A White Christmas

Two days before Christmas, we woke up to snow.  Chase was entertained part of the morning by this little fluff ball that decided we needed a little contrast to the white stuff.

Later that day, Chase and I tagged along with Spence to go feed the horses and bulls.  The horses were pretty eager for some green stuff.  It was BITTER COOOOLD! (That’s why I stayed in the truck and took pictures and never got out once)

BRRRRR! The horses concur.

We only found a few bulls, but Chase wanted to get out and go see them.  I stayed in the truck!

 

What a good daddy. We love him.

Copyright Infringement

I was catching up on my sisters’ and sister-in-laws’ blogs and found these great pics.  So even though Maren hasn’t given me permission yet (I’m sure she will :) I’m going to steal a few and post them here.

The Platts met in Alpine a few months ago to celebrate little Harv’s birthday.  Luckily Trish dropped by and picked up my kiddos to take them because I was in the middle of pregnancy headache hell.  Maren took some cute shots of all of the grandkids. 

9 of the 10 Platt Grandkids (we’re missing Lucy so there’s only one girl)

Ah, there’s Lucy; that makes 8 boys and 2 girls, with 2 on the way (that we know of).  My boys are on the far end because they are the oldest two grandkids. (from the back to the front: Hayes Platt, Chase Platt, Parker Humpherys, Charlie Humpherys, Harvey Platt, Briton Humpherys, Colten Platt, Treyharne Platt, Jane Humpherys, and Lucy Sundahl)

Hayes practicing his yoga moves.

Chase doing some equally awesome yoga moves with the help of Grandma Trish.

 

On Christmas day, while the kids and I were having dinner with my family, (yes, Spence was invited, he was just two hours late) Mike and Maren tagged along to help doctor some sick calves.  Maren took some cool pictures while they were up at the white corrals.  If you want to see the rest, you’ll have to check out Maren’s Blog.

Lucy goes for a wild ride compliments of her daddy.

Uncle Harv with Spence in the background. (I love this shot)

It was bound to happen…

Long ago, before Chase was ever a twinkle in his daddy’s eye, I got a really good deal on a pair of mission style couches that I loved.  They have served us well these past ten years and have held up unbelievably well.  Unfortunately, they have wooden arms with sharp corners. Up until now, and by some sort of miracle, Chase has never seriously hurt himself on them.  It really is amazing due to the fact that his balance on some days is along the lines of falling every couple of steps. 

It seems like sometimes when bad things happen, there seems to be some cosmic lining-up of planets that just propels the event forward, as well as all the precursor events that set it up perfectly to happen.  Let me give an example.  One summer when we lived in Utah, I decided to have a yard sale.  Always a bad idea. :) I advertized well and the place was hopping, so much so that I had to send my little sister Cortney down to the bank to get more cash for change.  While she was gone, I had about six people trying to ask questions, haggle, and pay.  In the midst of the flurry of activity, I had a great idea and called Kristen to see if she wanted me to sell her old bike that she had left in the garage for the summer.  She said yes, so I rushed into the garage and pulled out the first bike I saw and put it on the lawn.  Within minutes, with Cortney still getting change, a man wanted the bike.  He immediately accepted the $30 Kristen wanted for it and left in a hurry.  As business started to slow in the next minutes, a sickening thought came into my mind…was that Kristen’s bike I just sold???  It had looked pretty new now that I thought about it.  I rushed into the garage and there sitting in the corner was Kristen’s bike.  It quickly dawned on me that I had just sold Cortney’s $700 mountain bike for 30 dollars.  I was immediately sick to my stomach.  Cort returned a short time later and I had to tell her the news.  To her 19-yr-old credit, she was totally forgiving and nice about it, but I was still sick.  I closed down the yard sale as quick as I could and went driving around the entire Orem/Provo area checking yards to try to find the guy I sold the bike to.  Of course I didn’t find it, but I looked for hours.  So the chain of awful events went like this.  Cort leaving to go get money.  If  I hadn’t sent her, she would have been there to tell me it was her bike.  Me deciding out of the blue to call Kris about selling her bike.  Tons of customers at once had me flustered and I didn’t hardly even look at the bike.  And then the guy coming within minutes of me putting it out and knowing a good (great) deal when he saw one, bought it immediately. And how much do you think I made at the yard sale???  I think it was about $200… $500 less than Cort’s bike was worth.  It was like a sick chain of events that lined up perfectly for disaster. 

And so it was for Chase.  All these years without a major accident with the couch corners, and then our TV broke.  You may be wondering how our TV breaking could have anything to do with it, but remember what I said about the cosmic chain of events.  Well, when our TV broke, Spence moved into into the living room to get it out of the way so that he could set up our little TV. 

This is where the tree normally is set up.

The broken TV had been sitting in the living for about a month taking up a lot of space when I got out the Christmas tree.  And where do you think I usually set up the tree??  In the living room, right where the broken TV was now sitting.  So I looked for other options.  The only other place I felt I could really fit it was in the family/TV room between the couch and the piano. 

This is where the tree ended up.

But in order to fit it, I had to move the couch about 6 inches, which put the corners of the two couches 6 inches closer together.  The couches sit diagonal to each other and the space between them at the corners is the only way to get into the family room and then on into the kids bedrooms.

The arm on the left was the culprit. It does look sharp.

I should have know that would cause problems for Chase, but I was only thinking Christmas trees.  About a week and a half before Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa Platt were over for dinner and a little bit of Planet Earth.  Chase was standing in front of the couch showing off his ability to say “planet erff” when he took a pitch forward and caught the corner of the couch right between the eyes.  I grabbed him and saw that it was bleeding, so we got a towel and held it to stop the bleeding.  When we had it stopped enough to check for damage, we could see a slice that had punctured right down to the bone.  We were going to head for the ER, but and quick call to Dr. Wilson at home (thanks for answering Sean) and it was decided to just go in first thing to the office and get it stitched.  I sat on Chase (sounds weird, but it is the best and only way to hold his head still) with his head secured between my knees, while Spence did his best to bandage it good enough to hold until morning. 

8 am, and we were off to Eager for stitches.  They putting numbing cream on we waited for it to take effect.  Then after some discussion between the doctor, the nurse, and I, it was decided that I would sit on Chase with his head secured between my knees while he stitched him up.  I wish I would have had a video of me climbing on top of Chase on the procedure chair and then raising the chair up to where Dr. Wilson could stitch Chase’s forehead which was held tightly between my knees.  It wasn’t funny at the time, but I’m sure it looked pretty funny.  Chase cried the whole time, but once we got the numbing shots in, the blue stitches went in pretty quickly.  Luckily Darryl Greer is now Sean’s assistant, and he gave Chase all kinds of toys and entertained him as best as he could.  We had to put him on an antibiotic since the bone had been exposed.  I bet you are all wishing I had got a shot of that! (the bone) :) We really appreciated all that they did for us at Mtn. Ave. Clinic.

A week later we went in to get the stitches out. After looking at them, Dr. Wilson wanted to leave them in a few more days, which put it right at Christmas.  They weren’t going to be open, so he asked if we could just take them out. Now I don’t want to accuse Dr. Wilson of not wanting to go through the whole crazy procedure to hold Chase down, but it was convenient that we would have to be the ones to take them out. :) I got home and Spence just took them out the next day…he’s used to me sitting on Chase so that we can doctor him! :) By the way, I would recommend Spence’s services to anyone who needs stitches taken out….he could probably put them in to! 

 The day we took the stitches out.  (Notice the other scars from similar incidents that weren’t quite so bad.  Chase’s eye area takes a lot of abuse.)

I’m sure you all have stories of cosmic chains of events.  I’d love to hear them. 

 

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!