A snake in the rocks

Have you ever had that experience where you are hiking on the trail and go to step on a rock only to find a snake slither between the rocks right under your feet where you were going to step? That always gives me a frightened start.

This morning, I had the same type of experience. I was making our bed. I had the covers and sheets all straightened up nicely on the bed and I went for the pile of pillows on the floor. As I picked up the first pillow in the pile, I jumped back as there was something else nestled in between all of the pillows.

I guess sometime in the night or the morning, Avary must have come into our room and found a nice soft spot to finish off her sleep.

Gearing up for winter

Tonight our family went over to a widow's home that I home teach. My home teaching companion and I met up today so that we could work on prepping her yard for firewood for this winter.

She had spent the summer gathering dead limbs that had broken off of trees during windstorms, and also gathering construction debris from a nearby remodel to try to scavenge any firewood that she could get.

Our family worked on sorting out the usable wood from the painted and treated wood. We then cut the logs and wood to the proper size and stacked it.

The kids had a great time and were awesome workers. She was very impressed with how well they were working. Amber and I love these times with the kids when we all work together on a project. The kids love it and we feel great inside. We feel very blessed to have the children that we do.

Missing the dot

The other day, I discovered that our pet rabbit, Dot, was missing from her cage. The lid had been left off the top of the cage. She took advantage of the opening and had escaped when no one was looking.

I decided to not tell all of the kids immediately. I thought we would wait a few days until the busy, fun weekend was over.

Tonight, I took Aliece and Alayna a into the barn and explained to them that Dot was missing.

There were a lot of tears shed on the rabbit's behalf. Amber and I explained to them and tried to comfort them by saying that the rabbit was probably happy to be out free roaming the farm. We also tried to excite them by telling them to keep their eyes open to see if they ever see Dot running around.

Well, tonight I had to go out to the pasture to fix a major leak that was causing flooding in the field. It was just getting dark and I was walking back through the corrals to get back to the house. Something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I saw a rabbit running around in the corral. Sure enough, after having been absent for about four days, there was our rabbit.

I chased it into the barn and finally was able to corner it and grab it. I was able to put it back into its cage. I took this picture and sent a text to Amber so that she could show the girls the prize that I had just caught. Needless to say there was much elation and rejoicing in the household tonight.

Something Dad would do

This sign near a field outside of Blackfoot during the fair week reminds me of something dad would do. Sad was the day when the toilet thieves stole dad's rest stop just off of the Arbon Valley Highway.

The "build better spuds" triathlon

We started our morning today by getting up to frigid 40° temperature for the kids to run in a triathlon. To make matters worse, the Shelley city pool had its heater breakdown earlier this week. So not only was it cold outside, but the water was only about 70°.

The kids all had great attitudes, however, each did their race with a smile on their face.

This was the first year that Shelley hosted a triathlon for kids. Our family, along with Ashlee and Brett and their family, made up probably about 60% of the contestants for the race.

The kids all had a great time swimming, biking, and running. And to sweeten the pot, Shelley city brought all these leftover medals, T-shirts, and toys from events that have been held previously. They were trying to get rid of it all so the kids pretty much were able to take whatever they wanted.

Those that participated in the triathlon were: John, Aliece, Alayna, Jace, Elyvia, and Gretchyn.

First day of preschool

Today was the first day of preschool for both Avary and Jace. Both have been very excited to join the ranks of school goers in our household. They have been talking about it for several weeks. Jace has even been concerned that he doesn't know how to write his name. He was sure he would need to have that skill mastered before his first day.

They let Amber drop them off at preschool and they ran inside with hardly a look back.

Although they are only gone for a few hours three times a week, it is going to be weird to have official time in our house with all of the kids in school.

Times are moving fast!

The magic of the P-trap

Over the past six weeks or so we have experienced a weird smell in our basement and throughout the house when we had the blower on circulating the air.

Without the blower on, the furnace room would stink really badly.

Amber and I first thought that it was a gas leak. I shut off the gas to the furnace unit to see if it would help. However, the smell was still there. So I then shut off the gas to the entire house. To my dismay the smell still did not go away.

I wondered if we were having septic tank issues again. However, the drain closest to the septic tank is on the other side of the house. There were no weird smells there.

We have had a number of people stay at our house over the past few weeks, and we have had to circulate the air and use fans to try to dispel the smell throughout the house. It has been quite embarrassing.

This weekend, I was asking my good old plumber brother-in-law if he had any ideas for me. Dave asked me if there was a drain in the furnace room. I explained to him that there was.

He then told me that he thought that he knew what the problem was. He said that every drain in the floor has a P-trap. This nifty device will hold water trapped inside of the pipe. This blocks the smells from the sewer from coming into the house. He explained that occasionally that water will dry up and allow room for smells to come through the drain from the sewer.

As soon as we got home this weekend, I put a bucket full of water down the drain. That solved our problem! I am so relieved for Dave's help. With Alayna's baptism coming up this weekend and with a funeral on the Reed family side, we will have a very big house full of people. I am so grateful that that smell has now been taking care of.

Hats off to Dave! I owe you one!

We've come of age

On Monday night, amber and I did some negotiation and purchased a ski boat from a couple that were moving to Arizona.

This afternoon I got off work at 3:00pm an we headed to Gem Lake that is literally two miles from our house. Given the time of day we had the lake to ourselves. It was the perfect opportunity to get comfortable with our boat.

We got all of the kids onto the tube at different points and feeling more comfortable with it. They all had a blast. amber had a sore mouth from smiling.

Ours is definitely at starter boat. It is a 17.5 foot inboard/outboard open bow boat. It has a four cylinder 3 liter engine. Not a power horse per se but gets good gas mileage out of it.

To Bone and Back

Today, Amber is in a race called from bone to back. She and some girls from our neighborhood decided several months ago to do this relay race. They are five-mile segments that take them through a course of about 40 miles to bone, Idaho and back to Idaho falls.

Amber is running two legs of the course in a row. That means she'll be running 10 miles overall.

I am on my motorcycle following her along the route. She is almost to the halfway point and is looking really good.

Prepare for John Jr's Ordination

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are hoping to have John be ordained a Deacon on July 8. Our church starts at 11am here in Woodville. I imagine the bishop will have him be ordained right after church at 2pm.

You all are welcome to come and join John on this special occasion. I'm sure we'll also have some food to feed you all as well. :-)

We would love to see you there if you can make it!

Ambushing an Elder

The other day we had the missionaries over for some pizza and breadsticks. The dinner was not quite ready when they arrived, so I sat down with them in the family room to chat. As we sat, one of the missionaries picked up a photo album from our coffee table. He commented on how creative the cover was and asked if he could thumb through it. Without thinking, I told him that was fine.

I kept talking with his companion, but in the corner of my eye, I noticed that after a page or two of turning in the album, the missionary quickly, but quietly set the album back on the coffee table and joined the conversation. I thought it odd at first, but then realization set in.

I apologized to the missionary. I didn't think about that album being our Hawaii photo album. It was chock full of photos of a beautiful Amber Andersen in her swim suit. The missionary had obeyed the rules as soon as he saw the pictures and had quickly closed the book.

Way to obey the rules, Elder! We had a good laugh about it together. But I was impressed that he closed the album so soon.

Ninja shirts

jace continues to be on a ninja kick. Over the past three weeks he has been wearing his shirts on backwards. It doesn't matter whether it his his regular day shirt or his pajama shirt.

He gets this idea from the ninja Lego people that he plays with. They all have plain colored shirts in the front to help them hide.

I thought this was something that would pass in just a few days. But after several weeks of this, I wonder how long he is going to insist on wearing his shirts backwards.

At least we have him convinced that he needs to wear his church shirt the right way.

Yellowstone with the Kosmicki's

Ken and Ellen Kosmicki spent the weekend with us. On Saturday, we went up to Yellowstone National Park. ken had never been there before.

We got to the park at around noon. We visited the traditional sites of Old Faithful and the various hot pots and geysers. We then went up the north side of the park and saw some very cool things that we have never seen before. One such place was Mammoth Hot Springs.

We spent all day at the park and got home at around 130 in the morning that night.

It was fun to spend some time with them and their two little dogs. We all had a great time hiking around and seeing the sights. We saw more wildlife on this trip to Yellowstone park then we have ever seen in prior visits to the place.

Ken and Ellen will leave later today. We will miss having them around. It was very good to see them and enjoyed our conversations with them.

Hair gel makes me horny

I was in the bathroom putting hair gel in my hair and combing it. Alayna and Jace were both in the bathroom with me as well. Alayna said, dad did you put hair gel in your hair?

Jace responded quickly, "I know when Dad puts hair gel in his hair."

I asked him how he could tell when I had hair gel in.

He responded, "because when you have hair gel and it is all horny. "

Amber started to laugh in the other room, and I quickly corrected Jace by saying, "you probably mean my hair gets spiky."

"oh, yeah", Jace responded.

So if Jace happens to tell anyone that I know that dad gets horny when he has hair gel, you can all understand what he really means.

Sent from my iPhone

New trailer for the four wheeler

Last week Amber and I went hunting for a good quality trailer for our four wheeler. I had the experience of using a variety of trailers a few weeks ago for a service project. I noticed very quickly that there was a large difference in quality between the different types of trailers.

Amber and I found a trailer that we thought would work and be really tough. However, the trailer was not in stock and we had to order it and wait for a week for it to come.

Tonight, Amber and the little ones went to Sears to pick up the trailer. When the older kids and I got home from shooting with our neighbors, we all got together and assembled the trailer.

We are excited to put the kids to work gathering up sticks, logs, and other debris to help clean up our area. I think the best part about it, is the fact that the kids will probably have a good time driving the four wheeler and picking everything up as well. I call that a win-win situation!

New Job

For the summer I wanted Aylee and John to have the opportunity to have a job. I didn't have enough money to pay them for their work, however, we figured out a good way to do this.

They are each required to work for me for about two hours each day. We meet at about 7:30 AM to get their assignments.

They get paid eight dollars an hour which is the going rate for farm hands of high school kids around here.

Instead of getting money directly, their money gets applied directly to the purchase of the calves that we bought earlier this year.

By the time we sell the calves in the fall, they will get a percentage of the profits equivalent to the percentage of ownership that they have in the calves through their work during the summer.

They have done a lot of good work for me so far this first week of this arrangement. Today their job was to paint the cement collars around our buried sprinkler heads in the pasture. I am hoping that we can get our little ranch looking spiffy and organized with their help.

Half Marathon

Yesterday morning, Amber got up bright and early to head up to Idaho Falls to inflict pain on her body.  She and her friend, Tia Rickabaugh, were excited and set to run their very first Half Marathon.  

The race was called the "Personal Best Half Marathon".  The course was near the airport and was sandwiched in between rolling green fields.

Amber and Tia ran the race together most of the way.  Amber finished the race with a great time for her first half marathon:  2 hours 17 minutes and 43 seconds.  Tia was announced as the third place winner. Amber had two runners between her and Tia so it looks like Amber came in 6th place overall for the women runners.

The kids and I waited at the finish line and were excited to see Amber cross over.  She looked strong and had a great time.  She has been worried about IT-Band issues with her knee lately as well as some foot problems, but her body held it together for the race.

Way to go Amber!

Early Mother's Day

We ended up celebrating Mother's Day a week early this year due to the fact that this Sunday afternoon I fly off to New Orleans for our annual conference for ServiceNow.  

We all worked together and created a fun meal Sunday afternoon.  We marinated some steaks for half the day.  They were so tender and delicious.   We also gave Amber her gifts.  It was a Running mother's day as most of Amber's presents were to deal with her new running addiction.

Amber has her half marathon coming up in less than two weeks and already she is starting to study up on running a full marathon.  It is pretty amazing, especially at her age! ;-)

Rube Goldberg Show

Aylee and her lab partner, Mark Crandall, have been spending their time in their GT (Gifted and Talented) Solutions Science class building a Rube Goldberg machine.  These types of machines use gravity and other objects to perform unique functions that all contribute to an end goal.

For their machine, they had a marble roll down a foam tube where it landed on a plane of dominoes.  The dominoes would knock each other over successively until one would fall into a weighted box.  This would cause the box to fall and alternatively raise up the other end of the string that had caused a switch to touch a sprocket.  The switch allowed electricity to flow from a battery that caused the sprocket to turn.  The turning sprocket would light up a small light builb.  She then had part of our NXT (lego robot kit) positioned such that its light sensor would react to the lit light bulb.  The light from the light bulb would signal the NXT to turn on it's motor which then would pull a toy fish out of a small tank of water.  It was a pretty amazing machine!

They had a science fair at the middle school.  We took all of the kids to look at the various booths.  Mom had wanted to come but has been sick for quite some time, so Dad made a special trip up to see the science fair.  We enjoyed all of the booths and cool demonstrations.  Even the youngest of the kids thought it was an amazing event.

New herd of calves

On Thursday, for better or worse, I made some phone calls and ended up purchasing 18 holstein-jersey calves (with a few beef mix as well).  I ended up paying more per calf this year than I did last year, and these calves are a bit smaller as well.   We are getting in earlier than last year, though, so hopefully we can make it up with a couple more months of feeding.

I made a gamble and bought a lot more calves than last year.  We are hoping to fence off a neighbor's 22 acre field for some extra feed this year.  I had hoped to use the pasture on the other side of our property, but the people that kept their horses at our place last year beat us to the punch and got their horses in the other pasture before we approached our neighbors about doing the same.

Aylee and John have the responsibility of keeping the calves watered.  They also work together to grain the calves as well.  They have each put some money into the investment.  We are hoping for a decent return when we sell the small herd this fall/winter.