts were not his style.

The green moose and purple hats.

Licking frosting is Sonnet's favorite job! Here are here cookies.

The decorating crew ...you can see the big hearts were for Peyton's class for his Valentine's Day party. I remember as a kid when Sharon Park did the big huge hearts...They were one of my favorite memories. I had to do them for my kid...I hope they will remember them...even if they don't eat them.

These were Sonnet's finished cookies...

These were some of the finished versions of all of the cookies we made...there were a lot!!!!

On the actual day of Valentine's, I woke up pretty early to get ready for school. As I was in my bathrobe with really wet hair, I saw the sunrise. I couldn't resist taking pictures. I went out on my porch in the above mentioned attire and I took these pictures. It was like the sun was saying Happy Valentine's Day.

Then that evening we had Valentine's hunts and received some small Valentine's tokens. Andy and I exchange the same gift every year...he writes a continuing story and write poems for him. We are amassing quite a collection of each. It is one of our favorite things. This year we got the kids pillow pets and Peyton got a big huge Hershey kiss (he loves chocolate) and Sonnet got some great new spring clothes! (I know kind of boring, but what girl doesn't love new clothes!)

Got caught eating his chocolate.

She loved the ladybug...

I Strongly Dislike January...But the 14th (and 13th) is great!

2011-02-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

These three pictures were taken on a day that we had a cold day. It was on those days that I decided I really do not like January. It is very cold, dark, and depressing even though we had two cold days (which were very nice). Another shot of the nasty cold...We also had a nice surprise one day in cold January...our drains started to burble. You kind of get sick feeling when your house starts making the sounds your stomach makes before it blows. We knew something wasn't right. We didn't know if it was pipes or a backup...it just ends up we had too much poop (and other stuff for that matter). Apparently when you live in a house and aren't on a city sewer system that you need to get it pumped regularly. So of course my awesome dad knew some dude who would come and do it for us. He pumped 2 loads of "stuff" out of our sewer tank...let's just say yuck and leave it at that...However I did reflect upon the fact that of course this happened in the middle of January and of course our sewer was buried under about 3 feet of snow...why does it always happen that way? Murphy's law or something like that! You can see all of the snow that had to be pushed...for us to access the sewer. I hope it didn't kill my strawberries or my rhubarb! On to better things. Kaysha's birthday is a day before Peyton's birthday and we all met at blast off and had a blast. See if you can see a head in that! We had a fun time running around, playing with cousins,talking with each other, letting the kids burn up some pent up energy, and trying to beat mom in skyball. She is amazing! It's too bad that isn't a sport...I think she would be rich!
Sonnet and Peyton both loved the ball pit and running around in the little tubes.
It was really cool because we went on a Thursday night and no one was there...we basically had the run of the place. That was kind of cool because you didn't really have to worry where they were because we were the only ones in there. Peyton loved the rock walls and we were amazed at how quickly he could scale them. He went up and down about 10 times and tried all three levels. It was kind of funny though, because he was so light he kept coming down very slow once he got to the top! That made us laugh!

Sonnet is also a strong little thing. We are amazed with her arm strength. She held on the whole time down in this ring ride. She did it about 10 times too!

Dad was not to be outdone and he did a spider dance game! He was pretty good!

We then went back to Angie's and had pizza and cake with Kaysha...this was the best picture I could get of the birthday girl. She was flitting around all night and very excited about all of it! The next day was Peyton's birthday. He had to go to school. We took 1/2 of the day off and had his little party at school that day. Sonnet got to come over and we did a Darth Vader pinata that you just pull strings out of. He had a cute little class and they all got to pull out a string before Peyton found the magic one that made all of the candy fall out.

Then after school he finally to to open his presents. Angie always has these big fill-up balloons at her kids birthdays and Peyton has just loved them. We finally got him some...the only problem is that they are still full and still floating around my house...more than a month later! I guess I could just pop them..but he loves to look at them and play with them.

He is getting to an age where he actually slows a down a little and will read the cards because he can read now. But you can see the utter chaos he can make in about 30 seconds! He is at such a cute age.

After Christmas this year, we didn't really have anything to get him, so we just got him fun stuff that we hadn't really thought of. He did get lots of legos because he is really into them. I'm not sure what I think about them. There are tons of little parts. He builds it once and then I just have little parts all over my house...hmmm?

This was what Peyton thought he had to wear to his party...it was a Star Wars themed party again...we cracked up about this one. Andy says he looks like some character from a bad 80's movie (I can't remember which one!)

This was what the scene looked like before everyone arrived.

Once everyone got there, they had to put on Darth Vader masks instead of party hats. That made us laugh. See if you can guess who is who! We had a great night!

His request of Lasagna but he doesn't like hamburger so I did a chicken nugget lasagna..he seemed to like it as did Austin. Then we has Snicker's salad, veggies with ranch, apples with caramel apple dip and bottled root beer. Pop is getting in his birthday spankings...He needs them!

These are the styling "Top Gun" glasses that aunt Pam got him. He thought he was one cool dude in them.

The next picture shows him in his new cowboy boots...(his mom doesn't know what to think of them...but he loves them!). It also shows on his face the pure excitement of this gift that I think Grans and Pop gave him....a UFO that flies. It was the hit of the night. We were all flying it all over and had quite the laughs.

This is Peyton about to blow out candles on the Death Star (at least my feeble attempt with Andy's help in decorating!) We sure love this little boy and are so glad he came to our home. We can't believe he is 7 and yet with each passing year he just gets better and better. More smart, more cute, more creative, more witty, more fun, more challenging (but in a good way), more excited about life. I wish for him a life of MORE great experiences.
Not too bad of an attempt at the Death Star...but kind of a depressing cake! ha!

I should have said the 26th also. Little Sonnet has now been in our home for over a year. We can't believe this little girl has been with us so short of a time and it seems like she has always been here. She is a bright light in our lives and adds such a wonderful spirit and love to our home. What a sweet, cute, loving little girl. She just blesses our lives. Pray for the lawyers to get things figured out so we can get this all settled...it is taking FOREVER! But I know that good things come to those who are patient! :-) However, I do know now why they have all those lawyer jokes! Last year about three days after she came to us...Can you see any differences?

My Favorite Present...(Here you go Lataun)!

2011-02-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

So every year, I get a lot of money to go to Barnes and Noble. I believe most people in my family think that it is an easy way out for a gift for me...however, little do they know that I love, love, love to go there and just peruse and get a stack of books. I joked with Andy that someday I may get to purchase all of the books that I have a hankering to get...however, I was really tempted when I went in there this year to get a Nook...but alas they have invented a color one which is so much cooler and so I will wait a year or two for the price to fall...any thoughts on Nooks and Kindles? I've read some disturbing things about how there is a new application for Iphones and Ipod Touch and Ipads that let you scan in the bar code of books you have and they will upload to your phone. Does that mean I could go into Barnes and Noble and do the same thing? I also read an internet article that talked about how children born in 2011 will not know what traditional newspapers, magazines, and books are...that was also a little disturbing...but I'm really seriously thinking about getting a Nook...I'm just afraid my friends (my books) might be a little mad! :-)

Here is the list for this year...There are some darker colored jackets on the books, so for anyone that is interested...here is the title list: Divine Signatures (Gerald Lund), Before Green Gables, Pathfinder, What the Dog Saw, Third World America, A Homemade Life, Bento Box in the Heartland, Committed, Freakonomics, The Pillars of Greek Wisdom, Inside of a Dog, The Cheesecake Cookbook, Fast Breads, Cake Pops, Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques.

Hmmm...Kind of an interesting list...I pulled up my list from last year, so that I could compare how my interests of changed. I'm really addicted to nonfiction now and I don't read as much fiction (the only problem with that is that is takes me so much longer to read nonfiction) . I'm also so into cooking and my new love is to purchase any cool, interesting, exciting cookbook that I can find! It appears last year, I was very interested in fiction...funny how our interests change!

I still love a good fiction book but need some new ones after reading "The Hunger Games" series...anyone have any recommendations?

December In a Nut Shell

2011-02-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

December came and went in a flash of busy, hectic, fun-filled days. It was a magical time because of how excited our kids were about everything (especially Peyton). They are at an age where everything about Christmas reminds you as a parent of your own special times growing up. To start out December Peyton had a dance recital at the high school. He does a great job and is so fun to watch. This is his little dancing group...that has really grown from last year. We love that there are five boys and five girls. They will be doing a really cute dance with their partners coming up in the spring. Peyton wasn't quite sure he wanted to dance with a "girl" but he has done a great job. We had lots of mail to send out in December...in fact, we spent the first part of December getting gifts and things ready. On one of the packages we sent, Peyton had decorated this package of Andy and I under the mistletoe. It made me smile and I had to get a picture. Definitely one of my favorite things about Christmas.

The tree marathon began the first week of December...with our kids so excited about getting their trees up. It is a good thing they were, because Andy and I have lost a little excitement about putting up "all" those trees. We are up to 14, however only 9 made it up this year (which was okay with us!) The new tree for the year was Sonnet's tree. It was fun to see how excited she was with her tree.

The kids trees are the only ones we add to each year, so it will be fun to see how each year her tree changes. One of my other favorite things is my dad's lights. I'm glad he got them all up. As you can see this was a very pretty night... The next event was the Christmas play. This is Sonnet with a little girl her age. They played for a little bit before it all began. The theme for the Christmas play this year was a cowboy theme which was great for Peyton...he loved it!

Some of the vaqueros waiting to perform. This picture below was so funny. A line was forming to see Santa and my kids ran up and cut in front of everyone. I'm training them so well aren't I! One of my proudest moments..(hmmm). These pictures were at Peyton's school party. Peyton has an amazing teacher this year who he just adores. She got them all such a wonderful gift. What a giving, caring, kind, and inspiring lady she is.

They also made Gingerbread houses. She told me she was going to teach them how to make them...which I thought was weird because we just plathered candy on when I was a kid. Much to my surprise and delight...these little houses just turned out great. They actually look like a gingerbread house with a little bit of thought. She just knows how to make things fun and educational at the same time. Peyton is lucky to have her!

We had some great snow before Christmas. As you can see I didn't get a very good picture of the sledders. But it was a wonderful Christmas weather. I do wish now that it would go away, but we liked it for Christmas. Peyton is sledding with a cousin and Uncle Jake took them out to do this. We loved having family up for Christmas. All of my siblings were home. That just made Christmas grand! (a little crowded and noisy at mom's but wonderful!)

Andy's birthday is Christmas Eve and we had a nice dinner and celebration at our home with Andy's dad. I loved this drawing that Peyton made in Andy's birthday card. As you can see he does love his dad, but he is frowning because he can't open presents yet! This made us smile! Andy turned 36 this year. We both wondered where the time has gone. This is him posing with his present opener helpers. I don't think he opened too many of his presents. This is Andy at my parent's house opening his gifts in a rush before we go to the "White Elephant" party at my grandpa's house.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Christmas. As you can see all of the kids are crowded around Holly who is pulling up the "Santa tracker" on the internet. This is why Christmas is so magical. These little ones were just enthralled with Santa getting closer to Idaho! I had to pull it up at my house when we got home! Just to check again where he was!

This was Grandpa Sanders' gift, but he gave it to "Rascaleono" as he calls my little boy. I would have loved to see Grandpa in this, but he got a kick out of Peyton wearing it! I guess we do what everyone else does on Christmas Eve by opening the Christmas P.J.s...Peyton and Sonnet finally got to give into that madness of not being able to open a present. I thought they looked so cute in their P.J.s

Off to bed for the longest night of a child's life. Peyton was so wired we had a hard time getting him to sleep. We left quite a haul out for Santa as you can see. Peyton also hid a special box of candy that only Santa and Peyton and his Dad would know where it was hidden. That was how Peyton would know if Santa was really real (yes he is already questioning...it never came up in my mind!) As you can see, Santa ate all that was left to him...and he took the box of candy that was hidden...one of the first things Peyton had to find out when he woke up.

Peyton loved everything and had to dump out, rip open, try, etc...every single thing that Santa left him. It was very cute! The old bird left quite a haul at our house. Some of the highlights included the race track for Peyton and the doll house for Sonnet.

He also left Sonnet a fropper (we are still not sure what it does)...the cute hat was courteousy of Grandpa Scott. She loved both.

One of my favorite pictures to take is my parent's tree....every year no matter how much we cut back it is still jam packed with presents! My family especially my parents are so generous. One of my favorite pictures of Christmas...notice the bow on Pam's bum! ha! We got a good laugh from that!

Peyton got a costume from Jake and Nancy's family. Of course he had to try it on. We rushed to open gifts so that Mom and Dad could get a dinner prepared for 30+ people. It was then a shift over to my grandpa's house for presents and dinner. Sometimes I wish we would just order in pizza and be able to enjoy the day.

The next picture at about 10:00 p.m that night is me opening birthday gifts...sometimes you just can't fit it all in...I think the look on my dad's face shows how busy that this day really was. I turned 37 this year and for once in my life I felt really old on my birthday...(I think it was because I was a catching a bug that I fought the rest of Christmas vacation!)

Cute, cute, cute...kids...This is their Christmas clothes outfits...that they wore the day after Christmas to church! There is another December birthday...right after Christmas...this cute little thing is my brother's daughter. She is a funny little particular thing. She is deathly afraid of Andy which is hilarious and makes us all laugh. She calls him guy and hides whenever he comes near. We joke and say she is a good judge of character. Playing hot potato at the party...
Then to end December we went over to Brove's house and did the traditional games, food, and frapee. This is Peyton drinking/eating frapee at 12:00 a.m.
As you can see Sonnet has had it. We are irresponsible parents and let our kids stay up to ring in the New Year...what a wonderful December we had..

Yes, He is the Real One!

2010-11-21T15:33:00.000-08:00

We went to the festival of trees! We have a great time! We love to see Santa and I swear he is the real one. Sonnet is posing by the fairy tree. She loves fairies and so she was trying to pose like one! Somebody got hungry and so he wasn't have the best of times. After he saw Santa he was ready to go. He was also a little disappointed because Santa only let him tell one thing he wanted and he got shushed. I think maybe because it was Friday and he had probably already seen 1000's of kids.

You can see they were very excited to see Santa and had a lot to say. Sonnet rushed right up and gave him a huge hug! She loved Santa. She doesn't even really know what he does yet.

Peyton ran right up to him and was ready to tell him what he wanted.

I couldn't get a really good picture of all three, so we have a really cute one of her and a good one of him! Thus the problem of having two kids to take pictures of.

Looking forward to the old boy making a stop! And yes, he is the real one by the way!

School Shopping and Aquarium-Take 2...where did my post go?

2010-08-11T10:10:00.001-07:00

I already did this post once...I'm not sure where it disappeared to? But we just recently went school shopping in Utah...Yes that means that summer is over, but we are ready physically for school to start! We did some great shopping and for the first time we went up to the Park City Outlets. I loved them and they had so many great, fun kid stores...that we pretty much found everything we needed.
Andy always likes to joke with me about outlets, because while I find good deals, I for some reason buy more thus spending what I could have saved..I've always told him I've never been a quality girl, but quantity! But I recommend the outlets..They have everything you could want!

My next favorite things we did were to go to two of our favorite restaurants that we only go to when we go to Boise or Utah...We are glad that PF Chang's and Cheesecake Factory aren't local or we would go broke...but they are worth every penny. Andy and I call it the quality scale.

Wendys=20.00$

Olive Garden=40.00$

PF Changs and Cheesecake=80.00$

See the quality of the food doubles by twenties..ha! I know that doesn't make any sense unless you have eaten at them.

We love the lettuce wraps at PF Changs. And our kids even liked the lo mein they had. At the cheesecake factory my favorite things are of course the cheesecake, but the salads are probably my most favorite...

We ordered cheesecake to go and sadly one of our pieces got left in the fridge in our hotel room. Some lucky cleaning person got a nice treat. My question is though, do you think they really ate it? Most people seem to think that they would, but I wouldn't eat it so I don't think that they did? Any thoughts? Ha!

Another one of our favorite places to go is to the Sandy Aquarium. This was our second time and Peyton just breezed through it and seemed a little bored, but Sonnet loved everything and would stand and look for a long time at all of the cool fish and exhibits. Peyton kept wondering when we could go back to the hotel and swim!

These are my cute frog wranglers!

There is another place in there where you get to pretend you are driving a boat. Peyton loves this place and of course, sister had to do it too!

This part is my favorite part of the aquarium. It is where the jellyfish are and they sit and swim around and it is dark and the light changes and they just keep floating. I love to photograph them and also to watch them! They are so cool!

Sonnet wanted to pet this big old octopus, maybe because it was behind glass, because when she had a chance to pet the sting rays...she wouldn't! I don't blame her. They are pretty slimy.

Peyton ran right to the sting rays and wanted to pet them and said he was going to pet them (he wouldn't last year!) I happened to catch the whole process on film. You can see one right by where he is standing. Then he tentatively puts one finger out to touch it, but it suddenly flaps its (wing?) and it freaks Peyton out! (third picture in this series). It was hilarious!

As you can, they are kind of creepy looking. I had no desire to put my arm in this year, but I did last year!

Andy was the only one brave enough to actually touch them this year!

You can see she doesn't want to stick her arm in that either!

The cute little explorers going on an expedition! or at least posing for a cute picture!

We had a great time school shopping and doing some fun stuff too!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...

2010-08-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

So this summer we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Peyton. (I got this idea from my friend Megan S...thanks!) and we knew we were going to Utah to shop and so we decided to take a tour of the Sweet Candy Company so Peyton could see how a real candy factory works. Let's just say it was pretty cool and that he had 1000 and 1 questions. But it was all worth it. The candy shopping at the end was also fun! We had to wear these groovy hats through the whole tour. Didn't we look styling!

The tour showed us a bunch of different things and how the different types of candy was made. My personal favorite was the orange sticks because we got to see the whole process. We were showed the cool machines and how they do things and we got to try candy along the way. It is definitely cool to see American manufacturing and how they have a machine that does everything. These pictures were all taken in the candy gift shop. My personal favorite was above...the huge orange jelly beans. I didn't end up buying anything though...I was quite proud of myself. However Peyton choose buttered popcorn salt water taffy, Andy got a bag of the tropical mix because it had coconut in it and Sonnet picked out swedish fish.

My favorite comment of the day was when Peyton was telling granny and pop about the candy factory and he said they had candy clear up to the clouds. This was when they showed us their storage room and where they keep the candy. That was cute.

The famous Salt Water Taffy that you buy at Broulim's all of the time. However, not all of their flavors were out. Andy was sad because we couldn't find coconut...only in the mix!

Peyton with his purchase!

Another one of my favorites...orange slices!

These are the fun mixes that they only sell as mixes! Just so you know! :-)

We loved the candy tour but Peyton kept wondering where Willy Wonka was! ha!

Garage(Garbage) Salin' It!

2010-08-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

So Pam decided she wanted to have a garage sale. She has moved into a new home and had a lot of stuff she wanted to get rid of. We all ended up adding in a few items and we all made some money. It was a lot of work for her and some work for the rest of us. We held it at Angie's house in Idaho Falls. We all had a hard time watching our stuff leave for less than we knew it was worth, but we made it through it. We decided to have another one in three-five year!

We were amazed at some of the funny things that people do when they come to garage sales. First of all people show up earlier than when it starts just so they can get a good deal and see all of the stuff. Second they like to make a deal. If something says five dollars, they want it for three. I've learned to mark things up a little higher and I might actually get what I'm asking for. Third, people buy really stupid things if they are cheap. Why would people buy some of the things they do? Fourth, some people are very strange that come to garage sales. I thought it would be mostly moms, but there were some strangees...(Pam called them all meth users!). Finally I've learned some people get some really good deals. We sold one of the Andy's fossil watches cause he owns three and it was a ninety dollar watch that someone paid 10 dollars for. Also some little Mexican lady bought 12 pair of Pam's dress pants for .25 cents each=3.00$. As she was leaving Pam said she just walked away with 600$ worth of my clothes!

We ended up making over 600$ and I walked away with 200 and less junk! It was an interesting experience.

Once we finished, we went to Craigo's to enjoy some of the fruits of our labors!

Now that is a nice day...

2010-06-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

I had such a wonderful day on Memorial Day. In fact, I had just a plain nice weekend. We awoke late (9:30 am-that's sleepin' in at this place). My wonderful hubby cooked breakfast. It was nice, while I sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket reading a good book. Ate a nice, long leisurely breakfast. Had no where to go. Put on working clothes went outside and weeded my strawberries. Mowed the lawn---there is just something about that nice first mowing that makes it feel like vacation. The kids were outside playing all day. They had dirty faces and dirty hands and climbed and dug and got in the way and ran and played and fought.... Peyts got to go give lunch to Pop and little Sonnet got all sticky and red and blue faced from eating a popsicle while riding with me on the lawn mower. Andy was home all day. We ate a nice summer lunch a turkey sandwhich with pickles, cheese, mustard and mayo, cabbage salad, and cherries and blueberries. It is so nice to not have leftovers...they get very old after a while. I kept thinking it would rain, but it just stayed nice and overcast. Got 10 rows of our garden planted, came in had a nice hot shower and a quick supper. Kids listened to book and giggled while Andy read to them. I cooked dinner and we ate. Got my first sunburn of the summer, feels good. Put kids to bed and they were so tired that one feel asleep in the place we put and little Sonnet went limp when we rocked her. She must have really been worn out. I would love to fall asleep that way and I think I did while receiving a nice footrub trying to stay awake during the movie. My leg muscles ached and my face was hot. It was a nice way to inaugerate the summer! I hope more of those days are to come!

Our Little Girl...

2010-02-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time coming and with a little trepidation that I post this for various reasons...none of them having to do with us being overjoyed that our little girl finally made it here...But just for safety and legal issues, but I figure you gotta live life...and we are so thrilled with our new little addition. It has been such a blessing in our lives and we want to introduce you to her. Here are a few things our little Sonnet is doing. You can see how much she is blessing our lives! We are working on a project...coloring a kitty and doggie. She loves animals, especially our cats..much to my yuckiness ( I don't care for them...dirty and gross)

Let's just say, I learned something from this picture: long hair, suckers, and eating in the backseat do not mix. Sticky...but
Really enjoyed her sucker...thanks Peyton's piano teacher! :-)

She is becoming very attached to her brother and follows him around all over the house...sometimes to his frustration. She also will call him "Baby" and he doesn't like that. He goes around saying "Don't call me Baby"...it reminds me of Mad, Mad, World. But it is cute none the less. I sent Peyton over to granny's house to get something and I heard, "Peyton go bye, bye" and I walked into the living room and this is what I saw. She stayed there until he got back. It made me smile.

So my dad joked that I never liked playing with dolls when I was younger, but let me just say, it is so fun to have a girl. I mean how many cute blue, green, black, red, and gray shirts can you buy for a boy? I will admit boy's clothes have gotten cuter, but having a little girl to dress up and fix their hair is so much fun. She is a pretty good sport. I saw this exact outfit at Children's Place and wanted to get it and she humored me by wearing the hat...I think she looks so cute! But maybe you can see some of her frustration with me..! :-)

This was a fun moment when Peyton finally had someone to play with besides us...It has been so good for him and I think her to have a sibling. They are doing fairly well...but we still have some things to work on!

She loves Peyton's stuff...much to his dismay and I caught her with his hat and his Star Wars dude, but it was too cute to resist taking a picture!

(More of brother's toys...) Let's just say he has too many to often notice and he shares fairly well..

While I was trying to get dinner ready, my two little computer geeks were just going at it. It was too cute of a picture to pass up! And no I don't let them do this often!

This was another attempt at my trying a new hair-do and hat. I must say just one word: ADORABLE!

Little Sonnet has not had a lot of chances to be in the snow...some came from some where very warm...She loved it. She was a little frustrated at how hard it was to walk at first, but she caught on quickly. She also discovered how fun it was to eat the snow...which we really have to watch!

:-) She doesn't understand yellow snow yet...and we have a lot of that.

This is my first attempt at using all of those silly things that go into girl's hair. Let's just say it didn't really work...any ideas on how to get them to stay in? It looked cute for about as long as this picture..!

This was after the first day here. They are getting along already. I thought it was pretty cute!

She also doesn't mind getting dressed up and playing a little rough with her brother. He likes that. She is dressed as a knight right here if you can't tell.

This is her discovering how much fun stuff there is to get into in brother's room. She is also styling in some of his glasses! Ha!

We are so lucky and still have a ways to go to make all of this happen, but we just feel so blessed to have this little one in our home. We hope that things will continue to go well and she will continue to adjust. She is such a happy, sweet, loving little girl and one more added bonus. She eats better than Peyton does! How nice is that! :-) We love her determination, her stubborness and how she just loves everything she sees and learns. It has been a pleasure to introduce you to her.

My Cute Birthday Boy...

2010-01-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted Christmas yet, and I'm planning on it soon...how life goes so fast I do not know. I can't believe it is the middle of January. The month that I dislike the most has slipped by very uneventfully and not really too cold or miserable. But the purpose of this post is to celebrate my cute little six year old's birthday. He is getting so big and I must say he has been so cute through all of the holiday seasons and celebrations. His excitement and joy over all of these things has been very cute to watch. When he woke up he had to get up extra early(if you look in the windows you can still see it is dark!) because he had to go to school. How depressing is that. I took the day off, but still had to get up at 6:20 to put in Monkey bread (birthday boy's request!) and I cooked the rest of the day!

This is a pre-chaos picture of the the presents. We did not do a very good job disguising the bike that he was getting. In the next picture he said that this was his big boy, six year old smile. He looks a little goofy, but it is cute none the less!

He was so excited to open presents and he did them very quick. We did not have to spend too much time opening. Christmas and birthday definitely went very quick. He had stuff opened in about five minutes.

He got so many nice things for Christmas, it is hard to figure out what to get them so soon after...we didn't even really know what he wanted. I don't think he did either. We got him a bike which we hope will be the last for the next little while because we have already gone through three....He had a tiny little kids one, he had a Wal-mart cheapo that would peddle very easily and he loved Austin's old bike because it did peddle...so that is what we were looking for when we got this one. He is a touch little, but still did just fine when we went out to ride it. It is a nicer one that we hope will finally last for our little biker!

It is against my better judgement to purchase army stuff for our little boy, but he has been so into it lately that we got him some. He is opening an army tank and some dudes that go with it.

He is saying I'm sure right now...cool! Awesome! (those must be six year old words they learn at school!)

This is the chaos that was left after five minutes...I didn't even get that many pictures because he opened them so fast.

He wouldn't pose for a loot picture so this is as close as I got. It was kind of a boring birthday for him I think because we just didn't know what to get him....but once he got into it, I think he liked it. He got a CD player/stereo, some clothes, army toys with a tank, connect 4, magnext building set and his bike...from us! Still probably too much, but we did try to cut back. We forgot about one present we had left from Christmas so he got a present later in the day that we didn't give him for Christmas too!

This was the cake I made. Mom gave me the idea to be a little lazier this year and just buy some toys for cake-toppers. So he had another star wars cake. It is definitely not one of my best cakes, but he liked it. He picked out all of the different candles that is why there is such a modge podge...

We had everyone over who was close by for dinner and presents that night....that is why I said I felt like I cooked all day long. Peyton choose pork chops and mashed potatoes and corn for his birthday dinner. Of course I tried to add a few extras...but it was a nice dinner.

Of course Peyton did not eat much because he was too excited about his presents. He kept sneaking away from the table to open them. A couple he actualy broke into and saw what was in them, but I think he had fun. Kaysha is trying to help, but I don't think he wanted any of it.

Peyton has lately had a fascination with the Blue Angels and jets and we even pulled up some on you tube for him to look at and watch. They are coming this summer to Idaho Falls so he has been very excited about them. His granny got him a blue angel pilot suit and helmet and he felt so big. It was pretty cute to watch how excited he was. She also got him a Blue Angel jet, that didn't come in the mail as quickly as she wanted it to. He got that yesterday and we've already made a commercial with it...My old student Willy and one of Peyton's buddies brought him a "Defend Freedom" pin from the military and I noticed that he had pinned it onto his suit...I may have to get used to the idea of a military man in our house...hopefully it is a phase..??

Aunt Pam and Uncle Ryan got him some more army clothes and tools (grenades, knife etc...) and some camo pants that supposedly he can wear to school (argh...there is another thing I said I would never do....but they were pretty cute I guess for a little boy! and he loved them). Aunt Angie and Uncle Matt and the kids got him a Nerf gun and some walkie-talkies. He is very excited about the nerf gun after playing with 20 of them at Angies...
We went to blow out candles and even that happened fast because I still didn't get a very good picture of him....he made a wish that he later told me was to be a Blue Angel pilot...hmmmm!???

This last picture is the gift that pop gave him...it is a remote control bull-dozer that I believe would scrap the snow off of our walks...we had to charge the batteries for that puppy all night, but he looks pretty happy with his gift...It was totally awesome I believe was how he put it!

What a cute little dude. He is growing up and it is so fun to watch how excited he gets for little things...It was a joy to have this day with him. He shares his birthday with his Grandma Scott who just passed away and I know we were all thinking about her on this special day too. We were lucky to have Grandpa Scott come to the party that night...I know it meant a lot to all of us.

I suppose I should...

2010-01-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should post pictures of my cute little boy and various other Christmas pictures, however I decided to be a little selfish and post some of my favorite gifts first...I have a lot of fun and cute pictures from Christmas, but I'm going to show you my favorites... The first pictures shows you my grand total of books that I was able to purchase from all of my gift cards that I receive to Barnes and Noble. I received a 25$, 50$ and 100$ gift certificate...or a total of 175$ dollars. In 25 minutes I had this stack of books plus one more and went over my limit. This year I tried to stay within my limit so I put back one book and my grand total was 174.26...I had 24 cents left over...pretty good and I got a nice stack of books. I only got two read over Christmas...(a few more others of my own that I didn't buy!) I had a nice time reading...so all of you who think I don't like getting this Christmas...you are very wrong! I hope to one day be able to get all of the books that I want! Maybe someday! :-)

This is another of my favorite gifts. This is the first time Andy picked out a whole outfit for me and I must say he did a nice job. Pants, shirt, sweater, and necklace. I was pretty impressed and it all fit! He did a pretty good job if I do say so myself! Cute, cute, cute!

My last present was actually a birthday present, but same thing...right...My wonderful parents got me a kitchenaid and let's just say I've been wanting one of those for years...They were so nice to get it for and to top it off...it is orange! I made my first batch of cookies and it is pretty awesome! I'm already saving for the pasta maker attachment and vegetable attachment!

Thanks to everyone for all of the nice presents I got...that is not all I got, but these were a few of my favorite things...:-)

I'll post more pictures of Christmas soon!

Christmas Eve Fever

2009-12-29T16:56:00.000-08:00

We had someone who was very, very sick on Christmas Eve. He had what I like to call Christmas Eve fever. I remember as a child how long Christmas Eve was and how much I wanted to open everything. It was a time of snooping, peeking, getting frustrated and mad, and excited all in one. Peyton had Christmas Eve Fever really badly this year. As you can see in the picture below...he helped Andy open his birthday presents and lets just say in 2 minutes flat he had basically shredded the paper and destroyed our living and was ready for more. It didn't help that he got to open presents, it just ignited the flame. We had actually wrapped presents for Peyton and put them under the tree. However, we ended up actually putting them back into the orange bedroom that has a lock on it. We showed him this present that he got to open but he had to wait until bedtime. We also told him it was a toy so he wouldn't be really disappointed. Well the fever was too much and we knew he couldn't help himself...so we threw it up onto our high ledge that he cannot reach. After I did that, I decided that would be a nice place to display all of his presents next year! The torture just might be enough he would figure out how to pile and stack chairs to get to them! This present stayed there until evening. We then went to my mom's where I found Peyton searching desparately around the tree for any present with his name on it. He then encouraged some followersTo join him...Let's just say that Pam and Pop got them out of there. However, I do believe he peeked into one present! A child after my own heart...The problem is that I know all of the tricks. You can't hide stuff, you just have to lock it away. However, when he gets old enough to pick locks like I can, we might be in trouble! I think we have one more year of him not doing that! Finally he got to open a present for him on Christmas Eve. We had survived the day with minor side effects from the fever. The only way I know how to pacify it is to open a present and go to bed and wake-up Christmas morning. Then after shredding every present and being a little bit sad that there aren't any more, the fever suddenly leaves!

However, we were able to get it to lower just a little bit by the Christmas Eve present he opened! Isn't he cute in his new PJ's! Yes I had to sew the sides so they would stay up! :-)
P.S. -Another symptom is getting caught sneaking into Christmas goodies before lunch and dinner and leaving evidence on your face. This was the Muddy Buddies I made that someone was caught sneaking into that day!

This could provide a little diversion from the real things they want to sneak into!

This Christmas was one of the best ever because Peyton experienced and illustrated all of the joy that is present when a young child believes. I know I can never get that back, but I got to live through it vicariously and it was wonderful...Oh, to be young again!

Christmas Recital

2009-12-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

Peyton had his first clogging recital on Saturday. We were a little worried because he had been sick all week. But after a few quick rehearsals at home and working on him not watching the other dancers, he did amazing. Andy and I were amazed at what a little performer he was. He was charming and cute and really quite the stage man. No nerves and really performed well. It was so fun to watch his hard work pay off. This is one of his little friends who he dances with. This is one of my students who Peyton got to know during the play. She also danced at Patty's recital and was amazing. She is a very talented girl and she is very sweet to Peyton...This is Peyton's little class. They are from Hamer, Terreton and Dubois. The other little boy is Jenny William's little boy and it was fun to go back to Patty's and watch them all dance.

After the recital they did a little present exchange. It was really cute because Patty read a left/right story and let's just say it was a little chaotic. Peyton even pegged someone in the head when he was passing and they weren't very happy, but I don't think he meant to, it was just hard to keep up especially with the little ones.

I was very proud of Peyton. He ended up getting a blanket and he asked if he could switch his present. I whispered in his ear to be big and he was fine. I saw a few of the kids crying probably because their present wasn't what they wanted it to be! It was a really fun night and we were very proud of our little toe tapper!

Christmas Party Before Thanksgiving...??

2009-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

So we had a nice Christmas party before Thanksgiving. I guess I should explain why there is a Christmas party before Thanksgiving. My family always has a Christmas party that one of us is in charge of. This year it was Holly. She will not be here for the holidays, but it was her year to be in charge. She was up for Thanksgiving week and wanted to have her Christmas party. So we all meet at my house. Her theme for the party was to do some old-fashioned things we did when we were kids so that our kids could do it. It was fun. Dad and Jayson are relaxing while everyone tells a Christmas memory. I again heard some of my favorite stories about Christmas. However I'm still waiting for Austin's Christmas memory.

Peyton is working on something that we all did in Mrs. Murdock's class. You take crepe paper and wrap it around your pencil, then did it in glue and make your picture. We ended up making candy canes for a our picture.

This is where Holly is giving everyone a candy plate and getting a little emotional because she won't be here to watch us make the candy. (because we all know she didn't help! :-)

We also did the traditional left/right present exchange. Jay did the honors be reading and I think Dad just kept what he wanted and passed all the rest on.

This is the silence of the lambs snowflake that Peyton made. I thought he did pretty good for his first snowflake.

Pam, Ryan and Dad all made quite a nice long paper chain that ended up in Kyla's room. It turned out very cute.

Carson seranaded us with some Christmas carols...that his dad did not really appreciate. But it was pretty cute!

Holly and Granny are getting Adam going with the crepe paper candy canes.

Working hard with that glue stick!

Angie was put over the scissor patrol because we had a lot of under-age scissor users and Carson kept trying to steal them.

The chain gang!

Peyton's final candy cane picture...It turned out just like I remembered them when we were kids. Thanks for bringing back the memories Holly and Mom! The food was good too! We loved the cheeseball...looking forward to more!

Happy Halloween Weekend

2009-11-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

So our Halloween started our really busy. I volunteered to be one of the room moms and was lucky enough to plan and attend Peyton's Halloween party at school. We had a lot of fun. We did pictures in our costumes and a whole class picture. Then each kid lined up for a picture by themselves. We printed out the picture for them to take home. This was the year of the vampire for Peyton. A whole bunch of boys decided they wanted to be a vampire. But Peyton just wanted to be one. Not sure where he got the idea from.

We did a lot of fun activities at his party. We had a fun treasure hunt that led us all over the school. Then did a monster mash musical game. We did a Halloween cup toss. Attempted to decorated a paper plate pumpkin, and also decorated cupcakes. I don't know how kindergarten teachers do it...It required a lot of energy. All in all pretty good for my first party! I even told them a few fun Halloween lies...like the witch's finger breadsticks that I cut off of a witch and the mean pirate who hid their treasure. They believed everything I said...right??? ha!

Peyton liked the decorating the pumpkin cupcake. Then he wanted to wander around and see what everyone else was doing. As you can see we have a lot of busy little kindergarteners.

Our afternoon got even busier because I volunteered to help decorate for the Hamer carnival. We went home, cleaned up a cute little vampire, and then headed back to the school. The carnival was great and it looked very nice too!

The first thing that Peyton wanted to was the bungee run. This is for a little bit bigger kids, but Peyton loved it. You basically run and then it jerks you back...doesn't sound really fun.

Peyton did the pop toss and the dime toss. Andy and I got into the dime toss because were trying to win the book "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". After I tried and tried and won other things, Andy finally after a few tries, actually won the book. I then tried a Koosh toss because I could win these bugs that would crawl up and down the wall which they didn't after I won them...but we had fun anyway. We had two other places we had to be that night so we hurried through as much as we could

Peyton got a carmel apple and bit off all of the caramel. Then he did the sucker pull and won a prize.

We decided to forgo the vampire costume for the night because we had a wedding to attend and also went to the Halloween concert at BYU-Idaho. The theme for the concert was a Super-hero theme and Peyton loved it. We had a good time. Then we went home.

The busy Friday was over and Halloween came. We spent the morning getting our chores done and taking funny pictures of us in scary teeth. And yes we also look a little scary but we were having fun.

Then we got our little vampire ready again to go trick or treating. He was very excited to go especially after a few trick or treaters came to our door. He was very cute and wanted to put all of the candy in their baskets. Andy then took him out to get his loot. I stayed home and handed out candy and read a book...how nice!

Andy said Peyton was very brave and went by himself up to all of the houses. He only got scared out one house that decorates with a lot of spooky things. But he still liked it and had a good time.
As you can see he looked pretty spooky! He didn't like wearing the makeup but I thought he was a pretty cute little vampire.

This will show the fruits of his labors Halloween night. He got a pretty good haul.

And he ate candy until he was sick...ha! Actually he is pretty good and only has a few at a time. He was so excited though and it was very cute. What a fun weekend we had.

Today (Sunday) we just kind of had a nice day at home. I made Pumpkin Cinnamon rolls and we stayed in our PJs all day. It was a nice weekend! Busy, but fun and nice!

Bigger and Better Than Ever...

2009-10-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

So this year we grew our own pumpkins and didn't hav to buy any. I must say I was very proud to have grown these big babies...however you kind of forget that maybe they might be hard to carve. Let's just say that these bad boys were a little difficult to work with, but we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed what we came up with. Peyton of course is still a little too young to be doing is own carving. He started out wanting the biggest pumpkin, until of course he had to actually pull out the guts. You can see that he ended up switching to another pumpkin that was a little more his size and that he helped picked the design for. Of course Andy carved it. I told me how funny it was that he picked the design and then he says he is bored and leaves while Andy carves the pumpkin. But he ended up thinking it was very cool. He then had to immediately find a way to light the pumpkin.

I was also able to finish my first one about the same time Andy got down carving Peyton's pumpkin. I went with my witch theme again and since it was such a big pumpkin, I decided that I would add some words at the top. I ended up turning it enough that it actually looks like the witch's hat. It is pretty cool if I don't say so myself...

This is what my witch looked like lit up!

This is Peyton's spooky pumpkin!

We did our traditional eating the guts picture. Peyton always thinks this is so funny!

One of the pumpkins was so big, Peyts could fit his head into the opening in the top. This is the pumpkin he originally picked out but thought it was too hard to get the guts out, so he switched to the smaller one!

This is our traditional family of pumpkin heads pictures! We do this every year. After we finish carving, we put them put like they are our heads. Andy's pumpkin and mine are so big, we had a hard time hefting them up. I believe that is why my gullet is sticking out! ha!

Peyts was trying to look like a mummy!

I like my witch's head! It goes with the sign on my door at school that read, "Who needs Halloween, I'm a witch all year!" ha!

Andy's is the heaviest...he needs a little bit more on that bad boy!

This is what his looks like lit up! It is pretty cool and spooky. How would you like that thing looking in your window?

These are all three pumpkins lit up. Keep in mind we still have two more to finish...

This is my second one and it was so big that I carved three designs on it. I thought it turned out pretty cool, but I definitely got sick of carving pumpkins. Peyton took our one that looked like a butt crack pumpkin and painted it. He seemed to have the most fun with this. I forgot to get a picture but I will...it was a funny pumpkin. It grew into the fence and it made it have a design. These pumpkins were so heavy and so thick we had to scrap the insides for quite a while!

This is what my final pumpkin looked like lit up. We had them all out on our porch and lit up and then we realized it was freezing cold, so we had to haul these bad boys all back to the garage...it was not cool! But it was a fun night of carving!

We (or rather they) are the Champions...

2009-10-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

Just can't do it like Queen can...huh! Well yesterday we had the chance to go and watch Austin play for the 8th grade grid kid championship. They played against Sandcreek and it was a very good and close game. Austin had some great tackles and also some great punts...This is our cheering crew right here. Let's just say that some of the crowd gets crazy for grid kid!
Austin's team ending up winning a very close game. I believe the score was 12-13. I was actually pretty impressed. They had some great plays and their little quarterback was pretty good. Sandcreek had one kid that did pretty much everything, but once they shut him down they did great! We enjoyed watching it. As you can see it was a beautiful day. Probably one of the best we have seen in a long time. It was even hot. We went from freak snowstorm to really hot. We loved it. It did mess up some of my pictures though! There is a little bit of a glare!

I didn't do a very good job of going down on the sidelines and taking pictures this year. I had to study my lesson between plays. So I don't have any good action shots. Granny wanted me to post this for everyone so I hope you enjoy!

As you can see in this shot and the next one, they are holding their hand in the form of a "C". I'm assuming that means champions. According to Angie, they haven't since sometime last season. There is another Rocky Mountain team that is also pretty good, so it should be a fun time watching them next year when they get into high school! I may actually go to a few of those games!

This last video is a reproduction of their chant they do before and after the game! It must imitidate the others because they really do get into it. You can see that Austin doesn't have much rhythm...you'll have to work on that Aus! Great job!

The Cycle Repeats Itself...

2009-10-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

So ever since Peyton was little we thought he would love to clog. He loves dancing and he has great rhythm. Well Patty Gasser who is still teaching thank heavens decided she would do a little class. It has been kind of fun watching him learn his dance that I think those of us who took from Patty also did. There is another little boy in his class and also three little girls. They are all pretty cute...
Peyton stands by Tyson while warming up. He is doing pretty good during warm-ups...then....

...he gets in front of the mirror and all control and listening vanishes. He begins to pull faces, sit down, run up to the mirror...etc...After a lesson a while ago, we had a come to Jesus talk. I basically threatened him with everything he holds dear if he doesn't listen and do his best. That helped him improve a little...but I think he gets a little tired of marching to the beat of the same drummer and has to go out on his own. But he will be dancing for a Christmas recital I believe! Should be fun! It has brought back a lot memories of when I did this as a kid!

Them are Some Punkins'

2009-09-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

So as I write this post(October 5, 2009), I have looked out all day at about three to four inches of snow and sadly wish that fall was just starting...I've loved watching my garden grow all summer. We have been very lucky with all that we were able to harvest. I'm always a little sad as I watch it age and continue to die as the weather gets colder. A while back my dad told us that it was going to freeze and that we needed to gather in our pumpkins. We went out to do that and were kind of sad because they grew so big. Before we gathered these in, we got some great pictures to actually show how big they got. I also had some awesome sunflowers that are all now weighed down with snow. I miss fall already...and my peaches are almost out! Saddest part of the year for me!
We had a really long row this year of over 60 sunflowers. They all got at least 10 feet or taller. They were a pretty and impressive sight!

Does anyone have any good ways to get to the seeds? They are millions of them. Last year I tried, but I don't think I did so well! Any suggestions?

Loved these shots of the sunflowers and the sunset!

Here are some of our pumpkins that really grew this year. My mom told me they are called Turk's turban and they are really good to eat, however, I just wanted to grow them for decoration. We sure had a lot of these...however, our monster pumpkins are what I am the most proud of!

This plant that grew our monster pumpkins went nuts. These two pumpkins actually grew on the other side of the fence because the plant actually through the fence and then the pumpkins sprouted. It was funny because the vine of the pumpkin made it grow through into the fence and so it is deformed to look like a bum crack..we of course refer to it as the bum crack pumpkin! Ha!

Here are the bad boys....We had a hard time lifting them into our wagon to haul out of our garden and we are not sure how we are going to carve them, but we love our huge pumpkins! I believe this is the biggest thing I've ever grown!

These two grew side-by-side. I took Jake's advice and tried to put something up to it to give it perspective. I realize that my foot is not the best thing to put up...however, it was all I had at my disposal. It will show you, though, how it dwarfs my foot. I have big feet and they look small compared to these babies!

We had four total big pumpkins and some more small ones. We are excited for Halloween. So much so, that Peyton has already tried to chop into two of them...hope they make it. We duct-taped the holes he made...we'll see!

Three Steps to Heaven....mmmm!

2009-08-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Just in case any of you need a quick and highly fantastic pick me up for the week...may I recommend one of my foods of the gods....It is easy to prepare and very, very good! Step one: Get a bowl and fill it with raspberries (preferably fresh-picked from your own bushes...which does involve a little more work, but is very peaceful!)

Then you need to sprinkle those raspberries with "REAL SUGAR"...no fake imitations will do.

Finally you need to then pour on "CREAM"...notice I did not say milk...but cream. Yes the goey kind that sticks to the top of your mouth and coats the raspberries (and later your hips) like a fresh coat of paint!

I guess there is a fourth step and that is to eat! But that is where you will actually experience a little piece of heaven! My great-grandfather used to serve this as a treat when we would go to visit him...I still vaguely remember that. I believe maybe that is why I still like them. There is a little nostalgia involved in it. I've taught my little boy to say "These are to die for..." when he eats them...not literally of course, but figuratively speaking. Those of you who are worried about calories and fat, etc...only once a year won't hurt! I will not be revealing how many times I've participated in this sinfully, heavenly good treat!

Enjoy!

First Day of School...(a little late!)

2009-08-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been very excited for Peyton to go school. He has also been excited. I'm a little late in posting, but it gave me some time to think about school and education in a different light...from the perspective of a parent. The first thought I had was that Peyton is the first of the third generation of our extended family (my mom and dad) to go to Hamer school. That means we need some cousins to move here quick! Second it made me think about my role as a teacher and how every parent hopes that the teacher will like their child. I hope the teacher will treat him well. I hope she will respect the things we have tried to encourage and overlook some of his faults. I think every parent thinks their child is smart, but I really do and I hope she will challenge him even if others are slower. And if he is slower, I hope she will spend the time to help him. I know also as a parent, you have to be involved which is very hard for me. High school and the kids have been our lives for so long. Even Peyton feels like he belongs here. Now to try to figure all of that out so he has a nice and enriched time at Hamer will be hard for me. I was excited to see him enter the school that I made many great memories and some not so great memories at. I hope he loves it and that he will make friends and be nice and do the things we have taught him...like flushing and washing and not getting in people's space and listening when he is supposed to. He kind of learned a hard lesson after the first day. I looked through his papers and they were supposed to write A's and little a's. He did like three big A's and four or five little a's and then began doodling and not writing his name they way he should and as I was looking through his papers, I got mad and I made him sit down and re-do his school work. I erased his name, I erased his doodles and I told him he could do it right at school or re-do it at home. She had put a sticker on it indicating it was done, and he was a little mad at me, but I told him, he knew how to do it and he was going to do it right. We erased and re-did it and since that time, he has completed his work and written his name much better! Kids will do what you expect and no more.

He acted so big on the first day. You can see how he is posing...acting like a rock star. It was fun to go in with him. I told my principal I would be late on the first day so I could stay a while with him. It was kind of funny, but he just seemed so ready. We had a bit of a hard time (and are still having) getting him out of bed. He is not a morning person...just like his mom, but we got there and he found his desk. He had to check out all of his stuff to make sure what was there. Unfortunately and (I was not very happy about this, but found out why) we didn't get to buy school supplies for them, the school does it. And even though it was one of my most favorite things to do when school came around, I will deal with it for the years he is at Hamer. The teacher had some quiet work for them to do until all of the kids got there. He was too excited and just wanted to look around and do things and see the kids. But he did try.

As you can see he sits by a cute little girl that many of you will know as Kirk and Fawn Robbins little girl. He also share a four space with Brian his little friend and Kaylee Dalling who he went to pre-school with at Laurel's house...so he is very comfortable with most of the kids. There are 11 kids in his class. 7 of them are from Hamer and 4 come from Terreton.

I was so proud of him because he raised his hand and asked if he could go and say hi to one of his friends and the teacher told him no...which I didn't think was that big of deal...school hadn't started yet, but he did mind. He was so cute. He kept saying "You can go now, Mom" and I would say, "I just want to watch a little bit more"...but I left shortly after this. I had thought about not having him ride the bus home because I thought it would be easier to pick him up and round up his stuff, but when Granny got there, he convinced her he wanted to ride the bus...so that is just what he did. He got on Johnny's bus and rode home and has been doing it ever since!

For the most part he loves school. As I look at his schedule, and saw reading, math, reading, math, reading and then art, science, social studies, and music (only one for each day of the week and only 30 minutes long) I was a little sad because that is where he has the most fun. I wonder if maybe we aren't getting our priorities mixed up and need to refocus back into those areas, but I told my mom when I was talking with her that I guess that is where parents have to pick up what is not focused on and do it with them at home. So we will be doing more art, science, music, and social studies....The first day was a little bit hectic for me and very, very hot, but it started great and Peyton had a great day!

It Was In My Eyes!

2009-08-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

So I thought our child was finished with the scissor excitement that he was in last year when he cut his pants, his hair, his toys...etc...I thought we had managed to avoid the drastic. But for some reason...after coming home from a cooking class Saturday, I was met at the door by my sick looking husband and my smiling little boy who looked like this! He had taken the scissors and cut his hair...that yes was a little long and that yes I had an appointment to get cut in one week ( I was holding out for school!). He said it was bugging him and that it was in his eyes. Imagine the sinking feeling seeing his hair cut up to his scalp. I can't figure out why when little kids cut their hair like this, they actually think it is okay and looks good and why they have to go clear up to the scalp right in the front where it is so noticeable! I wasn't really happy with him and I told him when I was taking a picture because I might laugh in a few years, but I was very mad at him...(okay not really...but I had to make a point! I used to do this stuff too!) So I desparatley called Raquel who switched his appointment and managed to fit him. She worked wonders, but it is still a little TOO short for me. He likes the spike and thinks he is really grown-up. I keep hoping that maybe it will grow a little bit before school. It looks like someone set a bowl on his head and cut. Someone actually thought we got his hair cut like this on purpose. We didn't. He did this and I guess next time when he tells us to cut his hair and it is bugging him. I will call immediatley! Ha!

Oh What Do You Do In the Summer Time?

2009-08-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate going back to school and wondering where summer went, I can't help but feel like I didn't get all that I wanted to do accomplished. There were many projects and goals that I had this summer that kind of went by the wayside. However, this summer was very relaxing, fun, and provided a much needed break from my hectic life. This summer seemed to be one of learning for Peyton and a lot of fun for both Andy and I. We did many activities with him that seemed to be some major stepping stones. He just learned and did so many fun things. We can't wait to see what he has in store this coming year with school starting, piano lessons, and starting clogging with Patty. We are excited to see him do things and be excited for things. It is kind of sad and scary to send your child out into the "mean world". You hope he is ready and the world will be kind to him. You hope you have given him the skills he needs to make a successful start. This summer showed me how much fun it is to watch him grow.

This was from a rafting trip our whole family did at our cabin. I will be posting more of those pictures in another post, but I know that Peyton loved this trip. We all had a lot of fun.

One thing that Peyton really loved doing this whole summer was taking four wheeler rides. He actually can run one of these by himself and does pretty well driving. It is a little scary turning the reins over to a five year old, but he does it well.

T-ball was pretty miserable for me and for him I think. He had really fun and nice coaches and lots of little kids as you can see, but his mom wants him to learn right and he doesn't really want to do much. I had a hard time not wanting to yell at him the whole time to do it right while I watched him roll around on the ground or run the wrong way...etc... It was not too much fun for either of us, but he finished and hopefully next year, when he gets into some games and sports maybe start making a little more sense, it will be more enjoyable for both of us. He did love swimming lessons and really seemed to be at the right age for these. I would have loved to have him take longer, but driving into Idaho Falls every day stinks. I don't know how Andy does it. For some reason this was the highlight of the summer for him...swimming lessons and swimming in general. I think maybe we will try to do some more this year, since the Apple offers swimming all year. He learned a lot but still takes after his mom a little with regards to water in his face and nose and eyes...we both do not like this.
These two pictures are at one of the many cooking contests that Andy and I entered this year. So far we have won 500$ (we have two more we are participating in). My winning recipe has been on the cover of the Idaho Falls magazine, we have cooked and experimented with some yummy stuff and hope to continue doing well. We have really enjoyed these cooking competitions. This particular competition had singers as you can see Peyton is enjoying the guitar player and drummer, they had all you could eat ice cream, and we came away with some awards. Andy finally got a medal and two of my entries won prizes. I however fell from first place and had to settle for a second and a third! Peyton mastered the art of riding a bike this summer. I will admit it was harder than I thought to teach a kid to ride without training wheels. It was awful sending him riding and to watch him fall...time after time...but we stayed strong, took off the training wheels...did not cave and put them back on, nursed a few scrapes, overcome a few crying fits, and now he is doing awesome and is wearing his parents out to go on countless bike rides. He rode clear up to Debbie Ball's house and back with his dad last night after running around in the gym at the school for 2 hours. Oh, to bottle that kind of energy! He can stop and start by himself, he is starting to practice tricks and he has discovered a little bit of freedom that riding a bike provides. His mother worries a little but loves to watch him accomplishing things that are hard! We drug out our pool and as you can see from his face, he prefers a pool that is heated. This little guy gets cold really quickly and did not really enjoy the pool in the yard! But we did have a fun day of water fighting that day.
These next two pictures show a precious little girl who came and visited this summer. We are hoping that she will become a member of our home. We are trying to adopt her, but we don't know what will happen. As you can see it was a wonderful, stressful, learning, growing, amazing three days for us...we hope that she will join our home soon. Please pray for us if you need something to pray about! ha!

Peyts will be a great older brother, but there will be some adjusting on his part. This whole place has been his kingdom and he will have to share it. I believe though, just like this picture shows that he will great with her.

We of course took the traditional trip to Tautphus park, however, we didn't do the zoo. We got there a little late, so we just did the airplanes and miniature golf. Peyton didn't like either. He told the operater of the airplanes that he wanted to get out right now....and he got bored after one hole of golf. Needless to say, Andy and I wanted to play, but he just wanted to smack the ball around...it was a quick 18 holes. I must also say that we were very disappointed with the condition of the golf course and Tautphus park in general. It is looking old and run down. They could use some of the money they used in the skate park there to fix it up!

We also made our annual trip to Jackson...we usually do it in June around our anniversary, but we were busy then I guess???. We thought Peyton would like the wild west shoot out that I thought would be great, but was a little cheesy. However he loved it and even got a bullet from one of the "real cowboys" that he fired in the show. Of course then we had to visit the shops and we found a real cowboy belt that Peyton had to buy. He purchased it with his money he won from the parade....so I guess his mom didn't really have a say in that one.

For some reason when we go in stores, we love to try on funny hats and take pictures. This is just a tradition that Andy and I have done when we travel. I thought this was a pretty funny one.

Peyton wasn't too sure for a second if this thing was real or not! When he discovered it wasn't going to attack him, he thought it was pretty cool.

Of course, the traditional Jackson picture. We then went to the Playhouse which was featuring Grease. I love the Jackson Hole Playhouse because they just do such a great job acting and singing. We didn't know how Peyts would like it, but he loved it. He watched entranced the whole night. I missed the slow-motion fight scene and thought that it is getting more expensive each time we go, but I'm glad we got to fit this trip in....

So this is what we did in the summer time...with a few other things. I read a whole bunch and really got hooked into books about the Holocaust. I've never really been interested, but I read four this summer and really am intriguied...all from very different points of view, all fiction, but all based upon actual things that happened. I would love anymore suggestions of good books about this. I'm sad summer is ending. It has been for the most part a very peaceful, needed break. We have a lot of fun memories....

The Fruits of Our Labors/A little of Last Year too!

2009-08-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

So for some reason I have the gardening bug. I caught it last year. I guess this is something powerful and god-like about growing a garden. You take something you can barely see in the palm of your hand and your grow it into something like out here! I love my garden. I don't even eat everything in it, but I wanted to grow it. I started gardening last year and we had a lot of fun. You forget how much work it is and then you try it again. This year, for some reason and doing something I have no idea what, I hurt my back and haven't been able to do all I wanted to do in the garden. If you look close, you will see more weeds than I would like, but we did a garden, nonetheless. It is growing and it is producing. This is one of my favorite parts of the year...harvest and seeing what you have done pay off. For the most part, besides meat, I could eat every night something from my garden and I'm putting away stuff so that I can continue to do so. This is the whole thing in four sections. Everyone tells me it is huge, but I don't think it is that bad. Over in the corner is where our pumpkins and peppers are growing. I have some pumpkins on, but I don't think I'm going to get peppers...we'll see. I started this section for little seeds inside of my house. Some grew some didn't, I don't know which ones will take and what kind of pumpkins I have growing. I was a little sad because I did a bunch of melons this way too but none of them lived and I didn't plant more...so we didn't try melons this year! :-( Then I have three rows of beans. This year we decided to plant yellow and purple beans along with the normal green beans. I love color and really got into trying different colors of things this year. As you can see the purple and yellow ones are so pretty. I haven't cooked any of the colored ones up yet. They are new. So we will be trying them soon. Beans are kind of a funny thing because they are so plentiful. For six bucks, we grow enough green beans to feed us all year. I think I would become a bean farmer if I had to choose. This little suckers just keep coming. We have given away, frozen, and snapped so many beans and the funny thing is, we are just starting with them! I would hire pickers if I did own a bean farm...miserable!I'm not a few of canned beans, so most of mine I freeze. We love them that way and they taste like they are right out of the garden (for the most part!)After our beans we have peas...our peas took a hit this year maybe from all of the rain, but they have been producing fairly well in the last little while. I'm not a fan of peas except for fresh from the garden...and since I know grow my own, I can eat as many as I would like! I do freeze a few and use them a little throughout the year...but don't really care for them except for from the pod! We have have two rows of lettuce. I loved growing lettuce last year, so this year I tried a wide variety of kinds...I got kind of funky and had 21 different kinds to try. They didn't all grow, but I still went back to three favorites. The others taste bitter. I guess I haven't acquired a taste for arugala and other funky greens...yet! But they were fun and pretty to grow. I don't like the red lettuce, but it sure is pretty and gives some color so I planted a little bit this year! The green leaf is my favorite and I haven't done a very great job of harvesting it this year. I have given a bunch away, but we have only enjoyed it a few times. I need to do better before it goes bad...however, I'm thinking about growing some inside during the fall and winter! I still have a bunch of seeds...just need to find the right planter!

After our lettuce we have two and a half rows of carrots with about five different colors...We have the normal orange carrots which are very good this year, red carrots (not good), yellow carrots (not too good either, but I was told by someone who ate them, they are good cooked!), and purple carrots which are my favorite! I grew these last year and loved them. I grew white carrots last year and didn't care for them....so I didn't grow them this year.

This year I also tried four different kinds of beets. I don't even really like them, but they looked pretty. There were some yellow beats, the normal kind, a bulls-eye kind of white and red, and an elongated one that looked like a carrot! They were fun to grow and I need to figure out what to do with them! Then I have my onions and potatoes. We planted yellow and red onions (my favorite) and red potatoes and a few fingerling potatoes that I am looking forward to trying! We try to harvest these and save them into the fall and winter! It is nice to not have to buy them for a while! I'm hoping to keep them longer this year! Then we have our corn. We have 6 1/2 rows of corn. One whole row, though is decorating and popcorn corn..I hope they turn out. I have four different kinds of this growing. Then we have 5 1/2 rows of eating corn...if it turns out, we could be in for tons of corn! argh...I planted a variety of kinds this year. Last year my corn turned out, but it wasn't that great of a yield. Hopefully we can figure it out this year!

My next section is our rhubarb, strawberries, tomatoes, and ZUCCHINI! We got a whole bowl full of these! We also have some apple trees growing in this section, but I don't know if they are going to do much? We will see. I didn't pick our rhubarb soon enough, so I didn't get as much as I normally like, but I'm hoping to get a bit more from some of the younger ones. Our strawberries at first were a little rough. We did some transplanting and made some new rows and now have a whole bunch of strawberries. We have quite a few rows producing big nice berries. I've made strawberry jam, strawberry leather and will be freezing strawberries. These are not my favorite, but Andy loves them..and I'm slowly getting converted. My tomatoes look a little rough, but I have some coming on...hopefully we will be able to enjoy them...My mom though will be in tomota heaven..her plants are huge and beautiful! My favorite this year has been my ZUCCHINNI. My husband laughs because I always plant too much, but this year I did about seven different kinds of ZUCCHINNI. We laughed because at a fruit market we stopped at, you could buy 10 ZUCCHINI for 1 dollar! It is the fruitcake of the garden..you can't give it away! But I like it. I find a variety of ways to use it and I freeze it to make zucchini bread in the winter...we love that!
These are some of my different kinds of Zucchini...they are wonderful battered and fried! YUM!

Finally the last thing in my garden, but the one I love the most is my raspberry patch. They still haven't produced yet this year because they are late bloomers...They like to bloom in the fall. Last year they were so yummy! I'm holding out hope they produce like they did last year. We'll see! I haven't been able to weed and transplant as well I would have liked in my patch this year, but I see lots of buds...cross your fingers!

Finally this year I wanted to do an herb garden. It needs to be weeded which I'm going to try and do this afternoon! I grew dill for my mom..but because I wanted to also! I grew mint, peppermint, and chocolate mint which you can see below. I also grew spearamint. I just now have to figure out how to use it all! I will be drying some!

I have rosemary, thyme, pineapple sage, and lavendar! They smell so good and like above I need to learn how to use them.

Finally if you look in between the weeds you will see some fresh parsley! This was a fun new experiment! And they are perennials, so they are supposed to come back!

These are our little melons we grew last year. I was sad we didn't get any in the ground this year! These other pictures are of some of the fruits of our labors last year...I was going to post them last year and have had it saved since then, so I'm posting them now! I'm looking forward to doing all of the canning and peach season coming up.

We didn't grow cabbage last year because of worms and the smell! argh! We did grow sunflowers and I look forward to them coming out soon! They are bout 12-13 ft. tall right now, but we don't have flowers on them yet!

I Vow a Post a Day...Summer is OVER!

2009-08-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

As my summer is winding down, I've felt really bad to "let" my blog go. We have done so many fun things that I want to capture and remember. I think I will work my way backwards and my goal is to do a post a day. So today I start with school shopping in Utah...The pictures are mostly of the fun stuff we did, but this year we went to the Park City Outlets and let's just say that they are so cool. They have tons of places for kids clothes and I loved them!

Andy jokes about going to outlets to save money, but you end up spending just as much because you think you are getting such a good deal, so you buy a lot. Let's just say we had some major arranging to do when we got home. Sonnet is not going to school, but Andy also joked that her fall wardrobe is complete! I told him a girl has to have clothes...and yes girls are so much more complicated but more fun to shop for! I mean how many sports, cars, guitars, and camo shirts can you buy!

My other favorite part of our trip was going to Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs. These are our favorite restaurants. Andy and I joked after receiving the bill for both places that we are glad we only visit these when we travel, but they are so good! Our kids even like both places. We bought some cheesecake and took it back to the hotel after the dinner because we were stuffed. We ate it later that night after swimming....however, one unlucky piece got left in the little fridge in the hotel. Let's just say both Peyton and I begged Andy to go back to Sandy, Utah and get it, but he wouldn't because we were in Brigham City! ha! Some lucky cleaner hopefully ate it. That was a topic of conversation for us on the way...would you eat it if you were the cleaning person? You should be able to tell that it hadn't even been touched! I don't know if I could even though it was Cheesecake Factory. I hope they enjoyed it though if they did eat it!

One of our favorite things to do in Utah is go to the Sandy Aquarium. It is pretty cool and the kids really liked it. Sonnet was so interested in everything you showed her. Peyton kind of buzzed through the place and kept asking when we could go back to the hotel and swim! That is all he wanted to do!

I have cute little frog wranglers! You get to pretend you are driving a boat. Peyton loves this! And of course, Sonnet had to do it too...since brother did it! You also get to pet sting rays...with the stingers taken out of course...but it always makes me laugh to see how bad Peyton wants to do it until he gets up there. You can see above that he is attempting to touch it with one finger, but it flapped at him and my camera was in the right place at the right time...as you can see below...they are kind of creepy! Sonnet didn't care much for them either! She did however want to pet the octopus through the glass! She thought he was cool! These are my favorite. I love watching them and could watch them for hours! They are so cool!

My cute little indians posing in the canoe...But now it is time to go back and swim...

Don't Look Under There....You Dirty Rat!!!!

2009-07-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

So the other day my husband and I were trying to hurry and get all of our flowers planted because we were leaving for four days and they also really needed to be planted...anyway, we were doing some stuff on our deck and he had this bench that I built a couple of years ago at a super Saturday that totally fell apart. It had been bugging me and I wanted to throw it away, but we had been doing some planting on it and keeping some of our plants there...well Andy walked over to it and saw a bunch of animal poop....and he just kind of passed it off as a ground squirrel or something. I was very disturbed that something was pooping there and so I determined I was going to get rid of the darn bench and clean it up. So I go over and pick up the bench and low and behold something comes running at me. Now I'm not the type to be a hysterical female and I've always tried to be tough with mice, small rodents, etc...because I always thought girls who were afraid of them were stupid, but this just plumb creeped me out. I dropped that bench like it was on fire, I ran off our porch and screamed like a little girl. Well I told me husband after I calmed down a bit to go and get the darn thing. He got a shovel and even though he seemed a little scared of it himself, went up and proceeded to smash it on the head with a shovel. He definitely squished/smashed/killed the thing. It still gives the creeps when I think about that little thing charging me...My dad informed us that is was a pack rat. We think it was stirred up because they are knocking down and cleaning up some junk across the way from us. They think that stirred them up. They are also out in my dad's barn. It really creeped me out to know that thing was there while we were outside. I don't know how long it was there, but it just gave me the willies. Be careful the next time you decide to look under something for it just might be a dirty rat!

(Scroll down a nice surprise!)

Red Jello Happens..

2009-07-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

So have you ever just had one of those days? One where you were extremely busy...extremely stressed, don't have enough time, have places to go and people to see and projects to finish and food to cook and a lesson to plan and a parade to watch and a picnic to go to, and family to hang out with, and fireworks to watch, and on and on...well that was my day. I was making the famous knox blox jello flags. I usually make blue and red, but only had red and orange jello. So I go to put the flimsy jello molds in my fridge which is already really full. I set the orange one in the fridge and then try to attempt to put the red criss cross on top of the orange one. Well it didn't want to sit there and it was rocking and rolling because the molds are very flimsy and it just wouldn't stay. I didn't know where else to put it, so I finally got it balanced on top of the orange one and began to shut the door. When I heard a terrible sound... Yes, you guessed it, it sounded like something spilling. I opened the fridge and felt like something had been murdered in my fridge. There was runny red jello all over my fridge! I was too tired, busy, and horrified to do much but go out and yell at my husband to come and look. By then I was able to kind of smile and joke about it. He offered to clean it up, but I knew he was busy and I was busy...so we left the murder scene in our fridge for I hate to say two more days...I didn't feel like doing it on Sunday but I did it on Monday. I wasn't too worried because my fridge needed a good cleaning anyway, but every time we opened the fridge door, it looked like someone had been murdered.

Let's just say that in life sh$%$#$ happens....but from now on I will say, "RED JELLO" happens! And if you can laugh about it, it will help. I won't tell you it took about three hours to clean my fridge and that red jello was in every crack and crevice, drawer and shelf...but my fridge now looks like new!

Fireworks, Parade, and Family...Fourth of July Fun

2009-07-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of fun over the fourth of July. Peyton has really enjoyed everything he has done this year with all of the holidays. This is such a fun age. He wanted to stop at the fireworks stand and we bought those silly little fireworks that cost an arm and a leg and don't really do much...but he loved them. I must admit that this big sparkler is pretty cool.

We then broke out the small sparklers and luckily made it through no little boy burning another one.
Peyts decided he needed to be tricky and did two at a time.

My family always does a family show on the third of July with Jake and my dad displaying their stash of not quite legal fireworks that they have acquired either on the Indian reservation or in another state. I believe this year it was another state. I don't know why Idaho is so stiff about it, they are actually pretty fun. So these next pictures are out on my uncle's lawn because of the location where we shoot them off. I don't know if I can mention, where but it is quite a show. I told everyone we needed to charge to come to the pre-show of what will happen the next day.

Andy is fooling around with some fireworks and he shot some photos of me too, but they are all blurry. That is why I never have any pictures of me on here!

This is the whole crew playing around with fireworks. We have quite a crowd!

This is the master pyrotechnician himself. What would we do without Jake's love of blowing things up and fire. This career of fireworks started very young and very illegally...when Jake stole an M-80 from Bruv and attempted to blow not only himself up, but my grandpa's field! Then his life of crime continued when he attempted to throw a salute on his teacher's lawn...it is a good thing it died, for it could have really done some damage. He was shot at on this attempt...Luckily the teacher missed! Now he his registered to do this kind of stuff and the only real illegal thing he does is buy fireworks that he shouldn't shoot off in Idaho! Thanks for the nice pre-show!

Pam has always been Jake's sidekick at this family fireworks shows. She is helping Peyts get his sparkler going.

Peyts loved the sparklers this year. He did have a hard time not putting them in people's faces and around their hair. He also liked dropping them on the ground and stomping on them!

This is a photo that Peyts took of Andy and I. How nice that he can actually take pictures of us! He did a pretty good job especially when you see some of the othes he took. We had a lot of leg pictures!

Andy is quite a creative dude and I had the bright idea for Peyts to drive a tank this year and wear his army clothes that he just purchashed (yes against my better judgement!) I usually just have to dream up some idea and Andy can make it happen. This year he just happened to create a tank out of Peyton's little gator that my dad bought him three years ago. This little thing has been turned into a fire engine, too! We don't know what we are going to do next year, but it turned out awesome. Andy gets all of the credit for this one!

Let's just say that some little boy thought he was a real soldier. I wrote this little poem on the back of it that he is standing by, but he drove it too fast through the parade for anyone to read.

I’m a tough COWBOY,
a brave FIREMAN,
a courageous COP.
I’m SUPERMAN,

BATMAN,
and ROBIN.
I’m a smart DOCTOR,
a clever SCIENTIST,
a wise TEACHER
I’m a valiant SOLDIER,
an obedient SERVICEMAN,
a decorated GENERAL
I am a little BOY,
the bright FUTURE,

the SPIRIT OF AMERICA!

Looking at this picture you can see that the above poem rings true. He really feels that he is all of these things. He thought he was so cool in his tank. It was rather funny watching him in the parade scoot around in that little box. He thought he was pretty big!
The only way into this thing was through the hole in the top. I guess that makes it more realistic.

This is the crew at the parade. We have a specific spot that we park at all of the time. This year it was a little invaded by people. I wasn't that happy, but it worked out all the same. The parade seemed to zoom by really fast this year. I got Peyton on video driving around and it was rather quick so I don't have photos of him. Holly also made a float with the kids on it. It was historical figures from the past and some modern day soldiers. It actually won the grand prize. Peyton won most creative and got 20 dollars for his prize. That was pretty fun!

Every year after the parade we go back to Mom's house and eat. We always have a bunch of great food, but the highlight is surely the scones and dutch oven chicken. I believe my parents are getting sick of it, but we sure enjoy it. After we gab and eat, we go over and watch the fireworks at the school.

I attempted to film the show but only got a little bit. I also had my camera turned the way that I thought would capture it best and forgot that if I turn my camera this way and film, that everything is sideways. I figured you can still enjoy the fireworks this way and Jake wanted to see them, so just remember it is sideways. It was quite a show this year and I know that everyone enjoyed it. It lasted over 20 minutes and only had a few short ones that made us all a little nervous! Good job pyrotechnics crew! I tried to upload the long one, but it won't let me...so I guess you get the really, really short one! :-) (Okay so I've tried three times to upload the footage and it won't let me...so I guess no footage! sorry!)

Airshow Extraordinaire

2009-07-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

So we decided that Peyton would love to go to the airshow in Rexburg, and he did. However he loved the army stuff they had there more than he loved the airplanes. I think if he had been able to actually go in the airplanes like he was able to go into the army stuff he might have liked the planes. There were some really cool stunt planes and some fun old planes. He really had a great time.

Rexburg Air museum has a bunch of cool planes. Andy told me that they even used some on the movie Armegeddon. Peyts had a hard time just looking at the planes...A lot of people had their hangars open to go in and look, but he wanted to get in.

As you can see he is just thrilled with the Army stuff because he could get in and go crazy. He would not leave this section and we were there getting into and out of Army stuff for a long time!

Some guy had his helicopter there and he was letting kids get into it, but he also get a little touchy if they touched too many things. You can see Peyts just sitting there, wanting to press everything! So then he would run back to the Army stuff!

These are some of the weapons they had on display there. I hope that they aren't real, but I think they are!

This is a cool old Navy plane. Again, you can't really see it because they are covered, but they had some really neat planes there!

This is one of the stunt planes. There were two planes there that were a little nuts....a red one and a yellow one. The yellow one acted like it was a drunk plane...it would fall, lose stuff off of it...nosedive etc...The red plane was pretty cool...it was nuts and you will see from the clips!

These two old planes were flying in formation with each other. They were cool too!

As we were leaving we found this silly car in one of the parking lots. I thought it was too funny not to show you! Some people are funny! I wish I had an old shaggin' wagon like that to paint all of the time!

I found the gold...you all should give it up!

2009-06-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

Just in case you are all wondering...the rainbow found its end at our house! We recovered the gold and are shortly going to be leaving for an island that we bought....just kidding. These pictures were taken by a neighbor (Lori Eddins) who noticed this event happening during our rainy season that we have been having. I can't believe how much it has rained. I am one for rainy days and so I haven't minded too much, but I want the sun to come out a little so my garden will grow. By the way, Andy maintains that Lori took these photos so that she could hunt down the gold...maybe she is the one that found it and she feels guilty so she is offering us these pictures...what do you think?

Back when Andy and I lived in the rat trap, we went out and saw a rainbow ending right on top of Blaine and Connie Larsen's house and we thought how ironic that some people get all the luck! Well now maybe our luck is shifting. I'll let you all know!

Actually, just kidding...we are very blessed and we love our home, our town, our family, and feel like we do have the luck of the rainbow's end blessing us. Thanks for taking the photos Lori!

My High School Heroes...

2009-06-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

So last week was high school graduation and I spoke at it which was stressful and frustrating but mostly a little sad. There were some really fun kids and ones that I got attached to, but also ones that Peyton really got attached to. They were goofy, spirited, smart, interesting, and kind young men...not ones that you run into very often any more. Each one will hold a special place in my heart because of how they treated Peyton.... Justin always saw Peyton at church and Peyts would try to get him to come into church. One of the cutest memories I have is that when Peyton went out, he told Justin that he needed to come in and when he did Peyton just lit up...Justin has always said hi and treated Peyton special...

Bob also is one of my favorite, favorite kids ever...Just in case anyone wants to know, he was one of the best if not the best football players I've seen at West Jefferson. He also has a scholarship to Western Montana to play football. He is a modern-day Rudy. He has worked so hard for the last three years. I will miss watching him, but I'll also miss teaching him. What a great student to have in class (most of the time!). He was also so nice and sweet to Peyton. I think that every time Peyton went out to the school, he wanted to see Willy, Bob and Justin. They would just make him feel like the cat's meow. Bob is also Peyton's cousin and he is a good babysitter when I've needed him for a second or two at the high school. I really will miss that kid....He told Peyton to hold up a number 1 finger and that is what I will remember most about Spencer is how he does strive for excellence in all that he does...through hard work and dedication. I hope Peyton will try to be like that when he is older...maybe just more with school work! :-)
Finally Willy who is probably one of the most amazing young men I've had the opportunity to teach. He may not be your straight A student, but this kids knows how to work...and yes he did get an A from me this last trimester because he worked his tail off. This kid has his priorities in line and will be serving a mission soon. He told Peyton in Wendy's after a football game to "Listen to his mom and eat his food!". Even though Peyton has never done this since, he still remembers what Willy said and he is always lifting our table and trying to be as tough as Willy and Bob. They were so kind and were great role models and examples for Peyts. I will miss them next year because there just doesn't seem to be kids who will fill that spot for Peyts...but I know they will always keep in touch and still be very important to Peyton....

At graduation, Peyton even decided he wants to be smart like these boys. It was nice of them to let him feel that way!

What a great group of kids!

It has been a while.....thoughts on summer, skunk traps, slivers, sounds of music and sunsets

2009-06-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

Can I just say, I love summer. I feel like I've been running a school marthon and of course I finished last, -last one to turn in grades, last one to leave building, last one to start my vacation-but I finished. It has been a great year, but a busy and hectic one. I can't decide why I felt like a first year teacher again and was SOOOOO busy planning and grading, but it just seemed like it would never stop. I finally got outside last night and did some weeding in my perennials which are looking so beautiful and in my strawberries and it finally felt like summer. No worries, no cares, and today I slept in until...hold onto your socks...9:00 a.m. I never thought that I would think that sleeping in until 9:00 would be like heaven, but it was. I don't plan on making a practice of that because I have a lot of goals this summer, but it is sure nice....to actually feel like you don't have any responsibilities.
So lately, I've been trying to capture some of the funny, ingenious, and unique things my little boy does and I've been pretty successful in my quest. I've caught him just recently being very creative outside. We both feel like new people now that we can get outside. He was making something with all of these junk parts he found on the abandoned land next door to us. It was quite the set up as you will see and so I filmed him explaining his skunk trap. For some funny reason he is deathly afraid of skunks...we aren't sure, but if he gets a wiff of their scent or thinks there might be skunks, he kind of panics. I believe it is because of me...I do not like them either and I am deathly afraid of getting sprayed...I guess because I've actually had four or five close calls, but they are pretty funny stories now...well anyways, he devised a skunk trap...(we actually caught a skunk in a trap at our house because it kept coming and eating our cat food...a couple of times it about got Andy! It also sprayed in our garage once and we had a hard time sleeping for a couple of days, but not too bad.) So this is the skunk trap.

I also caught Peyton making some repairs on our deck. It was pretty funny...I'm glad I remembered when I got in trouble for using a roll of tape to make a tape ball. I remembered that and thus did not get mad at my industrious child and his explanation of what he did was that now we would get slivers when we touched those poles on our deck. I thought it was pretty clever of him.
(sorry anyone know how to switch the angle?)

He also decided since his mother won't buy him drums that he'll make up his own. He really does crack us up sometimes with what he comes up with. This was pretty clever...he uses chineechopsticks...or our chopsticks as his drum sticks and various buckets around the house and created his own drum set. Let's just say it was much more pleasant that an actual set of drums.

And finally the other night after a rainstorm we caught a beautiful sunset. I didn't really capture the beauty, but I sure love the sunsets that happen right out my window. I love living in this place. It sure is beautiful and peaceful and I look forward to a summer full of peace and relaxation with the only thing being hard is my yardwork. Happy summer....and look forward to a little more constant blogging...I'm excited about that too!

Easter Fun...

2009-04-16T17:45:00.001-07:00

We will be going in reverse order for an Easter update. This picture was taken of the "couple's egg hunt" that dad did. There were random eggs with candy in them and other prizes. No one told us he was going to throw them inside of scratchy bushes and under dead things with stickers in them. I had scratches on my arms from it. However, Ryan and Pam were the most gung ho and ended up finding the most eggs. Andy and I, I think came in last place. We didn't do so hot. However, I think Angie stole a big egg from Andy and he's too nice to take it back from her! :-)

This is Peyton's loot after we did the hunt on the lawn. I think after the Lion's Club hunt and the little hunt we do for him at home, he didn't care how many he got, he just wanted to find the cool eggs.

This is our line-up for the hunt. We had some pretty piddily numbers. However, I believe we have some pictures like this when Sas and Phyllis still started. Mom gave out prizes for certain eggs and we definitely learned why Sas and Phyllis never had her help...They were prizes from her left-over happy meals and some broke upon opening...Let's just say they fit the category of the "Not so Grand Prizes!" :-)

This is Peyton's easter outfit that we got him. I thought he looked just like a cute Easter egg. I'm glad some stores are a little more brave and have "cute" boy clothes!
He definitely strutted his stuff in this picture!

One of my favorite things about this year is how cute Peyton has been at holidays. Five is such a cute age. They believe anything. Well his plan this year was to "catch" the Easter Bunny and take all of his chocolate rabbits. Well I then proceeded to tell him that when I did that the Easter Bunny hid my baskets harder. His eyes got all big but he still was going to catch him. Well needless to say he feel asleep and we put him to bed. We then hid his stuff a little bit harder than we normally do. We also make a bunny trail that you will see below and none of the bunny trails led to where his stuff was. So when he finally found it I told him that maybe the Easter Bunny had heard him talking about catching him and so he hid his bunny hard! This picture is a result of that discussion. I would say it is priceless!

Peyton is the only kid I know who genuinely loves this silly chocolate rabbits. I always thought they were cool as a kid, but the chocolate was crappy. He just loves them. I wasn't real thrilled that Walmart only had a "gangster" bunny, but Peyton took care of all the accessories very quickly and then proceeded to go for the ears. He will probably never finish it, but it was worth it for such a cute picture.

The search is over! He found it after a little bit of looking. I should have done it harder, but I thought I had.

The bunny trail leading to the basket!

We have never done egg dying at our house so this was the inaugural year for this. I wasn't really sure quite how to do it and had to actually read instructions. I also did not know that I had to use white vinegar and so had to bum some from mother. After this, though, I believe we had some great eggs. I only cooked 18 because I thought Peyts could do quite a few and Andy and I could do one or two, however, we went through that 18 very quickly. I think we had enough colors for 60 eggs if not more, but we had a fun time.

As you can see we had an inundation of "blue" eggs. I'm outnumbered and didn't get too many eggs. It got kind of funny after a while because every time Peyts would pick up a new egg, he would find a blue color to put it in.

We went out and hid the eggs for Peyts. I think he thought he had to ride his four wheeler around to find the eggs. I guess that is the modern way to egg hunt! It made us laugh. I believe he actually only ran over a couple!

I love to see Peyton's creativity. He decided if he used his finger he could paint the eggs without dipping them in. We also tried some tape and went a little crazy with the crayons.

The many colors!

These were the winners of the Hamer Easter Egg hunt. Peyton actually won something for the first time ever....if you don't count the "pink bunny" that dad walked him to when he was two because no one could find it. He was very excited until he learned he couldn't pick the prize he really wanted (the one that the kid by him has). He had seen the prizes all week at Mom's and thought he would get what we wanted...but he ended up liking what he found!

I'm sure many people think that dad had something to do with Peyton finding the prize egg, but he didn't. He found it on his own and as I was thinking about, not too many of us have ever won at this hunt...it was almost like we were jinxed! I'm glad he got it because next year, he'll be up with the older kids.

The loot he found in the Hamer Easter Egg hunt!

He was very excited for this hunt. I actually think he knew what he was doing this year!
We had a great Easter in reverse order! Holidays are sure fun with kids. They remind us of our own fun memories we had when we were their age!

Just Like Daddy

2009-03-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

So my little boy I'm finding lately wants to be just like Daddy. I guess I'm lucky that I'm married to such an amazing guy. Andy is learning to play the guitar and Peyts is so fascinated with it. He wants to do it just like his Dad. However every once in a while the little rock star on him breaks out. As you can see in the picture below...

Everything that Daddy does, Peyton wants to do it. You can see how intently he is watching him. It makes me think of that poem about little kids watching our every move and emulating what we do. This little boy has made us all think about everything we do and to shape up a little. I have to watch every word I say. We have to think about movies we've watched with him in mind.

This is my most recent favorite on wanting to be like Daddy. If you look close, you will see Peyts with a little missionary badge. I thought this was so cute. I do hope our little boy grows up to be just like his Daddy. He will be a good man if he does.

Pay It Forward

2009-02-23T18:43:00.001-08:00

"The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive a handmade gift from me during this year. When and What will be a surprise. There's a small catch though....Post this same thing on your blog and then come back and leave a comment telling me you're in. Remember, only the first 3 comments receive the gift."
I happened upon this fun little game from Monica and Geri it's top 3 only.
be quick!
{p.s. email me your address if you'd be so kind.}

My Two Sweet Valentines...

2009-02-14T23:19:00.000-08:00

So there are perks to living in a house full of males. I received two sweet valentines from my sweet valentines. Andy knows that unlike most women, I don't really want red roses. I love, love, love orange roses and I love when he gets them for me. This year, they were a light peach, but they were so pretty. Not to take anything away from the pretty roses, I think this was one of my favorite valentines I've received. I love his scratchy little writing that says "I love you, Mom". I think this was my first gummy lump (read Robert Fulghum). It was so cute, because Andy helped him make it, and he couldn't wait until Valentine's Day to give it to me. So I got it two days early. I now know why Moms love this stuff. It was the sweetest thing I've gotten in a long time. If you look really close, you will see a combine and on the back is a tractor with tracks. I love Valentine's Day!

My sweet husband has been writing a story every year that he adds to and I receive it on Valentine's Day. I'm amazed and thrilled with what he comes up with every year. I sure love him.

Cookies, Cookies, and More Cookies

2009-02-14T22:44:00.000-08:00

So twice a year I get brave enough to attempt to make sugar cookies...Halloween and Valentine's. This Valentine's week, I decided to try some new recipes and I couldn't whittle down which ones to use, so I ended up using three different recipes. This turned out to be a five in the evening to an eleven at night project.

. The first batch as you can see were rolled in sugar and they were pretty easy. We had fun getting out all of the colored sugar that I own and rolling these cookies into it. Peyton and Andy even made one that looked like a rubics cube.

Then the real work started and we had to cut out two batches of sugar cookies, bake them, and then wait for them to cool enough to be frosted and decorated.

As you can see this is something that Peyton loves to do. He gets very messy, but does a pretty good job. We have been doing this since he was three, and I must say that this year I was very impressed. His cookies looked great and he was very creative.

This was his plate of lips that he decorated. I thought they were so cute. He said he made them for Aunt Pam because she is smooching so much lately.

These are the John Deere cookies that Peyts thought he needed to do.

Andy is such a good sport. We were both really tired that night, but we got through them fairly well.

I joined a cookie cutter and recipe club a long time ago...and every month they would send recipes, cutters, and sprinkles. I have so many sprinkles that we have quite the party decorating.

These are my favorite cookies that Peyton decorated. He did such a great job. Peyton got bored, and Andy and I had a lot of cookies to finish. The best recipe that I tried was a lemon one. The frosting was lemon and the recipe was lemon. They were to die for. However, at 11:00 p.m. at night we were sick of sugar cookies, from sampling dough, frosting and actual cookies and being on our feet until then, we pretty much gave all of the cookies away because we were sick of them.

What's the Deal?

2009-02-14T22:39:00.000-08:00

For those of you that know me, you will understand the message...for those of you that don't, congratulations, Sherry!

Mr. January Organization

2009-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

It takes me approximately one year to undo all of the fabulous organization that is in my home and done by my husband. That is why January is dedicated to organization for the month. It is what we learn about in FHE and it is what we do for activities. My husband was blessed with a lot better sense of order than I was, and he is really good at helping me organize. I'm very good at making messes but also finding things to contain my mess. I also provide us with some humor because usually by about September, it becomes very dangerous and fun to open our cupboards. It also reveals some interesting finds! So every year, I help him pull out all of the messes I've made and let him work his magic.

As you can see below, this is our pantry. We aren't quite done with cleaning it, but Andy has started and it is already looking better than what you see below.

The next order project is usually my cupboards in my kitchen. It gets to the point after that whole year that some of them don't even shut. I'm very good at messing up the order he tries to create. But I do really well if I can tell him where to put stuff I use a lot. He is so amazing, he has even organized my closet. He did that a few years ago, and for the most part, I do very well with his system. He arranges by color and by style. So pants are all by each other. Dresses and skirts are by each other. Short sleeved shirts are all arranged by color and long sleeved shirts are arranged by color.

These pictures of lovely cupboards that you are looking at, are ones that I've messed up and that don't close very well. This one below was so full that every time you opened it, something would fall out on top of you. Sometimes it did it without even opening the cupboard.

As you can see, the before and after is a very amazing transformation. He takes my mess and provides order. I love opening up this cupboard and finding what I need a lot more quickly than I did before. I even used the lemon pepper that I didn't know I had and spiced up our chicken dish the other night.

This was my favorite messy cupboard. It is above my stove and it is where we keep the medicine, but also my gum, vases, and other random things we don't use very often. However, because I'm a gum addict, I open this cupboard quite frequently and much to my surprise, even though I know it is going to happen, something would fall out of this cupboard. Sometimes it would even fall into what was cooking on the stove. It usually made a huge mess when it did this. This is the final product of Andy's organization.

This shows him in the process of doing the job just so you can see it really is him. I believe he hires out for 100 dollars a house! Just kidding. This is the last cupboard I took a picture of just so you can see. It was jam packed with papers and magazines and other odds and ends and he just whipped it into shape. He cleaned out our game closet so that we can actually find a game to play without pulling out all of the others on top of our heads. Just to make you all very jealous, even organizes my sock drawer according to color. Besides all of his added attributes that I love, I love that he provides order to my chaotic life. I like to think that I not only provide him with a winter hobby but a little random chaos and confusion! :-)

The Only Reason I Love Winter!

2009-01-27T13:25:00.000-08:00

So yesterday the weather was really yucky from a Sunday quick blizzard. Our roads were covered in drifts. I thought for sure we would be out of school on Monday. Our school board (who shall remain unnamed and only referred to as a much loved and respected group from this author's opinion) felt that it wasn't that bad outside. Even though I was mad I had to be in school, I kind of agreed with them. I was able to make it to school fairly easily. However, others were not as much in agreement as I was. Granted, I didn't sleep all night waiting for a phone call telling me school would be out, but it never came and I ended up at school very tired from not sleeping all night waiting for a phone call that would tell me I didn't have school. But I did!

So last night (Monday night) I went to bed with a little hope of getting out of school, but not really believing it would happen. I guess it was supposed to be cold, but my mom said it wouldn't get that cold. So I went to bed and at 5:50 a.m. I received a phone call telling me it was too cold to go to school. Needless to say, I was very delighted to be able to have a "free" day off and be able to sleep in in a warm and cozy bed. I guess some areas around registered -31 degrees below, however, I am convinced that our school without fail always has a "make-up" call day to make up for the fact that they should have let out school the day before but didn't. Then they get a bunch of mad people calling them and they let school out the next day to make up for it. I'm an avid lover of basketball and have seen this phenominon happen all the time by officials who knew they made a "bad" call. Then they make one to kind of make up for it. Whether it was too cold or just a make-up call, I'll take it. It is one of the few professions that provides these nice "mental" health days for its employees, because we have to keep in mind the safety of the children. I love my job on days like this. I even like winter when it does enough to keep me home! Everyone pray for more cold!

There's no day like "Snow" day

2009-01-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

So we got some snow yesterday, and it actually was kind of nice outside, so Peyts conned us all into going out and playing the snow. I will admit that I do not really like snow or playing in it, but it was pretty fun yesterday. Our cute little angel had to make a snow angel first thing. It was funny because as soon as he got up and moved he would fall back down into the snow to make a new one. We finally went and tried out Dad's snowmobile. We couldn't figure out how to get it working, so we had to call Dad. I guess it was a good thing, because you only had to push the gas to get it going. Once we got it going, we decided it was pretty fun to ride on it. It really has some get up and go....

I actually pulled Peyts around quite a bit and we only once about wrapped around a pole. He must have been in a good mood because I dumped him off of the sled about 10 times and he would just giggle and get back on.
We tried to go over by grandpa's house, but the problem was the snow was melting and so we had to go to our back yard...which was actually kind of fun. We have a lot of hills and we had a lot snow that wasn't tromped on.

It was also pretty fun, because Peyton usually gets so cold, but it really was nice outside. The best place to dump someone off was going into our garden down the hill. Peyts kept getting dumped off, but he loved it. I will admit that I usually don't like to go out in the snow, but it was fun.

Our fun ended when I broke the sled pulling Andy. I went a little bit faster with him and it snapped the rope out of the plastic. Maybe after the snow we got today, we will be able to go back out and play some more in the snow.

I guess it isn't so bad. But I still wouldn't mind the snow melting so we can have an early spring.

Little Horse, Little Cowboy

2009-01-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is one of the reasons why I love living in Hamer. Even though I have no intention or desire of my child becoming a cowboy, while he is little there is a world of possibilities that he can explore in safety and without me worrying too much. My dad bought this little mini horse and before the nasty cold weather hit, Peyton really enjoyed feeding and walking this horse. He even got brave and lead her around. She is a little more spirited though and gave him a few nips on the back that he did not like. I was impressed at his bravery though and I hope they have some fun adventures. I think my dad bought her for all of the grandkids to enjoy and we hope that this spring and summer we can get her a little more tame for the kids.

Peyton was very brave, but got a little gunshy after she bit at him. However I know he thought he was a good cowboy while doing this. It also gave him some chores to do because we went and fed her every night for about a week. (sorry dad!)

He has been brave enough to sit on top of her, but she isn't broke yet. I had some students who actually raise them and they use them for chariot racing. You wouldn't think that these little mini ponies would do much, but they actually have a lot of power. My two students said they would work on getting her broke and more kid friendly this summer. I sure hope so, so that Peyts can grow up liking horses and making memories like I did.

These little cowboy boots were actually Jake's boots. When my mom found them, Peyton just latched onto them and has worn them down more than they already are. I had to hide them from him because nails were coming up through the bottom into the inside of the shoe. Peyton wore them all of the time and he wore them all over. I finally got mother's permission to throw them away. I took one final picture of boots that served their time well! Thanks Jake!

My "Super" Birthday Boy

2009-01-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

So on January 14th, my cute little noodle had a birthday. I realized that this was his last birthday that he would actually be home for (school). He is getting so big. This birthday and also Christmas was so much fun with him. Everything was so exciting. I don't know if you remember attacking a present with such determination and speed, but everything he wanted to know what was in it and who it was from and he had to open it immediately. It was pretty cute.

Peyton received three little farm sets from Cal's...every farmer boy's favorite store. I couldn't pass them up because they were so cute.
He also got some real working clothes like Ace, Badge, and Tyrell as he says. He has the overalls, coat, real leather working gloves and boots. After he opened it all, he asked me where his hat was like Ace...so I failed in the hat. Later in the day he had to put this all on and go outside and work. He got cold in like five minutes!

So like most little boys, we have hit a super hero phase. Peyton loves costumes and loves to dress up and think that he is the person. Back at Halloween, I purchased a variety of costumes (on sale) and he now has a whole repetoire of superhero costumes. He really thinks the muscles in the stomach are his. However for a kid, he really does have some great abs on his own! He loved his Batman and Robin costume, however, I think he would have more fun his Brock and Jays were here to be superman and the other caped crusader. I told mom that Pam needs to have them dress up in these and take presents at her wedding. That would be a hoot! I haven't run the idea by Pam yet.

The accessories attached to Robin's costume he really tried to use. One is the hook that Batman throws and then pulls himself up buildings. I am worried that Peyts will actually try to do this and then break it because it is cheap plastic. But man does he think he is cool in these! This is the little farm set all out. He has been having a lot of fun. A moment of madness possessed me because the grain bins will actually open up. So I got a bag of rice for him to fill up his bins with and there is rice all over my living room. We tried to think of something that would be easier to pick up, so we got out beans. Now I have rice and beans all over in my carpet, but he has loved playing with that so much. I don't think I've seen him play for over an hour with anything. He was really being a farmer. This set has a grain truck, graneries, milk truck, barn, windmills, tractors, pickup, all kinds of things to pull.
In this picture you can see the rice mess we have going on here. But he just loved it, so I guess it is worth the mess. But trying to get him to pick it up is another story. The last couple of years, I've purchased a cake pan for Peyton's birthday and we had a big party with the family. This year, we actually met at Angie's house and had a bigger family dinner for Kaysha and Peyton. It was fun. That left us kind of by ourselves at our house. It was fun, but I think Peyton missed having a house full of people. I wasn't really sure what to do for his cake. He kept changing and he wanted me to do the Tigger cake I did when he was a baby...but we were kind of having a super hero party and he has been into Star Wars, so I free-handed a Darth Vader cake. You can tell I'm definitely not professional, however I am fairly impressed with how the Darth Vader cake turned out. Peyton had to help me, so the orange blob at the top is a spaceship that he did. The only problem with this cake is that it turns your teeth, mouth, and lips black and blue. We had some funny laughs about everyone's teeth. Peyton and I got into a fight with whatever you call these silly blower things. Andy was trying to get a picture of both of us with them out, but he couldn't.

Granny and Pop ended the night by bringing over their presents. Peyton was just ecstatic to see that they had gotten him a ride on four wheeler. I don't have him on it because that night Andy had to put it all together. It is pretty cute and he loved it. He had such a fun and nice day.

He blew out his candles and went to bed very happy and tired to be five. The next day we had his yearly check-up and had some exciting news. He has reached another milestone...we finally hit into the 25th percentile of weight. Since he has been a baby we have always hit the 5-10th percentile of weight. Andy and I were excited. He was 44 inches tall and weighed 37.8 pounds. He then received another present that we had been talking about...his school immunizations. He had actually found a little place to hide in the office and it brought back memories of Dr. Peterson's office and those doors you could lock yourself into (Holly!). The doctor kept teasing him about getting 50 shots. Peyton wasn't sure whether to believe him or not. Pop kept telling Peyton he only had to get one. I didn't know how many he had to get, but it ended up being four shots. The nurse at this doctor's office is amazingly fast. She had me hold his hands down and he wasn't quite sure what was happening, but he ended up getting pretty scared and insulted after the first poke. Then when she continued, I had a crying little guy. However, he settled down pretty quickly and we were able to get him laughing again. I think it kind of hurt his legs for a few days, but he is back to normal and ready to go to school. When I told him he could now go to school at the Doctor's office after his shots...he replied, "I don't want to school. I want to go home and make pie!" Not sure where they came from or what he was thinking about, but he was not thinking school was worth those shots at that moment. I'm glad all that is over.

As I think about this birthday, I was glad I took the day off and spent with him, because he is now entering the world. This is his last little birthday of childhood before school starts to corrupt and change kids! (yes I believe that!)I was kind of sad throughout the day, but we had a great birthday!

My Freakin' Lucky Day

2009-01-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

So I have to share this story, because it is probably one of the coolest "lucky" things that have happened to me in my life. I've entered and signed my name to many things to "win" something like the car in the mall, the trip to Bermuda, the free money...whatever. I've never won anything. Even at my English conferences I've never won anything cool. Most people win like 200 dollar shopping sprees to a book store and I get a catalog from a company of a kid's book that costs two dollars. So over the last couple of years a company called Galaxy Press has sent to some of the English teachers at this school some really bad books. I saw that because I'm am not a fan of science fiction. I always thought it was nice they sent the books, but I don't read that genre. Well I felt bad just letting them sit, so I starting given them away to students after I added some to my school library and classroom library. They continued to send the same books. Well last year, they improved and sent an adventure story on tape. I kept that because I've really been interested in books on tape and thought that I could use it on one of my classes. All of these books were by the author L. Ron Hubbard. My students tell me he is the guy who started scientology....whatever that is. Anyway so the other day I got a package in the mail and opened it and saw the familiar L. Ron Hubbard stuff. I was busy at the moment and just slide it under the podium. So today while I was bored (my students were working in groups planning a project) I was fiddling with the box. It seemed like the tapes like last year, yet when I opened the box it seemed more rectangular in length. I was a little confused. As I pulled it out of the box it was sent in...I couldn't figure out what was in the box. So as I was looking at it one of my students noticed that there was an ipod logo on the side. I was in complete shock and couldn't figure out what it really was. There was no way in my mind that it was really an ipod and yet after all of my students rushed up to the podium, and we opened it, it was indeed an ipod 80g and loaded with all of the L. Ron Hubbard stories. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it felt like I had won the lottery. It was so cool. I've never really won anything of significance, let alone received for free anything of significance. I was so excited I left my students in the class (who were all jealous and tried to steal it) and went and showed a variety of people. I hope they weren't too jealous, but I know I would have been! I wasn't showing them that for that reason, just because I was so amazed. So one of the people I showed was my principal. I asked her if it was mine or the schools and she said it had my name on the package so it must be mine....Needless to say I didn't argue, but I feel kind of bad because I own an ipod. So I thought I would figure out a way (whether I switch it for my thirty gig or keep it the same) to load just one of the them full of books and if kids want to check it out, we'll do that...(I think that is what I'm going to do anyway...we'll see)

I will however say that I may press my luck as I drive home and stop and buy a lottery ticket....You don't have days like this too often. I'll let you know if I win anything!

Winter Rumination: Spring Fever

2009-01-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I have spring fever. Since Christmas has been over, I've received about seven different seed catalogs in the mail. It makes me think of warm sunshine, weeding until my legs ached. Yummy cold dinners full of vegetables and fruits we had grown. It makes me think of tans, zuchinni, green beans and lettuce. It makes me think of eating raspberries until I'm sick to my stomach. I can't wait to begin planning my garden again, planting my garden and enjoying the fruits of my labors. I've decided I just don't like winter. The snow at Christmas was nice, but it can now melt and we can move into spring. I came across these pictures from the summer. I had intended to publish them then, but must have ran out of time at school and alas I stumbled upon this post while I sit in my classroom freezing and look out and see snow and ice. This was our garden just beginning to grow.

I think my favorite thing that we grew were my raspberries. My dad informed me that they probably wouldn't produce fruit. When his started producing and mine didn't I was really sad, but then low and behold in the fall they produced tons. We were eating them clear until that really hard frost in October (I think!) How nice was that. I ended up getting two raspberry seasons (my dad's crop and our later crop...and even though I loved it...it was not very nice on my hips because my preferred method of eating raspberries is with cream and sugar....if you've never done this, you've never lived!)
This is our whole garden patch and I really thought it was small but most people thought it was gargantuan. I will say the only thing I planted too much of was green beans though. I thought four rows was not that much, but we picked until we were dead and I even invited over people to come and pick as much as they wanted and we still had more! The rest though was great!

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-07T21:43:00.000-08:00

So I have some grand plans in 2009. I love to make resolutions and they have gotten better over the years. They are more specific and ones that I know I will be able to accomplish. I'm sharing a few of them with you, but I made quite a few. Some of them are personal and I've never really been too picky about how well some of them were addressed. If I did good one week and then struggled, I knew I could still go back to them and it isn't the end of the world or really drastic if I don't get them accomplished. I have a journal at home that I keep resolutions and I've done that for the last 15 years. It is funny to see that I wrote for nine years straight (I was deathly afraid of the dentist) to go to the dentist. I never did for those nine years (yes I brush my teeth all of the time and floss...but...I was a chicken). However, now I'm doing so much better. So even though it took me nine years to get up the courage it is something that is now very easy for me to do. We get it sometime. If we don't set our own personal goals...not for our kids or our spouse, but for ourself...can we truly learn and advance? I know these are grand an I may only get to half of them and it may take nine years to accomplish some of them, but I'll get there. Thank heavens we may have an eternity to achieve all we want. I'm also making a new goal to write on this more frequently. I would like to have it be like a journal (did you know you can publish your blogs into book format)....so sorry if my responses start coming more frequently. They may not always contain pictures either...I hope you all set some New Year's resolutions and that you have some grand goals!

Kristie’s List of Stuff She is Desiring to do in 2009
1. Finish Adoption paperwork by end of January
2. Finish applying for psychology position at BYU-Idaho
3. Read text for English class at BYU-Idaho

6. Teach or work on teaching at BYU-Idaho Education week
7. Write 2 books-
8. Finish Poetry book for Drew and Rochester trip
9. Paint playroom
10. Go to eye doctor, dentist, and doctor for check-ups
11. Find out more about working with my master’s degree

13. Organize and type my loose recipes and go through collection
14. Read one parenting book, one marriage book, and one other book of choice per month
15. Go to temple at least 2 times a month work on memorizing thing at the end
16. Support Andy in his goals

18. Organize files at school and in my craft room
19. Plan menu better and be better at shopping for that plan
20. Plan and do something fun with Drew at least once a month
21. Work with Peyts on his goals and in getting him ready for school

23. Look into information with regards to Doctorate degree??
24. Work on putting together my England book
25. Help Andy organize his Africa mission into a book

26. Make adoption book for Peyton

11 trees and a partridge!

2008-12-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

Well here it goes, all 11 trees up and about two weeks later, our house is definitiely a winter wonderland. Our first tree up this year was Peyton's tree. He has been so excited about having Christmas this year that it was contagious. Maybe that is why we were stupid enough to actually do all 11. For those of you that don't know, Andy and I started this wild tradition after our first year of marriage. We felt that since my birthday was on Christmas and his was on Christmas Eve that we needed some grand Christmas tradition. This is what started. Each year we purchased a new tree. The rules are that you can never add to a tree once you have it, however, we have broken that with Peyton's tree and add all of the ornaments he makes or gathers within that year. It is getting to be a little out of hand and we have purchased small trees the last couple of years, but it is kind of neat once they are all up. All of them have names. I will list them below. Our goal is that after we have been married for a while (which we are getting to) , we will open it to the public for a Christmas tree lane and charge a dollar or two to come and see them. Then we will donate it to a charity of our choice.
This is Peyton's tree. It is pretty cute and fits him...very random and hodge podge. This was also purchased our seventh year for Peyton.(We actually lost a tree in all of our moves and hope to make it up...it was called twig tree and it was made entirely out of twigs. We had it out on our porch and used bird houses and birds and kept it outside). Peyton loves his little tree. He can decorate it anyway he wants and we add a few ornaments for him every year! He informs us that he wants to take the blue snowflake tree into his room next year, but that goes in our room!

This is "Twelve Days of Chrismtas Tree". It has carolers, music note ribbon, snowglobes-each with a different 12 days inside, and then four of each of the 12 days of Chrismtas ornaments. This is tree was purchased our seventh year. This tree below was I and Andy's first tree. It has all of our decorations on it. We purchase a fresh tree for this tree every year. It has all of our first ornaments on it and a lot of homemade ornaments that we like. We like to think of this one as our snoopy tree. That is what we usually like. However, this year was a really nice tree and doesn't look like the snoopy tree.

This tree is a smaller tree and we purchased it the year right before Peyton was born. This was in our sixth year of marriage. It is "Smores tree". It is actually a really cute tree and all of the ornaments and garland are smores stuff.

This tree was purchased last year(number 10) and is a smaller table top tree. It is actually referred to as "Symbol Tree". Each ornaments is supposed to symbolically represent something with regards to Christmas...however I do not have the guide and cannot remember what each item represents.

This is snowflake tree. This was the first tree we got after our real tree. This is actually Andy's favorite tree. It is blue with silver and white snowflake ornaments. It is a cute tree.

This next tree is actually called "Berta Hummel" tree. She is an artist who sculpts and paints little children. I collected the ornaments for about three years. This tree was tree number eight. It is our most expensive tree and matches our living room. Most trees we tree to keep within a lower budget, but after all of the collecting and the price of a flocked tree this one wins that award.

This next tree is angel tree. This tree was our fourth actually tree and it is a good thing we were able build a house because the "Rat Trap" (what we called our old house) didn't really have anymore room for trees. Our home right now, although very full of trees, still has room for some more. We will see how sick of it we get! Angel tree I think is one of our prettiest. The ribbon says Silent Night, Holy Night, and there are probably close to 100 different angel ornaments.

This is a our ninth tree and one of my most favorite. It is just whimsical and cute. It is called Candy Cane tree and is strictly red and white. I also purchased a cheap Walmart white tree and it is just really cute.

This next tree is my most favorite. Even the name makes me smile. This is "Tacky Fruit Tree" with bubble lights. You know the ornaments you purchase at Walmart after Christmas-the ones that no one wants because they are really tacky...well that is tacky fruit tree. It even has the traditional Christmas Pickle on it.

Finally our tree for this year is actually very clever, small, and funny. We call it "Bad Economy Tree". It is about three inches tall and can't even support one bulb. We figured it was all we could afford this year...but the tradition must go on.

I hope you enjoyed the tour through our festival of trees! Merry Christmas!

I'm Thankful...for Thanksgiving!

2008-12-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

So I know I'm a little behind on the Thanksgiving thing, but I did want to post what a nice vacation that was. As we get closer to Christmas and oftentimes find that Christmas overshadows this holiday, I thought it would be a nice refresher to remember this nice day. As I went into Gram's house, Pam and Steph were doing punch responsibilities. Pam for years has always helped with the punch. I wonder if she still knows how to make the kind Gram used to make. It is also nice to have Sas running Gram's kitchen and making sure that everything gets done. I know that Sas would make Gram proud with the management of this HUGE dinner! She does a great job. Lawrence did his turkey cutting job and actually tried a new method of cutting this year because he read it helped to keep it more moist. I only really care for turkey if I can snitch it, so of course I went and stole a piece after I took the picture. You have to be careful though that Lawrence isn't using the electric knife while you are snitching because I did get my hand swatted. Holly was here for Thanksgiving and set the table very beautifully. We actually had quite a crowd for Thanksgiving and the day after so it was a lot of fun to celebrate this year. As you can see the kids are getting fed up with waiting for the food (especially Adam!). They pretty much did in the olives before we started. Of course they were getting yelled at by all of the adults, so we ushered them downstairs for one of my favorite things to do at Thanksgiving.

Fussball! This was kind of cute because all of the little kids wanted to play. I felt it was kind of like an ushering in of the next generation. We had a little Beebomb (Jaden) Peyts (Me) Jays...(Holly...oh wait she never played!), Bruv (Adam who makes as many comments about others playing as his dad does-I'm sure it is a distraction tactic!...he says exactly what his dad says!). I tried to resurrect an old playing of the originals that I learned to play with (Bee and Jim on one side and me and Bruv on another...but I couldn't manage it) Andy and I spent the most time playing with the kids and it wasn't too bad, but it definitely was a goalie game!
So we finally got to sit down and eat...probably later than we ever have. The dinner was great and I didn't have to sit at the adult table this year and listen to all of the health problems of all of the older people! :-) I got to sit at the kid table and for the most part it was very enjoyable! My most favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is stuffing and jello! At our Thanksgiving, we have about 10 different kinds of jello. I really only like three specific ones, but I will try the new ones. The shot of the one below is my favorite. It is a lemon pudding with whipped cream and marshmellows and pineapple. It is great!

After everyone is finished eating it has been kind of funny for some people who eat too much to play "fat dog" on the couch. That is basically that you go and lay down on the couch and stick out your stomach and moan. Well in the past when Pam has done this, Steph, Sam, Adam, and Shelly would get on top of her. We started taking a photo. This year they reversed the order and Adam got the food all squished out of him...I think! It was pretty funny.

I have for the last couple of years wanted to make a pie for Thanksgiving because it was something that I had never tried before. I decided I would make a fresh apple pie with real apples and everything. I have always been a little intimidated because my grandma and my mom are such wonderfully awesome pie makers that I have'nt wanted to try, but anyway I bought seven different kinds of apples and I did a lot of reading about different ways to make a pie. I had a lot of fun making it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and I thought it was really good. I think it was the prettiest pie over there, but my mom still wins hands down on the best pie. You will see below two pictures of my pies and one of her cherry which is still my favorite! Kudos to Marie!

You can see a huge difference with her pie and mine. It just looks lighter and better. I guess maybe in another 20 years, I might be able to master them!

Buried Under Piles of Paper....Help!

2008-12-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

So I've felt really bad lately because I have been literally buried under piles and piles of paperwork. I haven't been a very good wife, mother, blogger, person...just a teacher. I don't know what it was, but I had a very hard time getting through my grades this year. The bad thing is, we just switched over to a trimester and I feel like all I ever do is grade anymore. I finally told the secretary today at school that I needed my prep hour and did not want to cover a class because I'm tired of taking stuff home.
I know, I know....my mom never has any sympathy, she just says if you are tired of grading then don't assign it. However if you are an English teacher, there is not doubt in my mind you will have papers. I only had two bigger papers given for my Honors' class but man they about killed me. They take so much time to sift through and to actually do them justice. My husband said to just give everyone A's...but that is not the point. The point is that if they make that effort then I need to make that effort. However, the good news is that I did finish my grading on Friday of last week. I have been pretty much grading non-stop since November 17th. It was stressful, boring, redundant, and awful, but I did finish. I then went home all weekend and did Christmas stuff which was a lot of fun. It has made me want to get way more creative this tri with regards to the assignments I give. I can see why the longer I do this how much nicer looking for another career would be....but I am done for now and will possibly even try to change my blog background from fall to winter...since it has been over for a while. I may even try to post some Christmas posts. But for now, it is my prep hour and I have grades due again in two weeks...so I guess I will go back to the grading funk that is my life!

I've been tagged!

2008-11-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

This seems a little more difficult than I originally thought when I uploaded. I think I will just stick with the seven random facts and call it good! I hope Nancy doesn't mind. I also feel bad because it has taken some time to actually get to this. I also don't know if I know enough people to tag...but we'll see if I get to it.

So seven odd facts huh!

1. I am a chain gum chewer and addicted to gum. If I don't have my gum around, I get very uptight and I start searching through bags and coat pockets to find it.
2. Even though I'm around people a lot and I teach, I actually would rather just be home and be alone by myself (with Andy and Peyts and my fam)
3. I usually have about 5-10 books that I'm reading at one time. Some I never finish
4. My husband and I do a new Christmas tree every year for Christmas. We have so far 11/12 different trees:
1. Real tree with our first decorations
2. Snowflake tree
3. Twig Tree (got destroyed and would love to remake it!)
4. Tacky Fruit tree with bubble lights -my favorite
5. Angel Tree
6. Smore's Tree
7. Peyton's tree
8. 12 Days of Christmas tree
9. Berta Hummel Tree
10. Candy Cane Tree
11. Symbol tree
12. We are getting a card tree this year!
We hope that by the time we have been married for 30+ years we can open a Christmas Tree Lane, charge entrance, and then donate it to a charity of our choice...or something like that!

5. I'm addicted to buying books and clothes and I love online shopping
6. I love to watch cooking shows and secretly think that I'm "The Next Food Network Star"
7. I have a secret ambition to write and publish books, own my own business, and learn to play the banjo.

I could go on, but we'll save it for another time!

A "Super" Halloween

2008-11-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

So I feel kind of bad because for some reason, I didn't take a lot of pictures on Halloween night. We had a great night and were really excited, but my camera was not in action. I did manage to take two pictures of our cute little Superman. It was so funny because when he got this suit, he immediately put it on and began lifting the chairs to his little table with one arm. I think he thought it made him strong and also that he could fly. Thank heavens he didn't need to test it. He just put one hand in the air and then ran like he was flying. He was very excited for Halloween. When kids started coming to the door, he opened it took the bowl and began to dump tons of candy in each pumpkin. It was pretty funny. Because Andy was going to be a little late, I decided I take him out until Andy got home and then we could switch. It was nice this year because there wasn't any silly carnival or trunk or treat and we actually had kids out trick or treating. The town was lit up. We did the route that if you done in Hamer consisted of going up Dena's road and then Andy took him down by Coralee's house and also down the road where Warren Albertson lives. Peyton was so cute this year trick or treating. He went all by himself up to each door and he did it on a run so he could get more candy. I tried to remind him to say "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you". I hope he did.

One of the things that Peyton was really excited about was spraying his hair black and he was very insistent that he have the curl that Superman has. It was a lot of fun getting him ready. His excitement was contagious.

He did get tons of loot that I did not get a picture of. I will say one thing, though, remember when we got Halloween candy we definitely didn't get full size candy bars. We got those tiny little things could be eaten in one bite. Well my little toddler got about seven different ones at different houses. People are definitely improving in what they give out. I did think how sad it was though, that most people don't make anything anymore. I know when we were little we loved going to Dorothy Down's house to get donuts and Coralee Knight made caramel popcorn balls. Levaun Mickelsen gave out that mother goose popcorn. Those were definitely the days. There just isn't time to do that homemade touch anymore. Maybe one day, I'll try to do this!

Pumpkin Carving

2008-11-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

So Sunday before Halloween we attempted to carve our pumpkins. We opened up the pumpkins and began with my favorite part and that is digging out the guts. Peyton and Andy don't really care for this part, but I love it.

Peyton attempted to clean the guts out, but gave up about two handfuls into it. He thinks it is gooey and cold and yucky. And as you see he is not too thrilled to be doing this part.

NoOne of my favorite pictures to take is of Peyton pretending to eat the guts. This is actually about as close as he gets to being by the insides of pumpkin.The choice of a design begins. We are pretty picky about the types of designs we pick. I remember when I was a kid, we would just draw the face and have it carved in 15-20 minutes. Peyts wanted a spooky face and so we found a pretty good one. He wanted to do it "all by myself", but Andy manned the knife and we got Peyts pumpkin carved. Of course I'm very partial to witches lately (maybe it is the profession I'm in that makes me partial to them!). This was the design I selected and although it wasn't perfect, I think my witch actually turned out really well. Andy picked a haunted house this year and I thought it actually turned out really well!

This is one of our fun family traditions since Andy and I have been married and that is to put our pumpkin up and actually have a pumpkin head picture! Because Peyts is the only one who carved a face, we all had to use his pumpkin to take this picture. I thought we all looked very spooky!

Peyts was very excited for the finished product and we had to immediately go outside and light them up.

They definitely make for a very fun and spooky night! Who knew that pumpkin carving could be so difficult and so much fun....! Signing off until next year when they get even spookier and crazier. And if anyone has a good witch pattern...let me know, I need a new one!

Mountain Trick or Treating

2008-10-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

We had the opportunity to go to Island Park to Harriman State Park on Saturday and do some mountain trick or treating. Who knew that all of these years there existed anything like this in Island Park. I believe people who live around there go up and spend time decorating days before. They then give out free candy to anyone who comes. It doesn't cost to get in and besides being a tiny bit chilly it was pretty fun. I think one of the scariest things about this is the lack of light and being up on the mountains. I'm told there is a funny story involving Adam and the bathroom that I didn't really get the whole story, so ask Adam, Kyla or Mom!

When you arrive, you wait in line for the hay ride to the little grouping of houses. This is our tough crew of spooks who went this time. Austin is the pimp daddy in the suit. Adam is the freaky werewolf thing...(nice Bruv!), Kyla is Maid Marion of course, Kaysha was just scared and cold and Peyts dressed up like a cowboy.

This shows us getting onto the hay wagons to be pulled up to the little village of houses. Along the way to the village, there were various spooky scenes from Ghosts throwing ghost poop (marshmellows) to huge spiders in webs, to a vampire getting ready to attack a girl. I didn't take pictures because they squish a lot of people on those wagons and it was kind of cold. When we arrived Pam was there to give us the grand tour. She showed us the nice treat house that we could go to after trick or treating. They had homemade donuts and hot chocolate or hot apple cider. After walking around in the dark up in the mountains at the end of October, that was a nice end. But before we hit the snack shack we went to various houses for the kids to trick or treat. Some people set up scenes outside and on others we just walked into their houses. The witch's house was the scariest and it almost got Peyts a little bit scared and the woman screaming at you from the shower was probably the worst. I was very proud of Peyton for he never screamed or cried and was very brave. I told him he had to protect me. Adam and Kyla couldn't quite make it through. They must be at an age when this is a lot more realistic and a little scary. Kaysha just plain didn't go if it looked too scary. Austin was game and hit most of the attractions. This was really the only scary one. Pam was supposed to be Elvira I think mom said and she was working in one of the bone yards! This is the wicked old woman from Snow White she looked pretty realistic. I was a little disappointed she didn't give out poisoned apples!

There was a house that was full of fun games that kids could play and then when they were finished they could win a prize for each game. Peyton did a fish pond, a bean bag toss, hop scotch, golf, and this ping pong straw blow. It was a fun room.

He tried so hard to play the game right but got sick of blowing so he just used his hands and the straw!

In case you are all wondering who Pam is cuddling up with, this is Ryan. His parents actually run one of the houses up here and that is how we found out about this fun Halloween activity. I was debating not going because I hate giving up my Saturdays and for the last month, I've been gone somewhere. My two sides were arguing about making memories or staying home and being a sludge as I like to call it. I'm glad we went it was a lot of fun. I had a hard time getting them to pose for a picture, but I told them both they better get used to it. I think he is dressed up as a hunter! Aren't they "Spooktacularly" cute together!

I took this shot because this was probably the funniest costume I saw all night. This lady was a table as you can see and her head the main course. The glasses looked like there was wine in them, but it was just jello! How clever.

This lady was also one of my favorites because she was a great witch and she quotes a few lines from Shakespeare's famous witches in the play Macbeth. "Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble..." You get the picture. By then we were freezing and we headed back to get some great goodies. The donuts and warm drink topped off the night. We hitched a ride back on the hay wagon and ended our fun night. The funny thing is I later learned that Adam had to make a quick pit stop in North Fremont because he held it that long. He didn't want to use the spooky bathroom. He must have a bladder of steel! Ha!

Happy 90th!

2008-10-19T16:15:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday we celebrated Grandma Niederer's 90th birthday. It had been a while since I had even seen her. In fact, I'm sad to say that it has been since she moved to Salt Lake that I've seen her. She looked great for being 90. The party was nice. Everyone went to a lot of work to make sure she had a nice day.
She was able to blow out all of her candles...so as Dad has always says she will live longer than all of us because she is "too dang ornery" to die. A lot of family was there and we had a nice potluck dinner before. Yes there was even some good food to eat. I don't know if it was Pam's idea or Dad's but apparently we all got these roses for Grandma. There were 90 total! Pam told me about it and was going to have us all contribute, but then Dad just bought them. I don't know if Grandma could see them, but they sure looked nice. I also don't know if they could get them back to Utah, but they added to the atmosphere.
I thought this picture of Peyts and Grandma was cute. I'm not sure if Peyton even really knows who this is because he hasn't seen her too often. He definitely knows who "Poppa Sanders" is. He is around him a lot more and plus he has tractors. I did, though, think it was very cute when Peyts said, "I have a lot of Grandmas now!". If he only knew!
I wonder if she is losing more of her sight because she really didn't even know where to look when I took the picture. But as you can see she still looks like Grandma.
This is some of the family that attended. Not everyone made it, but I think Emil wins the award for traveling the farthest. He came from Alaska and it was nice to meet his wife. I was also able to meet a few new family members. There are also some on the way. Tasha is expecting and they are all waiting until Shane gets home to just show up at the airport and there is the baby. I don't think that is very nice, but I'm sure he will think it funny. Merriloy and Lisa did a lot for Grandma's birthday. There was a very nice movie and they had treats for all of the people who were going to come. It was a nice afternoon to visit with family.
As you can see there was only one drawback and that was the fact that it was like a blizzard outside. I told Grandma that Terreton was telling her it had missed her. If you look close at Peyts outside, you can see how badly the snow was coming down. The was a miserable weekend weatherwise. We about froze to death at the football game the night before and then because of the snow, we thought it made it harder for people to come to Grandma's party. But when we left, there had been a fairly steady stream of visitors who came through. I think that it is pretty cool that she had her birthday up here. It was nice to see. Grandpa Sanders also celebrated his birthday this week. He turned 94. How nice it has been to still have grandparents around. I miss the ones who are with us and enjoy the time I get to spend with the ones still here.

You have to love Idaho weather! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Keep in mind it is still October 10th! This is way to early for a blizzard.

Grid Kid Champions

2008-10-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go watch Austin play for the Grid Kid Championship in the seventh grade division. It was a beautiful day for football. After last Friday when it was freezing, this was like having a nice summer day. Angie had a bag full of noise makers and tons of posters for these kids and Peyts got into the action of cheering.
Austin played mostly on offense and special teams that I saw(except for at the end when Shelley was making a run to catch up....then they left Austin in on defense,too!). They played Shelley and according to Pam it was the not so good team that was playing Austin's team. There were two teams from Shelley and the good team got beaten last week by Austin's team. Well anyways, no offense from last years game, but this years game actually looked like football. The kids did a nice job on both sides. Dad said that Austin was playing linebacker and Pam told me he punts also, but I didn't get to see that yesterday. The final score I believe was 13-6???I think. It was a close game and fun to watch.

This picture reminded me of how many dads are trying live vicariously through their little kids sports career. Even though it was pretty mild yesterday, the speeches at the end of the game reinforced to me that parents should just go an enjoy them playing. The guy isn't even wearing coaching attired!
Well the buzzer sounded and it found Austin's team ahead and they won a trophy similar to a superbowl cup. I was pretty impressed. After being given trophies and this cup, we went back to try and get some pictures of the whole team...after listening to some miserable speeches by the coaches (I don't even think the kids were listening) we got to take team pictures. Pam told me that Angie doesn't take her camera to championship games because it is bad luck. Angie also said that this was the third year in the championship game for these boys and they finally won. I guess third times is a charm. Good job, Austin!

Peyts was excited to tell Austin congratulations, but he didn't want to put on Austin's helmet. He said it was stinky! I'll bet.

This is Austin's whole team. Some of the boys he plays baseball with are on this team, but a lot of his buddies didn't get to play because they got beaten by the team Austin played at this game!

My Visions and Dreams of a Contest Chef....Idaho Falls Cookoff...

2008-10-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

So I had visions and dreams of being "The Next Food Network Star" and I entered a cooking competition. It was a holiday bake-off and you could enter a holiday treat and a holiday dish. My mind immediately went to all of the great candies I make at Christmas time. I also thought of Gram's fudge and how it is the best fudge recipe and best fudge I've ever had. All of the other fudges are sugary and they use yucky dark chocolate. I was very excited about this cooking competition because we actually got to cook in a restaurant kitchen in Idaho Falls...."The Cellar". I was excited about that because it seems like a very ritzy restaurant...even though I've never eaten there. I went with visions and dreams about all of the money (300$ for first prize in each category!) I was going to win especially since I was also entering my clam chowder...which I think is the best clam chowder ever made.

So I arrive at the competition and it is very hot. I have to plate my fudge for 20 judges and 5 taster plates. As I'm plating, my fudge is melting in the sun. I also have to have a display plate for a photo...thus the pretty one. Now remember in my mind this is supposed to be Christmas/Holiday treats. As I'm looking around I'm seeing really pretty stuff...but none of it looks like holiday treats...So I'm thinking it is in the bag. How can gram's fudge not win. I was concerned that it was getting soft, but it is still great. So after I get my stuff done with the fudge, I get to go into the cellar kitchen and begin plating my soup. I was supposed to cook it at the cellar, but they didn't think they would have enough space for everyone, so I volunteered to make it at home. Then I had to drive it 40 miles and serve it. I managed to actually keep it really warm, but I think it sat too long. I was kind of worried about that. But I got into that restaurant kitchen, and I was very glad that I got to cook at home. I'm going to be honest, going into this "posh" kitchen made me kind of get grossed out. It was not really clean and it was not really functional to me. I was a little sick. It was kind of like when Andy took me to his dairy for the first time. I've known my whole life where milk came from, but to actually go in and see them getting milked with the manure flying and the milk coming out, it kind of makes you think twice before drinking milk. This kitchen made me think twice about all restaurant kitchens. Let's just say, any visions I had of trying to become a chef were slowly leaving. Well I got my soup all dished up and then it sat. It had already sat for about 1 hour...so it continues to sit before it gets served to the judges, but I'm confident it is the best soup ever. I look around the kitchen and see some of the stuff being made and I'm even more confident.
My dish is then taken out to be served and I get to wait. We wait for a couple of hours for the judges to actually get through everything. I would imagine that being a judge sounds fun, but I don't know if it would actually be that fun. That is a lot of food to try and a lot of weird people cooking it. So we are waiting for them to announce the winners and I'm just sure that my recipes are going to win. As they announce the winners and my name is not called for the dish, I think well Gram's fudge is the best...so I guess I just have to win that one. I know they are probably trying to spread out the awards. Me and my big head! Well after they announced all of the winners, I found myself standing there clapping for people who were not me. I hadn't won. It was kind of a blow to my ego because I thought I was such a good cook, but as I looked around, I decided that the judges picked pretty. The two winning recipes were below. I couldn't compete with pretty, but I know my food is good. I'm already planning what to make next time that is a little more pretty and still just as good as the two items I entered. I guess as a consolation, I'm still being published in the Idaho Falls magazine (I think...with my recipes) and also KCLE's holiday cookbook. That will be fun! Just in case you are wondering, I've put in the two photos that beat me out!

This was the winning holiday dish. Now I don't mean to be a sore loser because it was really pretty and it looks really yummy, but if I wanted to make this at Christmas time, can anyone tell me where I can find raspberries that look like that in the winter in Idaho...I don't think so!

This guy was actually cooking in the kitchen when I went in and this was the winning holiday dish. It did look yummy and it was fun to watch him cook. He had already entered a few times in their cooking competitions and won some prizes, so I was up against a repeater and a good cook. I would have loved to try some of the stuff, but they wouldn't let us.

These are some of the other entries. I lost to a cheesecake and I will concede that one.

It is that time of year!

2008-10-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

There is a smell in the air around the town of Hamer. It is one that many will know immediately and maybe even catch a hint of as they read. I don't really know how to describe it, but it is an earthy, musty, dirt smell. It is harvest time. Andy made a comment the other day about how this is the one time of year that all of Hamer is lit up at night time. This is the time of year that I don't see my dad very much. This is the time of year of a lot of stress for many farmers. This year (I hope I don't jinx it) is actually been very nice weatherwise so maybe that stress level is a little less. It is a time of year when fields become a tangled mess of vines and sand that will eventually blow in the fall wind. It is a time of long hours, good lunches with lots of treats, dirt, and lots and lots of potatoes.
Peyts and I went out today to see the fields and ride with Pam. I actually ended up spending most of this time at the school which didn't bother me in the least. Even though I have many fond memories of harvest, it is not something that I enjoy doing now. I enjoy the two weeks we get out of school and having some down time to rest from that first rush of school. Peyton loves everything about farming and tractors. Today he got to go and ride with Pop. They went to the fields and checked the cellars. Then he was able to ride with one of the combine operators...known to Peyts as Bo. He is making quite the friends with some of the workers...much to his mother's dismay. His new found friends include Ace, Badg (Badger), Tywell (Tyrell), Mamero (Ramero), and Bo. He is quite the little worker (or so he thinks!).

He is searching for some potatoes left behind by the diggers. It was quite the afternoon for this little guy. I personally like to go out and watch for just a little bit and as my brother says, value the fact that I don't have to do this anymore. When Jake was in college he fondly referred to this time of year as "College Appreciation Days".
These were some of the small ones that actually didn't make it in the trucks. It is funny because if you were to go in Walmart right now, these would be the big potatoes. This has been a pretty good year for big spuds! I hope the potato farmers actually make some money this year!

I Did It!

2008-10-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

The first official post is now up for the Scott family in Hamer. It actually wasn't as hard as it appeared to be, but I just needed some time to actually figure it out. I look forward to "blogging" with all of you. I just attended an English conference and it talked about how kids these days are "technology natives" and those of us from older generations who actually remember life without the internet are "technology immigrants". I felt like an immigrant trying to figure this out, but I'm an immigrant who adjusts fairly quickly to new technology. We'll see what we can figure out as we go throughout this blog with regards to all the "cool" things you can do. Also I found the little book selection at the website listed below. I hope you will all make suggestions to it and join. I love books and would love to hear some of your selections.

P.S-for those of you who don't know that picture at the top is an aerial view of our house (the blue one) and my mom's house in Hamer. Hope you enjoy the view!

The technology immigrant signing off on her first post,

Kristie