christmas program and jr cheer team

I can't believe that it is that time of year again! Here are the kids in their program. Delaney is and arabian princess.


Cienna doing her umbrella dance.

Joel the shpeard with his two best buddies Hunter and Casey

Here they are ready to go on!

The girls got to participate in the jr cheer team. The cheer leaders teach them some cheers and then they got to perform during half time at one of the basketball games. so exciting!! and boy did I love hearing the cheer morning and night and all day long some days for a couple of weeks!

they even got pom poms!

I couldn't get a very good picture of the girls but here they are on the court!

We also had a piano recital in this time frame (that I forgot my camera) so glad it is almost time to take a break form things for a while! hope you all have Happy Holidays!!

Halloween

for Halloween this year the kids had fun picking out what they were going to be, a pirate, a blood queen, and Pippy long stocking, ( with fake Halloween nails of course)! they bought their own hair dye and nails (which fell off by lunch time).


Scary pumpkins! the kids drew the face and mike cut them out.

some serious carving going on at our house! Yes that is my 5 year old with a drill!? I wonder what goes through my mind some days!

It worked out great! you beat that around in there and then just dumped out the seeds! I really liked it, what a great buy, now to put it somewhere I'll remember for next year!

Joel's class party I made witches brew (root beer & dry ice) they thought it was awesome!

spider eggs, and eyeball eggs (I ran out of olives) I did notice that all the kids picked off the spiders? what is that all about!?

apple peanut butter and marshmallow smiles. Those were a hit!

The kids started trick or treating about 4:30 and got home about 8:00 Now for me to hide most of the candy while they are at school. It was a very long and fun day, No one wanted to get up this morning, I think that Halloween should always be on a Friday or Saturday who's with me??

The funniest part of the day was Joel's teacher talking about scary costumes! The whole school goes on a little parade around the school to see everyone costumes, anyway the teacher was saying that if anyone was scared they could hold on to one of our hands. One little boy shouts "yeah I saw some scary ones, some of them have boobs!" No it was not my child thank you!! But we were all laughing so hard. Now if boobs aren't' scary I don't know what would be!? Hope you all had a great Halloween!!!

apple juice anyone???

Dave yet again talked me into helping with his crazy projects! We picked apples a couple weeks ago and now that the weather is cold it was time to do something with them. What you ask well make apple juice of course!


so we headed down to Jody's cuz he has the apple press. What else would I want to do on a chilly Saturday morning??

And yet again I have put the pics in a weird order!? He is Grandpa trying the finished product!

And Dave daring his big brother to give it try! " its good try it!" neither one puckered to much~ though I wasn't brave enough!

The Juice being squeezed out into the jar.

Joel taking a turn chopping the apples.

the apples being squished.

Delaney taking a turn squishing.

we had to cut the apples first! I think we started with 6 buckets full (big buckets)!

Pressing the apples to make the juice. It only took about 2 1/2 hours , and by the end when the sun came out we were wishing for the cold again, because the bees came out. We ended up with about 6 1/2 gallons of juice, now what to do with it???

The Sinks!

Mike came home Saturday and said "let's go to Lander and look at "the sinks" I knew something was up, and then he said "there is also a truck I want to go look at" I knew it! but I said yes anyway and off we went with whining kids almost the whole way! When we finally found the right spot it was beautiful! Here we are walking down to where the water goes into the mountain!


You can walk right down to the opening, the kids had a blast climbing all over!

Delaney took her turn with the camera, she said I had to put her pics on the blog too!

Don't we look happy?

Daddy and Joel in the hole! ha ha ha!

Another shot of the water going into the mountain, pretty cool!

Delaney working the camera again, ahhhh aren't we cute! this is on the bridge on the way down.

Here is the balcony overlooking the rise this is where the water comes out of the mountain about 1/2 mile down on the opposite side!

the plaque about it!

look at all those fish, they have a spot where you can feed them, and they say they come up here to spawn. Joel wanted to try handfishing, but don't worry we didn't!

You can kind of see the water seeping out of the rocks. pretty neat and quite a mystery! Well worth the drive, even with cranky kids! We dodged alot of deer and ended up hitting one about 2 miles from home, but luckily no damage to the van. Yes we did go look at the semi too and I think I talked him out of buying it I HOPE!

Solar Cooking

So Cienna had to make a solar oven for school, we were explaining what you needed to make one and how they worked. The idea was to cook a marshmallow. Turned out pretty well I think, she said it took awhile but it did melt and so did the chocolate she put in there. It was good, but pretty messy she said!


Joel decided he wanted to make one too, so I gave him a box and let him go with it so he cut and taped and worked on it. This is what he came up with, he threw in a handful of little marshmallows and turned on his flashlight and let them cook!

He let it sit in there for awhile pulled it out took out a marshmallow and said "ahhh done to perfection" where do kids get this stuff??

Where Does the Time Go????

It seems like just yesterday my kids were just babies! Now I am sending them all off to school for the WHOLE day! Here is Joel about 6 months old and of course eating with dad!



Now he is in kindergarten! He sure keeps us on our toes, we have to make sure all tools, tape, and glue are put up or we never know what we are going to find!

My little Cienna bug! She is about one year here.

Now entering 4th Grade! She made me straighten her curly hair for the first day of school. She is getting so grown up, she loves babies! I think she is going to be my Drama kid, she is always acting out something!

Miss Delaney, she was about 9 months here ans you can already see the devil in those eyes!

Entering 5th grade I can hardly believe it!! She loves any and ALL sports you can always find her with a ball! She is getting her braces on in a couple weeks! I am not ready for this stage in life yet but like it or not she is growing up!

Yep I am now alone all day, I thought that maybe I would get things done and enjoy me time, but Mike has had me busy so far. Maybe this winter I will get to just sit around and do nothing?? Anyway I hope all my kids enjoy their school year!!

Big Horn Co. Fair

Yes it is fair time again, All sorts of fun times! Here is Joel touching a spiky thing that I guy used in his magic show!


Delaney entered two of her quilts that she tied, in the open class and won first and second place Not bad!!

Mike entered his hay as usual and took first, he was beat this year for grand champion- whats up with that?? The Champ every year and he got beat out by a new guy?? He assured me though the only reason the other guy got it was because he turned in 3rd cutting hay and Mike turned in 2nd cutting. I think that he was more trying to convince himself!

He is still happy with first though look at that smile! so all in all I think it was another good year at the fair, maybe next year we will branch out and take an animal.

Operation!

So Dave asked me to take out his stitches from the removal of his skin cancer. Of course I jumped at the chance! This was right after I had read Mike's cousin's blog, he is a foot surgeon and he had cut a hunk of his hide out of his knuckle and took it upon himself to "operate" on it at his kitchen table! I couldn't do that to myself but boy if I could help inflict pain on others, I guess that's my specialty, I love helping people!


Cienna was taking pictures, she failed to get my official Hanna Montana scissors that I used to cut the stitches, Dave got a little nervous when I pulled those out! Rest assured It was all good I didn't cut him once!

The finished product! I offered to Pluck his whiskers too but to my surprise he declined?? Although I did get a couple trying to get to the stitches. Good as new And I didn't even hurt him too bad.