Tasty Turkey

Here is a closeup of Mia's cupcake! Soooo cute!

Thankful for...

So this Thanksgiving we are especially thankful for good friends who joined us to celebrate. It made our holiday so much more enjoyable. They even tried the wild turkey (which I thought was rather good!---surprise, surprise!!!) The kids had a super time playing and were completely worn out by the end of the day. The adults, speaking for myself, finally had some adult conversation, yes! Aside from the delicious meal, the children decorated cupcakes like turkeys. They did a super fantastic job. And, yes, I did get the idea out of my cool cupcake book. We have so many things we are thankful for and blessed with including our sweet children and also all of you. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

P.S. To celebrate the super cold day, yet special day, all of my children wore their swimsuits!

Future Hunter's of America

Success

They did it! They came back with a turkey. Now we can feast. Well, not actually, she was pretty small compared to a store bought turkey...but that is the price she had to pay for the ability to still fly or even walk for that matter. After getting the turkey, Aaron wanted to travel a little more and try to get a white tail deer, the kids were wishy-washy until Aaron plucked the turkey and that decided it for them.

Lanny--"Louie, do you want to go and see a naked deer?"

Louie--"No!!!"

They liked the turkey until she was naked and that was just disturbing to them. The first thing Louie asked me this morning was if I liked naked turkeys...my answer was the same as hers, "NO!!!"

I think they had a great time. They called me at least 45 times to update me and tell me things that they had forgotten to tell me the last time that they called.

I'm glad they had the opportunity to go. Although, I think as a whole the turkey species is quite ugly (not to diminish the sacrifice they make every Thanksgiving), their tail feathers are striking when spread out. I think I'll have Aaron fan them and hang them up.

I don't think this will be a yearly tradition, but I'm sure they will want to go again. Lanny is planning on using some of the feathers to make pens like in the olden days. He is pretty excited not only for the pens, but also for the Thanksgiving feast!

Thanksgiving Dinner

As we all know, Thanksgiving is only a few days away. King Soopers (our grocery store out here) is having a sale on turkeys. You can now get a turkey over 16 pounds for only eight dollars. But seriously, how many people want to go buy a bird that you just stick in the oven on Thanksgiving Day. I know everyone would rather go buy a turkey license for $16, get up at 4:30 in the morning, drive 250 miles one way, stalk a poor unsuspecting turkey that is happily eating in a farmers corn bin (it is fairly cold out), and yippee, you actually hit the thing, then you have to drive 250 miles back home so you can pluck it (wow, that sounds fun), clean it (even funner), and then stick it in the oven. Did I mention since it is a wild turkey it will probably only weigh 10 pounds or less. Now that is fun!!! So fun in fact that I went with Aaron last night to watch him buy a turkey license, then I got up at 5:00 after he had loaded the car, woke Lanny and Louie up, and got them dressed. I kissed them all and sent them off on a marvelous adventure (yes, I'm sarcastic, but they were thrilled) to get us a Thanksgiving Turkey. I'm supposed to be sleeping, but can't due to the visions of some awful accident befalling my family. I know this sounds like more fun than Disneyland to everyone, but if you don't quite have the willpower to get out of bed that early, or you don't have any turkeys waddling about, stay tuned because I'll be posting pictures of their exciting adventure soon (hopefully, they did take the camera so I hope they remember to take some pictures.) Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tagged

So my friend Marti tagged me! Seriously, she is the coolest thing ever, you can get some insight into her life at her blog martis-world.blogspot.com
Here are the rules. (The rules….link your tagger and list these rules on your blog. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.)
So I know the rules say to tag seven people, however, I don't know seven people with a blog, so I'm just going to tag those I know. But first...
1---I love to jump on the bed. Some of you know that, and to my husbands consternation, I have passed the skill on to my children.
2---I once accused the stop sign of stalking me. (Seriously, it was the middle of the night, and a bit foggy. I got up for some random reason and looked out the window. It may have been the stop sign on the corner, but to me it looked like a fat man was standing albeit very still and watching our house. I woke Aaron up in a panick. Even after he determined it wasn't a serial killer I was unconvinced, the sign still looked like one to me. It terrified me. I still can't look out the window at night without getting chills. I wish they'd move the stupid sign.)
3---I love moose meat. I hate having Aaron away so much, but I really do enjoy eating wild game.
4---So here's a big confession. I love, did I say love, well I meant it. I love High School Musical. I haven't seen the third one yet, but I'm counting the days till it's at the dollar theatre.
5---I pull myself over for the police when I am speeding. So I only did this once, but Aaron won't let me live it down.
6---This comes as no surprise to anyone, but I hate cleaning. I actually do make my bed, and then call it good for the day. If the dishes are dirty, I don't clean them, I use paper plates instead!
7---I so enjoy being a Mommy, but I still hold out hope of one day becoming Miss, more appropriately now, Mrs. America. It has always and will always be a dream of mine. (For those of you who remember what I look like...stop laughing.)
So that's me... here are the friends I've tagged.
Nicolehttp://www.holycolee.blogspot.com/, Marciehttp://cmnorrisfamily.blogspot.com/, Emilyhttp://kansasvacation.blogspot.com/, Emily's sweet son Isaachttp://isaaclarsen.blogspot.com/ he does a great job with his blog, so check it out. Nicole T.http://bigfamilyt.blogspot.com/
Happy blogging! Love you all!

Tumbleweeds

The wind has been showing off its' power lately and yesterday was no exception. We woke up to the howling wind and tumbleweeds racing across the land. The kids and I watched with fascination as the tumbleweeds flew by, veered this way and that, raced across the road, and vanished over the hill. We started cheering on certain ones, my favorite was #7, #56 didn't do so hot, he got stuck in a firmly planted group of tumbleweeds. After a few minutes of viewing tumbleweed races I decided we had to get ready for school. Thus our morning routine started...cereal, yelling, potty break, consternation, getting dressed...well, I did send Lanny and Louie in to get dressed just hoping they would actually obey my instructions, but alas, they didn't. As I was making my bed I suddenly heard a loud shout from their room, "Go, number eight, Go!" Louie was so excited for this certain tumbleweed she could hardly contain herself. Soon Lanny was shouting too. He had picked number one million, a bit harder to cheer for due to the long name, but still he managed. I wasn't going to be left out, so I ran in and cheered on several different ones, I didn't want anyone to feel bad by picking favorites. Many poor tumbleweeds lost the race by getting stuck in our neighbors fence, I'm sure many were stuck in our fence as well, but from our vantage point we couldn't see them. We did eventually get ready and get headed off to school, but the races were a fun break from the ordinary. I really don't like tumbleweeds, but for some reason I love to watch them race in the breeze...so free, I don't know. Makes me realize how blessed I am to live in the open and to be able to enjoy nature and share it with my children!

12 & 13 (See Catch Up Post below)

Kessie likes to be in her birthday suit + a skirt on her birthday!

Catch Up

So, it has been way too long since I last posted. With super special birthday girls, Halloween, and the nice weather, it just seemed like a crime to be on the computer. However, the wind is back, the weather is nasty, and the birthdays are over so now I get to live on the computer. I went through my pictures and have a ton to share, so there will be many without any captions. But I'll give a rundown list of all the great things that we have done in the past couple weeks (some not so great).
#1Louie and Kessie's Birthdays!!!
Can you believe that Louie is four and Keston, my baby, is two! They had super fun birthdays. Louie got a princess bike (princess was pretty much the theme of her birthday, since she is one,) Kessie got a pretend cat, that is very annoying to me, but she loves it and drags it everywhere. (Why would the manufacturer make it white? It needed a bath before she'd had it for an hour. She loves trying to feed it.) The cat, which she promptly named Kit-ty, emphasis on the Kit, even sleeps with her.
#2 Halloween
This is almost as big as Kessie's Birthday, seeing that they are the same day. I think the kids might rate it up there even a bit higher than birthdays. The weather was great, and the kids had a blast riding in a trailer pulled by our neighbors on their four-wheeler, we followed on ours. (That is our neighbor Courtney in the picture.) We went all over our neighborhood, but only to the houses we knew. We only went to about ten houses, but since there aren't a lot of Trick-or-Treaters out here, every house gave handfuls of candy. Talk about a parents nightmare, "No more candy!" I don't think I know how to say anything else anymore.
In no particular order.
#3 Doctor and Dentist visits
#4 School parties
#5 Lanny's Literacy Lunch (Parents are invited to go read and eat lunch with their child.) Lanny is doing great in his reading.
#6 Picnic on the front porch on Kessie's B-day. The weather was great, so she was pretty much naked.
#7 Primary Program at Church. The kids did great. They both knew their lines, and said them loudly. So proud, I know, naughty me.
#8 Kessie got her first hair cut. (And seriously, it was really just one hair.) She has so little, but I wanted to say she'd had a hair cut, so we tried.
#9 Aaron tried his hand at cupcake decorating for the stake Halloween party. Super job, Honey!
#10 Lanny ingeniously taped a cup to his face to cover the smell, while carving pumpkins! (Sorry the picture is sideways.)
#11 I took the kids to the park to take their yearly pictures. Lanny tries, but he always looks like he's stepping on a cactus (I still got some cute ones, though.) Louie loves getting her picture taken, so I got approximately 300 good ones of her. Kessie is darling, however, she refuses to look at the camera. I got several hundred nice shots of her back. Oh well.

#12 Aaron went hunting (shocker) and Goliath made friends with a rattlesnake. He (seriously, we are so blessed) has had no ill effects from it, I don't think he got injected with venom.

#13 Lucky number 13, the wind has returned in full force. With it came the tumbleweeds. Please note, they are almost taller than the fence, by the end of the day there were many, many more. I always thought tumbleweeds were a made-up annoyance to glamourize the Old West. Oh no, they are for real, and for ouchie too.

We have had a busy few weeks. Life is flying by, and we are so excited that we are along for the fast paced ride!