Nellie the Dog and Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. We went Trick Or Treating with our friends and the kids had a blast. On the far left is Sofie in the purple, then Chloe in black, Sierra in green is a dancer. Essie in brown is a cat. Oakley in blue is Silvermist and Izi in the stroller is Cinderella

Sierra and Oakley got glasses a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why Oak doesn't have them on in this picture. Here they are waiting to go get their CANDY!!

This is the day we picked up Nellie. We had a GREAT trip to So Cal. Went to Disneyland and on the way home got our new puppy. She's 8 weeks old in this picture.

Duke and Nellie. He's fine with her if she doesn't nip at him too much. Of course all he wants is to play fetch. It's really nice to have him, he helps wear her out.

This picture is shortly after we got home. She did great in the car (9 hours) and no accidents! She's a wonderful puppy and is already doing well with sit, come and NO CHEW! She's so cute and likes to cuddle, which is new to us because Duke doesn't cuddle. He just wants his ball or frisbee. Thanks to Peggy at Alpine Labs for such a gem!

Kids say the funniest things.

Oakley and I were looking at some dolls online. She really wants to get one, but I said it was expensive for just one doll.
Oakley said, "That's not cool".


Sierra was talking about Egyptian Gods and said some of them aren't modest. You can see the round part (boobs), but not their "nippletts".

This is too funny!

One of my friends on Facebook posted this this morning. So funny, but all of my kids have said similar funny things, esp Oakley, she's Queen of these kind of remarks. I think that these are part of the reward of having kids.

Stacie- I let my daughter do my makeup and she said,"I need to cover up these cracks on your eyes."

I said, "Yep, that's what happens when you get older. Your face starts crackin' up."

She said, "Whoa, then you must be really old." What a stinker :)!

I knew Stacie a bit when our husbands were in school together and she was the epitome of young and beautiful, so that makes it even a bit more funny. I doubt she has very many "cracks".

Garden Pictures

Here is our garden about a month ago, yes, I'm really on top of things and post them right as they happen. We've been a bit busy the last month. These pictures are mostly of our garden, so if you don't want to see, just skip this.

Here Izi is again with her favorite chickens. In the background is our Eglu chicken coop. It is SO awesome!! I love it! It's really easy to clean, move around and the chickens like it too. We're all happy with it.

Here is a close up of our tomato plant. It's just one, but it's grown huge! I can't get it to stay up, even with a cage and two stakes. Down from it is some Swiss Chard that goes all the way across the box. And of course the corn. To the left of the tomato plant we have a little cherry tomato.

Zucchini. Above it are sugar snap peas and below are some carrots. To the right are the potatoes.

These are out potatoes. To the left you can see the zucchini leaves. Above it, cucumbers. Below the potatoes more swiss chard and pumpkins.

Pumpkins.

Here is a top view of the cucumbers, peas and potatoes.

Starting at the top of the picture is corn, then basil, swiss chard and two pumpkin plants. The girls came home from school with them. To the right of the basil are the tomoatos.

We planted two kinds of corn, the regular yellow and this red version. The yellow tastes better to me and this lost some color when we boiled it. But it looks cool and I can probably dry some for decorations this fall.

Our first potatoes, Yukon gold (they were YUMMY!) and a few tomatoes. Scott is the only one who eats them and with the one plant doing so well, he is a little behind on eating them.

Bryce half and more of the chickens

OK, something weird is going on with the blog post thing. My pictures in the "preview" are all in the computer lingo and I can't tell where one starts and one ends so I'll just give a summery here.
The first picture is Scott and me before the Bryce Canyon 1/2 marathon. We know the guy who drives this UPS truck, he's in our ward and his wife runs, a lot. The next picture is one Scott took while running, thus why it's blurry. But it does show a bit of the beautiful scenery we ran in. This was a REALLLLLY fun race! It was so pretty and downhill. I ran a 2:09, taking 21 minutes off my previous half and this was Scott's first, he wanted a sub 2 hour and made it in 1:59! Pretty good considering he didn't train very much.

The next few pictures are of Izi and the chickens. She L O V E S them! She'll hold them for hours. Lilly, the black and white is her favorite, followed by Nina, the one in the last picture. She's great at catching them and giving them tons of love. They are really fun to have around the yard and even more fun to watch!

Baptism by running...in the rain

As some of you know I ran the Wasatch Back a couple of weeks ago. I feel like it sucked my running soul dry. Since then it has been VERY hard for me to get motivated to workout, esp to run. I have gone on a few runs and they have been really difficult. I felt as though I was starting over, completely. I would run and just whine and complain in my head. It was hard to breathe. I didn't feel together. I walked. I don't walk. If I'm going running, I'm going running, otherwise I would say "I'm going walking". I would come back feeling like a total loser for even trying.


But that changed (finally) today. I told myself I'm just going out for a nice run. No Garmin, no watching my pace or even thinking about the pace, just me and my tunes and whatever my legs could do. I have a half marathon in two weeks and I was starting to wonder if I would be able to do it. However, today I went out and started like I used to, walk for a minute or two and then a slow jog, then into my rhythm. There was a big dark cloud and it started to rain. I thought, it's just one cloud. It rained on me for 2 1/2 miles. Which was actually quite nice. Kept me cool with a nice breeze. Toward the end of the rain, the sun came shinning out. It was really nice to have the sun so bright, but also the rain still keeping me cool. I ran all 4 miles I had hoped to and I am back on track!

It. Was. Good.

Chickens Riding a Dog

A lot of people have asked us how our dog likes the chickens. We tell them he only cares about a frizbee, ball or anything to do with fetch, going for a ride in the car or for a run. Here he is letting the chickens ride on his back, I think he could care less, he just wants us to go outside and play with him. So as you can see, he likes them fine, but wishes they would throw his ball.