Pony Poop Farm additions

Spring is a good time for additions to any farm! It seems every year the stock at Pony Poop Farm seems to dwindle. They were down on chickens and ducks. Spring is a good time to restock. Three new ducks and perhaps 14 chickens... not sure how many chickens, too many to count, and they don't hold still very well.

The girls each picked out a duck... this is Lauren with her yellow duck, which she named Ming Ming.


The girls named all the chickens and ducks... not that I could keep up with all the names, especially since sometimes they changed their names.

Amber liked the chicks and ducks too, but wasn't very gentle with them. At times I thought, I hope this one is going to make it... so far they have all survived. I guess we left just in time.

Here is Lindsey with a little chick. We had to give the chickens time outs so the kids would stop holding them. They would sit and watch TV with them, and just hold them. They got pretty tame.

The chickens didn't seem to be afraid. Even when on Amber's head.

A girl and her chickens. I think she just kissed one of them. She was always kissing them.

Here is Amber with ALL the chickens and the 3 ducks.

Amber was trying to get one to sit on her finger like Grandma's birds do. Grandma tells her birds to step up, and they hop on her finger. This chick wasn't so good at it. It needs more training. By the end of our stay, the chicks would sit on a finger and just perch there and be still.

Amber took the chickens and was making them talk.

"Hi there."

"How are you?"

"My name is chicken."

"Do you want to play?"
She sat there playing with them like you would do with Barbies or other little figurines.

Next time we see them, they won't remember all the fun they had with the Utah Girls. They will be all grown up and won't even want to go in the tub or sit on a finger. They will just run from the Utah Girls when they see them the next time. Poor Utah Girls. (Although I was feeling pretty bad for the chickens and ducks, they were getting handled a little too much!)

To Washington we go...

For spring break we took a last minute trip to Washington. My nephew Thomas was getting baptized, so we thought we could go and support him. We had a wonderful time. The car ride as usual is kind of long and hard. The kids always get tired and grumpy with being in the car for that long. We normally start out early and then don't get there til late.


I was so happy to spend some good quality time with all my family. I normally always see and spend time with my parents. I also got to see my sister Becky who is really struggling at this time to find happiness and I think even more to find herself. She use to have it all, but trials and choices have brought her such unhappiness.


Most of us all went out one night to dinner. We have such a good time when we get together, or I do anyway. It is just laughs after laughs mostly. I hope my children have this same great relationship when they are older too. I know I didn't always feel this way with my sisters and brothers. I wouldn't trade any of them now. Being around them really makes me miss them and miss the whole family... all the small times they get together. I have been so busy and caught up in my own world that I often forget about those things and how much I miss it. Being back up there, and I think combined with my brother and his family coming here to visit, really brought back that ache I had when I moved out here.


I have a friend up there that I use to work with, she had twins last year. I was hoping to go suprise here with my visit there, but I was sick the whole time. I started off with a horrible cough, it started before we left to WA. It was a not stopping cough, the kind that you lose any sympathy for the person and you just want them to stop coughing because they are just noisy and annoying at this point. That was me, my brother and his wife took Robert down to the airport with me, and they kept saying, stop coughing! Or they would talk back and forth and say, we are stopping to get you cough drops! After the cough was a bit better then came a bad sore throat. I think I took Nyquil most the nights there. I really wanted to see Jennifer and her babies who were just turning one... but I didn't want to get her sick or her little cuties! Such a disappointment for me. I was really excited to see her, and kept waiting to get over my cough. I didn't even call and tell her I was there. I didn't want to call and say, "I am here, but I am really sick... do you want to see me?" and then have her feel obligated to say it was okay even though I was sick. (I am just now feeling a bit better in the throat area.)

We had a Easter Egg hunt on Saturday and a lunch/dinner too. Everyone was there, it was so great. I think most everyone stayed up that night until like 1 am. Of course then my kids didn't sleep that night real well and I was SO tired the next morning. It was well worth it.

Who put an egg up there??

No one wants to get eggs out of the pokey monkey tree.

There were SO many eggs that we ran out of places to put them. It wasn't very challenging really for the kids. There were some older kids that hunted eggs too. Two of the older boys were just looking for the eggs with money in them. They would pick up an egg, open it, and if it had candy in it, they would just put it back or throw it. Or they would say, I don't like that candy and look for something different.

She wants a duck for her bath

We were up in Washington for our spring break... Amber loved to go outside to play at "the park" she called it. My parents have a playground area outside, slide, swings, teeter tatter (or as my older girls use to call it the "up and down"), a balance beam, a tire swing, monkey bars and then some other bars and a swinging bar too I think... the playground equipment has changed from when I was growing up. I guess all those kids and then the grandkids are hard on playground equipment. The original slide is long gone!

When Amber goes out, she has boots on but not for long. She soon takes off her boots and socks if she had them on, and then she drags her feet on the ground as she goes around on the tire swing. And this is what she looks like.


It was definetly time for a bath! Which is no problem Amber loves baths. She also seemed to find some of her cousin Destiny's little ducks so she wanted to have a duck for her bath too. She is in the tub with her one pink duck, and then asks for some more ducks. I had a hard time finding the ducks she wanted but ended up finding some that seemed to work out okay.





In fact, after Lindsey got a look, she instantly started stripping to get in the tub too. I had to quickly tell her no, and that I was taking Amber out in just a minute. Pretty funny!

Things like this may only happen on Pony Poop Farm!

Rocks and Dirt

It has been kind of hard here, since we don't have a yard, just dirt and dust with lots of stickers and pokey weeds. Now that the weather is nicer, the kids want to go out and play... but where are they to play? They have their bikes and scooters, but that only goes so long. What I want it grass now.

Our lot is pretty unlevel, lots of slopes. We decided to do a rock wall on one side of our house to help make a more level yard for the kids to play on, and in hopes to have a playground area there too someday.

Here is what it looks like now, with the rock wall. The kids really like the huge rocks and of course more fresh dirt that gives them a nice digging ground.

Check out Amber's boots! We were packing to go to Washington, she had 2 red boots on, she took off one red boot and put it in Lauren's suit case. Then she found a yellow boot. They are both the same boot, both left boots. LOL Silly girl!


The girls are loving to dig in the dirt and make tunnels. They ask to go play in the sad. It is funny they call it that. It is pretty sandy dirt.

We have a rock wall on the South side of our house, but it needed a little help, there was a small gap between our rock wall and the wall behind us on the neighbors driveway. We got more rocks for this area too.

I think this will be fun to do landscaping with... I am just not sure WHAT to do yet... I have a good imagination but maybe not for landscaping.

More silly glasses

As I was looking through my pics, I forgot I had these on here, and I wanted to add them to my other post but my camera battery died. Here are some other silly eyes from our Washington visitors at the begining of April.

Samantha


Here is Emily and cousin Thomas. I love Emily's face expression!

Baby Parker, looking a little like Harry Potter to me.

My brother Kelly, he looks like he should be on The Big Comfy Couch with the rest of the clowns.

Made fun of for coupon clipping

When my brother and his wife where here last week, they discovered my couponing habbits. They laughed at me and kept making fun of me. They would say, "do you have a coupon for that?" or "Why didn't you use a coupon?" when we would go to the store or what not. They were cracking me up with their funny sayings and joking. Not to mention I do have a bit of a problem in my basement with lack of shelves... I have about 40 bags of stuff just dropped on the floor. The bags contain anything from aluminum foil, razors, tooth paste, plug in candles, bathroom cleaners, laundry soap, toilet paper to fruit snacks, cereal, apple juice, gum, granola bars, instant oatmeal, and crackers (and many things inbetween).

We are planning on being with my brothers family over Easter so I called him to ask if we were doing an Easter Hunt or anything... and told him I could buy some candy, I have coupons for candy and also some dollar rewards to spend at Walgreens that I could combine and get a good deal on lots of candy for eggs. I prefer to use wrapped candy in the eggs, I didn't use to but currently, it disgusts me to just through some whoppers in an egg and then have it sit out in the grass till someone finds it and eats it. Not to mention the whole plastic egg "made in china", is it really made or more importantly SAFE to eat out of? (Maybe this habbit of having candy wrapped started when Grandma/Grandpa started to throw pocket change in the eggs with the M&M's...some things just gross me out like that.)

I am talking to my brother, he is just laughing, "Oh you have coupons huh!" as he is laughing and telling his wife or my mom or who ever is there... I then was wondering what we were doing for dinner. I told them I would much prefer to bring things from home, if I could for dinner than to have to worry about buying them there and have to go shopping instead of visiting. Again my brother is just laughing at me... saying, "oh yeah, you want to bring your own food... you probably have coupons for that huh!" I was going to tell him also, that who ever bought the ham to be sure to save their receipt, since there is a $20 rebate when you buy a ham and some other groceries. After his laughing, I was afraid to tell him. (I do have 4 extras of those coupons since it is only one per household for anyone that doesn't get the Sunday paper if anyone is interested.)

He thinks it is pretty funny, and he likes to make fun of me. I was telling him at Walgreen's they have a sale through this month that you buy Colgate for $3.49 and then you get a coupon back for $3.50 so your toothpaste is basically free. He was arguing me on it, "It isn't free, it is only like free...that isn't the same." I then told him at one Walgreen's in Lehi their toothpast is only $2.99 and then I had a $.75 off coupon, so I paid $2.24 and then they gave me $3.50 back. He again argued that it wasn't FREE as I was claiming it was, or that they weren't really paying me to buy it as I was telling him it was sort of like they were. (He likes to argue with me!) He still makes fun of me even though I got a GREAT deal, and he laughes when I tell him about things like that.

But I see nothing funny or nothing wrong with using a coupon to get toothpast or chapstick that is kind of like free.... Or when I use coupons to buy 6 boxes of cereal for $1.70, would you?

Albertson's is having a sale on Post brand cereal, they are $2.07 a box, but if you buy two of more, you save $1 off two, so instead of $2.07 it is then $1.57. Then I had a coupon for $1 off 2 boxes of cereal, making them now, $1.07... but when you buy 5 or more there is a catalina coupon that prints off at check out for $5 off your next purchase. So the first time I bought 6 boxes of cereal I paid $6.07, but then the next 6 I used my $5 coupon, and the next 6 I used my $5 coupon making my cereal $1.07 for 6 boxes. Then my coupons for the cereal were gone. (Which is probably okay, since we have about 55 boxes of cereal in our basement, and that isn't counting the ones that may be in our pantry closet.)

What is so funny about that? My brother just doesn't understand a good sale! Awww, I am falling in love with coupons!!

Temple Trip

We took Kelly and his family along with my parents to Temple Square. Kelly had been there back in 1980 when my parents were sealed, and all of us kids sealed to them. (We believe as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that when we are sealed in the temple that it binds our family in heaven, so we can have the same family relationships in heaven as we do here on earth. When we are married on earth, it is "until death do you part" meaning that once you die your marriage in no longer in effect. We believe that when you are married in the temple or sealed in the temple that your marriage will go on beyond the grave and beyond death so we can be married in heaven as well.) We (my brother and I) were like almost 4 years old, so he didn't remember much. Sarah had been there a time before when she drove back from WA with me. Their kids visited Utah for the first time this trip. (I hope to have them all come again!!)

Robert took half the day off and went with us too. Robert's parents came and watched our kids and also Kelly and Sarah's little one so we could go with my parents to down town Salt Lake to see the temple. We rode Trax down there. The kids thought that was pretty fun!

Here we are getting ready to get on Trax.

Here Thomas is having fun riding on Trax.

Destiny had fun too, she almost fell asleep on the way downtown.

We watched the movie about Joseph Smith, and my parents got some scriptures for Thomas for his 9th birthday. Thomas has decided to be baptized, and will be doing so on the Sat. before Easter. It will also be the Sat. after his 9th birthday. He is pretty excited.

We walked around the temple. The weather was pretty cold, the wind was blowing. In fact there was some snow on the ground, not on the sidewalks but on the grass or the bushes or what not. Destiny fell asleep during the movie, so after we got out, Kelly put her on his shoulders. She didn't seem quite awake for a little while.

Sarah, Kelly, Thomas, and Destiny stood up next to the temple here up the steps by the big wooden doors.

Like I said, there was still snow on the ground. It seemed like for some reason the snow kept falling, although it had some help from many others... Thomas here has a big snowball he just threw at his dad.

You can see how snowy he is. I am not sure Destiny was too happy about most of the snow throwing at first. She was better later as she woke up more. There was so much snow flying that later that night I went to get something out of my purse, and it was totally soaked inside. It took me the longest time to figure out what "spilled" in my purse or what I set it on that was all wet. I then realized it was probably that giant snow ball Kelly threw at me.

This was actually taken before the movie, before Destiny fell asleep. We walked through Temple Square for just a second on our way to see the movie.

I think every time I see the Salt Lake Temple, it still amazes me! It is such a gigantic amazing building. I can help but to just stare at it. It seems to be beyond words for me really. My parents and probably my brother and his wife kept telling the kids about the temple, so they were really excited to see it. I think they all had a good time. I was glad to go with them to show it to them, and I am sure my parents where glad as well to be there with them.

It was nice to go again, as I hadn't been there for awhile. It is funny how you have something so magnificent so close yet you seem to forget about it. I definitely see a Temple Square visit for my family in the near future.... when it warms up a bit.

Washington Cousin Fun

My family all lives in Washington state, so it makes it hard to all get together. When I go up there during the summer I am normally there for a few weeks at best, and never feel like I have enough time to hang out with everyone or to see everyone. Unfortunately life for everyone else still goes, even though I am on vacation.

Being spring break for my parents and my brother's family, they came to visit me. Here are some of the things we did while they visited our family. All the kids had a great time, my girls love to get together with their cousins, I sure wish they were closer to get together with them more often.

This is Parker and Samantha. Parker is 5 months younger than Samantha, but weighs at least a pound more and is 1-1/4 inches longer. In this picture it doesn't really look like he is bigger because Samantha is starting to get up, but he is bigger. He is SOLID! This picture doesn't really show exactly how big he is. Sometimes they call him PORKER instead of Parker.

Here is another picture of Parker. He is such a cutie! He has lots of hair, and it is so curly on top. I put some curl spray in his hair here... usually his hair lays down. Sarah wants to cut it, but Kelly wants to keep it long.

I don't know how it all got started, but the girls ended up doing some magic shows for us. Here they are doing a magic show... I think this was one where you had to guess where the little toy was under the caps, maybe?

We had a silly string fight. We all went outside, most the kids all had their pajamas on by this time, and we gave them all a can of silly string. I felt bad for some of the little ones, since they couldn't get it to spray very well.

Emily got it pretty good. She was kind of a poor sport, she got upset when she got sprayed in the face... too many late nights I guess!

Lauren and Lindsey got really close to who ever they were spraying. This is a good picture of it. Lindsey and Lauren are looking a little crazy here.

You can see our street is just covered in string. I am glad we went outside instead of staying inside for it. Good idea to go out!

Emily's birthday and Thomas' birthday is only a few weeks apart. Thomas turns 9 next week, so I thought it would be fun to do a little early party for him here, since we won't be able to be there with him on his big day. He loves trucks and tractors. His other Papa drives a log truck, which he LOVES and has often gone with him in his truck. We decided to make him a log truck cake. It turned out cute I thought. Thomas thought it was pretty cool! We made Emily take Thomas outside to go play while we decorated it and put it together. I think he was surprised!

Here they are just starting to blow out their candles. Emily's cake is hard to see, but it was suppose to be a sunset on the ocean next to the beach, with coconut trees and umbrellas. Didn't really turn out and I was running out of time. I did buy the cake plate it is sitting on, I was anxious to use it!

Time for cake!! (I forgot to get the ice cream! Bummer.)

My Brother's Family

My brother, Kelly came to visit with his family. They had spring break in Washington (in their area) so they came for a visit. This is my twin brother, his wife, and their 3 kids. We had a ton of fun while they were here visiting. They came down with my parents, so it was a house full, but I wouldn't have had it anyway else.

This is Kelly my brother...

their youngest son, Parker 5 mo. old

Sarah, his wife...

daughter, Destiny 5 years old...

and Thomas, will be 9 yrs next week.

The whole family looks so much alike, except for their daughter... she is the one that looks the least like any of them, but you can still see the family traits in there somewhere....

We had a blast while they were here! Makes me really miss being closer to family. I know my kids had a blast too. These are their closest cousins in age too. Amber keeps asking, "where's baby Parker?" and "Is Thomas still here?" Poor thing. She really took to both the boys, and is really missing them. As well as her Grandparents and Kelly and Sarah too!