Horse Back Riding and summer hike/rides

When we lived in Porter Mountain Estates our friend had horses and a pony and Maes and Jake took horse back riding lessons.  Jake got bucked off a while back and I am fine if he never wants to ride again, his helmet broke.  Maes got pretty good.  She is far too busy for one more thing so we are not doing lessons, but looking at these photos makes me want to have her do them again.  It was so much fun for her. 

 We also took the kids on a small hike, part of it was paved so perfect for the bikes.  The kids love being outdoors and we live in such a pretty place, we should do it more often.

Maesyn's 4h

Maesyn was able to participate in her first 4h show as a Clover Kid in May.

 

Here she is looking very serious and cute with her friend Sarah Clark.  She and Sarah have big plans to breed their bunnies- although she does not really know how the animals breed.  I just told her to look at her book!

 Here she is looking very professional showing her bunny.

 The bunnies have tatoos in their ears to identify them.  Ours does not have a tatoo yet.  You have to show the ear as part of showmanship.

 Here she is showing something else.  Cannot tell what it is that she is showing.

 It looks like she is showing the straightness of the front legs.

 

 Here she is showing the eye. 

 

Maesyn's bunny won best in breed.  (we have an American Fuzzy Lop and it happened to be the only one there so it won by default!)  She looks so cute with her ribbon.

Mikah, the poor neglected 3rd Child.

Mikah will be 2 at the end of September, but she has begun acting 2 early!  That is now why we don't take her picture though.  Our camera died early this year, and it has taken this long to get a new one.  So I have missed 5 months of pictures.  

As soon as we got our camera Nate took some pictures of the kids.

 Mikah is super busy all the time, so she needs to rest up at the end of the day.

 Mikah is acting like a 2 year old here. She is grumpy at Maesyn's birthday party.

Mikah wants to be big like her brother and sister.  She can eat a bowl of cereal by her self.  She is a bit messy at it though.  She also can eat as much if not more than the other kids!

 Mikah loves to jump on the tramp.  My dad will be angry that we don't have the safety net up yet.  It actually broke and is living at the dump now.  We need to get another one.

 Although she is not wearing pants in this picture, she is actually over dressed for her regular trampoline jumping time.  She will often go out with just a diaper on, and then that will end up coming off as well! 

 Mikah likes to paint her toe nails.  Here she is painting them with Maesyn's new nail polish that she got for her birthday.

It looks like Mikah might be helping, but she is not!  Sometimes she will surprise me though.  Today she spilled some milk and then got a rag to clean it up!  I need to put her to work!

We have kids, big kids! Maesyn's Birthday Party!

Maesyn Turned 7 on Monday the 13th of June. 

I cannot believe that we have a 7 year old!

 

We Started out the day with a little art class.  I have a group of kids from Show Low that came for the week.  In celebration of Maesyn's birthday we made mini cupcake's.

Then, like a very mean mom, I made Maesyn help me clean the house to get ready for the party. 

 

Cupcakes decorated by the kids.

 Maesyn is very creative.  She has had ideas for a while for her birthday theme..when it came down to the last deciding minutes before sending out invites she decided on a Bunny and Minute to Win it party.  First the kids made Bunny Cupcakes.  It was a really fun idea, I did not have to spend the day decorating cupcakes and the kids had fun decorating their own.

 We also made these little animal suckers.  When you hold them up to your face you look like that animal.  We had bunny, pigs and dogs.

 One of the games.  You had to flip your shoe from your foot onto the mini tramp..in less than 1min.  It is harder than it looks.

 Jake and Oliver playing "Junk in the Trunk".  They had tissue paper boxes with ping pong balls in them.  They had to shake their bums until they all fell out. Jake really got into it. 

 Maesyn and Ellie before playing the Elephant Game.  They each have a baseball in that pair of tights on their heads.

 Trying to knock over the water bottles with the baseball trunks!

Aaron and Bekka playing "Face the Cookie" where you have to move a cookie from your forehead into your mouth without touching it!  They did pretty well!  

Nate planned on getting off work early so he could be there, however they had a situation at work and he could not leave so I did most of it solo.. but the time he got home I was lying on the couch with a headache and let him scoop the ice cream! 
It was a fun party and Maesyn had a really good time.  

Cannot believe she is 7!

This is different than I though...

Do you ever dream about taking some time to just sit down and read a good book or to watch a TV show.  Ohhh it seems like I'll never be able to do that.  I know if I'd make time for it I could, I make time for other things. But relaxing.  That requires ideal circumstances (a clean house)..and sometimes, often times, by the time the house is clean I have something else that needs to be done or I am just ready for bed. 

Yesterday was quite busy but I was able to read my scriptures and get to bed shortly after 9pm.  I'm sure Nate would love it if I would stay up late with him.  He stays up to finish his making posts or grading papers for UOP and often times he will put in a move.  He is a night person, mine are mornings..

Here is a run down of the day:

4:05ish..the alarm goes off and after hitting snooze a few times I am out of bed by 4:30.  Toilet, get dressed (part of this is done on the toilet- multi tasker I am)
4:35.. I am heading out the door with my bag of bike stuff.  I have to pump up my tires and get the bike on the van before 4:40
5:00 meet the group at the church behind the KFC.  We are off on a bike ride.  I am the slowest of the group.  I am afraid of speed, so even if I were capable of going fast I only feel good going 25mph on the down hill, although I hit 28 today at one point.  I am only about to cry if I think the group totally left me and I'm lost.  I missed the turn to my favorite part of the rid and rode in traffic more than I would have liked...but now i am a braver cyclist.
7:20. I am on my way home.  I don't know how long I rode. (could check the garmin) but we talked in the parking lot about a bunch of things including the marathon training and tatoos.
7:45.  Home, make a up some green lemonaide for Nate and I.  We are doing a detox of sorts with friends.  I also eat a grapefruit.
Now I loose track of time however from the time I get home to about 10 the following happened:
read up on the detox to see what i had in store for the next few weeks
Made mikah breakfast
cleaned up the mess
made an egg for me
made egg and toast for Maesyn
Straightened kitchen
switched laundry
Bathed- yes...sort of relaxing, but then a little one joined me.
Got dressed, got the toad dressed
Jake and mikah ate a few cupcakes that I had to clean up
got materials for art class ready
Taught an art class to kids on Van Gogh and persepctive landscapes
Though Jake how to do crayon rubbings
Mikah "participated"
Got yelled at by Jake
Make sippies of Milk and cups of Chocolate milk
change a poop
At 11 I was able to: 
cleaned up art class
made lunch: salad for me, tuna for Jake, Ramen for Girls
Sorted bills into piles
investigated if I set gas bill for auto payment
change a poop
blogged.
It is now 12:45
Today I still have to
Put the toad down for a nap
clean up lunch- oh always a mess
put files away
check sprinklers
attempt to clean sprinkler heads
measure craw space vents to get new ones
determine the sprinklers that need to be replaced (make a list)
Wash more laundry
fold laundry
clean up my room. 

I think I can easilly handle the list.  It is all small (ish) things.  But the thing that tires me out so is the instance that Mikah be with me/on me so often.  The fighting and whining between the big kids. 
For now they are being nice..Jake even went upstairs to make his bed without a problem.  Maybe he will clean his room and brush his teeth too.

For now, I'll put the toad to bed and start on my list.  Oh the list.

Our House...is a very very very fine house.

 Here are some pictures of our new house.  We have done quite a bit of work, but are always finding more to do.  I don't have all of the spaces photographed, but I will get to them all eventually. 

Welcome to our house.

Here is the walk to the door.  We are working on the front landscaping.  My dad put in the rail road tie border on the planter, I need to fix the pavers and after some more work we will have a nice garden area.

Here is the entry or mud room.  We put the old dresser and some chairs and baskets in here.

A view of the mud room from the front door.  There is a small coat closet and an glass door to the rest of the house.

Here is our craft cupboard.  I love the placement and the space just seemed to invite it.  It is very large and holds art supplies to

Here is the down stairs living area.  It backs up to the kitchen so it provides a big entertaining space, however, this is the only down stairs living area, so if I have guest over I need to have the kitchen clean (if I desire to appear a clean person). Through the door in the back you can see the little play room.  We have trimmed the windows with casing, but have not completed and of the treatments in the house. 

A buffet table behind the couch acts as a divider between the kitchen and living area.  I wish that the wood floor extended through the whole area.  The previous owners had the wood cut at a diagonal and defined the too areas really poorly.  With wood floor throughout I could decide where the kitchen ended and the living are a began.  The buffet is just collecting junk at the moment.

Here is the kitchen.  The cabinets used to be a dark wood, but we had them painted cream and they really open up the space.

Here is part of the kitchen.  This is a perfect place for a hutch, but this wire rack suits it well for now.  We also painted the pantry door with Chalk board paint.

We have a cute under the stairs pantry.  My mom built the shelves for me.  We can keep our additional food storage in the garage because it does not get too hot in there.

Sort of a bad picture.  Here is a view of the playroom.

Here is part of the play room.  It opens up the the garage and sees to be the main port of entry to the house.  We put in commercial vinyl tile to make it easier for the kid to play. 

I know the garage was what you wanted to see next!  I really like this space.  I told Nate that we would always be able to park our cars in the garage if we had one.  We need to keep it clean.  It is a must with snowy winters!  Well, this is only a large one car garage, and yes, my van will fit in there, but it is such a fun place to play.  All the bikes have a place as well as the extra toys.  The kids can ride on the big paved drive, so I leave it to them to have their fun.  We don't have sidewalks, so I like the kids to ride on the drive and in teh garage.  We also have a huge shop with lots of shelves.  The plan is to turn it into a garage for nate's car.  And once the garage sale items are out you could fix the matrix in there. 

We have a niec laundry room down stairs.  It used to have black counter tops and dark wood shelves and a tiny little sink...and a black toilet!  The shelves are open, so all of the supplies are neatly hidden in baskets.  And no, my washer and dryer do not match.  But they both work!

We traded out the low black counter and pink sink for this white laundry tub.  It is much more useful in the laundry room. I still need to get orange linens for all the bathrooms as well as a table to fold the laundry.

Upstairs we have a loft area with the TV.  We don't have AC in the house, but we do have a swamp cooler in the window up here.  The kids are watching TV with dad after church.  They have popcorn, a big no no for carpet areas, but I guess Nate threw out the blankets to catch spills.

Jake has his own little room.  None of the closets have doors yet, but I think I will keep Jake's open as all of his treasures are on display in here.  I installed a lower clothes rod so he could hang up his own laundry.

Again, no window treatments yet.  The rooms will just have pretty white casing and blinds.  Simple.  Jake does not have a ceiling fan in his room because of the bunk bed, so he has a cute old fashioned desk fan. 

Jake has an explorer theme in his room so he has treasures from all over the world displayed.

This is the kid's very small bathroom.  The renters took out a cute vanity and left a junk piece...so we bought quaint little sink that takes up very little space and are very happy with it. We also painted it blue in here.  In fact, the whole house was painted, all the walls and ceilings.

Maesyn and Mikah share a very large room.  It used to be two rooms, we think.  When they added an addition on the front it covered one of the windows so they opened up the wall and how it is one long room.  Eventually we will add a window and a wall and make this 2 rooms.  Both girls have closets that need doors. 

Here is Maesyn's side of the room.  They have a butterfly and fairy themed room.  It is a work in progress.  Again, no window treatments as of yet.

We have a fun deck, that is in need of repair, but we will save that for next summer.

This is my side yard with a garden area.  I am working on cleaning it up this summer.  We have a strawberry patch in the far right corner and hope to plan more berries this summer.  There is a shed on the side and an old spool that I keep my potted herbs on.  It is again, a work in progress.

Our lot is over a 1/3 of an acre.  Through this fruit tree you can see the rest of the yard, sort of.  We are working on getting the grass a little greener, but are enjoying it just the same.