June 27, 2009

Goodbye MJ

I love Michael Jackson's music.  So talented, but such a sad life.  But no one has better moves...no one.  So I've changed my music as a tribute to the late, great Michael Jackson...because hey....we could be related! :)  I tried to include some Jackson Five stuff and some later stuff too.  Goodbye MJ.

You'll have to scroll to the bottom and turn off my playlist if you want to watch these videos.  Advisory: Michael does his trademark "crotch grab" move, so if you're offended by that, only watch the video of him as a kid.

Here's a compilation someone put together of some of MJ's best moves:

The sound on this one stinks, but the moonwalks are AWESOME!!!

He was amazing as a kid...watch for his signature spin way back then.

And Billie Jean for the road:

June 22, 2009

My Mother's Day Present

So Spence hired a professional photographer to come out to our house and take family pictures for Mother's Day....not quite! :) 

We had a few minutes before we left for church so we snapped a few shots before we left.  I think they (Spence and the kids) only complied because it was Mother's Day.  I'm pretty sure we only have one family portrait from when Hayes was a baby...two, if you count our wedding pictures.  How sad.  So these are our makeshift family portraits that don't include all of us in any of them since someone had to take the picture. 

My boys.

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Best buds.

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Me and my punks.

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My sweet boy.

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My best bud Hayes.

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Me and the love of my life, Spence :)  Hayes did a pretty good job taking our picture.

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Maybe next year we can get some with all of us together!

Animal House

At what point do you have too many animals?  And what do you do when your husband and kids are just crazy over them....even when they're chickens???

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OK so I have to admit, the chickens have been a lot of fun.  Oh, the hours you could find all four of us sitting out in the chicken coop watching our little brood.  These were are first batch.  Three or four weeks later Spence brought home another batch; and then a few weeks later another batch.  We have Leghorns and Wyandottes and Barred Rocks and Orpingtons and Rhode Island Reds and Araucanas and Black Stars; just to name a few! :) 

Hayes has a lot of them thinking that HE is their mother.  They follow him around and try to hide in the legs of his shorts.

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Hayes likes to hold the chicks while he watches TV.  This little one climbed up his shirt and nestled under his chin.

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He's even taught them a few tricks:

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Chase loves the chickens also, we just can't let him hold them in his little vice grip.  He visits the coop daily and helped me get them water today.  He wanted to do it himself so he carried their water all the way out to the coop without dropping it which was quite a feat for him. 

So as our list of animals grows, so does the list of chores.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it's been great for our kids and Hayes has become quite the responsible pet owner. It's been great for Chase too, who loves and animals and is getting better and better with them.  BUT....the chores become very time consuming.  BUT....I do it because I think the benefits outweigh the costs....at least for now! :) I'm such a pushover.

Besides, maybe I'm more of an animal lover than I think.  I spent 15 minutes watching and taking pictures of this dumb little lizard while I was outside building up our fire pit.  I thought he looked so cool standing up with his crazy long toes and biceps that look like a man's.  These boys must be rubbing off on me.

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June 21, 2009

Chase Jackson Platt Turns Seven!

Not my baby! How did this happen?  Seven?!?!  Wow, how time flies.  I hate to see my kids grow up.  It literally tugs at my heartstrings.  The only thing that made it easier was how much Chase enjoys a party...especially when he's the guest of honor.

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We had a little party (a week late) over at my mom and dad's house.  Jane was entertaining Chase by dancing to the drum machine Trey and Brindi got him. He loved it.

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Trey give T a ride on Hayes's back.

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Grandma Trish doing a very important job...keeping Chase fed.

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Bruce and Tere babe

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Thanks to everyone who came....Chase loves his family!

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Cade always avoids me when I have the camera, so I was so proud to catch him. I didn't get Syd, she was too busy playing "andy-i-over" with the kids. PS I looked up the game to see if I was calling it the correct name and found that there are many variations on the name.   It was one of our favorite childhood games. Here's the link. We must play our own special version, because ours involves hitting the other players with the ball at the end...that wasn't in the official rules...imagine that! :)

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This is for you LAUREN!

My adorable little niece has been on my case (in a good way!) to get back to blogging, so this one is for her.  Thanks for all of the encouragement :)  Lauren also blogs, privately, and does a great job.  But I have to say, I just checked hers and she hasn't posted since March!  She just got baptized, so I know she has some material.  So Lauren, I'll be watching and waiting!

One of the things the Ashton cousins gave Chase for his birthday was a kite.  He couldn't wait to get it into the air.  We had to wait for a "less windy" day, but it finally came.  Chase is actually really good at flying kites...that or he has a little guardian angel keeping those things in the air for him. 

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Hayes didn't do too bad either, although he's always disappointed when the kite doesn't fly as good for him even though he does all the right things.  I guess there might be more to that guardian angel theory than one might initially think.  If I can find them, I'll post some old pictures from the first time Chase flew a kite by himself. 

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Too Gone for Too Long.....

I'm pretty sure that's a Randy Travis song.  Well, what can I say...I guess I've been a little busy.  The sad thing is that I really enjoy blogging, but I just haven't been able to find the time, so once again I'll have to play catch up. I think the last time I updated, we had one foal and were waiting for two more successful deliveries.  Well we succeeded.  We now have 3 of the cutest little foals, one colt and two fillies, running and bucking around the horse pasture. 

First came Sweetie's baby, Sugar, on May the 3rd.  We were excited when she came out paint like here Mama. 

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Hayes making sure that Sugar will always like him best!

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Like mother, like daughter:

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Then we waited for Sandy to have her baby.  We were nervous because she has had problems in the past.  Our favorite horse "Sonny Boy I" (RIP) was born with what is called "dummy foal syndrome" or "maladjusted foal syndrome".  During the birthing process, some sort of trauma causes swelling on the brain and it affects the colt's instincts to nurse.  When Sonny I was born, he was in Flagstaff and a vet gave him an IV and other stuff to bring the swelling down.  In the end, he ended up doing fine and turned into a wonderful riding horse for Spence and Hayes.  Sandy also lost her first and only other foal.  It died and tore Sandy bad enough coming out that she had to have surgery.  So needless to say, we were pretty nervous for this baby to come and for everything to be OK.  We brought Sandy to the pen in our back yard and started checking her religiously.  On the night that Spence was sure she was going to have it, we set the alarm for every hour to check and wouldn't you know it, she had it between 3:00 and 4:00am and we missed the whole thing.  But the baby came out without causing Sandy any problems. It was a rainy morning, so we spread straw in pen so the baby wouldn't slip trying to get up and nurse.  It was a big stout horse; just as big as Sugar who had been born weeks earlier.  After hours of attempted nursing with lots of near misses, we knew something was wrong.  All of the other babies had been able to nurse after one or two tries.  We knew the baby needed colostrum, so we milked Sandy and gave him some in a syringe. We just kept watching.  He kept circling Sandy and trying to nurse, but he just couldn't latch on.  Trey came out and he and Spence milked Sandy a few more times and we got the colt to drink from a baby bottle.  By the time 9:00am rolled around we decided to call the vet.  They said they had the antibiotics the colt needed, so mama and baby got loaded in a trailer and headed to Snowflake.  Trey said that shortly after receiving the IV, the colt started nursing and he's been growing stronger ever since.  We were relieved to know that if it ever happens to one of her colts again (which is a good possibility considering our odds so far) we know what to do and it's a pretty easy fix.  Here's mama and baby after they came back from the vet that first day.

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They had to shave a little spot on his neck to put the IV in.

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And if you know Hayes and his ways of naming pets, you might have guessed that this little look-a-like is Sonny Boy II. 

I just had to throw in this other shot from that day.  Just a shaggy, scraped-up, sleep-in-the-eye, dirty-toothed punk with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face.  What a boy!

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