Skunked

As I near my driveway, I am alarmed to see a truck with the word "SHERIFF" emblazened on the side. A moment later, I decode the words "Animal Control Officer," as well. Before my mind has time to run through the list of possible scenarios, G comes racing toward me (and my still-moving vehicle), clad in pj's and bare feet. As I get out of the car, he excitedly announces, "I go to dee baf-room! I go to dee baf-room!" (His best friend's mom is trying to potty train him. I am not on board yet, being eight months pregnant and busily trying to finish our last month of schooling.)
I grab him before he runs into the street to give his report to more passers-by, and we make our way to the backyard, where the "sheriff", neighbors and the rest of our family have gathered.
Soon, it becomes apparent that a skunk has made its way into our empty chicken coop (the hens haven't come in yet for the evening.) He is now trapped, having somehow survived a close-range shot from our neighbor's crossbow. The AC officer intermitently strategizes with Clint and visits with his friends, our crossbow-owning neighbors. (They run the local animal shelter and are apparently on friendly terms with Mr. AC). I thought AC officers came, trapped little critters, then took them away for you.
One hour later, and watching through the window with my little ones, I conclude it is not so simple a process. Finally, as we are finishing up with our nightly prayer and scripture reading, an overpowering stench wafts through through the house and we see Mr. AC carrying a body bag out to his truck.
I put the children to bed, showing them this picture before kissing them all good night. (WARNING: This isn't the bloodiest picture ever, but you may want to skip it just the same.)
(Actually, the one they saw wasn't this gruesome, but I'm sure it still led to some pretty sweet dreams.) Then, I head downstairs where my husband - who has now been outside with skunkie for over 2 hours - comes in. The scent is overpowering, so he obligingly leaves his clothes in the garage and bee-lines it for the shower. (This is reportedly the second streak of the evening; the first occurring just before I came home when G came outside and announced his feat with the potty the first time.)
He goes to the grocery store for me (this guy knows how to pamper a pregnant wife!), we watch a great documentary ("Paper Heart"), and then go to bed. I am occasionally awakened by the need to dry heave; pregnancy super-smell mixed with skunk spray all around and in our house apparently does that to me.
And I hope for a little less adventure tomorrow. :)

Father/Son Campout

Every year, Clint and the boys go on an overnight camp-out with the other men/boys we go to church with. Gabe was once again left behind...maybe he'll be out of diapers next year! If dirt is any indicator of the good times enjoyed by my boys, I think they had a blast!!

In their absence, the girls set up a tent, too. Ours was conveniently located in the living room.

Gabe & Autumn enjoyed a couple movies tent-side, before G was whisked away to his crib.

That left time for me and my baby girl to snuggle and watch another show.

In the morning, we ate and bathed, then hurried off to a Pioneer monument dedication. The President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of our Church, Boyd K. Packer, came to dedicate it. It was a nice ceremony.

Autumn captured how at least half of the meeting really went down for me, chasing G who thinks it is hilarious to bolt away (the giggling only increases when he heads for the street.)


(As a side note, we were sitting pretty close, and there were only 100 or 200 people there. Anyway, Sister Packer was sitting on the front row watching and I saw her look over at me and smile a couple of times. She has 10 children, so she must understand... that's what I perceived, anyway. I love being around seasoned, virtuous mothers. I can only hope their strength and goodness is just a little bit contagious!!)

First Day of Summer

We've sort of been laying low around here...chores in the morning, playing all day long. On the first day of summer break, we were all outside. A was swinging, and I kept tossing a big bouncy ball at her feet. She giggled as she sent it flying. Soon, J took over ball-tossing/fetching duty, and the other boys grabbed a swing. Which gave me the chance to snap a few pictures. I love spending these long summer days with you cuties!!

Occer Ame

This is what we heard Gabe say almost every day for the past 7 weeks. Sitting on the sidelines while A, M & J played their games was torture at first; he wanted to kick the ball and score a goal, too! After a few weeks of games, he began finding Autumn's soccer jersey at home (plus a random pair of cleats.) He would bring them to me, saying, "Occer ame?". I would dress him, and this is how happy he became each time:


What a stinking cutie!!

BFF's

The charter school the boys went to this year required that I volunteer four hours a month. Mostly, I just dropped in their classrooms to help out however I was told. This happened while Autumn was in preschool, which meant that I had to find something to do with Gabe. Luckily, one of the women I go to church with was willing to make a swap. Once a week, Gabe got to play with Sam. They amazed us both with how well they got along. Here is a snapshot of their last playdate together:

Now for something cute to look at...

Part of why we moved to a rural town was so that our children would have the opportunity to raise animals. Last year, we experienced raising chickens. Some of them are still alive, so we decided it was time to up the ante.


We are trying our hand at raising lambs this spring/summer. Clint found two local sheep farmers with bum lambs they needed help with. When a ewe births three sheep, she will only care for two of them. The third lamb has to be bottle-fed, and is called a bum lamb (or a bummer.) Because sheep are social creatures, we decided to get a pair of bum lambs. The farmers will pay our children for their work at the end of the summer, at which time they will collect the lambs for eventual breeding.

Last Saturday, Clint took Autumn & Micah to go pick up the lambs. Unfortunately, one of them was sick (and not showing symptoms at the time.) He never ate much at all for us, and Clint had to bury him on Wednesday evening (after the lamb stopped breathing right in front of Clint & Autumn.) This prompted a lot of discussion about the resurrection, but the children handled it amazingly well!



Anyhow, we picked up a replacement lamb yesterday (the children had fun bleating back to her all the way home, while she complained about being stowed away in a kennel in the back of our car.) Oreo (the replacement lamb) and Cookie/a.k.a. Lambie (the surviving original lamb) are doing very well. It's fun to watch the kids play with them. Jonah spent 30 minutes in a game of hide-and-seek with Cookie on Thursday (she was feeling pretty lonely). Who knew that lambs could play that game...she was actually good at it, and would attack Jonah with lamb kisses each time she found him. And it's sweet to see them feeding a bottle to them. Gabriel chased Oreo around for 5 minutes last night, trying to get her to take his bottle. He was scolding her for not cooperating ("No! NO!") and had a stern look on his face that would have intimidated me into obeying.


So, wish us luck on our newest adventure. And, if you get an urge to bottle-feed a lamb, stop in. Feeding times are 7 A.M. and 6:30 P.M.

Family Fun Night

One thing I love about blogs is how fun and easy it is to find great ideas... and steal them! Every Monday night, we gather our little family for Family Night... we sing, we pray, we have a lesson, and then comes our favorite part -- games & treats! A couple Mondays ago, we tried out my stolen, flour-cutting game.



You fill a plastic cup with flour (make sure to really pack it in), dump it upside down (I put it all on a cookie sheet to cut down on clean-up) and place a coin on top. Then you take turns slicing the flour, until someone eventually causes it to collapse. This sends the coin falling into the mountain of flour. At this point, the person who last sliced the flour has to find the coin with their face.


It was really a big hit, so thank you blogosphere!! ;)


Autumn finally cut the mound right down the middle, so that she could indulge in a flour facial!


And why no picture of me, you ask? Well, let's just say I rock at flour-cutting... we all have our talents! ;)

Play-doh Playdate