First snow

The kids were excited to wake up to our first blanket of snow for the season. Aliece was awake at least thirty minutes early telling us about the white snowfall.

Amber, Avary, and Jace made sure to get out the snow clothes and play in the winter wonderland. The had snow ball fights, built a mini snow man (jace built it by himself), and did some sledding.

Later in the afternoon we headed out into the storm to drive up to Spokane where we will spend the weekend. The driving was slow between Dillon and Missoula with steady snow, but luckily the mountain passes were all clean and dry for the most part.

Mother Gothel

Amber took Aliece and Alayna on a date last night while Aylee and I went out on a date of our own.  Amber, Aliece, and Alayna have been working on reading a book together, "The Ordinary Princess".  There is a mother, daughter book club that assigned that as the reading for the month. They have sat on the couch at nights to read the book out loud as a threesome.  It has been fun seeing them.

Last night was the book club meeting at the Shelley Library.  They had some fun crafts and such at the meeting.  The girls had a great time.  The highlight of the meeting, however, was having a local Shelley lady talk to the girls and do some reading.  

She told the girls that she had gone to a writers convention (or some similar event) several years ago.  She was sitting at a table with a group of people that were together.  She asked them what they all did and they all mentioned that they were Disney Animators and that they were working on a project.  They said that they couldn't be specific to her, but that it had to do with the story of Rapunzel.  She asked them how it was going.  They said it was going well, but they were having a hard time visualizing the witch character for the story.

She then told them about the book, "The Ordinary Princess" because it had a fantastic witch character that they should use.  She also explained to them that they needed to do a film on that book.  She spent some time talking about the book and why it would be a great story to develop in the Disney way for today's children.  The more insistent she became about how they should do a movie about that particular book, the more excited they got and they seemed to watch her every move and whisper together.  It even looked like someone was taking notes under the table or something.  

After the event was over she really didn't think much about the chance meeting.  When the movie, Tangled, came out, her daughters got the movie and they were watching it at home.  When they saw Mother Gothel, the daughters called out and told their mom to check out Mother Gothel...sure enough, the animated character was the spitting image of this lady.  In one of the scenes, Gothel wears the same dress that this lady wore to that event. 

I don't think this gal ever hoped to be the inspiration for a witch in a Disney movie, but nonetheless, it is fun to know that a disney character was designed after a local Shelley woman!

Library Confusion

Aylee and I went on a Dad/Daughter date last night. One of our stops was to the Idaho Falls Public Library. We were checking out a few movies at the checkout counter. As we were doing so, the lady checking out our movies said to Aylee, "Has anyone told you that you have the most beautiful eyes? I could just look at them all day".

There was no visible or audible response from Aylee, so I looked at her and she was looking down at the counter fiddling with a paper. I softly nudged her and whispered that it would be polite to respond. Aylee then gave the appropriate thank you response and we finished checking out.

As we were walking out of the library, Aylee felt she needed to redeem herself for me. She told me that she didn't realize the lady was talking to her. She said, "I thought that lady was talking to you and saying YOUR eyes were beautiful, Dad, and all I could think was, AWKWARD!!"

Ha ha...we had a good laugh about that.

Annual Halloween Party

On Friday, October 19, Jen and Dave held their annual Halloween party for the adults in the family. Joe even came up from California for the event. Since he was good to be there for the weekend, Amber and I brought our kids that we could stay the weekend as well and spent time with him. Since we have our kids, Jan and Dave set up a separate party in another room for the kids to watch movies and have treats as well.

As always, this party was exceptional. There was way too much food. It was all so good that I feel like I just engorged myself with such a variety as to make my stomach churn in the light but later regret the various flavors that I stuffed it in such a short amount of time.

We had a great time sitting around visiting about things have been going on. We played a couple of games also. One game, we stood in a circle with small balls of yarn in each of our hands. We are then supposed to toss the ball of yarn to partner on the opposite side of the circle. Once we caught the yarn, we were supposed to wrap it around ourselves once and throw it back. We are supposed to do this as fast as we could. The first partnership to finished with their ball of yarn was the winner. It was fun because in the end there was one big giant spider web that was formed between all of us.

Amber led a game as well. We played this game at the Reed family reunion. Everybody wrote down three games of people, real or fictitious, that everyone would know. We put them in a hat. We went around the room and everyone had a minute to help the room guess the name. For the first round of all the names, we could say whatever we wanted in sentences to help the people guess the name. On the second round, we can only say one word and everyone had to try to guess the names. On the third round, we could only use actions to help the group guess. It was a lot of fun.

Pumpkin Time

Last night, we spent some time designing faces and carving them into our pumpkins for the Halloween season. This is a little early for us, however, with their upcoming trip to Spokane and other activities, there is no other night that we could carve pumpkins. We are hoping that they'll last until Halloween.

It was really fun to carve pumpkins this year because everyone really got into it. I was surprised by how much ownership Jace took with his pumpkin. He wanted to make sure that he was the one to clean out all of the insides in the picked the seeds out to save them. I hardly had to my hands dirty!

Amber had started some Halloween music in the background. Avary helped us with the pumpkins for a little while. However, the upbeat and ghoulish sounds from the stereo finally took over and she was dancing around the kitchen floor to the Halloween tunes.

Test Drive

Yesterday, we had a friend of ours give us a call to tell us that they were losing their pasture for their horses and cows. They knew that we had talked about having a horse for our kids. They have a 20-year-old horse that has been a roping horse all of its life. He is getting old enough now, however, that they have turned him into simply being the family horse for their younger kids.

They wanted to know if we were interested in buying the horse. Otherwise, they will be putting him up for sale. They expect to get around $700-$800 for the horse.

This is an expense we hadn't planned on, but it is a good opportunity to get a horse from someone you trust and know would be good for the kids.

They offered to let us keep the horse at our house for a couple of weeks to get a good feel for the horse and decide if it is something we want to do.

Our friend brought the horse over to our house last night. Everyone got a chance to ride the horse in our circle pen. Even little Avary sat with a big grin on her face as I let her around in a circle on top of this large horse.

The name of the horse is Bugsy Blue. He is a gentle horse, albeit quite tall. He has a soft gait and reacts well to even the smallest motion on the reigns. He did hurt his foot many years ago. He favors the right front hoof a little bit, but has still been able to continue as a roping horse and later as simply riding horse.

After a few days of a trial run, I guess we will need to decide whether or not to fork over the extra money to keep the horse. I don't know, maybe we would be better cattle farmers if we owned a horse? :-)

I am a poor farmer

We got our check from the sale of the cattle on Monday. I eagerly tore open the envelope to see what our winnings would be. needless to say I was shocked by the outcome of the sale.

We had sold seven of the 13 cows that were remaining. The check for those seven cows was less than the check that I received when I sold the four cows last year.

The average cattle price for Holsteins that went at the sale that day was just under a dollar a pound. The price I got for our cows was about $.50 per pound. I guess I learned a very important lesson this year. One, look at the cows before you buy them. Two, don't buy a jersey cross breed. The Jersey cows do not sell well in this area.

Now I just need to decide what to do with the remaining six calves. Is it worth it to take them to the sale and cut our losses and run? Or do we hang onto them longer to fatten them up and hope to recoup some of our costs.

Once again I am grateful that my family's livelihood is not dependent on my ever fallible agricultural skills!

Boise Temple open house visit

This weekend our family made a special trip to Twin Falls and then to Boise for the Boise Idaho Temple open house. On Friday night we stayed with Adee and Adam at their home in Twin Falls. Our kids had a great time playing with their cousins late into the evening.

The next morning, after some delicious breakfast burritos and a breakfast cake, we loaded everybody up into the car and headed to Boise.

Adee and Adam took their kids, we went to the temple with them at our appointed time. Of course, it was a beautiful building and we all felt the spirit of peace and tranquility there.

It was nice to pause in one of the ceiling rooms and look through the double mirrors with our entire family and see our family go on forever.

It made a good impression upon me and upon the kids. I hope that one day our family will be able to stand together through eternity in the life to come.

Cowfolk

Today was the day that I took seven of our 13 calves to the Blackfoot livestock auction. Amber, Avary, Jace, and I worked on getting the calves separated and into the horse trailer.

Avary and Jace especially thought it was cool to be able to wear their cowboy boots and go out into the corral to work with the calves.

Once we got them loaded, I took Jace with me to drop off the calves. He wanted to find his cowboy hat and cowboy vest to come along. I decided to get in the spirit and I donned my cowboy hat as well.

While we were driving and talking, Jace said that he was so grateful that he was a cowboy and lived on a farm. It sure made me smile.

He even went as far as saying, that he is probably more of a cowboy then he is a ninja. :-)

Freaky Hawaiian Intimacy

Today, Jace was looking at a photo album of Amber and I from our anniversary trip to Hawaii this spring. One of the pages has a photo, or rather several photos, of Amber and I kissing on one of the beaches on the island.

As Jace looked at this page, he turned at Amber and exclaimed:

"This page is freaking me out!"