Weekend

Ok,  this one was actually from a few weekends ago, I was like, "Hey, we match (coordinate, whatever!) we need a picture of us!" 😊 So we had Aidan take a picture and I suppose there can be pictures of us on here too...😜

We had a movie night last weekend and Clara didn't last long. 😴

Ella has teeth falling out all over the place, and so I thought I better take a picture of her toothless smile, plus it's the only time she'll let me take a picture of her, so there is that...😏

I am currently the high school Sabbath class teacher, but this past weekend I was also the cook for our post-church meal (Emily was helping me), so I had my class (Dallas, Emily, Caleb, Megan, and Kayli) help out with some of the meal prep, they were getting a lesson in kneading and forming bread loaves here. It was fun, we should do that again sometime. (I'm safe, I'm pretty sure that generation doesn't read blogs.) 😁

Aidan has been planning this year's Superbowl party since last year when my dad came over to watch the Superbowl game, I think that spurred Aidan into wanting everyone to come and he had it all planned out that he was going to make everyone Nachos. We do not watch football in this house. Ever. But we did end up having a Superbowl party with some of the family, although Aidan didn't make everyone Nachos, we let people make their own. 😉 My kids were way more into the football game than I ever imagined they would be. It was fun! Maybe we'll do it again next year. 😎

Tree Trimming

I love trees!

I'm very conflicted about these trees in my front yard though. 

Pros: 

-big

-established

-good shade

Cons:

-hideously ugly

-Elms (dirty tree)

-Big 

-Too close to the house

-large limbs with lots of dead in them hanging over the house.

-Been trimmed too many times by people that didn't know what they were doing

-That they are more bush (multiple trunk) than tree means the trunk stability is lower.

We've gone back and forth on what to do with the 2 trees right in front our house, and have considered just taking them out. This past year was one of the windiest years I think I ever remember and we were constantly picking up big limbs, and started to get worried that a big one was going to go through our roof, especially after this. I think 5-6 trees ended up toppling over around EskDale this past year during wind storms.  My uncle Wayne convinced me that if they were trimmed right, the trees would be worth keeping. At this point, Wayne is really the only one I trust to touch my trees, but he didn't have the time or the equipment readily available to make it happen and a tree service from Elko has been in the area so we ended up having them come work on the trees.

It seems like they did a good job, but I'm not an expert, I just know what I don't like. 😉 I did talk to the main guy and he reassured me the trees were still in pretty good shape but he would let me know if they found anything concerning, I wanted to talk more about trees, he wanted to talk about EskDale. 😁

The jury is still out as to whether or not I'll grow to like these trees but we'll at least still enjoy the shade and sleep a little easier now that the limbs over the house have been trimmed back. 😀

Just some of the branches from ONE tree. 😮

I think it's fun to watch how they do it, but I'm also known to tag along when Wayne is here watching him trim trees too. 😏

Before

After

Mild and Balmy Winter

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere on the Farmers Almanac that our area was supposed to have a mild and balmy winter. 

That hasn't been the case. It has snowed so much I can't keep track of which storm these pictures were from.

I do remember it was already -11° when I took these pictures though, so we knew it was going to be a cold night. It was so pretty so I kept running outside to take pictures.

That night Cary couldn't sleep because of how cold it was and he was worried about pipes bursting, it ended up being -28° that morning. We had to really bundle the kids up to walk to the bus that morning and then grandpa Greg walked with them to make sure they didn't dawdle in the cold. 😁

The kitties are managing to stay warm.

The crazy thing is that 3 days later or so, we had a warm wind come through and melt all the snow. It was nice.

It snowed again at some point and we actually had to call a half day of school and go pick up our kids. (Again, we've had to pick them up twice). Clara and the kitty were waiting for dad to finish scraping off the truck.

Break 2016-2017

Cary has some time off at the end of the year, so that is nice that it coincides with the kids time off of school.

One of the mornings during our break, we drove to Petra for waffles at Ben and Chandra's, and then they let us leave our kids there. Winning! 😁

It's inevitable, and you always hope it won't be the case, but 

during the break it seems like everyone is sick. Clara was running a fever and keeping me up at nights for almost a week, the other kids just seemed to have a cough/cold but it didn't turn into anything major like it usually does. We've been really healthy this year and no major illnesses or anything occurred until December! I think that is some sort of record for us. 

 I gave these mugs to Cary, a few quotes from a favorite tv show of ours. 😄

(Kenneth did the drawing on the mugs for me)

Our new project! We took our bedroom closet, and the hall closet.

What the rest of the house looked like when we took out all the stuff out of the closets.Yikes!

One morning I drove Aidan over to the Border to meet up with Nomi and Charlie. On the way back I took advantage and stopped to take photos of the foggy morning we were having.

This photo was overlooking the reservoir. 

Looking towards EskDale

Britton working on his reading.