Early Morning Light

I wish I were a better photographer. The reds behind the trees were incredible. I could not get it right with the camera (granted it was my phone which is crappy at best). But you get a hint of the beauty I saw.

The Whole Family in one place at one time.

This is a typical picture for this family. But I was incredibly happy at that moment. All my Children and Grands in the same place I was. Exhaustion, dead Oso Perro, Silly happy faces all just add to the joy of the moment!

Update coming soon!

Welcome to the wild animal park!

We looked up from working in the yard yesterday and saw this....



Look closely and you will see a scary wild animal that has claimed the rango as its own....



Wait a minute that does not look TOOO scary........




Nope it is just Adams silly Buck guarding from the highest non natural point he can get to! He is such a fun dog.

More Ari Birthday!

The presentation!


Laugh til your tummy hurts! Tagg, Heather and Kenny are singing on the phone along with those of us in the room.


Adams version of the Mississippi Squirrel revival a la birthday cake???? Don't ask me ask ADAM!The smoke clears and Benny is on the move.

Ari's Birthday Celebration Begins!!

Yes as you know we can NOT celebrate a birthday on just one day. We tend to string it out over several. Today, the actual anniversary of Ari's birth, we went shopping. There are no pictures of this since we all know how I feel about shopping! However we do have various other goofy pictures of just us being us.
Ari was captured trying to get her mom! Busted!
Ari and Fog in the fog!
This is the cat Storm keeping A company!
Ari's best friend Alex modeling her toe-less socks!
Ari is falling into the truck......just a hint honey if you let loose of the money you can save yourself!

She has struck it RICH!
Ari has learned to put her money where her mouth is!

Cat Car????

I have heard of a Cat House but a Cat CAR?



Just a bit of a cat nap.


UH OH better scram!

More fun pix

These are some of the animals and maybe even some people that inhabit this space.


Here is A. being seriously funny! Even when he is doing goofy faces he is so handsome!




B. of course, he has the cutest dimples!



If I understand correctly this was during a water fight in which even the animals were participants. This is Cody the horse standing there with A. the wet girl. Hmm if I am judging by wetness I think the animals are winning!


This is Doc the donkey he came to us for Christmas and is such a wonderful guy!


This is one of the many cats that wander around outside here. A. is their protector and apparently hairstylist!


Cody and Leland came to us for Christmas. They are awesome young men.

AT LAST!

I am finally getting back into the swing of things I think. But then again who knows! I can only say that in this moment I am posting.


So as we know Ben is a famous, within the family, fisherman. Now he is famous within our area! Someday this guy will be famous throughout the WORLD!


This is my favorite picture of me that does not have K in it. Of course any picture WITH K in it trumps any without lol On my right is Dayle and on my left is Dealer.

This of course has K in it so would be one of my favorite pictures!


I think we are flying a kite in this one!

WOW TOOO LONG!

I have been a terrible Slacker! Kelly had to use the camera for a job he went to Houston and Ohio for and so I just got out of the habit of taking pictures. But the camera (and the husband) are back so I will hopefully be back blogging. I am putting some random pictures on while I get re organized.

This picture is a great demonstration of a joke Adam (funniest guy on earth) told me awhile back. I was sitting at my computer with my back to the room (and to Adam). Suddenly Adam said "Bear you're in the Frito position." with out turning around I said, "do you mean the fetal position?" He said "No, he wants my Frito's so he is in the Frito position" He is just the funniest fella!

Bear is our dog he is an awesome boy.

My incredibly awesome and talented daughter has written some more poems for us. She is hoping that Heather can see some photo ops of something to go with them. here they are.

Night
Quite why?
Is it honor,
or the love of God,
or is it when
the spirits of the dead
living life again
but silently,
the crickets and the cicadas
singing to them.

Moonlight
Shining and glimmering
in the water
or off the green,
red, orange,yellow,
bronze and brown leaves
or off sleek cats fur moving about.

Comparing
Starlight and moonlight
or electric light
which is more beautiful?
Starlight and moonlight?
Or electric light?
Moonlight and Starlight!
Likely right?
You answer.

Ben recently gave a talk in Primary it is about being Thankful.

I am thankful for my family, they help me to learn how to be a good brother, a good son and to know I am a child of God. In Ephesians Chapter 5 verse 20 it says "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"

It is not easy to give thanks all the time. Sometimes bad stuff is happening. But it says to give thanks ALWAYS for ALL things. So that is what I am going to do.

God loves me. He will comfort and protect me. He will walk beside me and hold my hand. I can be thankful for things that bring me that close to Him. I am thankful for this talk, it helped me to learn about being thankful even when it is hard.

Benjamin's Birthday

All Ben wanted to do for his birthday was to go to

Roaring River for the kids fishing day. The Boy

LOVES to fish!

Here is the cool fisherman just wetting a line with his buddy Evan.

This is the split second before he started yelling "net mom we need the NET" I dang near dropped the camera! Evan had caught his first fish EVER! Unfortunately we did not get a picture of his fist fish as I was scrambling for the NET. I might add that it was no where near me! Evan decided that the fish was too small, we all agreed, and he let it go.

Later Ben caught this fish. It was quite large especially considering the size of the fish people were catching around him.

These two fellas were instrumental in bringing this baby in......well one of them had grabbed the line and broke it, the other one dived for the fish and knocked it up against the cement thing so it was just wooozy enough that we were able to scoop it back up with the net....whew what a save!

Evan later caught this fish whom he named Billy and also let go.

His sister Sierra caught this guy whom she named bob (not to be confused with our boB) she did not let it go and did take it home to eat all gone yum yum!

This is Jaws he was very yummy. Ari says that he was blind in one eye. That kind of grossed me out hehe. He was FEROCIOUS (wink wink)

ARTISTS UNITE!

Heather took this great picture. When Ari saw it she was inspired by it to write this poem. They make an awesome team! Ari and Heather have teamed like this before. To check that one out go to Kendricks blog (yes I know it is Heather and Tagg s family blog but hey I am the Grandma hehe)

Dragons dancing in the air.
Finally they alight
taking a breath before they go

Just a great Picture of the Birthday Girl!

Ari's Pictures with her new CAMERA!

Ari just loves her new camera and she will be a regular contributor to the blog from now on! Here are a few she took of the furry people (and feathered) that share our homestead.

Here are a few chickens from Ari's flock!

This is Sadie the carnivore wannabe!

Bear went on our ride as our "protection" he is a very tired and footsore boy now. But happy very, very, happy!

This is Sweety Pie the kitten. She is studiously ignoring Ari and the Camera.

The Birthday RIDE!

We did more riding than picture taking but we did get a few.

We stopped and had our lunch at (IN) this pretty stream. Ari's horse Sadie was a HUGE MOOCH. Even tried to get us to let her taste the fried chicken. YOU ARE NOT A CARNIVORE SADIE! Grapes and bread and carrots as well as the apples were a big hit with our equine partners.

Here is Ari explaining the dietary laws of horses to Sadie. Note the look of disagreement on that horse's face! With us were Terry on the left and Lori on the right. Jenny was not able to be with us and we missed her!

This was the After Ride Party!

More presents! Ben was the present delivery person and enjoyed his job immensely. Ari received lots of cool stuff and says thank you thank you thank you!

Lori's husband Mike did not even go on the ride and he looks more tired than the rest of us! HA

I do not know why but I really like this picture of my beautiful sweet daughter!

Ari's Birthday!!!!

Yesterday was Ariana's Birthday. We had a GREAT day! We took a girls trail ride. It was a little sad without Q and Pony but we had a lot of fun. We did find that without the leadership of Q we have no natural leaders in the whole group. Therefore everyone wanted to follow or walk beside someone else. This did not work so well and we had to do some schooling to get a good trail line going on the narrow trails. Here are some great pictures from the day!

Here she is intently working on seeing what was in the BOX! That is her brother Ben and her friend Erica with her on the couch.

She Squeals with delight when she sees NIKON and knows it is a camera!

This camera came with all sorts of cool stuff!