More weekend fun....

Just a few more photos of our fabulous (but exhausting) weekend. The picture of Brenton lighting the charcoal with the weed burner/flame thrower has got to be some of my best work. He was so absorb in his 'work' he did not realize I was taking the picture until he caught me sharing it at the party a bit later. I love this family!

So we started our weekend early on Friday with the arrival of winter bum (orphaned) lambs, the wrapping up of the school week, and heading to our first Irish dance competition called a Feis. We also squeezed in a superbowl party with four other families at our home. The bum lambs are time consuming but mostly enjoyed by the kids, the survival rate is low in the winter. This year Moira has set up a 'lamb nicu' in the corner of 'her' rabbit shed, the particularly weak lambs get to share the heater with the rabbits. The lambs get fed four times a day so the kids are busy. The Feis was great! Hugh got a participation medal and was the youngest dancer there by four months. We were amazed at the composure he had in front of several hundred people. Liam received three medals for honorable mention and actually competed on the first level for one dance. Moira was in seven dances and was thrilled just to make it thru when we discovered she actually won one of her hard shoe dances. This means she moves on to the next level in that dance, she also placed 4th and 5th in two soft shoe dances. It was a great day and we were so proud of how well behaved our family was. Cody spent hours and hours building a fabulous lamb nursery behind the shed and did all the transporting of lambs from the ranch to our house, he even took away the unfortunate ones whom did not survive. During superbowl half time the kids went to feed the lambs and most of the kids at the party trooped out in the freezing weather to 'help', mostly to fight over whose turn it was to hold the bottles. It was a crazy 72 hours but good all the way around. More pictures to follow. By the way Moira's nearly waist length hair took almost an hour and a half to put into spike curlers, thank goodness Pride and Prejudice is on DVD!

 

The first photo is Hugh and I posing before we headed out to the grocery store, then we were playing with the air popper for making 'sitcky corn', gluten free caramel corn. Then we have the princess shoveling off the inground trampoline before heading out to the midget sled hill in driveway.

And it is over......

What is it about January that makes it seem so long? One theory is all the smog and fog we had this year but I am not convinced. So many good things happen this month but it always seems like a struggle to get thru it. We had three or four inches of new snow this morning, just enough to make driving up the hill to church a spiritual experience. We are all set to launch into February....indoor soccer is wrapping up and tryouts for high school soccer are on the horizon, Brenton might go to Nevada to ref a tournament, there is some scout camping in the freezing cold because we are manly thing, our firs real Feis (Irish dance competition, Valentine's Day, the Super Bowl party Brenton has to have every year and hopefully one shopping trip to the big city! So not much happening here....some friends came for an impromptu Sunday dinner and we had fun, their cute little almost four year old daughter told her Dad not to worry about her picking up toys...the kids would do it for her! We laughed hard at that one. Brenton's sister is our new neighbor, about a half mile away so we made her sticky corn as a welcome to the neighborhood but Hugh was deeply disappointed when they were not there for the delivery of the treat. One of her boys cannot have gluten so it is a special recipe for gluten free caramel corn. Actually it is quite good and we probably ate half the batch! We will catch up with them tomorrow and use delivery for our family night activity, how is that for multi tasking? Hope that life is treating everybody as well as it treats us. Oh and Moira's Irish dance dress will be delivered this week she is a wee bit excited. Yeah for February!!!!!!

That's too crazy?!

Can it really be nearly the end of January? Could preseason training for high school soccer really have started? That is an outdoor sport right? Last time I checked our driveway resembles a rather soiled winter wonderland complete with midget sled hill...which wonder dad Brenton added sides to for a bit of safety. Of course Liam still slid down the side (accidentally) yesterday and hit his head on the hitch of the scout trailer parked a bit too near the midget hill. Luckily he has the hard head of the Irish and seems to be fine. It amazes me how long the younger boys can play in the driveway and have a blast. Sunday night we invited our neighbors (the Fawson's..I actually taught Jared a million years ago when he was in high school, and Tiffany is one of my first friend here in Utah...her parents guided me greatly in those early years of marriage) and their two little girls over to sled. Brenton hooked up lights and they played until the dads starting giving snow bellies and generally being rowdy. Life here still revolves around high school, home school, dance, Irish dance, soccer training (indoor, in Logan), not enough running, Brenton's work, church, and whatever else we can cram into our alotted hours of the day. Moira performed at a drill team competition with her local dance studio, Cody and I went to watch her....fun was had by all and I got to listen to music on Cody's Ipod with his cool Skull candy headphones! The Irish dancers first competition (called a Feis) is on the 6th of next month so we are focusing on getting ready for that, the kids are excited but it is something oh so different for them to experience. I am excited because new can be hard and hard is always a good chance for growth. Well I am off to find Hugh's well loved and tattered "Thomas" blanket and prep for tomorrow's school....maybe it is time to sneak in an all art afternoon. I love those and Liam has been asking if he can try running the sewing machine so maybe we need a stay at home field trip. I will post pictures as soon as the techie daughter is out of the shower to help me get the cute ones of she and her brother out of the digital camera!

Sledding