Magic Beans and a big "I told you so"

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to get out our old humidifier because the air was getting so dry with the colder, winter weather.  I have been running the unit non-stop since I set it up.  The other day, Amber was complaining about the humidity in the house and claimed that I was running the unit way too much. 

I relented somewhat and started to shut the unit off during parts of the day.

This evening, Jace came downstairs after we had sent him up to get ready for bed.  He said, "Mom, can you come up stairs, I need to show you something".  Usually that means something bad has happened. 

Amber replied, "can you just tell me?"

Jace answered, "no, I can't, I need to show you".

Amber asked again, "well can't you just explain it?"

He insisted, "No, I don't know how to.  Can you just come up?"

Amber finally went upstairs to find Jace's amazing discovery.

Due to the large amount of moisture in the air lately, a little bean seed that had fallen to the floor and later lodged under the carpet near the humidifier has started to sprout.  I guess Amber was right.  I have been pumping a little too much water into the air lately!

A first class scout!

Last night our ward held a Court of Honor for the scouts.  As part of the event, John was asked to give a thought about scouting.  He is a natural at public speaking.  He told a funny joke about the Mayan-based "end of the world" and how it related to their recent scouting activities.  He then spoke about how Scouting has helped him prepare for his life as a young man and a future adult.  He finally praised his scout leaders for their efforts.  He did an awesome job.

At the court of honor, John received his Second Class, and First Class rank advancements.  He also brought home six merit badges.  

It is his goal to reach the Eagle rank before he turns fourteen.  We have mapped it out and if he works hard, he might just make it!

Always a Party!

Last Saturday, our family hosted about 15 families from our neighborhood to a Christmas party.  We set it up in the form of an open house so that people could come and go.  We estimate that we had about 50 people (counting the kids) coming through the house. 

Everyone brought something to snack on.  During the week, Amber had been very busy making snacks and food of our own as well.  

It was funny because the event was supposed to go from 5pm to 9pm.  Right at 5pm the kids were waiting at the door.  They after ten minutes passed, they started to think no one was going to come.  About 5:15, however, the people started to come one after the other.

Aylee helped the younger kids do Gingerbread house decorating, and Aliece built up several carnival activities in the basement.  The adults had a fun time visiting.

It was a good way to get to know some of our non-LDS neighbors as well. 

Many kudos goes to Amber for driving this.  The kids caught the excitement and really worked hard to make it go off with a bang!

Lost Innocence

Today I took John and Aylee to a fast food restaurant for lunch. We decided to pass the time by playing a game of, "which would you rather".

I would give two scenarios to the kids and they would have to pick the one they would rather do or have happen to them. They then would take turns asking as well.

On one of my turns, I asked the kids which they would rather do if they could either go to Disneyland or Hawaii.

Aylee responded that save would rather go to Disneyland as there is more to do. John chose Hawaii. Aylee started to try to convince John that Disneyland would be a better place.

John argued back that there were great things about Hawaii, including bikinis and hula dancers. That caught me off guard for a bit.

Ha ha...he is sounding more like a teenage boy now. Should I be worried?

It Sucks

The other day, Alayna approached Amber and asked, "Mom, do you know what really sucks?"

Seizing on the opportunity to rid the house of such ugly vocabulary, Amber, intercepted Alayna's conversation and said, "Alayna, that is really quite an ugly word. Why do you stop right there and ask me again when you can find another word beside 'sucks' in your question."

Alayna went silent and Amber waited for her to rephrase her question. Alayna thought for a bit and then went on with what she was doing. Now Amber was curious about what Alayna had to say, and was wondering why she hadn't tried again.

After a few minutes, Amber approached Alayna, and said, "honey, why didn't you think of a different way to ask me the question?"

Alayna replied, "I wanted to ask you about how vacuum cleaner pick up dirt, but I couldn't think of a better word than 'sucks'."

Amber stood corrected....I guess the word "sucks" does have a place in our household vocabulary after all.

Food storage bandits

Tonight, our ward hosted a food drive for the neighborhood. I'll food donations were going to our local food bank. We were doing this food drive a little differently than we have in the past.

Typically, we hand out flyers a week ahead of time announcing that we will be hosting a food drive. We encourage residents to put bags of food on their porch on a certain day and time so that we can pick them up.

Tonight, however, we decided to send one group of youth out with the flyers announcing an immediate food drive. The flyer encourage people to back up some spare food and put on their porch in the next few minutes so that a second group of you could come and pick it up.

This was a huge success for us, well, at least for most of us.

For John Jr was delivering his flyers when he got stopped by a lady in the neighborhood. She reamed him out for probably two minutes. She told him that his flyer didn't have enough appropriate information. She asked him how she could tell that he was not just with a group of friends going around stealing other people's food to fill his own food storage.

The leader that was escorting John's group, said she must have yelled at him for about two minutes. The leader was afraid to go over there for fear that she would start all over again with her rampage. John handled this very well. He just smiled and kept nodding his head as the woman let out her suspicious rants.

Afterword, we had a fun time talking to John about it. He agrees that it was good preparation for his mission in the future.

It was yet another reminder how you do not get between an Idahoan and their food storage.

Quick Impromptu Visit

Dad called yesterday and was having some problems with his Pickup, so I decided to take Jake's flatbed trailer out to to him that I had been borrowing.  When I got done with work I took Aliece and Alayna with me and we headed out for a quick trip to Arbon.  

On our way out there, we stopped at Jake and Shantell's to take a look at the new baby.  He-who-must-not-be-named was definitely a cute little guy.  The three of us got the opportunity to hold the newest addition to the family.  It was a lot of fun.

I can't believe that he is already over a week old, having been born on November 6.  I am sure he has grown in that short amount of time from his 20.25 inches and 7lbs 3oz birth weight, but he still looked tiny. I always forget how small these kids are when they arrive.  (I included a picture Jake sent out when he was born, as I didn't think to snap a picture myself while we were there).

Ryker was really cute around his new brother.  He would sit next to the girls as they held the baby.  He would rub its head and give it kisses.  He had a very proud and excited look on his face the whole time.  He is going to love having a brother tagging along with him in the future.

After our visit to Jake and Shantell's, we headed off to Mom and Dad's place to visit and share some pizza together.  We couldn't stay but a couple of hours, but had a good chat.  Aliece and Alayna had a great time of course as well.

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!"

A cold triathlon gets news coverage

A few weeks ago when the carters were visiting, they all participated in a triathlon sponsored by Shelley City.  They called it the "Build Better Spuds" triathlon.  I may have already posted about the event here, but last week there were three pictures in the Shelley Pioneer newspaper with captions.  

It was pretty fun that all three groups of kids got their pictures in the paper as well as how they did.

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.