Emma's birthday party

Heidi wanting some food!

Emma talking to her grandma, and opening presents

The look of stop taking pictures mom!

For Emma's birthday we went over to the barn so that the kids could crawl through the hay tunnel again and then we roasted hotdogs and had hot chocolate. After that everyone came back to our house and we had cake and opened presents and then watched Emma's new movie Tinkerbell! By the time we started watching the movie all the kids were very tired as you can see in the pictures.

Emma, Madison, Alison............Jordan, and Katie

Zechari

Happy Birthday Emma!

This year for Emma's birthday cake we made a chocolate cake with chocolate gnache for a filling between the four layers and the outside of the cake. Then I made the butterflies out of chocolate and added pink frosting to make it girly! :) Everyone seemed to like it immensely. It tasted really good with a nice cold glass of milk!

Today is a sad day at camp. One of the horses that we have had here for many years died of colic today. His name was Dakota. He usually got colic twice a year for whatever reason, once in the spring and once in the fall, and this time they could not save him. This horse was a favorite among a lot of people that have been to camp and will be missed greatly. Chad is going over to the barn now to haul him away and then another horse at camp will be gone. :(

Edit: Dakota did not actually die of colic but because he slipped and fell on a hill and was wedged between two trees, which made it too difficult for him to get up. For this reason and because this all happened during the night no one found him until the next morning and he was already dead.

Every day as soon as Heidi wakes up she is ready to put her coat and shoes on. It does not matter if we are going anywhere or not, she wants her stuff on I guess for just in case! :) Here is her picture all dressed up for the cold winter day.

Hay Tunnel

Standing in line to go into the hay tunnel can be a little tiring!

Emma coming out of the hay tunnel.

Madison coming out of the hay tunnel.


Yesterday the girls spent another 3 and a half hours at the barn going through the hay tunnel. This time I went along with them and got some pictures! I think that we will be doing again for Emma's birthday party on Thursday too, and maybe again when Grandma gets here!

A Day of Quiet!

Yesterday, some friends of ours were down with their nephews and wanted to take them through the hay tunnel. They invited Emma and Madison to go with them, which of course I didn't have to ask them twice to get ready!!! After about an hour of going through the maze their time was interrupted by another scheduled group so they decided that they would come back a little later. They stopped by the house and asked if the girls could spend the afternoon with them and then at 3 they would go back and go through the hay tunnel again. I said that was fine and so from 11:30-5pm I only had one child to take care of, and she took a nap for half of that time, and with Chad working most of the day it made for a very quiet afternoon!!! I was able to clean the house some and then sat down and relaxed some. I didn't quite know what to do with myself :). In any event the girls had a great time getting to know new friends and spending more that 3 hours in the hay maze. Heidi and I enjoyed our one on one time together as well. She is my little snuggler and she spent a great deal of time in my arms just hanging out!
Today the girls awana's from our church is coming out to do the hay maze at 2, so we will go back over for a few more hours of fun! This time I hope to get some pictures so I will post them later.

My internet was experiencing complications for a couple of days and so everything was extremely slow in loading and a lot of the time I would get booted off so I have not been able to write anything for a while! Not much has happened of course, just the usual monday night football and homeschool with the girls. Emma has been such a big help lately, more so than usual, and it scares me to think how fast my little six year old is growing up. I did go sledding with them in our back yard on Sunday, just once, because I thought it would be fun, which it was until my little helper Madison, pushed me so I was going fast enough to go over our embankment at the end of the yard. That would not be so bad except for the wild rose bushes that stand tall waiting for you to come sliding into them and poking you all over with their thorns. Not only did I sled into them, but Madison had pushed me so I was going backwards and really could not stop myself before I hit them!!! Emma and Madison thought that it was quite funny and laughed and laughed. :) I would have done it again, but I think going over the edge and getting the thorns stuck all over me was enough to make me not want to try until we can build up the snow so we don't have such a horrible demise awaiting us!

Heidi has always loved to play with this frisby and will play like this for over half an hour!!! Same reaction each time....a little squeal and a giggle and then back to the person folding it for her so she can pop it open again. Oh the simple things in life that make it fun. Who needs real toys anyway!

Sledding!

Yesterday Chad got the girls new sleds and so today was the test day, and oh the fun you can have on hard slick snow!!!

For some reason the video will not rotate so you have to watch it sideways :(. Sorry!

Officially Winter 2 Months Early!!

The last snow we had, had melted and we were with green grass again for a few days. It was even close to 50 degrees a couple of times. Now it is and has been snowing and we have at least 6 inches of snow and it is still falling. The kids are enjoying their time in the snow making snowballs for snowmen and just running in it. So unless we have a miraculous change in the weather, the snow is here to stay! Just in time for hay tunnel season too! On Thursday we open our hay tunnel up to the public and we already have 5 scheduled, which means 10 hours of working at the barn for our staff! Luckily we have enough staff to rotate so none of them should have to be there for a full 10 hours. Emma and Madison are excited to go through it again this year, however I definitely will not be as the tummy is far to large to fit through some of the corners and paths that I know they will put in there to twist and squeeze through! I do plan to get someone to video tape it for me though if we can figure out the night feature on it so you can see what the 1200+ kids go through when they come.

Busy Weekend

I must say that this weekend tops them all for being busy. It was not really the amount of activity that we had to do but just the sheer number of people coming and going. On Saturday I had made cinnamon rolls for our family and the neighbor family, and then I took both pans to their house to be baked since our stove is not working and we are still waiting for our new one to arrive. Then Chad had to go back to camp and work another meal. When he got home at 2pm I left for town to pick up movies for the evening excitement and to attend a triathlon meeting to start organizing a Soldotna tri. since there are none in this area. When I got home at 4 we waited until about 6 and then the four oldest next door neighbor kids came over for a sleep over because their parents had flown to a little village called Port Graham to get to know the people and to start a connection there for ministry. All seven kids were very good about getting to sleep fairly quickly which was nice. However at 5am something or someone had woke everyone and they felt that it was time to get up. I jumped out of bed at the sound of laughing and some movement and told them that there was no way that they were getting up at this hour of the day. They tried to go to sleep on their own but 6 kids, 7 and under trying not to talk is quite impossible, so I stayed in the room for 20 minutes waiting for them to go back to sleep. Thankfully they did and stayed there for another 2 hours. Heidi and Zechari actually slept in until 9am despite all the noise from the other 5 girls! We kept the kids until 1:30 and then their grandma came to pick them up for the rest of the day until their parents were to return home later in the evening. By this time we have already gained 4 more people for watching the Sunday Football and slowly more and more came!!! I had told a friend that I would watch her 3 kids at 6pm while her and her husband went on a date earlier in the week so at 6 they showed up, and by this time we have found out the Craig and Crystal (next door neighbors) were stuck in Port Graham due to the weather for another night and we are going to have their 2 oldest girls come and spend the night again! They arrive at 7:30, so we have the 6-7 people still watching the final game of Sunday football, our 3 kids plus my friends 3, plus Katie and Jordan! At this point during my pregnancy I tend to get grumpy with too many people around and I need that time in my house alone to just unwind and regroup but up to this point it has been solid people for two days so my patience is getting low to say the least. We had a good nights sleep with only one kid getting up at 5 am (luckily they went right back to sleep without incident!). I was feeling much better this morning and we all got up and took baths. I gave each girl their own bath got them in clean clothes and braided their hair, and then off to town we went for coffee and hot chocolate! The girls were all very well behaved and enjoyed their cup of hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream and sprinkles very much. Then we went to Fred Meyers to get everything we needed for Monday night football, and for a friend who was leaving the next day for the navy. We then got home and at 1:30, Craig and Crystal came and took the girls home! Our family spent the next 2 hours straightening up our house and getting ready for the 25+ people to come for the farewell party and football that started at 4:30. At 4:15 we headed to the camps kitchen to make the 10 pizzas for the evening, which with very hot convection ovens only took us 25 minutes start to finish!!!! Monday night football and baseball turned out to be very exciting to watch and the farewell party went well too. I must say though, that I am not in the mood to see very many people or watch anymore kids (besides my own) for quite some time!!! They were all very well behaved and has nothing to do with them....I just become a little grumpy and need my personal space a lot more when I am this far along in the pregnancy. Thank goodness it is almost over and I can return to normal in a month or so!

This is the cake that the 5 girls picked out for Jim's farewell party, and was very yummy!!!

Chalk boards!

My new project has been to make chalkboards using the chalkboard paint! I used a board for the kids chalkboard to be put in the "schoolroom/playroom" and I painted my pantry doors to make one for writing lists and verses and messages on. I love how they turned out.

Here is a picture of my pantry doors. I will take a picture of the school room when it is competely finished a little later!

This is what we woke up to this morning so we built a nice warm toasty fire and all laid in front of it, even the cats! Now there is about 4 inches of snow on the ground that is nice and wet and it makes for great snowman making. All the kids are outside right now rolling snow into balls to each make their own special snowman!

All the kids made a snowman like this one, but this is the only one that has not been destroyed yet. This particular snowman was made by Katie, our next door neighbor.

Today we really did get snow. Emma said she was sad to see the snow come because she still wanted to play out in the grass! Just yesterday at 45 degrees and sunny, Madison asked if I could get the sprinkler or slip-n-slide out to run through because she was soooo hot! I told her once again that our summer was over and she was going to have to wait until next year! Madison is more excited about the snow now as we look forward to sledding and building forts etc.

Snow

It is sad that today is our first day of snow. Not real snow like inches or anything, just a few little flakes that came with the rain, and it signifies the start of our winter that will last until next April when the snow should be on it's way out. Luckily today it left as quickly as it came. We have been enjoying the sun for the last 7 days or so which has been our longest period of sun since last may! I hope that we can ward off the snow bunny for just a few more weeks and keep our sunshine around for a while! Not that I can control but I can always be hopeful. :)



See if you look closely at the white spots....those are snow flakes! :)

My Garden

This summer, as far as gardens go, has been very dissappointing because of the weather and learning all the little things to know about greenhouse gardening. I got about 6 tomatoes off of 30 plants because the hummidity caused so much rot on the plants, and I did not know how to prevent it better when it first appears, and so all the blossoms of which there were hundreds rotted off instead. :( My cabbage which should have done well, because of the type of wheather we had is about 4 inches in diameter. I actually got some cucumbers to grow which is much better than the zero from last year, but they were only an inch long and were not going to get any bigger. My beans actually had lots of blossoms, but never really any beans. The things that did well were my basil of which I was able to get two cuttings off of, the carrots, the peas, and my lettuce which I was able to use all summer long with several cuttings! I also was able to get a few zucchini and strawberries, some nice onions that I grew from seed, and a little green pepper about an inch long! I really hope that our summers begin to get warmer and not so much of the rain and clouds that we had all summer this year, otherwise it is useless to put so much work into all the tomatoes and other plants that hardly produce anything.

The really sad thing is that I finally mowed after two months of it raining almost every day. We were able to get a week of 50 degree sunny weather that almost dried out my grass that was well over a foot long by the time I mowed it. I am going to mow it really short here in a day or two and that should be the last time I have to do that for the year!