Sick in our house!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. All that's been going on here for the last few days is that we are SICK!! It started on Wednesday. Of course it was the day I was supposed to get my hair done and go out with a friend for ice cream. It couldn't be a day when I was planning on cleaning out the chicken coop or something equally as exciting. I woke up throwing up. I was sick for two days. I was thinking I might have had food poisoning from Subway, but then, after a semi-calm day on Friday, Zoey started throwing up. She threw up all night and then Saturday, we thought we were good again. NOPE!! Nathan and I went to a play and came home just in time for Zoey to throw up again. Early the next morning, Owen threw up and later that morning, Jo joined the party. So, Nathan stayed home from church and I got to go by myself. Zoey seems to have rallied nicely and is coloring pictures of her pink house as I write while the older kids sleep. Hopefully it will leave as quickly as it hit us and Nathan won't get it. I must say, though, my kids were troopers while I was sick. Jo took over everything from the time she got home until Nathan got home and Owen took care of things while she was at school. They are growing up so much. Thanks kids!! And thanks to Nathan for doing everything on the busiest night of the week.

Frustrated!!

ARRRGGGG!!! I'm so frustrated with the computer right now!! Did you all like my last post? I'm not sure what happened, but somehow all of my posts were being translated into Hindi, which I'm sure is helpful if you speak Hindi or are writing to people who speak Hindi, but I don't. So, luckily, after an hour of being frustrated, I hit a button and we're back in English. Yay!!

सिक्क!!;लस्द्क्ज्फ़ोइसद्घोइउघ

Zoey's bedtime

Zoey had realized that now that we're working on potty training, she has an excuse to get out of bed at night. All she has to do is say she needs to go potty, and we won't get mad at her and we'll let her get up and go. Well, it's become a nightmare. She'll get up 7-10 times a night. Sometimes she'll go, sometimes she won't. You can see in her eyes that she know she's getting away with something. So, last week, I finally put my foot down and told her to go to bed. She'd already gone to the bathroom at least 4 times and I was sure she was done. She also has this thing that she does. She thinks that in order to get what she wants, all she has to do is be a happy girl. So, when I told her to go back to bed, she was trying to convince me that she was a happy girl. I did let her stay up a little longer so I could take pictures of her being a "happy girl," then she went to bed. The whole time I was taking these pictures, she was saying, "but I'm a happy girl." Not so convincing.

Doesn't she look SO happy?

It's Done!!

YAY!! WOO HOO!! Nathan finally got his tractor put together. He fixed the PTO shaft (notice the tilling), the 4 wheel drive, and a stuck valve: all that we knew needed to be fixed. But once he got into it, he realized that there were two broken gears inside the transmission that needed to be replaced. If we had just fixed the things we knew about, it would have been about $10, but it ended up being about half of what we originally paid for the tractor. It was worth it to have a tractor that does everything we need it to on our pretend farm. I'm just glad we didn't have to pay labor costs as well. It's nice that Nathan is able to take something completely apart and get it back together with minimal pieces left on the workbench. It ended up being a bigger job than we hoped, but about what we expected. 36 hours of labor later, it's finally done!!
The tractor's finally in one piece!!
I had to come out in the garage every once in a while to make sure I still had a husband.

French Fries?

We got our new Tupperware stuff from Tara when we went camping and filled up our new pickle holder (I don't know the technical term) with pickles. Owen said we needed to have something with pickles in it for dinner. He suggested pickle soup. I told him I didn't know how to make pickle soup. He informed me it was very easy. You just take pickles and add good stuff to it like water and flour. It makes a yummy pickle soup. We compromised and decided on tuna fish sandwiches. A little while later, Nathan called and informed me that he had ended up with some oversized potatoes at work and was wondering if we wanted french fries with dinner. Need he even ask? So, we had real french fries made with huge potatoes with our tuna fish sandwiches and green koolaid.

Now THAT's an Idaho potato!!

Enjoying the feast.

Camping Trip to Cave Falls

We went camping this last weekend with Tara and Jake. We had SO much fun. It was nice to get away from stuff and relax and also I loved going to see Cave Falls. I love having a camper. It really makes it so we can go camping more than just during the typical camping season. Our heater worked beautifully and kept our camper nice during the night. Here are some pictures we took during the camping trip. Thanks Tara and Jake for going camping with us!!

Here's Nathan reading Tom Sawyer to the kids before they go to bed. Jo insisted on sitting on our bed just in case there was a picture. I'm thinking it was because she was so tired that if she'd been laying down, she wouldn't have made it to the end of the chapter.
Here's more reading. I think this one is great because you can see just how "cozy" we are in our camp trailer. We just "downsized" from a 29 ft. trailer that Nathan worried about pulling every time we went camping. Now we have a newer 17 ft. fifth wheel that is much easier to pull. Nathan has said that he feels like it was made for our truck. It really is much nicer. It's just taken some getting used to.
Breakfast on Saturday morning. Notice, Calvin is the only one eating like a big kid. Zoey discovered the fun of a dirt fight. Here she is dumping dirt on Calvin.
This is her "I'm completely innocent" pose.
Now she's going after Gus.
This photo just cracks me up. It almost looks like Calvin is begging for mercy and Zoey isn't about to show any.
The aftermath of the dirt fight. Here are the kids with the lower Cave Falls in the background. Notice, once again, Calvin is the only one paying attention.

Heading down into the cave.

Here's our little family in the cave with the falls behind us.

Nathan found this little spring in the cave and the kids loved it.

On the lower "beach" with the falls in the background

A look at the upper falls from the trail.

Jo checking out the upper falls from the lookout.

The stairs going up to the upper falls parking lot. We got to know these well. I think we went up them about four times looking for kids and taking kids to the bathroom.

Back at camp chillin' around the fire. Jo and Owen stole Jake's sunflower seeds and thought that they were the best things ever. That's the bag that Jo is holding.

Another campfire moment. Notice how nice the fire ring looks. It's amazing what a few rocks can do for the place.

Zoey and Calvin saying goodbye.

Yay!! We love camping!!!