what a beautiful mess

And it only took a couple of hours to do so. Poor thing...all  he wanted was some peanut butter. Tonight we had a storm come through, although it was very short lived. It was, however, very windy. And we took the wind as an opportunity to take some pictures. We were all very excited about it (as you can probably tell). Yesterday we bought sixty ears of corn from some friends and had some tonight with our dinner. It's absolutely delicious. That's a lot of corn though. I think I'll be very busy tomorrow getting it frozen... Happy Sunday!

At our house lately, everyone has been loving Nintendo. About the only game played is Mario Bros.  I really can't blame them cause it's pretty fun. (see the fridge? we're getting rid of it...) I found another mouse in our house today. Ugh. I do realize that mice are a part of life if you live far from the city.  And while it's pretty gross, it just creeps along in one of our kitchen drawers while we're sleeping.  So tonight Trevor and I went on a mini date to the store for some traps.  BUT we came home with frozen burritos, chocolate milk and fun size snickers.  We had a ton of fun.  I think it must had been because of the snickers.  However we didn't end up getting any mouse traps because Trevor  refuses to get the ones where you can actually see the trapped mouse.  Did I mention Carl brought home a dead, flat (as a pancake) kitty today?  A dead cat and an alive mouse.  It's a little iron...

( This post tonight is going to be a little random. ) Today was a hard day. I woke up at 6 a.m. and I just am never going to be a morning person. But I got the kids ready for school, made them Scottish Oatmeal (it's just blended up oats but really good) and even got them to the bus stop on time. Since it was Josh's first day, I followed the bus to the school so that I could help him get to the right places. I'm so glad I did. It was sad to see him go with his class. Really sad. I may have cried a lot in front of my friend. But she didn't mind because she understood. I got in my truck and allowed myself to cry the whole way home (and I may have sobbed a time or two...). I got home, took a long relaxing shower, blow dried and curled my hair for possibly the first time in months and cleaned up the house. By that time, it was time to pick Josh up from school. The time went much faster than I expected. He had a great day...a really great day. Ever since he's gotte...

And now I'm going to go take a very long, relaxing shower. 

For our back to school party this year we took the kids to Lagoon. They had more fun and were more excited than we thought they would be... Emily and Stephen loved every ride, wanted to go on every ride and were never scared. They waited patiently in every line and never once complained. Annabelle was so, so brave. There were a few rides that she cried while standing in line because she was so scared of the ride she was about to go on. But she waited and loved every one of them! I was so proud of her for overcoming her fears! Josh was so patient while waiting for the big kids to finish their rides. He was a little to scared for the big ones but he was also too small (thank goodness!)  We made all the kids go on the Puff the Dragon little kid ride. Emily wasn't very excited about it. She had her arms folded the whole time but she also had a smile on her face...so I think she secretly enjoyed it. Trevor and I enjoyed the mer man that was directly above the ride...we ...

hallelujah ...it's the most anticipated night in our house. SO Did you eat ice cream like us tonight?  Or maybe eat some yummy nachos? Even if you weren't eating nachos or licking an ice cream cone or watching a movie like we did,  we hope you had a great-wonderful-awesome Friday night! And that you have an equally fantastic weekend.  There's lots of fun, busy plans going on here.  And it starts with me and Trevor watching one of our new favorite  shows and eating our own ice cream cones.  (instead of the drips of Joshua's- that's kind of gross...) Happy weekend all!

I see a dog and two little boys... but wait who's that hiding in the background? Oh yes, that's Trevor taking a nap at 7:30 p.m.. Good for him....and he's so dang lucky...

Tonight for FHE we had a lesson about our testimonies.  I used  this  talk given by Elder Holland.  I love FHE for the simple fact that I can consciously teach my children the gospel. I'm never confident enough that I do that in my day to day conversations with them. I hope that these scheduled lessons actually make an impact on them.  We were challenged in Sunday School last week to write down how the Lord blesses us each day.  And my blog is the perfect place to do that.  I can definitely see how the Lord has blessed me in my life today.  And while you may think it's my children because of the cute picture above, it's not.  They made me absolutely crazy today.  That sounds harsh but it's kind of true.  We finished up our school shopping and also did some grocery shopping and the boys were wild. So wild that I told them I will never, ever take them school shopping ever again.  It's another one o...

These guys are awesome! They housed us for the weekend, fed us and helped to paint our Meridian house. It was a lot of work but we got it done and still had time to hang out and visit. (the Fowlers minus Kyran) And they got us hooked on 24. What the heck?!? Why did we wait so long? After the kids went to bed we'd sit on the couch with a big bowl of ice cream and watch it... Thank you so much Fowler family~ We love you guys!

For the last couple of nights while Trevor takes his shower, I've been sitting at the computer watching our screen saver flip through all of the pictures we've taken for the last seven years. It's one of my favorite things to do. I've realized that the pictures I enjoy the most are the ones not staged; the ones that bring back memories of what we were doing in the moment that the picture is taken. Some of them would mean nothing to some people but to me they mean a whole lot. Like this one for instance: This one reminds me of a lazy summer evening. Emily made dinner and the other kids watched a movie and read. I was relaxing and reading a book also. And this one: It reminds me of how we spend most of our evenings and the ritual we have gotten into (it's constantly evolving). Right now, we walk around outside after the kids go to bed and put the chickens away. We talk about our day and hold hands. Then Trevor showers, I either get on the computer or read, ...

All ten roosters are now dead.  Our poor hens were starving because of how mean the roosters were.  The hens just stayed up on their perch all the time, barely ever coming down for food and water.  But now they're free to roam without the fear of being attacked.  Hopefully they will recover from the trauma and start producing more eggs... We had to have a "couple" picture to document this momentous occasion. Aren't we such a good looking chicken-killing-couple? Yes. Definitely.  So this next picture is a little weird but it was funny how Josh and I were doing the exact same thing.  The plucking was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  At least it wasn't bad until I accidentally put my thumb in the chickens butt.  That really grossed me out.  We killed 5 roosters tonight and so we ate dinner very late.  In fact here is our "rooster killing feast" that we ate at 9:00.  We had grilled che...

I took a lot of pictures. No worries, they aren't very gruesome and some can actually be described as cute.  We killed two of our roosters tonight as a kind of trial for the other 8.  We set up our slaughter station by our fire pit.  We made our pit a couple of weeks ago and we absolutely love it.  Here's a before shot of some of our roosters and hens. A couple of our roosters were getting mean so we're pretty excited to see them go.  They're especially mean to the hens when they get excited (if you know what I mean...). We started off by zip tying their wings and feet together and hanging them up.  Trevor then made two cuts on their necks to make them bleed out.  This picture is kind of gross. But not too bad... Hey look! It's Stephen playing peek a boo!  They were pretty grossed out. Stephens face is absolutely priceless! And Emilys also... After they were done bleeding, we scalded them in water and...

Lets start with a photo of Joshua burying a mouse that Carl found outside.  Burying is a loose term.  He's just putting dirt on top of the mouse.  Emily took a short nap today.  It's a good thing because she needed it... she was so dang ornery.  (You're such a sweet girl anyway, Emily!) As you can see, Annabelle really enjoyed our late night.  We went to some friends and ate nachos and watched a movie outside.  It's 11:00 p.m. and she doesn't even look tired... We had the heater turned on while we drove home...fall is coming up already! Didn't it just become summer?!? I haven't taken a snapshot of me and Trevor in awhile.  It seems as if either his face has gotten bigger or my face has shrunk a size or two. The difference is startling, right?  I love your face Trevor! 

Joshua is wearing a sweater and mittens.... while riding his bike on a 92 degree day.  He's a quirky kid and it's one of the many things I love about him.  Tomorrow I'm going to add some pictures of my other kids... did you know I have 3 other children? It's been a bit of Joshua overload lately! We're having ice cream in bed tonight. Tillamook Chocolate Peanut Butter~ my most favorite ice cream.   It's way past Trevor's bedtime anyway so we might as well enjoy it... Good night!