I Never Get Sick of Skies Like This…With Horse Impressions to Follow!

Every once in a while I have to do an “I Love You Arizona” post because I truly enjoy the lazy clouds in a wide open sky.  I don’t know if I could ever leave the West. I could trade the wind and lack of rain for light breezes and more monsoons, but I’m an Arizonan through and through.

There were some new calves in the pen that day and Chase went in for a closer look.  I think the calf’s idea of close was a little closer than Chase expected.  Right after I took this shot of the calf “nuzzling” Chase, it gave him a good head-butt right to the stomach and knocked him to the ground.  Luckily Chase is very durable… I think he has calluses on his behind! (I love the look on his face…I think he knows what is coming)

Checking on the baby horses.

Can you guess what he’s looking at?

Just a friendly little tarantula Spence and the guys found while running the calves through the chute.  No I didn’t pick it up. Neither did any of them.

Chase loves JC’s dog Bailey.  She always gives him a big kiss through the bars of the horse trailer.

Now it’s Spence doing the the kissing…is he kissing at the cows?  Maybe the dogs…I think I’ve actually seen him do that. :) Can you say sunburned lips?!?

 

I had to save this one for last.  The first time I looked at these pics, I dismissed this one as one to delete.  Upon further inspection and my memory coming back to me, I realized Chase was doing a wonderful impression of the horse behind him.  Sorry about all of the spit. 

That’s all folks!

Daddy’s little helper

Who’s under that cowboy hat in front of Spence? 

Oh, it’s just Chase trying to jerk the wheel out of his dad’s hands.

 

Now he’s got the hang of it. He’s driving all by himself….almost! (Are those crazy long sideburns hanging out of his hat?)

Driving the tractor puts a grin from ear to ear on Chase’s face. He likes to feel the power!

If you don’t believe me about the “ear to ear”, here’s a close-up.

It’s Official!

We went to the doctor this week and heard the baby’s heartbeat…so now I’m “officially” announcing that were having a baby!  :)  Spence was supposed to wait until now….but his excitement overcame him  and he just had to tell. (if you’re a friend of his on Facebook, you’ve known for a while now)  I’ll forgive him since everything’s OK with the baby. 

The baby is due May 26th, five days after Chase turns eight (our youngest :).  What a gap!  We’re excited…it’s like a whole new experience after so long.  It’s been fun to see how excited Hayes is.  He came with us to the doctor’s to hear the heartbeat.  He’s hoping for another brother of course.  He was hoping that somehow we could work out an older brother while we were at it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen! :)

Stick ‘em up!

Probably due to that fact that I was DEAD TIRED from being pregnant (I had forgotten how tired it makes you) I was a little lacking in the creativity department when it came to costumes for Halloween this year.  I had settled on ghosts and even found some great material in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart, but Spence and the boys had other plans.  Spence thought it would be easy to make them stagecoach robbers from the Wild West…and he was right.  The boys were more excited about being robbers than ghosts; so robbers it was!  (but they WILL be ghosts next year seeing how I have the material all ready to go!) My boys do make great cowboys!!!

Thank you, Spence, for the custom mustaches!

Lookin’ down the barrel of his shotgun, Hayes “dead eye” Platt

 

With the fastest hands in the West, Chase “quick draw” Platt.

A post from HERMAN

I recently received this mysterious message in my inbox: 

Dear Kellie….

This is your blog speaking. I really miss you. Remember all the fun times we had together? I know you haven't been feeling well but I've heard people really miss us. I'm just not the same without you.
Please come back soon,
Herman (you didn't know I had a name did you)

Well I guess that was the kick in the pants I needed to get back on track with my blogging.  In my defense, we got a new computer and it took forever to get the right software so I could get my photos back and I lost my favorite blogging tool, Windows Live Writer; but with Herman’s prompting, I went online and re-downloaded it and to my utter delight, all of my old blog stuff was there and they had updated it with some cool, new tools! YAY!  So Herman and I are back in the biz!

By the way, after some ingenious detective work on my part, I was able to track down the sender of this mysterious email. (I just looked at the address marked SENDER :)  Thanks Cort!

Oh, What Do You Do In the Summertime?.... If You're Lucky, You Go To ALASKA!

On the morning of August 6, 2009, I dropped Hayes off for his trip to Alaska to visit his Aunt Cort, Uncle Mark, and baby cousin he's never met, Ari.  He was so excited.  He took Spence's old mission camera so that he could document the trip (I still haven't gotten them developed...bad mom); luckily, my mom and Cort provided their pictures in CD form...thanks guys!

Here's how it all went down in the words of Hayes:

"Alaska, here we come!"

"This is one of my favorite pictures.  We found two kinds of berries; red raspberry and blueberry.  They were so good!"

"This is my four-leaf clover.  You can't see it very good.  I guess it's hard to hold something and take a picture at the same time. ha ha!"

"This one's better than the last. I guess I'm lucky...or at least I think I am. ha ha x 1,000!"

"It look's cool. Well I guess it really is...brrr."

 

"On our way to the trolley, Grandma told me it was a bucket that you would ride across the water.  I thought you would really be in a bucket that was in the water as you pulled yourself across.  But then it ended up being above the water in a safer bucket.  I was scared the first time, but the second time was awesome!"

My Aunt Cort is my mom's little sister. 

Here's me and my grandpa fishing for salmon.

At first it was so hard when the fish was pulling, then I got a routine: reel and pull, reel and pull, reel and pull; then finally the fish got so tired, I just had to reel it in.  By the time we had it out of the water, it didn't even wiggle.  I felt proud.

In this picture, we were going to a marsh.  This is me and my grandma.  There were 13 ducks all in one spot.  We saw three king salmon...they were huge!

This is me and my Uncle Mark.  We were under a mask.  Pay attention to slightly above the mask's chin; there are two whale tales.

My Uncle Mark is giving me his business card.  Now I lost it. It's baby Ari's shift now.

This is at the beach.  I'm out on the mud.  It was so slippery.  I fell down once and I was covered in mud.  I was sinking. It felt so weird. That is actually how I fell, because I was sinking. 

Apparently babies are attracted to shiny things. 

My Uncle Mark is teaching me to play a board game called Risk.  It's so cool.  Once, we played from 6 pm until midnight.  If you look to the side of us, you will see baby Ari chewing on my Bionicle. 

Moose look a lot bigger in person.  His antlers were, for some reason, hairy. 

This is a musk ox.  You can't see its baby right now, but there is one.  One time when the mom was walking side to side, it nearly walked over the baby.  Looks like someone's not paying attention.

These are a lot bigger in person also.  I am standing in front of America's bird.  It's talons are so sharp.

 

Look at that crazy kid......oh, that's me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's me, my grandma and my grandpa.  I'm so glad they took me to Alaska.  I saw so many cool things.  Thank you Grandma Terry and Papa Bruce.

This is me sitting on the fence watching a float plane take off.  It was so loud. 

THE END!

Finding Hope 9/11

Sorry, you'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom to turn off my music.  You might want to hit play on the video and then pause it and let it load for a while so it doesn't keep stopping to load.

Our First Egg

September 11th, 2009 we got our first egg from our chickens.  Hayes came in and asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand.  One small, brown egg.  I took a picture of it in Chase's hand because I can't pry it from his vice grip.  Guaranteed it will be broken within the hour...hopefully just not on the carpet.  I was going to try to tie the egg and new life to some parallel with 9/11, but I didn't feel I could do it justice this morning...I've spent the last 2 hours cleaning the worst thing possible....if you know what I mean....out of the carpet in Chase's room... don't even ask!  But I did find a cool video the church put out for 9/11, so I'll post that instead.

PS....Looks like we're going to fry up the new egg for the ultimate egg lover, Chase.  He's pretty excited