Beans!

Our Zuni beans finally dried out enough to finish harvesting them! Chris rigged up a little contraption to separate the beans from the rest of the plant and it worked like a charm. We ended up with 60 pounds of these babies. I think we might be able to take a few summers off before we will need to plant them again. Zuni beans make the yummiest refried beans our family has ever eaten!

Whit loves watching the marbles go down in the towers the kids make. He also likes to knock the towers over.

Fall Colors

Yesterday after picking the kids up from school we rode up the canyon a couple miles to check out the fall colors. It was beautiful!

I am glad I grabbed my camera!

Busy!

Chris and I have been enjoying our family and friends blogs so much that I wanted to thank everyone for the time they put into them. We love to see what is going on in your lives.

We have been doing a lot of cleaning up the last couple weeks. The garden is officially frozen which means I should be done with all the bottling. I am not. I still have lots of apples and tomatoes sitting in my washroom waiting for my attention.

Our friends invited us to take a little vacation to their cabin and when we arrived home all our flowers were dead. So...we spent the afternoon cleaning out the flower beds. The kids were great at helping.

Whit is walking everywhere now and is getting hard to keep track of. He thinks he is as big as the rest of the kids.

The kids hard work paid off. We finally brought the pumpkins in out of the field. They are hoping to make a little money by selling these beauties.

Chris used his big muscles to press the juice out of a lot of apples so we can enjoy apple juice all winter. We ended up with about 30 gallons of juice off of our one tree. We gave half to our friends who provided the press and I bottled the rest. It ended up being a lot of juice.

Casey and Whit washing the apples before they went into the press.

This is a photo of some of the finished apple and grape juice we did this year. We ended up with 140 quarts of grape juice and 60 quarts of apple juice. I am grateful to be done with that job!

We Are Still Here

Yes, we are still here.  I guess we have been super busy.  Between playing, working and getting all the food in our garden put up, I seemed to have forgotten to update our blog.  Here are some happenings!

We bought a new puppy.

The kids amazed us with their building abilities at a family reunion.  

Levi went on an overnight school field trip.  Dad decided to go along.

They learned a lot of new stuff.

They shared an old stinky cabin with mice during the night. There were about 50 boys plus dads that slept in there. 

They ate good food.

Levi had fun with cousins.  All three of them are in the same grade!

I found these pictures on the camera yesterday.  The kids must have gotten ahold of it.  I guess the kids are proud of growing something so big.  I am embarrassed  that things got so out of control.

On Saturday Levi and Dad took a long ride (5 hours) up on the mountains with some friends and relatives.  It was Thumper's first mountain ride since we have owned him.  If you look close Tike, the horse we are breaking, is behind Levi and Thumper.  It was his first time being rode outside of the corral.  There was no bucking!  Yea!  Chris says he thinks Tike might be a lazy horse.  We will have to see.

Chris is trying out his great grandpa's pony cart to see what needs to be done to fix it up.  Chis used this cart when he was a kid so it is bringing back a lot of fun memories.

Saturday night we had a little storm and lightning struck pretty close to our house.  This photo is taken from our front yard.  We had the wild fire firefighters here all night.

Every year when school starts we have a cousin sleep over party.  It is so fun to get all the kids together.  This year we had a blast!

Whit is learning to walk.  The whole family is proud.

We decided to try out our new pony for a nice Sunday ride in Chris's great grandpa's old pony cart.  We rode all over town.  Thumper did better than expected with the cart.  

Pony Pony Pony

All the kids could talk about when they got home from school was the new pony.  I wanted to talk about their first day of school but I could hardly get a peep out of them.  So, I sat down BY MYSELF to go through their backpacks.  Before I knew it Levi was asking me for some shampoo.  I told him he didn't need to shower until tonight and he told me it wasn't for him.  I walked outside and there was the pony tied to the carport.  I didn't know Levi knew how to put a halter on let alone be brave enough to get him out of his pen.  Levi had the rope all twisted around the carport pole in order to tie him up.  It was pretty cute.  We decided to have a lesson on slip knots used for tying horses up.  

---I decided the school stuff would have to wait.  ---

So, we gave the pony a bath.  Afterwards Levi and Casey rode him all over the yard and the neighborhood.  By the time we were done we had quite a few kids over at our house.  We did go through their backpacks but it wasn't until after dinner.

Thumper was was wet from getting a bath.  The kids couldn't wait for him to dry so they put a couple towels on him so their bums wouldn't get wet. ---- It didn't work.----

Thumper likes getting a drink out of the hose.

First Day of School!

Today is the first day of school.  The kids sure jumped out of bed faster than normal.  I wonder if they will be as excited tomorrow!

Levi is now in 3rd grade.

Casey is now in 2nd grade.

Heston is finally in Kindergarten. He doesn't start until next week.

Dad waiting for the bus with the kiddos.

Last night we added another addition to our crazy house.  We picked him up in Nephi and didn't get home until about 10:00 pm.  I am still trying to decide if we are good parents because what kid doesn't want their own pony or poor parents for letting the kids stay up that late the night before the first day of school.  We have spent the last 3 weeks going to bed early so we would be used to it.