Country Partying

Some friends of ours had us over for a real country BBQ. They live out in the REAL Beautiful Country, true with horses, BIG barns, great big fields of corn, and large grazing pastures. It's extremely peaceful and every direction you look in is great big open green country. If you look close enough you can see a small fox running in between the white barn and the corn fields. When you read about the early American settlers setting out, building their farms picture this, because these fields haven't changed much in centuries. They have been in the same families for generations and generations. There is an old stone home not too far away, similar in structure to the one Joseph Smith grew up in-from the same time period. Just one main room below with a small loft up top with extremely narrow stairs, can't imagine children climbing on them, scary. It housed 8 children! I wish I had a picture of it. Such beautiful country. But here we all are, some looking at the fox, some looking too late.The kids were all lucky enough to ride the horses, I was lucky enough to carry Maddie so she could be by the horse and watch Liv ride it-she started off on it, but decided it was too "dangerous" in her words.
Olivia loved it(of course) and had to be persuaded to get off and let the others have a ride.

The girls before Maddie decided it was too "dangerous"

This was interesting-the girls went for a ride in a trailer behind a 4 wheeler as you can see, Maddie loved in and stayed in the trailer through the course of all the rides-Olivia became scared for some reason, and got out crying after the first round of rides(she said later she just missed us-she wouldn't admit to what she was scared of). Here she is getting out (crying) Trent rescuing her.

Maddie just enjoying the view

Maddie telling me how big the woods were that she went in.

Here are all the women folk, mending and sewing the clothes-oh we had just finished baking the bread. Don't you think thats what women like us were doing here 100 years ago? Maybe-

Thanks to our friends for such a lovely cookout and a great time time for all.

PICTURE TAG

Thanks Jessie for the opportunity to give people a sneak peak into my perfect house, as you'll all see.
Read after the last picture to see if you've been tagged....The rules are you have to take 10 pictures of the following things and you have to do it right away. No straightening, cleaning or wiping your child's nose. Then you tag six others.

#1 My closet-your lucky I didn't take a picture of Trent's!

#2 Laundry Room-very pretty and organized as you can see

#3 My fridge

#4 My kitchen sink-my sink plants-no they are not dead(I don't believe so?)

#5 Favorite room-my living room because I can sit in there for hours and fold the wonderful laundry-oh I just LOVE to do laundry-running the clothes up and down the stairs, I do enjoy refolding, and refolding the piles my kids knock down

#6 my perfectly behaved and well adjusted kids-3 1/2 isn't too old for a pacifier and purple blanket. Oh lovely hair only a mother could love!

Those are not tears on my great sleeper and napper baby

#7 The toilet-many a day this jon has witnessed my only private brake-if it's considered private with a 3 years old screaming and pounding on the door yelling "why did you lock me out? Let me in, Let me in"-it's kind of sad when when you can't wait for that time of day when you gotta go-you know what-just so you don't have to think, or hold, or pacify anyone for a few moments!

#8 My favorite shoes-yeah right-I just love to put them on and pretend I'm running up some hill, working on sculpting my bod- getting any exercise other than the exercise you get from going back and forth from the kitchen. Don't worry friends I do plan on starting up again, next summer, maybe

#9 Dream Vacation-Old Mission Peninsula
Here we come-one dream thats coming true is this one in about 1 week

#10 Self-Portrait-This is what Trent comes home to every night-lucky man. Last nights make-up still on, no shower and most likely there wont be one today-sorry I really don't know what I was doing with my face, but it kind of covers some zits at that angle so I chose it.

Okay I tag Ashley M., Jill, Martha(you better do this, I don't care if your 9 months prego),
Sarah L., Emily M.(this means you have to do a blog), Rachel-where is she by the way, there hasn't been a post from you in months-come on!

Nature at work

We have had nature hard at work in our yard -for the good and bad. I'll start with the bad so in doing so- saving nature at her pinnacle for the end.
Meet the Japanese Beatles. They are a major nuisance in our area. The only way to safely TRY and get rid of them is through these traps. They are gross and stink bad.Here is one of our very attractive traps-you would like it even more if you got to smell it

You might wonder-"Cathy, why do you care so much to try and get rid of them" Well heres the reason-look at the destruction to these leaves. They eat EVERYTHING!

Look at the lack of leaves on this flower.

Onto the next destroyer in our yard. This one is much more tricky and harder to get rid of-or at least to stay away. This is a picture of my eaten tomato plant. The culprit is the deer.

Look at the fence it's caved in where the deer leaned against it to eat a midnight snack of ALL my almost ripe tomatoes-we used human hair hung in nylons last year and it kept them away-this year they don't seem to mind the smell of the hair at all. I used to love watching all the deer come into our yard and visit us, until they ate my Bonfire Patio Peach tree, Ate my garden, gave Tucker(our dog)fleas and caused Maddie to have extreme temper tantrums(oh wait, thats just Maddie). If anyone has any natural suggestions on how to get them to stay away let me know. We wont use chemicals-that defeats the purpose of our garden.

Now for the good that nature has put in our yard. A mother rabbit has made a nest of 5 baby bunnies under one of my daisy bushes. I discovered it about 2 weeks ago. It has been the funnest thing for us all to watch these rabbits grow and change. Also a point of much anxiety due to constant worry about all the predators and wondering if the mother was coming back to feed them. They are ready to be on their own and leave the nest when that little white stripe on their head is gone. It's almost gone now.

Thats a picture of Liv looking at the nest-look how close she made the nest to my front door! Amazing, I sometimes think animals know who is going to be kind to them and who is not. For example, our neighbors across the street told us they would have gotten rid of the nest if it was in their yard. And who's yard did she choose? Growing up we had a cat just appear at our back door whining-it was a cold winter night and my mom let her in. We discovered shortly after she was very pregnant. She is still my parents cat. She choice our house out of all the homes in that neighborhood. Could my theory be true or did she maybe try every other home and no one else let her in? Anyways I feel privileged that this mother rabbit built her nest for us to help watch over her young-and I believe she knew what she was doing. I've caught her often, watching us in the front yard and she lets us get so close to her. I have not touched her but I almost think she would let us. Mother rabbits do not stay over the nest, but they watch on from a distance-it's safer for the babies since the babies have no scent and the mothers do. We've learned they are very good mothers, even though it appears they are not since they're not seen much around their young.

But here is a picture of Nature at her Finest-Sophie
Look at how big she's getting. In a strange, and some people might say an insane way, I feel a connection to this mother rabbit. We are both raising little ones and want to protect them desperately. I pray for those rabbits every day along with my own babies-am I crazy?-maybe hormonal.

She's smothering her favorite toy in this one-it's a stuffed lion that plays music when you pull it, she LOVES it.

The BIG State Fair

We had a little trouble deciding what to do this 4th of July-we had a couple different options but in the end we decided to go to the Big State Fair!!! How exciting, I know! We actually did have a great time. We started out by catching up with out friends who had entered their Percheron horses in the fair (there is a picture further down of that). Through them we found out about all the awesome shows the fair has-like Buffo the Clown, and Hansens acrobatic trapeze show and other amazing American fair wonders-oh I couldn't forget about the amazing woman who has the head of a beautiful woman and the body of an ugly snake! (While the girls were riding the Farris Wheel I was lucky enough to hear over and over the spiel about the snake woman)
Weather wise it turned out to be a perfect day-it was 75 and threatening to rain all day, but the rain never came, so we were able to enjoy everything we had planned. And HERE are some pictures of the days events!

Girls with their friends-Maddie really did have fun in spite of this picture, and, um, most of the other ones.

This is the girls during Buffo the clowns routine
He had them dancing and doing little activities-it was fun for the kids




Here they are during the Hansen Trapeze routine-Maddie has a fried Oreo all over her face-had you even heard of a fried Oreo?


Sweet little So-cal
Trent and the 2 girls are up on that (during lightning-just a little though)

Olivia loved the petting zoo-of course Maddie's favorite animals were the baby ducks-though the momma tried to bite her

Here are the Percheron, I don't know what I did to this picture, I tried to adjust it and screwed it up, but I want to be done with this so this is how it stays

And this is what we saw last night-okay not exactly, this is at the Point in Pittsburgh and we stayed home and did our own-the battery died on my camera or I would have real pictures of that. Hopefully next year we will be daring enough to take on the crowds and actually see this in person and not watch it on TV like we've done almost every year!