And more pictures

Here we are thrilled to have the van mysteriously quit and then start a half an hour later. Thanks to Grandma Sherie for driving all that way just to follow us home. This is the only picture of Irish dance performance because my camera is beyond sad. Also important are the dog and cat cleaning up spilled lamb milk together...

lambs, FFA, bed building

Everyone enjoyed the headlamps for nighttime lamb feeding, Moira got a new bed and had lots of help taking apart the old one and building the new one. The Picture of all the blue jackets is the FFA Sate Farmer degree ceremony. Wonderful fun all the way around! Ooops enjoy the repeat of that cute Moira picture!

March? What March?

February disappeared in a cloud of dust and March has been no less blurry! It has been fun, educational, stressful, and downright busy. So settle in and catch up with us and I might even remember how to post a few pictures! When we last checked in it was early February and all was well. Many snowstorms (but not enough snow pack) later we are still feeding bum lambs, driving kids to this and that while trying to hold the house together and meet the educational needs of three of the four aforementioned kids. Cody made the varsity soccer team as both a goalie and a field player, yeah Cody! However, while playing strongly towards the goal in their first preseason game he was clobbered by the goalie and has been out for three weeks. He has been in a monster brace for two weeks and is going to the orthopedic specialist tomorrow. He hopes to get back in time for the rest of the season, I hope he is healthy and that whatever has to be done is covered by insurance! So off to Park City we go...Moira will hold down the fort as always. Brenton and I did get to travel to Cedar City to see Cody receive his State Farmer degree at the state FFA convention. He and his partner won second place in the ag engineering catagory but were no happy as only first place qualifies for Nationals. It was a fun day. The very next day after a ten hour round trip to the convention we trucked Moira, Liam, and Hugh to SLC for the St. Patrick's Day parade. It was beyond miserable, it rained, the wind blew, and it snowed on us the last half block of the parade. But, my little darlings did their one two steps and leaps the whole way! Most of the others just walked as we were nearly the end of the parade. Moira's special Irish 'poodle' socks turned black from her shoes and her hands were numb! Oh well, live and learn. Speaking of St. Patrick's Day the dancers had eight performances over four days plus the parade. It was crazy hectic but fun and Moira really shined as a helper for the 'littles'. And of course we have been feeding lambs, walking dogs and sneaking in outdoor run time wherever possible. We have even tried to start pulling the outdoors together to put in pastures, pens, gardens, and one day (I can dream right?) a chicken coop. Anyway life is great but a bit overboard at times. We are finishing this month off with extra Irish dance with the big man from Oregon, hopefully a return to soccer or a definitive diagnosis on a knee, my quick trip to AZ to see my nearly 94 year old grandmother, and whatever else Brenton forgot to tell me was on the calendar. Oh and refereeing season has started.....

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.