Game Room

Remember the cereal problem? Well we fixed it by building shelves in the Game Room. Then we decided to add a dvd/cd shelf. Then we decided to paint it. AND we decided to do all of this a week before Thanksgiving. I'm not sure the carpets were even dry that day :) The kids explained what the "hawt mess" meant, but I can't remember. Justin did quite a bit of the painting, but we all pitched in.

We put a long table and a desk under the shelves for the kids computers. To the left of the window is where the tv goes with the Wii.

This is usually where we find Alex sitting at his computer.


And the dvd/cd shelf that holds all the games, movies and cds that we own. Believe it or not, I'm the happiest with this because we had things every where. We didn't have anything big enough to hold it all. Kind of amazing how things build up over the years.

Renaissance Fair

In November we went to the Renaissance Fair. We had gone there 6 years ago and we've been trying to get back since. The kids loved it, both times.

My babies are growing up . . .

Had to try the Turkey legs . . . it will be the last time I have one. Funny how much tastier they are when you are younger.

Cereal

You may remember my facebook post about all the cereal. Here is the pic. This was in my living room for a while because I had no place to put it.

11 years old

Um, yeah it has been awhile since I posted. I'm sorting through my pictures today and thought I'd share some. Rebekah turned 11 in October. Next year, all of my children will be out of Primary. They grow up so fast!! While your changing diapers endlessly it sure doesn't feel like it, but then all of the sudden you are looking back on all of that with fond memories!!!

I realized this year for the first time, I'm a bit slow, that for several years now she has had a Halloween themed cake. So in keeping with that theme I bought the Halloween cupcakes. They were a hit.

Halloween

Half vampire/half werewolf

Ale'skittles

Jacob (yes, I did die his hair)

Vampire slayer

Blora

We went to Belton Lake yesterday. I forgot my camera but I was able to use my nieces. Last activity of the summer. School starts on Monday, the 23rd.




That is Rebekah in the sand. Hannah, Amber and Haley buried her. I think they bury her every time they are near sand :)

She lives!

Hannah and Rebekah

Justin K - 12

This didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, but it still turned out pretty good.

Happy 16th Birthday Alex!!

Alex turned 16 yesterday. It will be a while before he is a driver but we are working on it. He will be taking a couple of classes at Temple College this fall, which starts in a couple of weeks or so. He spent some time with his cousin James this summer in South Carolina.

This is how Alex likes his hair but I chopped it all off the day before his birthday!!! I don't have a very good picture of it yet.

Justin's Vocal Final

Oil Change

I was letting Teyla out when I looked over and saw Mark "helping" change the oil in the van. I thought this was really cute. I don't think you can tell, but he was pulling grass out with his toes. You can't see Alex in any of my pictures as he was completely under the van.

More potatoes

OK. So I have a dozen other things I've been meaning to post and I post about petunia's and potatoes?! Kind of embarrassing. When I first planted these potatoes I watched a bunch of videos by this man who had planted some in a cut up 55 gal. drum and some 5 gallon buckets. I don't know what kind he planted, but he only yielded about 2 -3 lbs. per bucket. Yes, my scale is reading 3 lbs. 10.7 oz. Kinda neat. This is one plant and we only did the one tonight. I will probably do the others next week sometime.

Petunia's

I've fallen in love with Petunia's. I used to think that they were not very pretty, but this spring I've changed my mind. It started with this 4 x 4 post. I hung the upside down cherry tomato on one side and a basket of Petunias temporarily on the other. My plan was to take the basket apart and get the 4 or 5 plants and put them in my boxes (see below). They do this in Germany and it is so pretty, but I've always liked the hanging Geraniums better. Unfortunately the hanging Geraniums are hard to find and I've not had good luck with them in this heat. So I bought the Petunias and it was cheaper this way. I found that I really liked the basket of flowers hanging there. So when it turned out that there were 5 plants in the basket, I put two in each of my boxes below and one back in the basket. That is right there is only 1 Petunia in the hanging basket. Every time I look at it I think, "I can't believe there is only one plant in that thing!"

The hanging cherry tomato was the plant that had the five tomato horn worms on it.

Side view toward my messy front porch.

My two boxes.

Left side of my back porch.

Right side of my back porch.
In this picture you can also see the potato plants on the left and my garden way back there on the right. Most of the green you see with the potatoes are actually grape vines.

Alex & his pet Delaware, Stacy

We ordered some Delaware chickens about 8 months ago. At the time it sounded like a great idea, not so much today. I picked them (10 pullets) up and while Justin was looking around for chicken supplies (he had been warned days, weeks and months in advance) the chicks were in the living room. I was not paying attention because I was making dinner. I kept hearing Alex say, "but we are not having chicken". I thought he was talking to his cousin Stephen, thinking that maybe Stephen really liked chicken and Alex didn't want to share. Or something. As it turns out Alex had been holding one of the chicks and introduced me to her as 'Stacy'. Then it hit me, he didn't want Stacy to know we were actually having chicken! (Yes, and this is a good day for me ;)

It didn't stop him from feeding Stacy a noodle from our chicken helper. I told him it probably wasn't a good idea, but it didn't stop him.

She ate that whole noodle!! We were all impressed. I'll let you know if she survives it.

It's Official!!!

Justin is officially an Eagle Scout!!! He passed his Board of Review today. All that is left is the Court of Honor. Go Justin, go Justin, go Justin . . .

Family 2010

Priest & Laurel Prom

This last Saturday (the 10th) was the Priest & Laurel Prom. Justin went stag last year with his cousin and friend. This year he asked this sweet girl out. She is from our Stake. This is the only picture I was able to get (I'm still nagging for him to get more - more was taken, just not by him). If she sends more or if I can get a hold of the lady who hosted 10 (yes ten) Priest and Laurels at her house for dinner, I will post them.


How do you spike the punch at a youth Stake dance. Yes, it did happen and I was floored. Caffeine!!!! Justin said it made him hyper - go figure.

One potato, two potato

I have discovered a side affect to using compost as your source of dirt. The original post I did on potatoes was 2 weeks ago. They were ready to have more dirt put on them again less than a week after I did it. They grew amazingly fast. I couldn't get to it until this morning. They were easily 18 inches tall and from what I read you are supposed to add more dirt when they are about 6 inches tall.

When we moved back Texas (2 years ago on the 17th of March), John went into the pasture and gathered all the manure and hay and dumped it into our yard with a friends front loader. I didn't use much last year. That is all I have used this year. I'm going to have beautiful, lush green plants and NO vegetables!!! But it is really, really nice compost :)

I'm not going to worry about any more dirt. From here on out I'm going to just let them grow and hopefully we will have some potatoes in a couple of months.

Rebekah & Hannah

A couple of years ago, or so, I took a picture of Rebekah and Hannah on the Easter Egg Hunt. I liked the picture so much that I tried to take one every year since. Well, I say tried because I found three since 2006. Anyway, I took the one above on Saturday.

This one is from 2007.

And 2006.

I was sure there was another one, but anyway. The point is at how much these girls are growing up. This summer marks 10 years since we moved to the land and the kids have absolutely benefited from it.

We went to a friends Missionary farewell yesterday. I don't think it was a typical one, but a gathering of friends and family before he departs next week. He was commenting on all the pictures that were being taken and I said, "well, at least you know your loved". His reply, "I've never worried about that." The look on his face said it all. This young man knew and had known all of his life that he was loved. I hope and pray that all the kids that live on this property KNOW that they are loved and NEVER for one second doubt it!

Happy Easter

Yes this is from last year, I found it this morning. I took pictures of our annual Easter Egg hunt yesterday. I will try and get them loaded in the next couple of days.

EDITED: I didn't realize that my program saved the file in 96 dpi, which made it look really bad when you tried to look closer at the scrapbook page. So I changed it to 300 dpi. It looks a lot better when you look at the closeup now.

So, there was this one coupon . . .

There are not many people who would take pictures of their stack of toilet paper. Aren't you glad you know me :)

Potatoes 2009

This is what they looked like when we first planted them. They did go down a bit, but in the end I decided that it was too much on top. So I didn't do as much this year.

I didn't think to get my camera until we got to this point. I wish I had taken before pictures. Through the whole season I covered it mostly with hay. On the right you can sort of see how we had plants breaking through everywhere. We ended up only having potatoes at the very bottom. The bright red potato is actually a tomato.

I didn't use the black container last year. This is a different black container here behind Mark. There is actually two and they hold blueberries. We moved the blueberries this year because the grapevine has taken over everything. I'm a little worried about the tops of the potato cages, but can't do anything about it at this point.