Meat Shop Progress

This past week we went to the flat to help grind the meat and make hamburger from the cow they killed last week. It took all of the afternoon and evening to grind and package it all. Wynn and Phyllis gave us some to take home which was nice to build our meat supply up a little more, since we had a little left that my brother-in-law had given us. Thursday and Friday Adam was sick at home in bed. I worked all week to get my house ready for the pest control guy to come on Friday. It’s interesting how it takes me so long to get my house ready for him to come and then he comes and is in and out in 15 minutes and then it almost takes me another week to get my house back together. I always have a greater feeling of security from pests after it is all over. On Saturday we worked all day on the meat shop continuing to frame up the sides of the shop. The picture is proof of the status of it. Mark and Adam were there the whole time with a few family members showing up towards the end to install the west wall and finish up a few things. After that tiring task Adam and I headed over to St. George to attend a reception of the daughter of one of the architects that he does work for. It was nice to go do something with just the two of us even if it was to a reception that we only knew the father of the bride. Take what you can get.

Our Lincoln Turns 2

Monday was Lincoln’s birthday. I can’t believe that he is 2. Lincoln was given a tower of rice krispie cupcakes that started to fall while we waited for Adam to come in from helping with the cow. Lincoln was a little confused at us singing to him, but loved the attention. He shared one of his toys with Addy. They were so cute lying on the floor on their tummies driving little cars and a tractor around. As I mentioned earlier about the cow, we went out to the flat for Family Home Evening, in which the activity was for Adam and his brothers to kill one of Wynn’s cows that was barren. The brothers were discussing how she didn’t look barren to them and looked somewhat pregnant, but Wynn was just sure that that was not the case. After killing her my nephew Zac came in the house and told us all that the cow was pregnant and we were thinking how horrible that was and then my niece came in later and corrected the confusion that she really wasn’t pregnant, so we were glad to hear that cleared up. Tuesday night apparently Larry (the family dog) was in a fight with some Husky dogs, I don’t know if you could say he was technically in a fight, but more that he was getting picked on and having to defend himself. I asked Phyllis about it on Wednesday and she said the following is what happened:
She found Larry on the back lawn/driveway area with 2 Husky dogs on top of him having pinned him on his back with him, “fighting for his life, for what it was worth” (I just loved how she put that last part). She came running in the house yelling that they were killing Larry. Daniel, Tim, Jimmy, and Jared were downstairs playing video games, so Daniel ran up the stairs and out the door to handle the situation and after kicking the dog and it not doing much then he grabbed it and threw it off of Larry with that dog turning to bite him in the process, but missing. Daniel told Tim to kick it which he did with great force and Phyllis had to tell him to stop. In trying to find Larry outside in the dark they were unsuccessful, but after coming in the house they found him under the table bleeding in a few places. The police came out shortly after Daniel and Tim found one dog down by the pond and resisted to shoot it when Phyllis told them not to. The animal control said they knew who the dogs belonged to and the owners came out searching for the other dog. So Larry lives again for others to tell another story about.
Wednesday I escorted my two little boys down the road to the top of the field in front of the flat where g-pa was doing the water. Tyson was determined that he wanted to help g-pa with the water so he dragged a big shovel all the way there and tried to copy what g-pa was doing. Lincoln was right in tow with one of g-ma’s hand trowels ready to do the same. Lincoln was prepared to start marching back to the house when we were done, but realized the offer to ride in the back of g-pa’s truck was much more inviting. These boys are farmers that is for sure. I know I have to make sure to keep an eye on them more as Tyson recently climbed in the backhoe, started it, popped it into gear, and released the emergency brake. As soon as Adam had realized that the backhoe was moving he went running from the upper part of the driveway towards the backhoe only to find that Tyson had popped it into neutral. He pays attention way too much as to how machinery is ran, which worries me. When the boys wanted to use the forklift to hoist up the cow to hang it over night they couldn’t find the key. We asked Tyson about it and he said it was in his new pants at home. When I got home I checked in all of his dirty pants and couldn’t find it. I noticed that my ring was missing on Wednesday when I was walking down the road with the boys. After looking in the bathroom when I got home and any other possible place that I could have set it I began to get very worried that it was lost and decided to pray about. During my prayer the thought came into my head to ask Tyson, which I approached him about after he woke up. I said, “Tyson, mommy lost her ring and is very sad about it, do you know where it could be?” He got off the bed and walked to my closet, lifted up Adam’s boot and there it was on the carpet. I remarked, “I wonder how that got there!” I then thought that since we were on a roll then maybe he would know where the forklift key was, so I asked him about that. He said, “It’s in my yellow pants!” (which I swear the kid does not own any yellow pants) I went to transfer the laundry and at the bottom of the machine was a single key. I asked Adam if that was it and then took it to Tyson so he could return it to Adam and see his excitement for getting it back. So, beware my child is obsessed with keys and just about any machine on wheels.

Lincoln the Crib Jumper

Monday evening we had Family Home Evening with just Lincoln since Tyson fell asleep on the way home from the flat. Lincoln enjoyed the one on one attention. After putting him to bed we heard a thump and the door open a short time later. Out comes Lincoln down the hall. My baby is a crib jumper and door opener. This is just not right. Thinking that he had lucked out before doing something similar like barreling out of the crib and hurting himself and then only crying at the door because he could not open it, I thought this was the same thing but after putting him back in his crib I only found him back out in the hallway again. I guess I should sum it up that he fell asleep on my lap. On Tuesday the boys and I, my nephews Josh and Johnny all rode with Adam to Salina early in the morning to take some cows to the auction there. Stuart and Heidi drove one truck and trailer while we were in another. I enjoyed the trip. Tyson seemed a little disturbed that we were selling Grandpa’s cows and bull and made sure to remind Stuart that he needed to sell and buy a bull. We had no intentions of buying cows this trip so that evening when Tyson said the prayer for dinner he made sure to put in, “please help us to buy more cows and get a bull for Grandpa!” I was laughing about that afterwards, however Adam was laughing that during the prayer Lincoln apparently had his arms folded and eyes shut but could not resist his food so he would lean forward and grab a bite of a roll with his eyes still shut and then peek to look for his cup of milk and after getting a hold of it close his eyes again while he grabbed a sip. Adam said that was the funniest thing he had seen in a long time. We just love our two boys. Of course when it was time for bed I put Lincoln in his crib and sure enough he was out in the hall reminding me that he could crib jump and open his door. I then put him in Tyson’s bed and locked his door from the inside, which only made him cry in there for a long time. When I went in to calm him down I was so curious as to how he gets out of the crib that I asked him to show me, which he did and now that is the funniest/smartest thing I have seen in a long time. He does it like he’s been doing it for months. There’s hardly a struggle. I guess it is time to break down the crib and get him a toddler bed. My baby is not so much one anymore. On Friday Heidi let the little kids ride the horses around for a little bit before brushing them down and putting them away. Tyson and Emily are on Sippy and then Erika and Lincoln are on Di (short for Diamond). It was cute to watch Lincoln clench his arms around Erika and her being such a big girl taking him around the farm. These kids just love the horses. Saturday morning we went to Lizzy’s baptism, which was great! She is so grown up. We had donuts out on the lawn afterwards and Susie snapped this picture of these cute boys (Gage is in the middle). We went out to the flat afterwards and changed into work clothes and spent the rest of the morning tearing apart trusses to get 2x4s to get working on the north wall of the meat shop, which was a success. The wind started to pick up in the afternoon so after eating a late lunch Stuart, Adam, Heidi, the kids, and I took Wynn’s cows up on Smith’s Mesa. We enjoyed watching the 2 baby calves romping around in their new open range. We got back late and called it a night.
Today, Lincoln’s nursery teacher told Adam that she was amazed at how good Linky was at shooting a basketball. She was impressed with his form and such. It really is amazing to watch him as he sets a stance, crouches down, extends and releases the ball in one motion and even flips his wrist. I know that he has been very observant of when Adam is shooting the ball at the short beam to our hallway.

Conference Weekend

Monday was such a nice day and I really didn’t want to stay in the house and do my normal Monday morning routine, so I talked Adam to taking me with him out to the flat. I started peeling pears to bottle, but caught a ride with Adam back to our house to spend some time cleaning. Adam took the boys and his dad up to Smiths’ Mesa to plant some peach trees. I really wanted to go with them so I could continue to enjoy the beautiful day, but knew I needed to stop pampering myself at some point. They picked me up on the way back. We cleaned off the cement meat shop pad for Family Home Evening.
Thursday we watched the twins from 9-2:30, which Tyson enjoyed having them over and playing all day. They were all funny to watch. One of the twins brought this cute little pink hat to which Tyson took a liking to and was wearing around while they were outside. He looks very funny in it, but boy could he pass for a girl. When the hat became an item to quarrel over I decided to go through my slip pickings of hats that we have collected for Tyson (because he never cares to wear them) and found enough for the other three kids to wear so this picture moment could not be passed up. I realized I should have taken a picture of Tyson with that pink hat as it was a funny sight.
Friday morning, after the boys woke up, Adam and I dropped them off at Susie’s while on our way to the temple. I’ve been helping my visiting teachee with the temple work for her husband and her that they have been working on and we finally completed names of children that needed to be sealed to their parents, so that is what we did. Adam had to remove some pieces of tile from a church building for an architect that he does work for, so we went and did that (while in our church clothes) afterwards. Imagine two people dressed in church clothes with one dropping pieces of tile off of a church building on a Friday in broad daylight…an interesting sight I’m sure.
Saturday morning Adam went out to the shop early in the morning to finish working on his truck and the boys were not up yet, so he came back before the 1st session of conference and we watched it at home. We went out to the flat right after so that Adam could continue his finishing up of his truck before the 2nd session, which we watched out at the flat. Abby was so nice to straighten my hair for me during that time since I only had time before the 1st session to take a shower and wash it. I was wishing I had a lot more hair at that point so that Abby could just play with it and take a really long time to straighten it…in other words it felt really good. After that we hid eggs for the little kids to find. This picture is of Lincoln, Gage, and Tyson enjoying their loot. Mark showed up with a truck load of bread to be unloaded for the animals and I snapped some pictures of the little kids helping out. They really enjoy throwing loaves of bread out of a truck. In the one picture Lincoln really gave me a cheeser when I said, "Cheese!" We had an informal dinner since the Priesthood session was at 6 p.m. and there wasn’t much time for a sit down one. While the men were gone the women visited in the kitchen. I don’t know that the word “relax” can really be used in a sentence with women. We stayed out there visiting until late. This morning we went to Stuart and Heidi’s to watch both sessions of conference. I only made Tyson sit on my lap through two different portions of conference. We will take it a little at a time. Heidi made some yummy homemade pizza in between sessions while I put the chicken pasta salad together for the dinner at the flat afterwards. I always enjoy conference and feel that there are many basics that I need to improve and better myself and our family on and am very grateful for the instruction and reminders.

Oil, Bread, and Basketball

This last week didn’t have too many eventful things happen if you don’t consider your child playing in oil and covering his face and clothes with it being one of them. I lose my cool when buckets of oil get left around and for some reason my boys always find them and decide to play in them. At least this time I went to the flat prepared as I had dressed my boys in their shop clothes. It’s funny because how many children do you know who say the following, “Mom, I need my oil shirt?” It’s not like these shirts are difficult to find. So in this picture of Lincoln I should point out that most of what is on his shirt is what was there before, it’s just his face that looks the worst of it. Susie came over with her friend Hailey/Comet, and we made homemade bread. Comet was surprised that we really meant homemade bread as we ground our wheat, used fresh honey and such. I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve made bread so I’m not exactly a professional and it was a first for Susie so I think it turned out quite well for our inexperience. Adam, had 3 days of OSHA training this last week which he was not too much of a fan of since the classes went from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and he is not use to spending his days that way. On Thursday evening I took the boys with me to our ward’s Pinewood Derby. I wish I had taken my camera with me as it was quite the scene when the cars would go racing down the track and Tyson, Lincoln, and another little boy about their age, would make very excited gleeful screeches. The Cubmaster said that next time he was going to invite the whole primary as watching my little boys was the best out of the whole event. It was very entertaining. On Friday evening Adam had a church basketball game over in St. George, so we all went over as a family. It is pretty much a family event as Tyson and Lincoln have to get their basketball clothes on and take their basketballs with them. During timeouts they get on the court and try hard to make a basket, so they entertain everyone in the process. After the game we stopped at DQ and grabbed dinner to bring home and eat. So this picture shows my boys after their game. On Saturday we went to the temple in the evening and that was nice to finally make it back there after about 1 ½ months of it just not working out. Phyllis’ stepmom passed away this past week so many of Adam’s siblings went to Las Vegas for the funeral. Tyson had been dealing with a mild case of asthma which required the breathing treatments so I didn’t feel up to going, but Adam had planned to go for the funeral and decided at the last minute on Saturday morning to stay. We did the chores while Wynn and Phyllis were gone. The boys and I collected the eggs which is always fun to walk around the farm and find the places that the chickens lay them (the usual places as well as some new ones) so it is like having and Easter egg hunt every day. My eye caught a brand new baby calf (about 3 days old) in the cow pen. It was very cute, but I didn’t have my camera with me, so I’ll have to snap a picture later and post it.

Tyson the Trash Boy

On Thursday we walked out to get the trash can and Tyson has become quite the helper and rolled it all the way back to the house by himself. I snapped a picture to show how big he has become. Two weeks ago my goal was to get a mirror hung above our gas fireplace, which I still need to accomplish because every time I have asked Adam to help he doesn’t have the tools with him that he needs to do it. This last week my goal was to clean/wash all of the filters and such to my shop vac and vacuum. That worked its way to the top of my list when I went to vacuum up some invading ants through some window caulking that had cracked in the back room and only found a cloud of dust coming out of the vacuum. When I decided that the time was present to clean all the filters I found out that one of my boys must have released a clip where the filter was, which was causing the consistent cloud of dust. It’s just another one of those things that gets pushed aside and only gets done when it no longer functions properly, which is always at the most inconvenient times. It just held me back a little while longer before I could go out to the flat on Saturday. On Saturday Adam and Daniel transported loads of cow manure to the lower part of Wynn’s land, with the really old dump truck and Cody’s nicer dump truck, while Mark loaded them up with the backhoe and Wynn spread it around more with his tractor and later that evening Stuart used the bigger tractor to plow the field. Adam said that when he had let the cows out of one corral that even though there was green grass all around them they made a b-line towards a plastic sack and ate it. Dumb cows! At church today there was a girl who sang a hymn and Tyson turned to me and said with excitement, “Mom, it’s Lillie.” Even though she had the long blonde curly hair like Lillie I had to assure him that it was not her. Phyllis has been feeling some flu like symptoms all weekend so we gathered at Cody and Shelley’s house on Sunday afternoon for dinner. We enjoyed sitting out on their lawn in beautiful weather and listening to their waterfall. It made for a great environment to visit and relax. It was enjoyable to visit with Uncle Mark and Aunt Michelle Steele who came into town to visit Caleb and Stephanie and so they all joined us for dinner. We headed over to Stuart and Heidi’s house around 6:30 p.m. to celebrate Lizzy’s 8th birthday. She plans to get baptized in April. Emily, one of the twins, came crying to me because she could not find Tyson and Erika. I took her on a hunt for them as well as Lincoln’s missing boot, from when Heidi had watched them earlier in the week. She was good to stick with my more thorough search for Tyson and Erika as they would not have been found under clothes or under the bed and such, but I figured it would make it more fun in anticipation of finding them and I would accomplish searching for the boot. After heading down the stairs and searching a few places there I informed Emily that the kids were outside in the sandbox. I then opened the furnace room and to my surprise right there on the floor as you walk in was the missing boot. It was an exciting hunt which had great success for both of us. The evening was an enjoyable time spent with family.

Mudding, Sinus Blockage, Vegas

This last week had its ups and downs. On Monday afternoon we went up to Smiths Mesa and rode Vaughn’s 4-wheelers. We managed to get our family of 4 on one, Vaughn and his date on another, and then Royce and Adar (the 2 exchange students) and Adam’s nephew Josh on another. We dressed ourselves prepared to get muddy and possibly very cold as from the time we unloaded the 4-wheelers on the lower Mesa area we mudded our way up to the top and checked out the ponds that were filled with water from the snow and rains. No one from the family had been up there to see how everything was doing, so we used that excuse as an adventure and had a lot of fun. I was glad Vaughn let us use the 4-wheeler with the seat, which made it a very comfortable ride for me and the boys. That is a small waterfall in the back of the photo flowing off the lower part of Smiths. On Tuesday Tyson, Lincoln, and I accompanied Wynn and Phyllis to JB’s for Phyllis’ birthday. I wasn’t too impressed with them when I mentioned it was her birthday and the guy asked if she had her driver’s license to prove it. Never had that happen before. Phyllis didn’t have hers with her and so she didn’t get any kind of a treat. My little boys even sang Happy Birthday to her when we got there and were waiting for our food. Not Impressed! On Thursday I had Adam take me to the IHC in the morning on his way into town as I had this horrible pain above my left eye that was throbbing and pulsating and I had a difficult time sleeping because of it. When a nurse got there just before 9 a.m. I called over to her from where I was sitting and informed her that I felt like I was going to black out. Throwing up was an uncomfortable feeling as well as I kept eyeing the garbage can by the door and trying to decide if I could make it over there if the action became necessary. Luckily I didn’t need to use it, but after being wheeled back to a room, talking with the doctor there, having a CT scan on my head, getting two different shots in each bum cheek (that was a first), and getting the results back that I had a major sinus blockage (they decided to do the scan since I was having feelings of blacking out and they wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything brain related causing that) that probably was bacteria related, so we picked up antibiotic and Adam took me home to sleep the afternoon off. Phyllis was so kind to let us drop the kids off that morning on short notice and watch them all day, while I slept at home and felt much better that evening. On Friday early evening we went to Las Vegas and stayed at Joe and Haylee’s new home. Haylee had planned an Abbott cousin’s party (Phyllis’ side of the family) for Saturday afternoon. We went Saturday morning for a drive to the Hoover Dam and were able to see the new bridge that is still under construction, which is absolutely amazing that structures like that are even thought possible. The party was fun and we stayed up until about 3 a.m., so with the time change and the difference from Utah and Nevada time we were really up late. We slept for a few hours and then drove home Sunday morning so that we could make it to our Stake Conference. Lincoln was having some throwing up issues so Adam stayed home with him and I took Tyson to conference. We spent the rest of the day at the flat. Considering my sinus issue it was a fun week.