Saturday, May 29, 2010

We spent the day at Kepler Lake and just hung out, roasted hot dogs and rented a boat to cruise the lake. It was a good time. The kids tried fishing, but we had no luck with that. Both kid poles got tangled more than once....the big poles just didn't have the right bait or the right operator, I guess.

Row, row, row your boat...gently down the stream.

Dave, Autumn, Logan, Brandon, Austin.

Dave chillaxin' after rowing the boat around the little lake.

Kristen getting sorta mad that someone (Dave & Autumn) keeps
pushing her boat back out when she is trying to get to shore.

Brandon decided he wanted to jump off the boat (got a little help from Autumn)

out in the middle, but then decided the water was too cold and couldn't get back in.

So he just clung to the side while Autumn rowed the boat back to shore.

Our Mary Kay Party!

My Mary Kay lady came over to do a foot spa/mud mask thing. It was just the kids and I at home. Autumn decided she would join me and soak her feet. Brandon was hanging around but didn't say anything except for ask a few questions. Once Quinell (Mary Kay lady) asked him if he wanted to join us and soak his feet too, he jumped at the chance. And of course Austin wants to do whatever it is that everybody else is doing. Logan was outside playing in the dirt to begin with.

Here is Logan with his dirt face soaking his feet.

Autumn with her mask on...super thrilled that I caught it on camera.

Brandon and Austin with their feet soaking and their masks on. Notice the nice head band they both have on to hold their hair back. My little princesses!


Austin, thrilled to do whatever we are doing. He even put on some makeup and mascara.
Daddy was NOT thrilled with that.

Pumpkin time!

I bought our pumpkins early this year to get the good deal! Then I let them just sit around the house for weeks. Dumb. I ended up throwing away Austin's first cute little pumpkin cause it started to rot at the top. Today I found some more cute little pumpkins for Austin and Logan and I decided I better at least get some pictures. Tomorrow I think we will attempt to paint them and then during the week sometime we will carve them.

Here is Austin's bestest grin!

Logan's serious about Pumpkins!

Brandon's nice grin!

The 3 boys and all the pumpkins.

Maybe if my plan goes as ummm....planned, I will have more pictures with our cutely decorated gourds in a day or 2. Hopefully the pumpkins will have more paint on them then the kids!!

Chaos Update!

I have been busy. As if keeping up with 5 kids wasn't enough, I had to add 3 horses. What was I thinking??

Well, our Quarter horse mare, Brandy arrived about a week after Dozer (the mini) and they became fast buddies. Each would get upset if the other was taken out of pasture for any amount of time. They rarely went more than about 15 feet from each other as they grazed in pasture.

Then we added Cisco, our Morgan/Quarter gelding, to the mix and it quickly put Brandy into heat. She was acting all wierd towards Cisco....rubbing on him and nibbling his back. It got quite nauseating! Cisco was more annoyed then enamoured too. We woke up the next morning to Dozer being on the other side of the fence, so either she had enough of those two or she was bumped out by one of them. We had decided to separate her anyway, since she is "with child" and Cisco was being slightly agressive with her. She will get her own mini pasture and can visit with Brandy when we go riding.

So yeah....I have been busy. Brandy has turned out to be a great horse. She will do whatever you want her too. Dave enjoys riding her around and Autumn is pretty good at it too. Brandon needs more time on her and a few lessons before he can ride by himself, but he is showing a lot of interest so I am going to try and keep him in it. Logan and Austin enjoy riding Dozer too.

And now I not only have appts for the kids, I have appts for the horses. The farrier is coming out on Monday to trim their feet, then the vet comes out on the 15th to give a look over and shots to the 2 big ones. Then we head into the vet office on November 1st with Dozer. She will get her shots and an ultrasound to check gestation.

So....I am busy, but I have always said I would like to have horses again and now I do and love it. I just wish Cisco was trained to ride so 2 of us could go out riding together. We will be sending him this spring to get trained and hopefully he takes to it well so we can ride him.

As for the kids, they are all doing well. Austin is picking up more and more words everyday and trying to copy what we say. He is growing like a weed. He was 27 lbs and 33 inches tall at his last appt at 16 months old. Logan is fast approaching 3 yrs old in December and talks about his birthday coming up. He sees others get birthday parties and he wants his. He is enjoying having his cousins here to play with and also enjoying his "baby" horse. Brandon is doing ok in homeschool. We got off track last week and its been slow getting back on track. I did have a meeting with his advisor to just go over what we have been doing and she finally looked up his test scores from last year and said he scored advanced in math, reading and writing. She was impressed with Brandon's scores and also my organization of our school stuff. Never thought I would get compliments on organization!!! NEVER! Autumn's birthday is this Sunday and she is having a party with her friends at the bowling alley. They have neon bowling in the evenings, so we will reserve 3 lanes - 2 for her friends and 1 for the rest of us grown-ups to bowl. Dave's aunt Jeanne and her husband Jim are coming up to our house to babysit Logan, Austin, Hannah and Callie so that we can all go bowling without having to chase little kids. Should be a fun time. Kristen is doing well too. She currently has a job at a local farm helping them harvest catnip and potatoes. Fun stuff....she gets cold picking the catnip leaves, and then sweats her butt off lifting 60 lb bags of potatoes. They are paying her $9 bucks an hour though and as a teen that is pretty good wages. She doesn't get to complain too much around me. I thought about doing it just to get out of the house and get some exercise. It will only last for a couple weeks and then she will look for something else.
Dave is foreman at his job now and I think he likes running the show. The good news is he will stay on for winter instead of opting for a lay off and hopefully they can keep him just busy enough to support us through the winter so he doesn't have to go to Nome again and maybe afford him some time with his photography too. As for me, I think you get that I have been one busy beaver! I plug along, day by day, trying to keep up with it all and not lose my sanity. Some days that is harder than others. I have started working with a personal trainer. I feel better about and am getting more exercise. I didn't do well with Weight Watchers, I guess I needed someone to tell me what to do and help guide me more. I suppose I should cancel my WW plan. Procrastination is one of my hard parts.

Otherwise things are going good, winter is fast approaching and I am NOT looking forward to watering the horses when it freezes! In the mornings it has been in the 30's, this morning shows 25 degrees. We have had nice days with the sun shining, but I also see the termination dust on the mountains and the snow slowing making its way down and I know it will be here soon.

Father's Day

I was really struggling with what to get Dave's for Father's Day. I didn't want to get him any camera stuff....he has too much already and I wouldn't even know what he needed. We had been talking about a grill for a while, but I wasn't sure how he would feel about getting a grill. I KNOW how I would feel about getting a microwave or stove or any other cooking appliance for that matter on Mother's Day. I would NOT be happy. But I decided to run it by him and he was agreeable with the idea. I think I may have been more excited than him. We went Saturday night to pick one out and after complaining about the one at Sear's that has a tiny scratch and dent in it and NONE left in the box, we went to Fred's instead and got one in the box. (BTW...next time we purchase a grill, we will get the one already put together!! Lesson learned.) Dave and I put the grill together Sunday morning and there were only a few tussles with it, but we won. It now sits, looking fabulous, on our front porch.

We spent the day up at Jim and Jo's house helping them to get ready for Carmen's wedding. We ended up grilling out on their grill for lunch though. Dave was sorta sad leaving his at home to go use somebody elses. Turns out Jim's was identical to our new one. Did a trial run on his before we broke in ours. The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE it up there. They have a huge yard and swings and all sorts of things to do. Even Austin spent his day just running around the yard, investigating various plants and other objects. I did some time popping dandelions out of the ground. I can't understand not wanting to use some sort of chemical to get rid of them, but Jim is very opposed, so there Heather and I sat (Autumn did some time too) with a little tool, popping them out of the ground.....hoping the root came with. Every now and then Heather found a worm and would call the kids over to look at it and hold it. I was soooo glad I didn't find any worms, yuck! Then she would have the kids put them back in the ground so they wouldn't die. Brandon got to cut grass on the big riding lawn mower. He was pretty excited about that. We noticed after a while though that he was taking the same path over and over again and not cutting new grass. That had to be boring, the best part about cutting grass is actually seeing your progression. So Dave went out and gave him further direction on how to actually turn in a bit and cut the tall stuff. He only left a few strips here and there that Jim had to go over again. Autumn and Kristen helped Jo dye some fabric for the wedding. Not sure how that turned out but we will see on wedding day I suppose. Kristen also made some tiny ice cream cookies with vanilla wafers and strawberry ice cream for the rehearsal dinner. They looked very yummy and now I have a new idea for the kids. Overall it was very nice day. We helped get a lot accomplished and it was nice to just hang out and let the kids run.