Saturday Success!

Brenton and Liam working on the new feeder.

The beautiful new dwarf goat feeder.  Indoors for all the snow we need to have!

Hugh 'wearing' the pvc pipe that was destined to be part of a mineral feeder for the goats.  I will post a picture of that later.

Well today was the first Saturday we have not had to go somewhere or do something for someone in a long time.  Not that we don't enjoy the going or the helping out but it was nice to be here.  nothing to dramatic; lots of cleaning, ironing, laundry, bread baking, and Brenton made a few amazing additions for the goats of Shamrock Farm.

The loose mineral feeder and trough feeder turned out great!  It is amazing what we can get done when we stick around our little place.  The past few weeks a dear friend(really family) has been finishing the porch we started this past summer.  We poured the cement at the end of June and they just finished putting the roof up this past week.  Now we need to get the metal roofing and siding all on it before weather starts happening (we hope the weather comes this year).  The truly neat part of this new addition is something Jared snuck in on us; see above picture.  Too cool eh?  Well I am off to sleep because morning comes early and I am trying to keep my miles up even though it is harder to do during late Fall and winter months.    I am so grateful my family was here and happy today, makes me miss Cody all the more.  I would not have him be anywhere but on his mission however we can still miss the heck out of the kid!

Half marathon and a Feis on the same day!

This past weekend was a whirlwind of fun, wrapper food, cousins, running, dancing and whining!  We headed for Park City on Friday to pick  up my race packet for the Pink Series half marathon on Saturday.  Then dashed into the Nike outlet to get all the kiddos shoes, Moira scored some with a double discount!  Then a quick drop in at Sephora for the princess before we pointed our road trip towards Lehi and Uncle Jake's place!  We spent Friday night eating pizza, watchin movies, playing Wii, and of course there was an epic nerf war!  Not able to provide pictures which is a bummer.  The weather turned cold, rainy and windy.  I was threatening to boycott my race but the morning dawned cold but decent so it was off to Park City I drove (again).  It was worth the extra drive time to hang with the other Hammons family thought.

Sorry not sure how to rotate this picture and my tech advisor is unavailable at the moment.  This is Hugh before he competed on Saturday.  It was a rough day for everyone.  All danced decently but not at the level they wanted to.....so we are off to set goals and practice so that the next feis is more in line with what we want.  It was a good but long weekend and we are facing the same kind of week with Brenton leaving town for three days and trying to wrap up outside projects just in case it should once again snow in Utah.  Well next time I will post all Hugh's baptism pictures and maybe some of the oh so sad they are funny pictures that cam from our 'school' photo session. 

General Conference 2012

So this is General Weekend for the LDS church and we normally chill at home and watch it on the television or listen to it on the radio while we are keeping up with life (hey, I could manage to be keeping up not catching up someday).  Well this year we had the surprise opportunity to attend the final session of Conference!  Brenton and Liam went to the Saturday night priesthood session and then we (myself, Hugh and Moira) met them at the Neal's house for doughnuts and monkey bread after the session was over.  Brenton walked in with a big grin on his face, I figured that the priesthood session had been great. A friend had tipped me off that the presiding bishop would be speaking and he was amazing.  However, part of Brenton's grin related to the above picture...our Stake President announced at the beginning of the session that he had had 8 tickets to the last session turned back to him and that they were available.  Brenton said he waited until the Stake President made it clear to the back of the chapel before he approached him, he got all the tickets!  So after a few minutes of quick debate we were set to go with our friends (the Neal's) and one of their sons along with our three at home children.  It made for a whirlwind finish to an already packed weekend but it was well worth it.

  The 'dads' dropped us off at the corner of the conference center and went in search of a parking space.  The children were all excited but my what a huge crowd!  Our small town kiddos were a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of people.  But we got in line and made it into our seate about ten minutes before the session started.  However, the poor dads struggled to find parking and by the time they did and got in line they were not allowed in with their tickets and were directed to the standby line.  A sweet lady tried to get them in but another usher said they could not deviate from procedure which makes sense when you are dealing with thousands of people.  So they sat on the grass in Temple Square and listened to the conference.  Inspired talks and a wonderful spirit marked the afternoon.  So pleased with how the children handled themselves, especially Hugh since he is barely 8.  The Neal's were wonderful they even drove us all down and home, they are great friends/family.

We had a busy week even without conference but that will be wrapped up in tomorrows post because it is time for a quick game of Uno and scriptures before bed.  and I must email my missionary before bedtime as his pday starts late on our Sunday night.!!!

Turning over a new leaf!

Well it has been a busy season in my family's life.  Since last December we have been in perpetual forward motion with so many wonderful things occurring that there was literally little or no time to stop and record them.  However I have many wonderful photos of many special events.  One of the biggest events of the past year was when Cody received his mission call to the France Paris mission!  Then there were milestone birthdays...Liam turned twelve and received the Aaronic priesthood, Hugh turned eight and was baptized...Moira and Liam were involved in the cultural celebration for the dedication of the Brigham City temple and we all went to a session of the dedication.  There have been moments of stress, of growth, and of joy along the way.  So I will try to record most of that along with pictures over the next few days and then keep very up to date as our missionary is able to look at the blog briefly once a week during his prep day.  Oops almost forgot that we celebrated twenty years of marriage somewhere in the crush of life.  And Shamrock farms is in the early stages of life and....I will get it all on here later, time to return to the joy of homeschool.  And it is great!

Train trip to Temple square

The weekend before Christmas we all rode the train down to SLC to see the lights and hit the LDS muceum. Cody's girlfriend, Josie, came along.
Hugh really had fun seeing everything without the crushing crowds that we experienced last year. Love that smile.
Liam loves seeing the square as well...but it was definatley cold!
The train ride was fun even though we had to run to catch the train down to SLC.
Josie fits right in and was trying to help Cody perfect his smile in this shot. Like that girl!

Always catching up....

So the last time Brenton came home from Colorado he decided to take the boys 'Christmas' shopping and comes home with not only mutiple nerf guns but with ammo and ammo holders! I will figure out how to post video so one can see what it is like to live with these silly boys. That is Liam that Brenton is pinning down in the corner of the kitchen.
Hugh figured out that protective gear might be appropriate after the first round of 'play'. That kid is amazing! Liam is more tactical, he kept popping out of corners and screaming down the hallway.

The next day Cody and the younger boys had an epic the battle that lasted for a long time, I was finding missing ammo for days!

Awhile Back...

Early in October we took a field trip to the Hyrum power plant and played around. It was cold but quite fun. The leaves were amazing and the playground was so much fun, especially the old fashioned merry go round!


The swings were also quite fun.
There is a super cool tree that we took a few pictures by.