Look what I found!!

I went out to feed and water the chickens this afternoon and guess what I found in the coop! Our first egg!! I've been waiting for five months for this day. I HATE storebought eggs. I didn't really see a difference until we had to go back to them in July. They are watery!!

Anyway, I had to run in the house to show everyone. I finally fed and watered the chickens, fed and watered Gus, and watered Hannibal. Then I remembered that we had new bedding to give the chickens (I had cleaned out the coop on Saturday and we ended up having to buy more bedding). I went to put that in and found another, very warm, egg by the feeder. It was like the chickens were thanking me for the new feed. Probably what really happened was that the chicken was ready to lay an egg, but wasn't about to miss out on the new feed. Now if I can just train them to lay in the nesting boxes, we'll be set.

The eggs really are both brown. The more white-ish one was the first one and it seems to have some sort of white coating over the brown. I'm SO excited to have brown eggs again!!

I just have to share a story about brown eggs here. We went down to my mom and dad's house and my mom got out a carton of nice white eggs. My kids all stared at them in wonder. One of them asked Grandma where she got the white eggs. They didn't remember ever seeing them before.

Girls' Weekend

I started this post right after we went down to Utah, but I never finished it.

We went down to Utah to the "Bronson Tricks of the Trade." The drive down was fun, the party was fun, the hotel was fun, the drive home was fun. Pretty much a bunch of fun. Kidless fun at that.

We came up with fun ideas for Cheap Family Fun, talked and laughed, and heard lots of Bronson stories. Then we went back to the hotel and talked and laughed some more. Just as we were settling down, we had a small emergency and had to get up and take care of it, which started us having to settle down again.

In the morning (or should I say, later in the morning?) we got up and had fun in the hot tub and pool, where we encountered another small emergency trying to put down the broken shades (Let's just say you should never go anywhere with Tara without being well stocked in bandaids). Jolee was the good one of the bunch. She just checked out the exercise room. I tried to talk myself into joining her, but I didn't talk hard enough. Then we got ready, compared our overnight bags (I vote Tara's is the coolest, and the most stocked - of course I could just be jealous of her mini straighening iron) and started for home. We stopped in Layton for lunch and Pocatello for ice cream and finally made it home later Saturday evening. I'm sure our kids were missed, but not enough for us to never do it again.

Here are more pictures from the night.

The party!

The ride home.

Thanks Jolee for making sure we were all invited. And thanks everyone for letting me crash your party even though I'm not related through blood.

The election from the mouths of kids

Jo came home from school today and told me that I should vote for McCain because "Obama wants to take all of our guns away. He thinks he needs them for something." Apparently they learned more about the candidates today. She said that they had an election at school and McCain won.

This election has really made Jo think. While they were having their afternoon snack, they made up some laws that they thought were important. Here's what they came up with.

Laws:

1. No drinking or drugs
2. No bullies
3. No pirates
4. No robbers
5. Stay healthy
6. Only nice boys and girls in the town
7. There should be a fire truck by every house
8. When there's heroes like Daddy and police, you gotta get out of their way really fast so they can do their work
9. No stealing guns
10. Hunt so animals won't be hungry and die
11. Love your neighbors
12. Sometimes moms have to clean the house, and kids

Jo asked if there could be two presidents like a brother and sister, like her and Owen. I told her no, but there's a president and a vice president. She decided that Owen could be the vice president, since she made up most of the laws.

Psycho kids

A few weeks ago, I opened the door to go downstairs and this is what I saw. I'm not sure what she was doing, but she wasn't doing it for a show. She wasn't expecting anyone to open the door and see her. I laughed SO hard!!

Then, when Owen learned that Jo was being psycho, he wanted to do something funny, too. Here's his attempt.

Jo saw me taking pictures of Owen and saw what he was doing and wanted to try. Here she is doing it for show.Zoey was excited to try, but she was afraid to hang her head over the side of the bench, so here's her attempt.But, don't worry, she more than made up for it last night. She woke up early from her nap yesterday, so by last night when we were trying to get everyone ready for bed, she was loopy!! I guess I should be glad that, most of the time, when my kids are super tired, they get psycho instead of super cranky.

She's definitely NOT ready to give up naps!!

Owen, the builder

Just in the last 6 months or so, Owen has started building everything. It started with just the normal blocks, but has escalated. He is loving blocks, magnetics and he's even moved on to food and glow sticks. Every time I turn around, he's telling me about something he's built, what it's for and how it works. It's never just "this is a gun and it shoots things. No, it's more of a " this is a robotic rocket/car. It can drive on roads or shoot into space. When it's in space, it can drive, but it's more like gliding because they don't have roads in space, you know. Then, when it lands on a planet, it can drive again." I'm so impressed with his little 5 year old mind. He's started telling me just recently that some things are "just in his imagination and they can't come out, so if I want to see them, I have to go in his imagination to see them." That usually happens when he's trying to explain something to me and I keep asking questions about it. It's fun for me to see him using his imagination.

I'm not sure what he called this . . .

but I do remember he was excited that it had a hidden checkerboard.

This was a "yellow-ish" sale. It was "yellow-ish" so it could be hidden from people.

Yes, it looks like an ordinary box made out of blocks, but this is the infamous rocket/car.

Something made out of carrots?

And magnetics

The world's biggest paper airplane. It's called a calendar plane because it's made out of a calendar, of course.

This "beautiful wind chime" is made out of glow sticks.

Yay Zoey!!

Zoey was doing great at staying dry for a long time. Then she had a little setback and started having accidents again. This has happened with all of my kids, but every time, I tell myself that I did it right this time and it won't happen. It always does. So, I somehow have to find an incentive to make it better to go to the bathroom than in their underwear.

With Jo I gave her jelly beans if she was dry and if she wasn't I got to eat the jelly beans. She didn't like me eating her candy, so she would stay dry. I did that until it was natural for her to go in the potty. Owen actually wanted me to share his candy with him, so I couldn't use the jelly bean trick. We made up a chart for him and every time he stayed dry, he got to put a sticker on a chart. When the chart was filled, he got to pick out a Thomas toy (still a big incentive for him).

When Zoey started having accidents, I tried the jelly bean trick and she liked getting the candy, but it didn't seem to bug her if I got the candy, or not. So, a few weeks ago, I decided to try the chart trick with her. Every time she was dry, she got to color a square on her chart (coloring is another favorite thing for her).
A few years ago, we got Backyardigans stuffed animals for the two older kids. We found 4 out of the 5, but we never found Austin. Jo and Owen never seemed to care, but Zoey LOVES Backyardigans and has realized that we don't have them all. When we read her the books or watch a movie, she comments on how we don't have Austin. I found a "Baby Austin" doll on Amazon for about $6.00 and we had our "prize." When her chart was full, she would get her Austin doll. Well, it finally happened!! This morning, Zoey filled her chart. She is so happy and keeps commenting on how she now has ALL the Backyardigans. She's been carrying him around all day.


Of course now that we started the candy thing, she also expects candy when she's dry. We'll need to wean her off that now.

Drying Clothes

Nathan and I decided to try our hand at drying clothes on a clothesline. We have a huge room downstairs and I decided to get a retractable clothesline to put in there. I shopped around and with the help of my sister decided to get one from Amazon. It arrived last week. I also got some clothespins and I had everything I needed.

Yay!! It finally came.

I got a lot of clothespins! They're supposed to prevent those clothespin divets in your clothes. We'll see.

Nathan and I (mostly Nathan) put up the clothesline last Saturday after his project for the day turned out not as well as he wanted. It ended up being a bigger project than we thought. There was only one stud on one wall and the other wall that we thought was wood panelling hooked to wood which was up against concrete, ended up just being wood panelling glued to concrete (huh?). The one stud ended up being in the wrong place to support anything, so Nathan ended up hanging two 2x6's up to support the clothesline and the receiver bracket. The drilling into the stud went okay, but as he was drilling into the concrete with his hammer drill, there was this shrill noise and the hammer drill stopped hammering. Nathan decided to try another place. Same problem. So, apparently there is more than just concrete in our foundation. He did manage to drill 3 holes for concrete screws to hang the 2x6 and we hung the clothesline and the receiver bracket.

The receiver bracket with the 2x6 screwed into a stud behind.

The clothesline with the 2x6 screwed into the concrete wall behind.

The clothesline with the lines extended.

We then had to pull the clothesline out and tighten all the lines so they were the same. In the instructions, they made it seem so easy. Not so!! We had to get out the channel locks to take off a peice they showed someone taking off with just a thumb and forefinger. But we finally figured it all out and got all of our lines tightened. Today we finally loaded it up with clothes and it seems to be working great. There is some sagging in the lines, but I did load it up with my heaviest batches.

My first batches of clothes hung up.

Zoey-isms

Last night, on our way home from FHE at Craig and Sarah's, We hear Zoey from the backseat, "There's a banana up in the sky!" We looked around, and there was the moon, just a sliver. Both Nathan and I tried to bring up that it was the moon; but, yes, it was shaped like a banana. She was insistent that it was a BANANA!! She talked about it the whole 30 minutes home.

Today, I was trying to straighten my hair. I had blow dried it and flipped my head up to see Zoey standing in the doorway. My hair at this point was about 150 times bigger than it usually is. AND I never wear it down when it's curly. She loves it when my hair is down and said something about it being pretty. I asked her if Mommy's hair was pretty. She got this funny look on her face and said, "No, it's a scaredy-do!!"

She's a thinker

Josie came home from school today with a "Scholastic News" about the election. It had pictures of both candidates on the front. Interested to see who she would choose, I asked her who she would vote for. She looked at me and said, "Mo-om, I don't know what they think and what laws they would make. All we learned about today is who would lower gas prices." I asked her who would lower gas prices and she said, "both of them." I was so impressed that she actually thinks about what the person would do and not just for who looks cool in the picture. I'm so proud of her.

More Halloween fun

On Halloween, Owen, Zoey, and I went to Nathan's work to show off costumes while Jo was in school. Nathan took Zoey out on the floor since she was already all suited up for it. He said that the ladies out on the floor ate her up. I think they were both cute. Nathan took some pictures at his office. It was a good thing because I forgot to take pictures later. The "I'm a cowboy, I'm too cool to smile" pose.

Zoey was so excited to look like everyone else at Nathan's work. She kept saying she was Daddy for Halloween instead of a lab tech. It was pretty cute.

Owen and Zoey.

I told the kids that they had to wear a costume from years past because we were so busy this year and I didn't want to make any new costumes. But then, last weekend when we were in Utah, Jo came up with a great idea that would only work for her this year. In the last year, she has lost 6 teeth and before that she had already lost 2 that had come back in. Her teeth were in various stages of coming back in. Her idea was to be a jack-o-lantern. She told me how to do it. So, the day before Halloween I was running to Wal-Mart (not a quick feat where we live) trying to find everything to make Jo a jack-o-lantern. I think it turned out pretty cute. (I did re-do Jo's paint when we got home so I could take pictures).

Full length.

And a close-up of her face.

She was such a trooper. I couldn't find orange face paint, so I ended up using acrylic paint. By the end of the night, her face was itching like crazy, but she was still smiling. She decided that she had to smile all night to show people why she chose to be a jack-o-lantern.

Halloween night, we went to our ward's trunk-or-treat, then went to go visit Grandpa Jack, then Gabby and Yani. It was a long night, but the kids were excited to be out late and see everyone. Thanks for letting us come see you.

No guts, no glory

At the request of Mimi, I took pictures of the guts of the piano. It actually sounds really good. It was built in 1905 and the inside is still in really good shape. We were told that it has the same soundboard as a grand piano and it even has little cool pegs to hold up the top like a grand piano so the sound comes out better. We are pleased with the piano overall. It does need some tuning and the outside needs some major work, but we're happy to have it.

The guts.A close-up of the guts.

Showing the pegs holding up the top.

Halloween fun

Our Halloween fun actually started a week ago. Last weekend, we went down to Utah to deliver the pig to Rachel and to get some canned fruit from my parents (thanks for all the fruit, Mom and Dad!! We're loving it!!). My sister and her kids had decorated her house for Halloween and her kids decided that they needed to have a Halloween party. They were nice enough to plan that while we were there. Then, Nathan's cousin also had a Halloween party that night. So, in going down to Utah for 24 hours, we were able to deliver the pig, pick up the fruit, and go to two Halloween parties. The funnest part was getting to see everyone from both Nathan's and my side of the family. It was a busy weekend, but SO fun. We ended up getting home at about midnight on Saturday night. Then we were up until 1:00 putting all of the fruit away so it wouldn't freeze out in the car. It was a short night, but worth it.

Here's at my sister's party. We started out with yummy homemade taco soup.

Then the kids (and adults) all had fun frosting and eating Halloween cookies. YUM!

We all had fun visiting.

Zoey's trying to convince Nathan that she doesn't need a nap (as she carries a Blue's Clues pillow down from the bedrooms to cuddle with).

More visiting and hanging out.

The three oldest grandkids playing on . . . a trike? These three have so much fun together.

Then on to Nathan's cousin's house. We had yummy mummy dogs (so cute), tater tots (some kind of chubby fingers, but I don't remember exactly what they called them, yummy salads, chips, spiced cider, macaroni and cheese (a huge hit with my kids), and Halloween cookies.

More visiting and hanging out.

The slide was the hit of the night with the kids. There was always a kid at the top and one at the bottom.

Zander and Stella

So cute, even if he is in a Ute jersey. We'll forgive him. His mom dressed him. The main reason I had to put this picture in was to show Molly that I could get a good picture of Zander.

Getting ready for the kids picture. I love Zoey's face in this picture. She's loving kids younger than her lately.

And the final kids picture.

I had to add this picture because Stella finally had her hat on. It was so cute!!

Eating yummy food and visiting.

The kids also got to go gourd bowling. They got to chuck pumpkins at these cute painted bottles.

Owen getting ready to bowl.

Zoey wasn't too sure about bowling at first, but she warmed up to it.

She also finally warmed up to everyone. Laurene . . .

and Kylie.

Thanks everyone for the fun parties and letting us hang out with you. It was lots of fun!! Are you happier with this post Laurene? Just kidding. I didn't have a big block of time this whole week to work on this.