All Moved In

Well we are all moved in and unpacked except for the trampoline still needing to be put together. The swingset is all together, horses are here, and the kids have even made friends with our neighbors who have an 11 year old girl and 9 and 7 year old boys. The chilly weather is WONDERFUL and simple to get used to. We have already had encounters with bears, spiders on steriods that can live through an entire wash cycle, altitude sickness, getting the cars stuck and almost driving one directly off a cliff stopping a few feet shy of hitting a tree. Oh but all of that is mild in relation to the batty neighbors. Thus far, we have 1 nice and sane neighbor(the people with the kids). We have a crazy old lady who sits on her knees in the middle of the street, 2 people who introduced themselves while complaining about where we parked(parking is very limited in the mountains), a person who introduced themselves whining about the horses, one whining about the dogs and another who warned us that we better not be druggies, partiers, have too many people over, leave trash out, or let our kids be noisy or play in the road. The last person was the last straw. I told the old bitty to tell the neighborhood to quit being jerks, come back with pies and introduce themselves so we can start over. I also informed her that Nate is a deputy and good luck to any of these jerks if they call needing him. GRrrr. I hope her busybody self lets the neighborhood know we are disgusted with the poor treatment. I am not taking kindly to such a RUDE neighborhood and the neighbors are all a block apart with tons of trees so why they all care to nitpick us to death just days after moving in is beyond me. I feel like having a VERY loud party just in spite! Thankfully they are mostly all temporary people who leave at summers end! Praise God, bring on winter!!

Moves in 2 days

Well, its been busy to say the least. We have been packing, throwing everything and then some away, had a garage sale, Sold our trailer/washer/dryer/Nate's jeep and have 2 trailer loads of stuff to go to the dump! Its been GREAT to purge of our lives of so much stuff. We gave away our chickens because we figured they wouldn't last in the mountains because our area is VERY animals infested or so we hear. There is a bear or deer or mtn lion there several mornings a week. No, my kids will never be allowed outside to play alone! I have about 20 boxes packed thus far and probably have only 10 more to go until the entire house is packed up~ I will update when we get up there with pics of the new house as we get it all set up:0)

Jesse Levi

He was SPREAD eagle, that big thing on the top that looks like a leg, well.....its not! haha, great boy shot

Yawning

Kissy face!

Jesse was a VERY wild boy for the camera. I knew he was wiggly, but even the tech couldn't believe what a ham he was. He was shaking his head, doing flips, and kicking her probe while she got the money shot. At one point, he pointed at us and shook his head and then grabbed his earlobe and pulled it and stretched it out and let go. He was opening and closing his mouth lots. It was one of the funnest ultrasounds I have had in 7 kids! I was 21 weeks, 2 days today and he measured mostly 1-2 weeks ahead on everything. His heartrate was 141.

Camping in Hartbar

Setting up camp

One view of camp

Another view of camp

Wyatt reading RugRats Campout haha

Kayla ziplining

Wyatt ziplining

Kennapoo ziplining

Everett zipining (he was an animal)

Tanners turn

Kayla lol

I Loved this pic of Maddi, the lighting was just perfect

This one too

The river that ran through our camp

The kids made a damn with Nate so they could swim

Everyone having a reading moment before dinner

playing in the river

We went up to hartbar last month and stayed a few nights. We got a GREAT campsite with a river running right through it. Nate put up a zipline accross the river for the kids. They had SO much fun. We fished, hiked, fished some more, played, read books and just enjoyed ourselves. We ate s'mores and hotogs to our hearts content. The last morning it was VERY cold so we all got up and got in the car and drove a ways to the nearest town and got breakfast and warm coffee. I guess you could say we wimped out, but it was part of the adventure. :)

Our Newish Horsey-Dolly

I have been so bad about not blogging lately, I completely forgot to mention our new horse. We got Dolly about 2 months ago and she is a wonderful mare. She is 10 so she has maturity and wisdom and is past being afraid of all the silly things that our baby horses are afraid of. We love her to pieces, she's a keeper for sure and beautiful to boot.

The Regional Park

I am a little late blogging this, but this was from our trip to the regional park in June. It was a fun day with all our homeschooling pals and it was nice for Nate to be able to come along as well as Jenahe and Lexi.

Random Summer Enjoyments

Playing with the puppy

Training Wild Mustangs

Making silly faces

Reworking the good horses

Having beautiful Sabbath day dinners

        Climbing  trees                                    Cuddling up with Sippy cups

Ah the random joys of summer and all it brings.

Summer Fun

Following the kid's interests always proves to be fun. Wyatt was reading a Toy Story book to me the other day and random enough the toys were building Teepee's and he didn't know what a Tepee was so we looked them up online. At this point, everyone became interested and they asked how they could make one. I told them to gather sticks and some twine from the hay bails. We worked together to tie all the sticks and make their very own Tepee. It was a fun project and it led into topics of Indians and other forms of housing.

21 Weeks Pregnant with Jesse Bear

The pregnancy is going beautifully. In fact, I have been so busy, I hardly remember I am pregnant most days. My belly is gettin a lil bulge going for sure though not many strangers are bold enough to ask the million $ question, "are you pregnant?" quite yet. :0) 

Summer 2010 Garden

We decided to just throw an assortment of seeds in the ground with only 2 bags of topsoil and see what would happen. We basically didn't want to put the money into an overly expensive garden. Well much to our delight, we have 37 healthy pumpkin plants, around 10 sugarbaby watermelon and 10 cantaloupe plants, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, peppers, 20+ green bean plants and a lot of peas all popped up. The crazy thing is that we ended up finding out we have to move now mid-garden season, but God always makes provisions. I was recently at Big Lots and saw they had topsy turvys for only 4.00 on clearance. I went home and did some research and guess what, I will be able to plant all my lettuce, onions and herbs, green beans and peas in the tops of the them with the squash, zucchini, tomatoes and other things coming out of the bottoms. I am basically going to take our garden with us in topsy turvys! How exciting!! We will take the pumpkins and watermelons up in planters and just put them in the ground up there. I ended up going back and purchasing lots of topsy turvys after doing a little research and we will have what is called, a "hanging garden."

Summer Bible Blast

It was a circus theme as you can tell and the concept was "The Great Transformation." The Butterfly circus was a metaphor for the kids to understand transformation of a sinful soul or ugly caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly or life washed clean once they accept Jesus. It had a huge turnout and the kids had so much fun. They came home with neat stories and circus crafts each night. They ate circus food for snack everyday and I can tell that the entire concept really resonated with all 4 of the kids. Even little Tanner seemed to understand everything that went on. The church did a great job and interesting enough, we seen some old friends from the LDS church there participating.