Summer

Let me wrap up our summer while I am on a high speed internet at my mom's. Apparently we still live in the stone "area" and can't quite get high speed yet and just can't seem to give up the time to post with slow mail. Anyways I will try to be positive but some may find humor or pity on our eventful summer, never a dull moment. A lot of the summer was spent working with the animals for 4-H. Above is Sydnee and her friend Christina. Sydnee trained this little heifer calf in about a day, maybe two and now it does whatever she wants. She washes it, combs it, blow drys it, practically walks it in the house. Troy on the other hand as you can see in a few pictures down didn't have the same luck with his calf. She is an animal whisperer. That calf tried to get away from her the first day and she just grabbed the fence post, anchored down, and held on. She actually won and the calf now respects her. Payce on the other hand tries to walk his and always comes out with a rope burn or two. The first day he started out wearing his crocks, now you will not find him in the steer pen without big ol' bog boots and full armor.

The best part of our summer was in late July and early August we went to Nauvoo, IL. It was the neatest trip you could ever take. We loved every minute of it and learned so much and saw so much. We hardly slept an ounce but I wouldn't trade that trip for anything. We flew to Kansas City, went to Liberty Jail, Jamesport Missouri where we spent the day in a large Amish community, then on to Nauvoo, Carthage, Hannibal for a Tom Sawyer cave tour, and then back home. We stayed in an original home built in Joseph Smith times right in the middle of old Nauvoo. Thanks so much to our Randall family serving a mission there who set us up with everything we needed to see and do. I will never forget the feelings there and what we saw and did.

And then there were those not so fun times this summer. Kai and I making memories. My dad loaded us up with a truck load of sweet corn to sell in Flagstaff. Well the truck is broke so I threw it into the Yukon and sold it. I think I'll just stop there and let you decide how much fun it was. And then to think I took on another load and the worst is that they still have 20 acres more of it that's not ready to harvest yet. I am pretty sure I will be busy for the next 5 weekends probably learning under water basket weaving or something or at least until corn season is over.

And then there is the rest of our days spent washing, combing, blow drying, etc. this thing. The fair is September 4th and we are looking forward to camping out there and seeing how Taya does. It is a lot of work but she likes it. She has a pig also that she will be showing.

Then there was Troy who couldn't believe Sydnee could tame that calf so quick so he decided to try it with Payce's calf. You know who won. Let me create the scene..... the pig was out on a walk with Taya, the steer tied up to the wash rack, Sydnee had her calf leading around, and Troy had Payce's in the shoot trying to clip on it. So there were animals everywhere. He comes walking around the corner with blood everywhere. I holler at the kids "put up all the animals I need to take dad to the doctor." So they are panicking and running around everywhere, chickens flying around, pig running all over. Anyways he cleans it up and stops the bleeding and decides to butterfly it. We put some essential oil salve on it and butterflied it and the next day the huge cut was almost gone. It was amazing. It stayed swollen for over a week.

Oh ya and don't let us forget our garden. Prophet says plant a garden so we planted a garden. This was our dead frozen garden in the first week of August. In one night it froze everything, even the hoses had ice in them. Everything died, we ate two pea pods from it, weed-whacked the entire area, and decided that maybe we don't have the green-thumb for gardening. The cows enjoyed it all. I guess we will just buy some sweet corn from that Yukon on the street corner and eat that all winter.

Well I could post about some other things we did like went to Lake Powell to camp and the wind blew nearly everything into the lake and the things that didn't go into the lake such as the tent and the awning got broken into pieces and thrown away. Or there was the other time we went to Lake Powell and spent 4 hours trying to get the boat to start in the rain. It wasn't until Taylor, a friend of Taya's, yelled out a prayer and said "God fix this boat." The boat started 5 minutes later and we were on our way. Or there was the time, oh well I think I'll save some for later. My kids are going to appreciate normal someday!! At least they are good troopers and for sure they have seen a lot. And now they are back in school and they just love it or is that me who just loves it? And I might blog again before fall or winter comes but I might not!