Yellowstone - July 2010

We went to Yellowstone last summer and that was a great trip. Beautiful country!! :)

The falls and waterways in the park are absolutely breathtaking!!!




























There were TONS of buffalo right along the road. In fact, there were so many and so close that they had posted rangers along the road and they (the rangers) got real testy if you stopped, even to take a quick picture. I managed to do it before they got all the way up to the van!! haha.






















There was this one huge Elk laying right beside the road. A bunch of people got out and were taking pictures of it, so I did too... haha.









Then on our way back by the same area, he (she) had gotten up and wandered over for a snack...

















I will add some more pictures later. I am done blogging for the night. :)

It's not been a year yet!!

Every time I see a fun blog, every time my sister updates hers, every time my other sister mentions pictures, every time one of my kids do something exciting or every time we take a trip as a family I think I need to work on my blog! haha!

As you can see, it doesn't happen often. The working on the blog part... I think of it so often. So I will blog!

Love this!!!

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand

They say a list is important to getting all you need to done

But if you make a list that would mean setting a plan... and that is something that NEVER works for me. Every time I make a plan of any kind, everything possible conspires against me to make sure it is going to go awry!!! :(

Started with a plan this morning - had so much to get done and needed to get to the store first thing. Got waylayed waiting on a client, finally headed out to run the errands I needed to run - at noon. Got all the things I needed to finish up prepping the garden and getting those strawberries in the ground, including the replacement sprinkler, in the corner of the bed.

Got home finally at 2:30 - Webelos at 4:30, no spreading fertalizer (stinky steer manure) on the garden before scouts, not sure 8 10yo scouts would enjoy that!! I'ill fix the sprinkler and put out the mouse bait (yes, it's SAFE FOR PETS!!)

Fix the sprinkler and have Ronnie turn it on to test it... blew it right off! WHAT??? :( Dig down and discover it is that stupid black tubing with the graduated fitting theing on the end of the coupler and something is not working :( Oh Shoot! Now I have to quit earlier to change for scouts, cause I am all muddy (better than stinky, I guess!!)

I will conquer it after scouts... after dinner... Ron comes home and is going to help me by fixing it. I go down and turn it on and he says "it isn't coming on at all" WHAT??? I turn it off and go back up, he comes in and starts mumbling something about someone turning on that valve in the basement but everyone assures me nobody has messed with the valve.

Let me backtrack now... our city just put in pressurized irrigation. it is great because we can water all we want, the kids can play in the water all they want and we pay a flat rate. bad thing about it is we have to hook into it ourselves. Ron and his uncle spent about 4 hrs- 3 wks ago hooking into it. Saved us! Thanks, Uncle Lance... We love you!!!!

Ok, back to tonight. the electronic sprinkler valve control is in the basement in a closet in the corner of Glen's room and the pipes run through there with a valve and then out the external wall. There's water running down the wall from the hole to the floor and the carpet is wet... :( That's what Ron was mumbling about!!! The valve box where we hooked into the pressureized irrigation and capped off the culinary water is full of water... so we go out front, turn off the valve at the street and Ron starts bailing. In the meantime I have dinner on the stove, Meghan is out babysitting and so I am running back and forth between trying to help Ron and keeping dinner from burning. He finally got enough water cleared out to see that the problem is a dislocated pipe below where we hooked in to the sprinkler system. "Not our fault!!"

We eat a quick dinner (tacos and burrittos) and run to Lowe's for parts and then home again before we run out of sun. (I met a worker at Lowe's whose name is Lanae, cool name, huh??) Get home, cut the pipe with a piece of junk pipe cutter that I am taking back tomorrow... I don't think it could make a fourth cut if we wanted it to!!! got all the parts measured, glued and fitted and put it all back together... it all works!! :D I love you Ron!!!

But! I am no further today than I was yesterday and my poor little strawberries are still sitting in a flat pan in my garage and the fertilizer is sitting in the wagon in the back yard and the sprinkler that is in the corner of the raised bed that I wanted to plant the strawberries in is still broken and flooding that corner whenever we turn the sprinklers on. ... :( and it is supposed to start getting ugly tomorrow and I have an appt at 10:30 in the am and then I am supposed to be fertilizing the grass in the afternoon before the rain hits and I have an appt Thurs morning at 10:30 and ... THIS IS WHY I DON'T MAKE PLANS!!! :D As soon as I make plans they all go awry!!!

So tomorrow I don't plan on getting out of bed, making lunches and going out back to put the fertelizer on the garden, hit it with the rototiller one more time before I come in to shower for my 10:30 appt. and then I don't plan on planting those cute little strawberries after I get home and I won't plan on fertilizing the front yard either. If there is e-mail for my job I will be doing that, but that is all I plan to do tomorrow, oh and keep my 10:30 appointment!!! :D Right now I plan to go to bed!!! You all have a great night!!!

I am so ready for spring!!

Can someone please tell me why - when I save my blog, it changes the layout; It ends up with extra spacing and moves the pictures around???

Ok, I am going to go back a bit, you know - catch up.
In Sept. we made a trip to Mirror Lake in the High Uinta Mountains... it was a fun trip.

We took the camera and of course Meghan took it away from me.

These are my pics of Mirror Lake

These are Meghan's pictures

As you can see, Meghan has a much more creative style with the camera! I LOVE to look at her pictures. I will publish more from her, soon.

It's been a while

and the batteries on the camera are dead!! I will take more pictures soon.

I have been so busy that I haven't had a minute to write anything!! We moved in the weekend of the 20th of Oct and things haven't slowed down since!! The house is starting to feel like home for us. The kids are making messes, and leaving them, as usual!

I am just trying to keep up with it all. Running two businesses is crazy but I love it! I just wish I could get more organized so that it was smoother. I am reading a book right now that is going to solve all my organization problems... ;D and I will share with you each step of the way.

We are MOVING

Ok, Real Quick!! I thought a blog would be fun... but I don't have a lot of time to spend right now. I will get these posted and then figure it all out later and make it all pretty and such!! :D


We are in the middle of MOVE and I don't have a lot of time, but I wanted to post these pictures for all to see. We got the keys yesterday, I took a load over today and tomorrow I am going over to vacuum, dust and mop.



Ron has decided we are moving this weekend... we'll see!









The living room (with the previous owners' furniture.)









This will be Meghan's room

Our phone #'s will stay the same and we have DVR on our satellite now!! LOL

Master Bedroom and BATH!!!













Check out my TUB!!!













One of the other bathrooms.






















The downstairs bath.

There is one other one that is a half bath
on the garage level that I don't have a pic of.

Let's see if I can describe it.. from the front door
you walk into the living room and dining/kitchen

From the living room you can go upstairs to the master bedroom/bath (I HAVE MY OWN BATHROOM!!!) and two other bedrooms (Meghan's and our office) there is also a bathroom (other than the master bath) on this level...

From the dining room you can go down about 5 steps to a family room, 1/2 bath, laundry room and this is the level that the garage is on (ground level basically,) I will take pics of the family room and the other bedrooms tomorrow. We got these from the realtor who had it listed and these were all he had. Then from the family room, you go down another level to two more bedrooms (the boys') and another bathroom and then you can go down another 5 or so steps and there is another family room. I am so excited!!