Thanksgiving #2

I don't know why these pictures didn't load with my last post, I thought I told them to. O-well. Had to put these pictures of my dad with all the kids. The pictures aren't very good, my flash wouldn't work for some reason.

Grandpa with all my kids and Austyn. They all sure love their grandpa and grandmas

Briggs sat on his lap for a long time, and its hard to keep him in one place for very long.

Honestly thinking of all the things I'm grateful for makes me feel overwhelmed and get all emotional. We seriously feel so blessed to have all that we do. We have all our needs met and most of our wants. We have amazing friends and family who love us and we love them. Good health, warm house, food to feed us, and most importantly our Savior and each other!! I can honestly say that I love my life and cant think of anything I would change about it!!!
ps, I have the most amazing husband ever!! Love that guy! And the most Amazing kids!!! I really do feel so blessed! Thank you to all who are part of my life! Happy Holidays!!!

Thanksgiving - With so much to be grateful for!

We had a great Thanksgiving this year!! My whole family met for lunch at the Hunting Club, and Daves mom was able to come which was so nice. We had the best of both worlds! The company was great, the food was delicious and the kids had a blast. We just ate, visited, ate, visited, relaxed and so forth. Loved it! (minus the little incident where Caden decided to go poo in the urinal- then wipe with paper towels- but thats a different story!!) Later in the afternoon a bunch of people went out hunting while the rest stayed back, looking through the black friday ads.

First thing in the morning when the kids came downstairs they noticed the sunrise and Kaylee ran and grabbed the camera to snap a few shots of it- One very important thing that we are all thankful for- Watching the sun rise and set over the beautiful mountains that surround us!

Out hunting. Dave and Kaylee were the only ones who went of my family. Me and the rest of the kidos stayed in the nice warm hunting lodge.

All lined out. Thought it was cute Kaylee with her long hair in the middle of all the guys.

In the morning when we were cooking we decided to go around to each person and they had to say one thing they were thankful for and Kaylee decided she wanted to be our scribe and write them all down. Love it!

She is pretty proud of that feather

And this pheasant :)

That is one proud papa shot! Out hunting with his little girl- cant get much better than that.

All of the mighty hunters! There is Dave, Kaylee, Cameron, Riley (dint mind him biting camerons ear, that normal) :) Dylin, G the dog, Wyatt, Kole, Kale, and Uncle Kool (or some call him uncle Kole)

Now them are some cowgirls!! :) Good Job girls!!

How cute! My stinkin cute little sister Alexa (left) and Niece Kaycie (right) won the all around saddles for a rodeo series in Delta! Good job girls! BTW, they kicked most the guys bums in tie down calf roping. Love these girls!!
WAY TO GO!!!!

Amys 3 kids and Alexa all entered the series. They had 2 all around cowgirls- and the boys both won reserve all arounds- and they were the youngest boys in their age group. They all did really good!

Some pretty good cattle hands...

Last week my dad had the vet out to preg check his cows so we went down to help (well watch, but whatever) The girls were in school so just me and the boys went. They had a great time and loved to push the cows up the alley way!

Caden posing with his poker stick.

Briggs just a gettin them :) He liked to yell at them too.

The boys working together to keep the cows going. They loved it and it was nice of my family to let us tag along and get out of the house!!

When you go shopping with mom

This is what happens when you go shopping with mom and you don't want to walk, before long you couldn't get out and walk if you wanted to! :) This is when me and Aspen went for our date this month. We went and watched Smurfs then did the grocery shopping. She was a trooper even with all this stuff piled up on her. It was late too, I think she just wanted to go to sleep!

1st snow storm of the year and some pheasant hunting

We had our first little snow storm yesterday - the kids were so excited. First thing in the morning they were sorting through all the snow clothes and getting all geared up to go play in it. I think they were most excited to eat it!!
Aspen..

Caden.. mmmm....

Briggs had a hard time walking in the snow at first with all his snow stuff on, but after a bit he got the hang of it. He loved it!! I couldn't get him to come in. When I brought him down stairs first thing I peeked out the blinds to see if it had snowed and Briggs got a little glimpse of it and he about bailed out of my arms to check it out, he didn't know what happened and why everything was all white. He just stared in amazement for a while then started pointing and talking like he was trying to tell me what his eyes were seeing was something very strange. It was super cute.
Aspen with her famous pirate eye..

Kaylee pulling Briggs in the sleigh - he didn't know quite what to expect and he fell over but thought it was hilarious!!

Loving it!!

Kaylee was a trooper and pulled him around for a long time.

Then later that day my Brother in law Kole and my sister Krista were nice enough to take us pheasant hunting! We had a blast! Koles dog "G" is amazing and did so good finding the pheasants for us. My sister Emily and her hubby Cam came and their little boy Cody. The weather was perfect and I think between all of us we ended up with 19 pheasants.
Walking through the field, following the dog.

Out of order, but Kaylee pulling Caden and Aspen

Kole with his awesome dog!

Emily, Cam, Cody and G and some of the birds

The MASTER GUIDERS- Kole, Krista and G!!

Me and Dave

Cody, Dave, Kole and G checking out a pheasant.

It was such a fun day to get out and have some fun with the family. Good for Dave to get out and do something fun! He needed it. Thanks so much Krista and Kole and G for the fun day!! And especially thanks to Kandice and Alexa for watching our hooligans so we could get out! My family is AWESOME!

If only we could find somewhere to buy some features..

Kaylee our little sweetheart reads any books she can find at the bookmobile or the library about ponies. She brought one home the other day about Shetland ponies. She read and studied it. It was talking about Shetlands- how they are small, loving, calm, (I cant remember what else) but it was saying all these good things about Shetlands.Then it said "These features make Shetlands a great children's horse". Kaylee looked at me and Dave and said, "That's it, we just need to buy Twix some "features" then she will be a good children's horse!" I thought it was so cute. The book also listed the Characteristics of a Shetland. It talked about their small ears, sloped shoulders sort legs, big mane, large nostrils (I should have her tell me, I cant remember them all- but she does!) I went out to help her feed her and she started studying twix and re listed them all to me explaining that Twix must be a Shetland. She was telling Dave all about it too and was showing him. Poor Twixey hasn't been out of her pen very often, its been cold, so she is feeling good. She likes to buck and be a little crazy. We tied her up to the trampoline while Kaylee was cleaning out her pen and she just kept bucking. Yesterday she escaped the pen while they were cleaning it and she just ran lap after lap around the yard- jumping up over the rocks and all, just running and bucking. We had to laugh! It doesn't help either that at first we couldn't keep her out of the dog food! She loves it! but that is expensive to feed in mass quantities, like to a horse, not to mention its like grain for her. We kept doing different things to try to keep her out of it, but she would somehow figure how to get to it- she is smart! We finally put a panel in front of the dog food that only the dog can fit through. She rubbed off all the hair on the front of her head trying to get to it but it seemed to be working. we were still going through it faster then we should have but didn't think much of it until this week Dave was out there working and we decided to do some re-arranging of things. Dave watched Sage- the dog nuzzle out some pebbles of food with her nose and push them just enough so Twix could eat them. He thought that was crazy and maybe just a coincidence. Then he moved the food inside the dog house and he was doing some more work when he watched sage do it again- nuzzle some out with her nose and push it out even farther- just outside of the dog house so Twix could have some. That would explain why Twix has so much energy and the dog food is not lasting as long as it should. Kaylee is such a sweetheart and takes such good care of Twix. She cleans her pen- daily now and feeds her, pets her, makes sure we have enough food for her. She Just told me and Dave a few days ago that we need to ask how much uncle Griff needs to trim her toe nails, they are getting long! Too cute! But it is crazy, but kinda cute that our pony and our dog are such great friends!! If we let Sage out and not Twix, She will through a fit! Running around, bucking, neighing, so mad that she got separated. Crazy animals, but it is fun for the kids! Hopefully they will keep taking such good care of them.

Things that make me SMILE :-)

I've thought a lot about how lucky I am to have such a great family. I love my kids! Although some days its all I can do to make it to bed time, I wouldn't change being a stay at home mom for anything! This week I have been organizing the pictures on my computer, and ran into some that made me smile.. enjoy.

Weird, but I love living where you often find snakes in your yard. I grew up with my dad bringing us snakes home in his lunch box that he caught while at work in this same valley. I am a little more chicken now and let my brothers or nephews catch them for us. This day was funny, we were all at my moms front yard visiting- me my sisters and my mom when Caden came over trying to tell us something, but he was just learning how to talk and we couldn't understand him. He was pretty serious about something, but we didn't know what. My sister thought he said snake but we just laughed it off. Then we looked over at my house and saw the cats playing with something so we went to check it out and Caden was so glad we finally caught on there was a snake on our grass just like he was trying to tell us.

I love being able to leave from our garage and ride on these fun tracks with my girls riding their own motorcycles with me, and my husband sharing his motorcycle with me if I be really good :)

Having Kaylee teach me how to jump, although she can still make it higher than me.

Love watching the kids play together happy!

Aspen being so brave. That's not a beginner track, and that was a big hill she came up.
Great job Aspen!

See, Kaylee teaching me how to do it.

Love watching my super hot, talented hubby do anything he does. He does it all so good!

This would make anyone smile, right? Jumping a tote gote? I'm smiling now.

Yep, here's the proof, she can jump higher than me.

Love to see this kid play so hard and happy that he cant even finish his dinner he is so tired.

I realized I never posted any pictures of fathers day!! Here is Dave and Caden in the new sleeping bag the kids got Dave. Seriously Love this guy! he is amazing! Always thinking of others way before himself, actually I'm not sure he ever gets around to thinking about himself. He is such a hard worker, never waisting a minute!
Happy super late fathers day to the best one ever!

These crazy girls make me smile a lot! They are total goof balls.

Sometimes so goofy they wear themselves out and cant even make it all the way up the stairs to their room before totally crashing out on the stairs. Yes, they are dead asleep!

Love Caden and his pet frogs he stashed and hauled around in his shirt pocket. During the summer Kaylee's cousins caught her a ton of frogs and she brought them up here to sell them to the neighborhood kids. I wish I would have got a picture of her sitting out there with a table, selling the frogs for 25 cents. Her and Kandice made signs and put them up around the neighborhood. She sold quite a few and they had fun with them. When she would leave the table she put up a sign that said " take a frog, and leave the money in the jar" so she didn't have to sit there the whole time. Too cute!

Ok, I wasn't smiling at this exact moment but when I look at it now it makes me smile. Aspen had just opened a brand new bottle of nutella and left it on the table. I was painting and was happy Briggs was entertaining himself when Kaylee said I better come check Briggs out. Its never good when she says that! There he was, just having a great ol time!

But, who couldn't smile at that!?!

He loves to put his bowls and plates on his head. Again, not funny at the time, but fun memories.

Love these two, and love how handsome they are!

I had to smile when I found Caden asleep with a rice crispy treat stuck to his face.

Love the imagination of the kids. We got this doll house for free a few weeks ago, and the kids now play hide and seek in it, and use it to lock each other up in it.
Caden locked up

Who wouldn't smile at that handsome boy!?! There is an elderly guy in our neighborhood that Dave and the young men take the sacrament to each week. Caden goes with him each week, dressed in his suit to see "grandpa" (thats what they call him) Caden loves to go and each week he runs right in there and gives this sweet old man the biggest hug and makes him so happy. His family says that is the highlight of his week, to get hugs and to see Caden. Its actually kinda funny but he loves any grandpas. He does the same with his great grandpa Smith. He can be such a sweet boy when he wants to.

Love that we live close enough that we can go visit the farm whenever we want. I love it that my family is so great and lets Caden and the girls come ride on the equipment with them!

Kaylee locked up

There are so many more moments that my kids and family make me smile and make me ponder how lucky I am to be where I am right now, to have them as my family and to be so lucky to be their mom but there is just a few to share for now!!