Rubys Minute to win it party

Ruby said that for her 11th birthday she wanted a Minute to win it party with balloons and a dairy queen ice cream cake. I love it when they know exactly what they want, and it's simple!

 Eric and the girls made homemade root beer... because Eric and I thought that sounded yummy. It was!

 We decorated with red and blue balloons and streemers and made a big score board with the games/ teams listed. When the girls arrived we divided them into two teams and sent them to the corresponding table that had a bag in the center with all the supplies needed for all 11 games including a t-shirt of the team color.

 All of the games had to be completed by all of the members of the team. Technically we did not time them for a minute, it was just the 1st team to finish. There were 11 prize bags on the mantel and whichever team won the game could pick a prize bag. (Top secret information shhhh... I placed haley on one team with the interactions to do what she needed to do to make sure both teams won close to the same number of games. Its not fun if one table won ten of the games and the other only won one. She did a great job and only had to "Mess up" a couple of times). The red team did end up winning but only by one game and everyone was happy.

Overall this was a really easy and cheep party to do and Ruby said it was the best party ever... so that's all that matters.

Our double rainbow!

Lucy and I were out stacking firewood in the wagon and it started sprinkling. It was so light we just kept working. Then it started pouring rain so we ducked under the little roof over the firewood trying not to get soaked. After just a few minutes the rain stopped and right in front of us was this very bright clear double rainbow (the photo doesn't do it justice). Our jaws dropped and lucy said "The end is right there!" and she took off running. After she got about 100 feet away she stopped and came back and said "I got sooo close to it but the closer I got the further it moved away". It was just magical for both of us. 

18 years ago today...

I made the best decision of my life!

Ruby's sad sick birthday

The day before her birthday she started feeling really sick so she sleep in Keaton's room (top bunks are not fun when you are sick) with the barf bowl and dogs. On her birthday she woke up with the birthday quilt... and a 103 fever. Not what you want for your birthday.  She told me how upset she was that she would not be able to go out to dinner for her birthday.

Normally when someone stays home from school they have to stay in bed all day. I couldn't do that to her on her birthday... so she hung out on the sofa watching Myth busters and eating popsicles. Haley was jealous and said that was her dream birthday but instead we dragged her all over Yellowstone.

Around 2:00 she let me know that she thought she was feeling good enough to go out for a birthday dinner and she wanted to go to Red Lobster. By the time Eric got home she seemed a lot better so we went to Red Lobster. The girls had a great time and Keeter didn't seem to bothered by all the attention he got from everyone in the restaurant.

A big week for our little guy

Keaton started eating spittingout baby food. Ruby and Lucy LOVE to feed him. Haley loves to say "Hi squishy tooshie" and Keaton loves it when she says it.

In other big accomplishments for the week, Keaton found his toes!

They are his new favorite toys.

4 months old already

After all we've been through together...

Today we said goodbye to Cami. 

We are all just sick over it, but we really had no choice. She continued to jump up on the kids and continued to get out of our fence. She would sneak out behind the UPS truck or any car leaving our property. After the accident we thought she would stay away from cars but it got worse. The final straw was last Thursday when I was at a brunch and received a call from our neighbor. Cami was outside our gate, filthy dirty and wet (it was raining) and Cami was "greeting" all of the guests headed to our neighbors house for a luncheon and getting them dirty. Before I could even make it home I received another call from the same neighbor saying that Cami had just bitten an 80 year old lady as she was walking to the house and they were taking her to the hospital for stitches! 

Although Ruby and I (the emotional ones) pled our best case for why we should keep her and how we knew she would get better with time, Eric (the logical one) explained that the liability was too great to keep her.  She was Eric's dog and loved to "work" with him.  I know how hard decision was for him.

We found a great home for her. A retired couple that had a great Pyrenees and loved him until they had to put him down for health problems associated with old age. They are both home during the day and although they have property for her to run, they really want her to be in the house with them (she will be in heaven).  

I think she has the sweetest temperment of any animal we have ever owned... we are going to miss her terribly :(

The P family

The day I met them Lucy was sick with the stomach flu and we had extra kids from the neighborhood running around. The P's were on their way over so I was desperately trying to clean up.  Haley called me to the garage to show me that two of our chickens had gotten their heads stuck and broken their necks. I was trying not to cry when through the garage windows I saw Joe and Kelly P pull in our driveway. They had already signed a contract to rent our house (sight unseen) and were in town so they wanted to see it.  Joe had also signed a contract with Eric's group so they would be working together. I was stressed out and emotional but answered the front door with the best fake smile possible and gave them a grand tour of our chaotic house between phone calls and Lucy calling me to the bathroom.  They seemed like a really nice family and I was sure that they walked out of our house saying "That was a zoo and that woman is crazy" and they would have been right. I was having one of the worst days ever!

Jump ahead several moths. They had moved into our old house. Ruby had become best friends with their daughter Sophia, Eric really liked working with Joe, and Kelly and I got along great.  We quickly became really good friends. They told me they were non denominational Christians and I told them we were Christian too and attended the Mormon church. It was all good. They were kind of surrounded by mormons here. Several of their neighbors and all the moms they carpooled with were LDS. As a result they were always invited to activities and they would come often. One week they were invited to church and they came. There was never any pressure on them to take lessons from the missionaries or get baptized, we were all just friends.

Then one day on the phone Kelly said "Jo and I want to talk to you and Eric. Can you come over Easter morning for breakfast then we can talk?" I knew something was up but was not sure what. We had a great breakfast then they sent the kids upstairs and went outside to talk. Joe started the conversation by saying "We really like you guys... you have been such great friends... we feel like we have been dishonest with you and need to come clean about something... " Then Joe and Kelly proceeded to tell us how they had been baptized into the mormon church several years ago. Joe had stopped attending shortly after but Kelly went for a few years by herself. They eventually decided that it was not for them and had spent the last 8 years trying to get as far away from the mormon church as possible. They had attended several non denominational churches but when they attended the LDS church they felt the spirit so strong and knew that was exactly what they were looking for.  They had a strong testimony of the Bible. They read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it. They took the lessons from the missionaries. Their daughters were baptized and today Eric and I were able to be in the temple as their family was sealed together for time and all eternity. It was the best day ever!

Say WHAT???

11/2
"You are always holding my baby. You NEVER let me hold him" Lucy screaming at me
"I need to feed him right now and you are physically unable to feed him" Me
"Fine, but when you are done I get my baby back!" Lucy
"Just so you know... I am the mom and this is my baby. You are his sister and I love all your help and he loves you, but I am the mom and need to take care of him." Me
"You are so rude!" Lucy as she stormed out of the room

11/8
 "I don't like the naked photos." Eric
"But that's how everybody does newborn photos... so you can see their cute little bodies." Me
"...And most people drink beer while watching sports, that dosent mean I have to." Eric

11/14
"Keaton dosent have a bootie yet, he just has a tooshie." Lucy

11/18
I was giving Keaton a bath and Ruby and Lucy were intensely watching everything.
 "Mom, when is THAT thing going to go away?" Ruby
"What thing?" Me
"That wrinkled thing behind the penis." Ruby
"Are you talking about his scrotum? ... That never goes away" Me
"What happens to it as he grows up?" Ruby
"It just grows bigger as his body grows bigger." Me
Long pause
"That is just disturbing to me, really disturbing." Ruby shaking her head, looking disgusted

12/12
"Here Haley, you can hold Keaton now." Lucy
"What???... you always want to hold him and hog him to yourself." Haley
"Ya, but when he's asleep he's lame." Lucy

12/17
"You need to wear a bra Ruby." Haley
"Today is my break of bra day" Ruby
"You should never have a break of bra... if you don't believe me you should come see my lunch room attendant." Haley

12/23
"Keaton's head always smells like mexican chips when I kiss it" Lucy

12/27
"Did someone toot, or is that Thai food I smell?" Haley

12/30
While at our neighbors house(retired couple no kids at home) for dinner,  Lucy was talking about how much Keeter loves taking a bath and she said "Sometimes he makes bubbles and sometimes he even shoots his squirt gun!".

Ruby's fashions

Say WHAT?

"The cleaning ladies make me mad. They always put my pillow on the wrong side. When I grow up and I'm a cleaning lady, I'm going to put their pillows on the wrong side of their bed. 

Lucy

Happy New Years!

Haley was at a party, Eric was chaperoning a youth dance so the girls and I had a little movie night with "fireworks" to welcome in the new year.

 Ruby, Charlie, Addie, Lucy and Riley

Christmas Eve Traditions

Carrying on my parents tradition, we invited a ton of people over on Christmas Eve for potato soup and a table full of desserts.

I think the highlight for me was when one of the Cannon's boys walked into the dining room and said "This must be what it looks like when you get to heaven!".

The girls used left overs from the party for Santa and celery for the reindeer.

We read the Christmas story in Luke, then the girls all got to open their new jammies and head to bed.

The express christmas tree

Because we were on vacation the beginning of December we ended up not buying our tree until the 17th of December. It was technically my year to choose the tree, but I let the girls choose.

It was Lucy's turn to put the star on the top and since it was about 12 ft tall, she was very brave to climb up to do it.

By 2pm Christmas day Eric had all the ornaments cleaned off the tree and the tree completely dismantled and sitting in out burn pile out back.  It really felt like an express Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas!

Keaton

Lucy's obsession

If you have been around Lucy for any length of time over the past 2 years then you know that she LOVES pandas. She has panda everything and wants everything panda. She has been asking to go to China to see real pandas. So since we were in southern California we decided that we really needed to make it down to the San Diego zoo. We had heard horror stories about how crowded it usually is, but we were lucky and practically had the zoo to ourselves.

Most importantly Lucy got to see real pandas... up close and personal. They were even cuter then I had imagined they would be.

We even got to hold baby pandas...with the help of photoshop :)

Disneyland

Since we moved away from California Eric has been having withdrawls for Disneyland.  We found an awesome Disney package deal that we couldn't pass.  Eric talked to his brothers and it quickly turned into a family reunion.  We did not want to have to deal with big crowds so we all pulled our kids out of school and went the 1st week of December. It was perfect timing.

The four guys on the back row are Eric and his brothers (Eric, Greg, Alan and Wayne).  I still can't believe that at 6' 3" Eric is the shortest of his brothers. 

It really worked out well. All the cousins got along great.

Even though Eric and his brothers used to not be so kind to each other growing up, they all had a great time together.

My good friend Nicole and her kids met us at the park. I miss her so much!

Ruby could not wait to see Ellie. They were inseparable. 

Can you spot Keaton in this photo, Lucy was helping him out :)

The Sharps

On our way down to Disneyland we got to visit with the Sharps. When we lived in California we spent tons of time with the Sharps. We carpooled, swam and got together almost every day. It was heart  breaking to move away from them but so much fun to get to visit them again. My girls asked if they could skip Disneyland and spend more time with them. We love you guys! 

The Festival of Trees

My friend Jill and I were in charge of the santa's sleigh for the Festival of trees. We went with a sports theme and purchased the toys last January when Target had all their toys 75% off. Eric made the goal posts and football field for us. Our budget for the toys was $400 and it sold for $3,000!!!! All the toys were donated to a local charity.