Precious Faces

Some days are just hard, but I honestly love being a mother.  Some times I wish it were easier, but I am learning to live in the moment.

I'm so blessed to be the mother to these precious faces!  I can hardly stand how adorable and priceless they are!

How ever did I get so luck to get the most wonderful and amazing children in the world?  They're growing up much too fast.  Can't they stay little?!

Tribute to Mother

Early on in the month, Reed came up with a perfect gift for our mom.  A recital, by us!

It was fun to prepare for, each of us picking our favorite song to play for our mother during the recital.  She has put in countless hours into helping us become talented in two instruments, some of us three, including our voices.  We thought this tribute to our dearest mom on her 50th birthday would be a treat, and it did not disappoint!

Siblings (and spouses) singing "Mother Dear I Love You So"

There was even a special appearance by our brother Keith, who couldn't be there that day.  We skyped him in, and that was a great surprise to our mom!

Tanner and Taylor also participated, representing the legacy we're passing onto our children.

Thank you, mom, for sitting by our side day after day, year after year, lesson after lesson, and encouraging us to do and be our best.  We wanted to show you that despite all the grumbling and tears, we are forever grateful for your love and perseverance!

We love you!  Happy Birthday!

Spring Roundup {2013}

Joined my family for spring roundup in Chesterfield at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  It was a beautiful day, and only got windy towards the end.  

 Keith, Clay, Stephanie, Reed, and our dad, 

ready to bring the cattle from pasture to the corral.

Kortlen ready for a ride!  

 Here comes trouble!  These two are obsessed with collecting shells and rocks...

...I threw away more than one bag of the above this weekend!  

This little cutie joined in on the fun!  Her we are, waiting for the work to start.  

The Flat-Bed Crew.  Brielle (Em's friend) and Emily taking pictures, and 

Tanner, Kortlen, Deseret and Taylor manning the tags and holding down the fort. 

So happy the Ryan got to help this year, and was able to get away from work for a weekend! 

Putting Tags in... 

It was soooooooooo dusty!  We were all black from the fine dirt in the corral. 

Ryan was initially 'assigned' to running the nord-forks, but quickly got promoted to doing castrating.  

Keetley slept all 4 hours in her car seat, in the ventilated (all windows down!) cab of the flatbed pickup.

Simple Joys

A few random things:

Sliding down the stairs at Grandma Poulsen's house, in the sleeping bag!  It's all fun and games till someone gets hurt....the next run down the stairs resulted in all three boys crying, and the sleeping bag being put away.  Good times!

6 weeks old, and baby girl is starting to talk with me!  She smiles in the middle of feedings, and is genuinely happy and content.  I love this phase, when they're starting to be more alert, and learning to have little conversations.

Making Crayons

I decided to make little star crayons for my preschoolers as a graduation gift....what started as a 1 hour project, quickly turned into taking all.day.long.  I kid you not.  A gallon of naked crayons will go MUCH farther that one might expect.

 Not sure how many I ended up with, but we had fun!  Tanner, Taylor, and Kortlen even helped!  I used a silicone cupcake mold for the stars, and found a silicone-bottom ice cube tray in an apple shape in the dollar bin at Target.  After 4 uses in the oven, it finally gave up the ghost, but gave me enough apples to give my class and one other.

I want to say there were 50-ish stars just from one gallon of naked crayons.

I baked them in the oven on 250* F for about 20 minutes, then would stick them in the freezer, and pop them out of their trays.  Worked really swell!  I wish I had TWO molds going at a time...it wold have taken less than the seven hours we labored.

The star shape is great, because you could potentially do 5 colors, then take ONE CRAYON to church, or put in the diaper bag, etc.  Although I didn't like the look of the 5 colored crayon, I tried to vary the colors in each point so a child would be able to have more than a single color.

Such a fun and simple (not to mention inexpensive!) gift...though it was super time consuming!