Picto-Post

This is going to be scattered and probably hard to follow, but at least I'm getting it done :) 

Before I forget, I got a new calling today.  I'll be serving as a laurel advisor.  It's kind of funny, just last week I was trying to recite the Young Women's theme in my head and I couldn't do it.  I thought to myself that I ought to study it and re-memorize it (they've changed it some since I was in Young Women's). Heavenly Father is obviously aware of little thoughts like this.  I'm excited for the opportunity and I hope I can make some kind of impact in these girls' lives.  I'm still friends with most of my young women leaders, so I guess I'm hoping that I can be the same friend and influence to these girls as my young women leaders were to me. Here's to treading on new territory including mutual nights and girls camp.  

This is what happens when I leave the room for two seconds to get something and Lane takes pouring the barbecue sauce for his chicken nuggets into his own hands. Maybe I should have cooked more nuggets :)

We tried out a giant bubble recipe from Pinterest. It was mediocre.  It made large bubbles, but not giant.  The kids had fun either way, but I was just hoping for bubbles as big as they are and instead we got bubbles the size of a basketball at most. :)

So we turned them into snake bubbles by blowing the solution through an old sock attached to a plastic cup with the bottom cut out.  These were much more fun because they'd get four feet long and then drift up into the sky if the wind caught them just right.

 Lane loves to sneak into the bathroom to do his hair. He did this do (mostly) by himself.

I finished the fenders for my saddle and I'm really pleased with how they turned out :) Slowly, but surely I'll get them finished.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm glad that Jonathan's super busy time of the year is over.  It's nice when he's married to me instead of the tractor :)  I am very thankful for his hard work though and I know that long hours come with the territory.

Our cat had three kittens.  One really cute black and white one, one gray striped one, and one possibly albino one.  (It's completely white with completely pink skin). I'll have to see it with its eyes open to know for sure, but the momma picked up an moved the nursery somewhere else and she isn't about to let us find them.  I warned Maggie this would happen if we looked at them to often...

I gave our lawnmower a tune-up, which was long overdue to begin with, but became inexitable when the poor thing wouldn't even run. I know a lot of wives probably would put this on the honey-do list, but honestly sometimes I like playing mechanic (and this was also during the time that Jonathan was married to a green machine with four large wheels). Anyway, the mower is not engineered very brightly when it comes to draining the oil, which make it a pain in the grass (sorry, I couldn't resist) to service, so it's never been done.  I expected the oil to be dark, but it was completely black and the air filter was equally as dirty.  I think I could almost hear the mower thanking me, and it did by firing right up and mowing the lawn like a champ :)

We went to visit my Mom's foster mom, Margaret. I call her my foster grandma, but that usually confuses a lot of people. I'm sure some of you are saying something like, "I didn't know her mom was a foster child." or, "I wonder why her mom was in foster care."  My mom's dad was an alcoholic and her parents divorced, but she ended up living with her dad because he had brainwashed all of the kids to the point of thinking their mom was the enemy.  When she was sixteen she had finally had enough and went and talked to her bishop who found a sweet sweet couple who took her in.  Howard and Margaret didn't have a daughter of their own, so my mom filled that void for them and they filled her void of a functional family. I loved going to visit her in Parowan, Utah (maybe that's where I got my love for small towns). They had the most awesome downstairs to play in, a fun yard, and she always made the best food! It's kind of sad to see her now because she's mostly blind and I think she gets lonely.

My family got together one Sunday afternoon at my brother Scott's house. They have two little boys and a room full of truck toys. Lane was in heaven!

You should see how fast Lane can run to the door when he hears the four wheeler coming! He'll never turn down a ride (in fact, sometimes Jonathan doesn't have an option except to give him a ride.)

I made this necklace for my mom for Mother's Day. It was fun and easy to make and I liked how it turned out well enough that I decided I'd put an ad on my facebook page to see if anyone wanted to order one for Mother's Day.  All I can say is "wow!" So far I've made 55 of them and I'm still getting orders here and there.  I'm not complaining because I had a pretty good profit margin on them, but I am glad the Mother's Day rush is over.  Honestly, I expected maybe two orders and hoped for five, so I was blown away at the response I received. I wasn't really planning on them turning into a full time job, so for a week there they were starting to consume my life :)

  

I drove by this house the other day and deiced that If I was rich and wanted a large house, this would be my dream house.  I don't see anything about it that I don't like. I've always loved log homes so naturally I've always assumed my dream house would be a log home, but I think this one trumps anything with logs.

My parents came up to visit and some of the cows happened to be delivered just after they got here. They used our driveway to unload them, so we all had fun watching the cows and calves pair up in the driveway before they opened the gate to the pasture.

Then my dad and I went fishing. He caught a nice german brown.  I had a huge fish on my line, but ended up landing nothing :(

We went to visit Jonathan's parents on Mother's Day.  I've decided again that few places are as beautiful as Cache Valley.

We got a new tent from the rewards we get from using our bank card.  Now I have the camping bug bad. Making s'mores might help, but I'm trying to cut back on my chocolate consumption :)

I spy Jonathan moving cows.

I put in a flower bed in a spot of the lawn that wasn't growing well and and was too bumpy to mow evenly.  Hopefully the flowers stay alive :) I've never had much of a green thumb when it comes to flowers.

I hung up our hammock finally (It's been in a storage bin for a long time).  The kids like swinging on it, but apparently I'm too old now, because when I laid down in it and Maggie started pushing me, it just made me feel sick. I was looking forward to lazing around reading some books in it, but now I don't know if that's a good idea. I never used to get motion sickness, but I get it fairly easily ever since I had Lane.

Maggie's pretty good at drawing stars. Actually, she's good at drawing a lot of things.  It makes me happy that she loves to draw.

I'm still having lots of fun experimenting with my camera. When I took photography in high school and  we did a unit on panning (moving the camera parallel to a moving subject to create motion in a picture), I wasn't very good at it.  I've decided it's a lot easier to master with a digital camera when you can see the results immediately and make changes as necessary.

The ranch has this crazy rock formation in one of the fields and I've always wanted to walk down and stand in the hole, but never have for one reason or another. Until now :)

It was a slightly breezy day, but it was windy in the hole in the rock.  I decided that must be why the hole is there; wind erosion.

There are a lot of other unique red rock formations on the ranch, but photos don't seem to do them justice.

Jonathan's family had their annual branding.  Unfortunately Jonathan was too busy to attend, but I made the trip up with the kids and we had a lot of fun watching and playing with cousins.  I was the unofficial event photographer and had a good time snapping pictures of everything that was going on.

Maggie and Lane asked the whole way up if they could ride a horse, so I was glad when someone was nice enough to give them a quick ride. b

Jonathan has an outstanding crop of dandelions!  Not ideal, but it's true. They have come up in full force this year, including in our lawn. So ignore the nasty weeds for what they are and just see them as a bright and cheery backdrop for pictures :)

Wouldn't it be nice if my garden self-seeded itself like dandelions do.  Too bad they aren't good for anything, because they would be a really easy crop to grow. They are kind of interesting to look at close-up though.

Our mare was supposed to foal around May 12, but she was showing no signs of an impending foaling and then the other day she was acting like she was in heat.  This leads me to sadly conclude that she probably lost the baby at some point along the 11 month journey and my hopes are crushed once again. We have not had good luck with pregnant mares.  My philosophy is that reproductive efficiency is not a priority when breeding horses. If a cow doesn't produce a calf then it's usually culled and the bad reproductive genetics are no longer at play. But when a mare doesn't produce, she usually gets bred again until she does and over time I think this has made horses less efficient in that area. It's not a huge deal, because in a lot of ways the horse market has been over saturated and would be that much worse if they multiplied like rabbits, but it's still frustrating when you have your mare preg-checked and everything looks positive and then after all that waiting nothing happens. I'd still like a foal, but I don't know if I'm ready for any more disappointment. Plus, if that's my philosophy and we keep re-breeding her until we get something, then am I a hypocrite?    

I put a bird feeder in our yard and now I know where the saying, "a little birdie told me" came from.  It took about two weeks for the first bird to notice the feeder.  Then in a matter of days our yard became a bustling hotspot for finches, orioles, and sparrows.  It initially took them three weeks to empty the feeder, and now it sometimes gets emptied in a day. The kids have had fun watching the different birds, but I don't know how much longer I can afford to keep up with their appetites.  

There's a nest of the most adorable baby great-horned owls by our house.  Why can't baby animals stay babies forever?

This is Lane being a daredevil at the park. Heaven help us, he might turn out to be an expensive kid when it comes to stitches and broken bones.  We've been fairly lucky so far, but I have a feeling he'll just get more rough and tumble the older he gets.