Happy Birthday Brother

Today Uncle Kollin would have been 32, Happy Birthday, we miss you!

Sunday afternoon at Shoshone Falls

We had to run down to Twin Falls to visit Ryan's truck driver who was in the Hospital, so afterwards we made a quick trip over to Shoshone Falls. We have never been there in our 9 years of living here, (Ryan's whole life living here) So we thought we should go. It was AMAZING, I had a hard time getting over the scary part of it though, It was a little much for me, I must be afraid of heights...and water, I don't know. It was really cool though, I am glad we finally checked it out, and we will definitely go back again the kids enjoyed it too.

Justin did not want to be in the picture

the back of the falls, you can see the mist where it drops down, that big rock out in the middle looked really cool from behind too.

There she is! Not the best picture, but it was breath taking!

The Snake River Canyon.

Emma's Kindergarten Program

Emma had her play and talent show Tuesday night. She was in a play with only boys, imagine that, Emma and all the boys, she is just like one of the guys apparently! She did a good job remembering all of her lines. For her talent she wanted to sing Oh Mr Jack o lantern, so I let her. She did a good job not being too shy. The pictures aren't the best, it was a full cafeteria, and we were in the back.

No one wanted to sit and listen, it got too long for Justin and Claire, she was fussy!

Silly Red Head!

I brought Claire in the house on Wednesday afternoon after we got home from town and went back out to bring in groceries. This is how I found her when I came back in the house, what a kid! Notice her upside down binkie, she has never liked binkies?? Funny!

Jaci turned 3!

Jaci turned three last Sunday, she is such a big girl! We are so glad that we get to have her and her family living so close to us now! Big butterfly cake!Taking some tastes, yum, yum!

Presents time, She was so good to let Justin "help."

Yummy lunch for the red head.

Cheese! Happy Birthday Jaci! We love you!

While I was gone...

Emma had 2 field trips, the first was to the Senior Center to read stories, which she loved and got a letter from the superintendent telling how grateful and impressed everyone was with the K. classes reading abilities. Also she went bowling in Shoshone and had a picnic in the park. She had a great time, she got all of the pins down 3 times and was pretty excited about that. I was sad that I missed so much while I was gone, she had a busy week. She wanted to show some of her work. Her last day of school is tomorrow. No more Kinder for Emma, she will officially be a first grader, boo hoo!

Ashley also had a fun week, she got this star reader award and was so excited about it that she didn't even tell me, and she forgot her award at Aunt Sara's house, I guess she is just used to getting cool awards, its no big deal for her! This week her class is having an auction with "money" they have earned throughout the year, from good behavior, passing test etc. Ashley had earned $6,400, (don't I wish it was real to put in her college fund!) We are excited to see what she buys tonight when she gets home from school.

Justin had a good time with Grandma Telford and was glad to get to spend the end of the week at Jaci's house. Aunt Sara took them to the park to ride bikes and they played for hours and had a great time. Sara also was adventurous and let them all sleep in the camper Friday night. They didn't have the furnace running and got too cold at 3:00am and Sara hauled all of them into the house, (Bob was gone on a scouting camp out) The kids had a great time anyway, Emma assured me that she was not cold at all! I was glad to see them, and they were glad to see me!

Happy Mothers Day to me!

I got home from the Sister reunion to some wonderful surprises! The kids made me some NICE cards and picked tulips from Aunt Sara's yard. (Emma picked me a whole sack full of dandelions, my favorite!) Ryan also got me some flowers and tomato plants for the garden, AND he had my house PROFESSIONALLY cleaned while I was gone! It looks so good! (well looked so good). It was the BEST gift ever! I am so thankful to be a mommy, I love my family!

Sister Reunion 2009

This years Sister Reunion is in the books! We had a really great time out in the back country of the Nebraska Sand hills. Kiley and Jason work on a ranch there and we had a great time getting used to the back woodsiness of it all! It is so funny that a bunch of farm girls could seem so much like city slickers out there. I tried to get some pictures to show the remoteness of their place, you think you live in the middle of nowhere, this gives new meaning to the middle of nowhere! This is the lane up to their house, the house is in all of those trees. We arrived Monday night after a 13 hour adventurous drive. We saw lots of fun sites along the way like Abe Lincolns head, a tree growing out of a rock, and lots of windmills blowing in the Wyoming wind!

Here you can barely see the dark line of trees way in the back of the picture, (that's her house)these are some of their cows, the ranch is something like 15,000 acres, yeah that's BIG!

We spent Tuesday in the kitchen, Jason had his branding scheduled for Thursday morning and Kiley feeds all of the "help" after they get all (850!!) calves vaccinated and branded. After we finished the cooking we went out that night to "help" Jason doctor sick calves. Our helping consisted of us driving around in Kiley's suburban looking for calves that we thought looked sick, I think we thought they were all sick, but he assured us that they weren't ALL sick, again showing how little we know about ranching! He was a good sport to put up with all of those women all week!

We enjoyed the show too, Jason would chase the calves down on his horse Roxy and then rope them to doctor, what a cowboy!

Wednesday was our trip to town, it really was a trip, an hour and a half driving straight through, we of course didn't do that though we stopped at any and every point of interest along the way. We crossed the Platte River which the pioneers crossed, the Mormon trail was on the North side the Oregon trail was on the south side:It doesn't look that bad now, but back when the pioneers were following along it, it was about a mile wide, how would you like to cross that in a wagon! My favorite stop was this place:

Chimney Rock. I am sure it was a welcomed sight for the pioneers, after miles and miles of flat, and rolling hills to see such a landmark brought them GREAT joy! There was a nice museum that we checked out while we were there too. The boys loaded and unloaded this wagon with all of the provisions that travelers would need, including Claire Bear!

We also passed the largest Tractor "bone yard" in the United States, I had to get some pictures of that for Ryan. Then we drove on to Scottsbluff for the rest of the day for some shopping, we got home late that night, it really is a lot of work to go to "town" I see why Kiley doesn't go very often.Don't Claire and Dallie look like they have had a long day!

Thursday was the big branding! Jason had some neighbors and friends that came to help brand those 850 calves that were all born last month. It was quite amazing to see all of the cattle and all of the wranglers, there were about 40 of them in all!

They were happy to see us, we brought them out a morning "snack" Some of these guys get up at like 3:00 in the morning to drive to the brandings, just because they are "neighbors" doesn't mean they live close by!

That's a lot of cows and calves!

Here is the branding pot, they don't use electric brands like we do, these things get really hot!

Can you tell how hot they get! It was a pretty cool site!

Claire and I held down the back of the pickup, we made sure none of the snacks and drinks got away!

It only took a couple of hours to do all of that work and then they all came up to Kiley's house for lunch. We had a picnic in her yard, it turned out nice, they were all jealous of her trees, there aren't a whole lot of trees in Nebraska. Lunch turned out good, there was plenty of food, and help! We had a good time!

Friday we relaxed! We took a little 5 mile drive (that took 3 hours) out to an old cemetery on the ranch. We discovered three graves before the rattlesnakes chased us off. Mom is quite an adventurer! Kiley, Trish, and I drove out to check on some of Jason's windmills and water troughs (Jason was at a ranch meeting until late and asked Kiley to go check on stuff) We had a nice drive out, but the way back in we got covered in that wonderful Nebraska sand! I cant believe how much the sand blows even though there is grass all over it, it was yucky!

The windmills are so cool! I love that they harvest that free wind, I'm glad the miserable stuff can be used for something!

We had a great trip and cant wait to do it again next year...at my house! I better get planning! Thanks Kiley and Jason!

Spring Work

We have had lots of work going on around our farm this past week. This cool machine came and did a bunch of work for us, I have never seen an excavator at work up close, they are pretty cool!

He did a bunch of dirt work in our pasture, this used to be an old pond that kept filling up some how (we found out the canal was leaking into it) and causing lots of mosquitos. I am really hoping we have that problem solved.He also created a couple of concrete piles around the yard.

The original owners of our farm raised a bunch of pigs which is where all of the old concrete came from, now we can farm every last bit of the ground, well at least the parts that arent covered in rock, gotta love this IDAHO farming! We grow a GREAT crop of rocks!

I also had my "first cutting" on the lawn that is. It is so dry! I had no idea, it has been once again, a dry spring. I am hoping to get it going now and all of that rain this morning really helped, it looks lots better already.

A few of our pets were trying to make the blog this week I guess! We are still praying for more rain! Grow crops, grow!

It's Raining!

BLESSINGS!