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.

Crafts to win!

This is how it works: The first three people to type "Tiffany is trying to be crafty!" in the comments on this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. The catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and give the same offer to the first three commenters who will also craft it forward.

Here are my contingencies:
1. I make no guarantee that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It will be done this year.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be.
5. I reserve the right to make something extremely strange.
6. You must post a picture of what you win when you get it.
Have fun!

My co-runner for the Wasatch Back is doing this and I wanted to join in the fun. My crafts might be more along the lines of food I make, but we'll see how much I get my brain thinking and my hands doing.

Goobard

Last weekend we went up to visit our families. My parents have a fabulous garden with two (huge) rhubarb plants in it. I'd been toying with the idea to make jam. For the most part I don't like jam, but my mom makes this one with rhubarb in it that I actually enjoy. So while we were up there I picked and chopped up my rhubarb. Yesterday I made the jam and had a couple cups leftover and made a strawberry/rhubarb crumble. Scott LOVED it and didn't want the kids to miss out. Relentlessly he offered them some and finally they caved- and liked it. Oakley really liked the jam too. But after she ate the crumble she kept saying how much she liked the Goobard stuff.

Also while we were up the kids, Scott and I got to help Grandma and Grandpa plant some of their flowers and garden. Oakley held up a trowel and asked Grandma, "Do you have another shovel stick so Sierra can help?"

So after a good weekend we have come up with two new vocabulary words; goobard and shovel stick.

Announcing our new arrivals...

Here are our new baby chicks! We just got them tonight. This one has been named Nina, she's super sweet and even fell asleep in my hands.

The black one is Lilly and the one on the right is Hedwig.

We are sharing them with our neighbor. They'll have them half the time and we'll have them the other half. We get to share the eggs all the time.

These little yellow girls will lay blue to green eggs and I was told, occasionally a pink egg.

Oakley, Sierra and I are pretty excited about them. Izi likes to look, but doesn't want to touch, which is OK, cuz I think she might accidentally hurt them AND I don't want to wash her hands twenty times a day. Scott says he's not that excited, but if you listen to him talk to them, I think they'll be good friends.

Sierra with Nina. She has crazy hair cuz she'd just finished swimming at a friends house.

The black one will lay brown eggs. Here is their new home, for a few weeks. We are looking for scrap wood and other supplies to build their coop. Anyone who has any ideas or plans of a good coop, please leave a comment!

Fun Day at the School

On May 2 our school had a huge rummage sale, carnival and craft/vendor fair. Here are the girls in front of their school.

This is Oakley going down the slide.

Sierra was a huge help. I had to be at the school at 6:30 to help and didn't get home until 4:00. So Scott was left with the girls. Sierra helped do Izi's and Oakley's hair and got Izi dressed. She also helped keep track of her at the carnival.

I was in charge of the bake sale, here are 12 loaves of bread I made. I also made 3 pans of Rice Krispy Treats. The whole thing was a lot of work by a lot of people, but we were able to raise a lot of money for our school. YAY!!

Our New Garden!

This is a cute picture of Izi throwing a bouncy ball to Duke. He loves to play ball/catch/frizbee with anyone or anything willing. We've seen him try to toss the tennis ball to the cat many times. The cat is not a willing participant of fetch. Anyway, behind them in the far corner of our yard is the BEFORE picture of where we put our new garden boxes.

Scott built the boxes and we put ground cloth on the bottom. Izi and Oakley are helping us pound in the staples, they did a really great job! We later applied stain/water repellent. This was last Wed. It took most of the day to build the boxes and move the rocks. Plus we bought a new yard wagon to help with the moving of the rocks, but we had to stop so Scott could take us on a few rides, he even took me :))) It was a lot of fun!

This is today. It was good enought weather last Wed and today, but the rest of the days inbetween were pretty windy and cold. They girls had a lot of fun playing in the water and are taking a break here. Notice Duke trying to play and Izi doing whatever her sisters are. I'm surprised she's still dressed.

This is the mostly finished product. Scott (in true Scott fashion) had to rearrange some of the bordering rocks and add more. But we layed down more ground cloth under the new rocks and boxes, put the boxes and rocks on, and filled them with yummy peat moss and garden soil. We covered them tonight with more ground cloth (I think it's becoming an obsession-NO WEEDS!). The nifty white rocks are courtesy of the "forest" behind our yard. They're really chunks of cement we think. Who cares, they are free and look great for now.

These are our seedlings we planted last week for FHE. At the top we have corn-we got a "new" kind that has red kernals, we also got the yellow kind. Below that is a row of cantelope, then a row of watermelon then our mini, carving and GIANT pumpkins. We have other things to plant, but I'm sure only my mom and dad care about what those are. So there you have it, the before, after and what we're going to put in it.

Floss anyone?

Yesterday I was sitting at the computer and I kept hearing this noise, blurrrddd... blurrrdd. I was busy doing something and the noise was registering in the back of my mind. Then I started really hearing it and I realized it was the DENTAL FLOSS being pulled OUT of the container. When I got to the bathroom Izi had unwound over half the thing. Here is what I couldn't get wound back on the spool.



Of course she needed a picture too when she saw the camera. Silly girl. What's really funny though is she started doing it again today, but I was much quicker, we only lost about 20 yds.

Whoa, Mom's Talented!

That's right. Let me tell you about the amazing feat I accomplished this morning at the wonderment of my 8 year old. Our fridge and microwave are relatively close to each other. I was filling up a liquid measuring cup with water from the fridge for oatmeal, while simultaneously OPENING the microwave door. When Sierra saw that she said, "Whoa, Mom is talented!" Whoa. is. right. I am Mom and I CAN do two things at once. (Isn't that one of the definitions of Mom-multitasker?!?)

Our Trip to Zion National Park

Here are some pictures of our visit to Zion. It was really cool. We went to St. George and had lunch (that is where the balloon came from), then went into the park. I haven't been to the park in the wintertime before. I really like it with snow.

I think this picture is hilarious because Sierra has a loose tooth, which is totoally sticking out over her lip. She lost it soon after. After we left the park we stopped and got some ice cream. All in all, it was a really great family day!