Working with Dad

We have had a fun week working with dad. I need to write it down so that I remember that it does happen! He has been working here all week instead of out at the farm, or up in Arco. The water just came on and so he is having to get all of the systems going so he is super busy but still has time to come and see us, or we go see him. Justin has been able to enjoy rides in the pickup and tractor. He is such a little farmer. He has had all of his tractors and equipment lined up and working all over the house. He likes to line them up on the piano and then sits on the bench and plays with them for quite a while. I guess it is in the blood. Justin is ready to go with dad, he just re-discovered shorts and loves to wear shorts everyday but he had to put on pants to go to work, and he cant go outside with out a hat and he left his good hat at Grandmas and so he is wearing a new hat. It was from Ryan's Grandpa Jones excavation company from West Jordan, UT. The hat must be at least 40 years old, Justin loves it because it has an excavator on it. And of course he has to take his lunch, just like Dad! Isn't Dad so COOL!
These pictures are from a week ago, We are loading up, Ryan is quite the danger seeker I think, the worst part is he has my son in there with him!!! Ryan is also quite the eBayer, he bought this equipment trailer off of eBay, funny huh. He has also bought a loader and other farm stuff off of eBay, he is much more brave than I am! Maybe he does share my passion for shopping after all....

Sister Reunion

Kache(kileys), Luke(Saras), and Renton(Ericas) sitting on Kollins monument. We had as many little boys at the sister reunion as there were sisters!! Erica, Me, Kristin, Trish, Kiley at Kollins monument Claire and Brek (tricias),They took turns crying the whole time, it is so hard not to be able to talk!!
Claire and Brek, no wonder they cried the whole time, they were always buckled in the car driving some where, poor kids!! This is one of their happier moments.

I had a fun chance to go on a vacation just for me!!!! It was our sort of annual sister reunion, this year we went to Sara's house in the Provo area. She just bought a new home there and was willing to let us all come and stay with her. Her home is beautiful, she has good taste! Erica and Kiley came from Wyo, and Nebraska, Kiley had to drive the farthest (is that a word mom?) And she had to do it alone, well with her little boys. But they drove, and I drove and Mom and Trish and Kristin flew to SLC and I picked them up on my way through.

The first day we just hung out and ate of course. Wednesday we went down to Delta UT. My brother Kollin is buried there and his headstone just barely came so we went to see that and visit his grave. It was a windy/rainy day. It was nice to see his headstone, Sara did a good job on it too. Delta has a nice Cemetery, it is well taken care of, which I am thankful for. We came home and had lunch in Provo, Kiley requested Mexican food (she is pregnant, so we let her have what she wanted!!) It was good food anyway. Then on to shopping. I think that pretty much sums up the rest of the trip, shopping, shopping, shopping. I couldn't have planned it better myself. I LOVE to shop and UT has some great shopping. We went to the Provo mall, twice, Tai Pan, IKEA, BYU bookstore (we did you to BYU campus also, but it was to go to the bookstore, so more shopping), Bed bath and Beyond, Target, Walmart, you name it we went to it. Not all enjoyed the shopping as I did but everyone did it with a smile even all of the little boys we had with us. It was sad and hard to go home. But we already have next years reunion planned for Kiley's house in Nebraska, should be fun!

Mom, Trish, and Kristin rode back with me and stayed the night then we drove them to the airport in Boise, their tickets were 29$ out of Boise, can you believe that! So me and the kids did a little more shopping in Boise after we dropped them off. They have some good outlet malls and I never get to stop when I have Ryan with me, (he doesn't value shopping like I do) So I got the kids a few things at Carters and Osh Kosh, they had great summer sales. We of course had to stop for lunch and play for a while and then we finally went home. It was a long week, but so fun.

I am glad to be having a quiet week this week. It is good to be home, I missed my kids and Ryan. Ashley stayed with my friend Kristen (so she could stay in school) Emma and Justin went to Grandma Telfords, she lives 30 miles away so she couldn't keep Ashley too. Ryan spent most of his week up in Arco planting grain, he loved it, sleeping in stinky hotels, eating fast food, and camping out with his brothers, he had a good bachelor week, but was happy to have us all back.

Our new Temple

We finally got some pictures at our new temple, I wanted to get some while it was under construction, obviously I waited till the last minute because it looks almost done. It is turning out so nice. I cant wait to be able to attend there. The kids were excited, but not as excited as they were to use the port-a-pottys. They all had to go really bad, Emma spent most of the time at the temple in the bathroom, hence the reason she is only in one picture. It is so hard to plan your trips around where the next bathroom is, one of the many joys of having children!

Weekend getaway

Two weekends ago we got to go on a quick getaway. It was so nice. I had a niece Erin Nielson get baptized in Oregon (near Boise) so we went up to see that and have a little time with just our family. It was so fun, we enjoyed the time together. Ryan is so busy, all the time, so it was good for us to get to go and spend time with him.

Saturday we left in time for the baptism at 6:30, Erin was cute, her sister Jillian and a friend sang a beautiful song, Jillian is such a good singer, I was amazed!!! Then we went to a hotel in Ontario OR. and stayed the night and had pizza and swimming and TV and all of that fun stuff you do in a hotel. Sunday we went to their ward and had good meetings and then went out to Bret and Jens for yummy Sunday dinner. It was fun to play with cousins and visit with friends and Grandma and Papa Nielson were there, It was just a great time. I need to go visit more often, they only live about 3 hours from us. It was a great time, Thanks Jen!!!

Ashley and Summer (Summer got to come from WA with Grandma, so lucky!!)

Emma going from the hot tub to the poolJustin after the baptism running around, what he does best! Jillian is in the back ground.

Justin and Ryan swimming, don't let the picture fool you, Justin did not like to swim, how weird, All of the other kids love it, including Claire, it was even warm???

Dinner slums....

I need some dinner ideas, two nights in a row I have just wanted to skip dinner and go to bed, kids and husband don't like that idea though. What are some of your favorites, I need ideas. I go through this every once in a while where I am fresh out of dinner ideas, I am low on groceries so that doesn't help either. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated by not only me but my kids and husband. I would hate for them all to starve....

Kollins Birthday

Today is Kollins birthday, he would have been 31 years old. I talked to him on the phone for the last time today, a year ago. I miss him so much. I think of him everyday.
He was a fun brother. I remember as children we played together a lot. Even barbies, he of course was GI Joe, he wouldn't play with the barbies, but would play with Kiley and I playing barbies. I remember he constructed a sort of zip line from the chandelier down to the piano bench so his GI Joe guy could slide down it. He was always up to something crazy. How about the BB holes in his bedroom ceiling, I think He and Bret would lay in bed and shoot the ceiling.
I tell my kids often the story about Kollin and the skunk. We would play out on the lawn every Sunday afternoon with the fisher price people, mom would always make us go out and pick them up so they weren't left out all night, anyway we of course waited until it was dark outside to go clean up and we would bring in a couple loads of toys at a time. Well I was bringing in a load and Kollin was coming with one behind me and a skunk came running across our path in between us, I was able to run in the house, he was trapped outside by the skunk. I went running in to get help and before we got out to him he came in the door. He was ALIVE! I thought for sure he would be a gonner. silly, but I was so worried about him, I don't know if he scared the skunk off or how he got around it I was just glad he was safe! So for being such an obnoxious brother I obviously liked him a little bit. I know I liked him a lot. He was a great friend and protector. I always was the annoying little sister wanting to run around with him in HS because he had super cute friends and it was fun to hang around with them, and he let me. In college he would let me borrow his pickup to do whatever I needed. The night before I got married we stayed at Bret and Jens so we were closer to Boise, he got in bed with me and just hugged me and held me, he was sad to be loosing his little sister. He was that way, our family is not a hugging kind of family, but Kollin was, I think he had to do it in a teasing way or we would suspect his real intentions of telling us that he loved us. He was such a good person, I miss him everyday.

Tea Party

We have been trying to recover from our long fun week. We have been doing laundry and D.I.ing like crazy. Our D.I. needs stuff and we have got stuff so we are getting rid of it. Anyway we did take a little time to have a tea party on the new picnic table. I wish we could have had it outside, still too cold!! I have got lots of blogging to do to catch up on the past two weeks, I will have to do a little at a time. It is good to be home.

A little busy business

We have been running around this week, it has been good to be busy. Monday we went grocery shopping and got all of that stuff out of the way, it takes a whole day for me with all of the kids and car seats and in and out... anyway it was a good day. Tuesday Ashley had her field trip to the fire station and then to skate land, she had a fun, fun time. She took my old camera but didn't bring it back. (one of the moms who went has it). When I get it I will post those pictures. We didn't get to go, I had planned on it but then I couldn't take a baby on the bus for liability reasons I guess, so I was sad not to get to go. But she had fun.

I went and got my hair done, I already had grandma arranged to babysit (for the field trip) and since I couldn't go I used her anyway, she is an awesome grandma!! Ryan's brother Marks wife, Paige does my hair and so I went down and she cut it and highlighted and did lots of fun, crazy things to it. I had not intended to cut it but Ryan wanted me to, so I did and it is CHOPPED off. I have been in morning ever since. It is a super cute cut, it is just hard to see myself with super short hair. I am still adjusting. It has been so easy to do though, which I need right now not having a lot of time for doing hair!

Yesterday was a full day. We had preschool in the morning, then scouts in the afternoon, then ran down to tumbling and then back for mutual. We had a big kickoff for our Temple celebration. The kids are doing a big dance and a whole big celebration and we are starting to practice now. The celebration will be in August when the temple is dedicated. It is going to be so cool. I had to give a short talk and we had a couple other short speakers and then played a game and ate food. There were about 100 kids there. It was so good to see. I love serving with the youth. They are so fun.

So today is catch up day, laundry, house work, all the things I haven't been doing all week. Ashley is out of school tomorrow that will be nice. We are going to a cousins baptism for the weekend. It will be fun to see some Nielson cousins and Grandma and Papa for a day or two. We are hoping Ryan will get to come. He started planting potatoes up here today so he is around in the area. We took our suburban in to get the A/C charged up and he came and picked us up and we rode around with him. I wished I had my camera, we saw potatoes being planted and the neighbors cattle drive. We broke down in Ryan's pickup on the way home, we were all still in our PJ's by the way and had to be towed by Ryan's brother Mark, how embarrassing, my white PJ's got all dirty in all of the work pickups we rode in. When we got home we saw an excavator being unloaded in our drive way. More work going on for our pivot to be put in. I cant wait.

last Tumbling class

The girls had their last tumbling class last night, it was so fun, and sad to be done. They LOVE tumbling. They have pretty patient teachers too. We would go with our friends that we also do pre school with. All of our kids match up about the same age so it works out good for play days and fun.

Justin and Clay, they play race cars and do a little tumbling on the side while the sisters tumble.

The girls all received a certificate for completing the tumbling class, they thought it was fantastic! Serena, Erica, Ashley, Emma.

Magic Reservor

After Stake Conference on Sunday we went for a drive up to the reservoir. We wanted to see how the snow was melting and coming in, the snow has already melted and the reservoir is still not full. Hopefully the mountain snow will fill it up. It was so fun for the kids, we checked out the East side of the lake and it was not as nice as the West side, I guess we wont go to that side again. The girls made friends with a fishermans dog, it was a nice dog. It fetched really well and would jump out into the water to get the ball, the kids thought she was great. Anyway it was nice to spend the day with our daddy too, we don't get to spend enough time with him.