Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun again this year. Mikaela spent all week trying to teach Cole how to say trick or treat. For those who haven't seen him lately he only says what he wants when he wants and he didn't want to say trick or treat and therefore wouldn't even try. So she finally gave up and taught him to say nummy please. Carrying his big orange pumpkin from house to house while saying nummy please was ohhhh soooo cute. He thought it was ok too...hold pumpkin out, say nummy please, someone puts candy in pumpkin...this is all right. Before the night started Mikaela kept telling us that she wasn't going to dress up next year as she was now way to grown up for that. By the end of the night though she had decided she wanted to be a dead bride next year. So we will see what happens but for this year we had one more year of fun with a scary vampire and a smelly hobo.

love you all Nessa

As we get back in the swing of going to school and getting busier at work we also begin doing all the extra curricular things. This is Mikaela's 5th year to be in the annual mini cheer camp put on by the high school cheerleaders. It has been extremely fun to watch her learn and grow each year, this year she actually knew all her cheers.



Cole loves to watch all the girls jump and shout, he loooves to watch football, but show him a giant black panther that will wave at him and he is in absolute aw.



The weekend after the game we went to Albuquerque to see my brother. He flew in from Houston for a long weekend and rather than spend the whole time in the car traveling we all opted to stay at the house there. This was quite a treat since it's been almost 2 years since we've seen him. We all had a really good time going to the zoo (they have a brand new baby elephant), shopping, eating good food we don't have at home and just hanging out.



While we were there we also played some miniature golf. Mikaela got a hole in 1 and several in 2 so she was excited. You know you are great at something when you only beat your 9 year old by 2 points.

Cole educated us all in a new way to play. You start out by putting your ball on the matt, lining it up, giving it a good hit and watching were it stops. Sounds pretty normal right, well here's where Cole's new rules come in.

You then calmly pick up your ball from it's final resting place and walk it over setting it down right next to the whole and hit it in. Always guaranteeing yourself a whole in 2...Tiger Woods look out. But seriously we all got a pretty big kick out of him.

Uncle Dustin teaching Cole the fine art of shooting cows with a sling shot on his i-phone. We were all so exhausted after our fun weekend that they couldn't seem to wake up on Monday...sooo cute.

Friday was homecoming in Cortez and Mikaela was in the parade.

The kids worked really hard decorating the float and getting all dressed up.

Mikaela is a panther. There was this whole jungle theme to their float that we never quite figured out but the kids all had a great time.

Hope this finds you all doing well. Love ya Nessa

As summer is coming to a close

Fair is finally over, (only three weeks ago...I'm not behind or anything)

Mikaela did really well. She placed 5th with her pig and 3ed in showmanship. Which for her first year is wonderful. She placed higher in showmanship than some kids that have been doing this for several years. As far as her pigs went we were so happy to have two out of three make wight after everything that placing at all was icing on the cake.

Mikaela and Daddy in the 3ed place holding pen

Doesn't she look so professional

In decorate your duds she took third over all the juniors woohoo!

Her outfit turned out so cute...she took denim shorts and a hot pink shirt and added lime green and hot pink bangle trim to the legs, made a spotted belt, and used puff paint to finish it off.

As part of any sewing project the kids can choose to participate in a fashion review...Mikeala didn't like this at alllll.

She got reserved grand-champion for modeling.

All of this wonderful stuff and the thing she seemed to like the very best is that she was escorted by a boy...an older boy onto stage and he gave her a flower (she told everyone all about it for the rest of the weekend)

This picture is from the fashion show.

After fair we had tank inventory.

Dad had his motorcycle here and gave Cole his first ride around the yard.

After they left Cole showed us all how to wear a helmet (notice he has a bandanna on under the helmet just like papa)

Then came my birthday, I got a cute little chihuahua puppy (until he came home we thought our dachshund was little.)

We named him Gus after the little fat mouse in Cinderella, you know the one who always thinks he can whoop the cat...same personality type. He is now the dominate dog, explain this to me he is younger and smaller than Rego, but whatever. He sure is fun though and our dachshund's attitude has really improved since we brought him home (maybe we should have done this a year and a half ago)

Isn't he cute

This last weekend our church threw us a housewarming party. It was so nice to have everyone over. As you can see we had a pretty good turn out.

stuffing our faces with all the good food

Stacy made us the cutest cake (she is so talented)

This is our new guest bed/shelf. Lee made us a Murphy bed so that we can have a spare bedroom and an office without sacrificing any space...pretty neat we thought. He came up with the design all on his own...another one of those oh sooo talented people (I keep hoping that some of these talents might wear off on me but no such luck).

I think I need to check in a little more often ha ha! but I will try to send more pictures soon. Love you all!!!

Cole's new room

Cole has graduated to a new big boy bed!!!

On Wednesday Nathan and I put Cole's new bed in his room and he absolutely loves it!
We decided to graduate him up from little boy frogs and ducks ): , to big boy trucks trains planes and boats. As you can see the pour child doesn't have anything to play with.

Mikaela had a very hard time with the transition to her own room... all the way up until the beginning of second grade we had to lay with her in her bed until she fell asleep and then most nights she still was sneaking into our room to sleep in the floor. So needless to say we were a little worried about the transition to a big boy bed but so far it has been wonderful. The first night I put him to bed with no incident. In the middle of the night we heard a thud followed by "OW" (we assume he hit the wall) but he never got out of bed or made another sound until morning. The second night he got up right after we put him to bed but we put him back without incident.

So one more milestone down thousands more to go. No one warns you how bitter-sweet all these milestones will be.

Love you all. Nessa

Cole

summer is here...and it's crazy

SCHOOL IS OUT!

During the last week of school the kids all got to do fun dress up days. Mikaela's favorite was of course pajama/crazy hair day. We spent 45 minutes and used a ton of hairspray but she got her mohawk.

I can't believe she is now in 4th grade. You would think that since school is now out we might slow down but that is not the case. We have only gotten more busy. Wednesday we added a new member to our family - Sampson came home after a special horse sale at the Sale Barn. He is a very good natured mild mannered 13 year old Appaloosa. As you can see he is much bigger than Baby. At first Baby didn't want the company but they have become fast friends. Cole seems to be confused though because up until now he was pretty sure all horses were named Baby...He just looks at him with a puzzled look and asks "BABY".

Thursday we tried to catch up on some yard work.

Friday night was a very late night trying to get Mikaela's three little pigs ready for the pig show Saturday. Her and daddy were up until past 10 washing and shaving all three pigs. Saturday morning we were all up by 6 so that we could make it to the fair grounds by 7:45. Mikaela did pretty well for her first show ever and it was very good practice for Fair.

Saturday after the show we came home cleaned the pig pen changed clothes and hurried off to Gallup for the company picnic on Sunday.

Nice face Lynn

Doesn't Michelle look amazing!!


Cole thought everyone was being to noisy so he told them shshsh.

Our nephews were here from Lubbock and all the kids loved seeing each other. Unfortunately they don't get to spend near enough time together.

Uncle Clifton making some burgers (lots of burgers)

Is this the look of confusion, ????, or I'm busted

Just one of the kids So much food.
Sunday after the BBQ we took Mikaela to Grants to meet her mom. They had to put her great-grandpa in a home on Friday do to his very fast onset Alzheimer's.

On Monday Mikaela called to tell us that Gene had passed away---so please keep their family in your prayers. Mikaela will be at her moms for about 2 weeks.

Hopefully the summer will get less crazy, although it is not looking very hopeful. Love you all Nessa

Sorry this is the real post, disregard the first one please.

So sorry it's been a so long since I've checked in, things here have been so busy I just haven't had much extra time. I don't even know where to start.

We got to spend a couple of nights with Savannah during her spring break from Grand Junction's ...as you can see the kids all had a great time. Then came Mikaela's spring break, she spent the first half at her mothers and the second half with us. We went to Durango which is always so relaxing. Except we had to cut the trip a day short when Nathan's new pride and joy was delivered 4 weeks early. Let me explain ... we've had a series of Sunday morning break ins around here so we decided to buy a gun safe. When we ordered it they said it would take 4 - 6 weeks so we didn't even remotely expect it to show up 9 days later. I'm sure you know it broke Nathan's heart.

Then on Sunday of spring break we got to attend out first 4-H pig sale. Nathan finds it amusing that Mikaela chose pigs for her first project - being as we aren't set up for them and basically know nothing about them. We are having fun though. She was pretty cute at the auction...she got to do her own bidding and everything. She really figured out how to through that little hand up when she wanted to bid, putting it down was another story all together. She fell in love with these three cute spotted pigs and decided that she just had to have one - so we ended up spending a lot more than we intended but she got the one she wanted and it all turned out fine. We also got a blue-butt and a Hampshire (who knew there were so many different types of pigs anyway) She is doing really good with them all and seems to really being enjoying it. She still is not very excited about having to pay for the pigs and all their stuff because "she doesn't have that much money" we've tried to explain but she doesn't completely understand...she will though.

Here are the three pigs the mostly black one is the Hampshire named Ham the pink one is the Blue-butt named Bacon and the spotted one is well the Spot named Suey.

The next weekend we went to Chandler AZ for LTC. Mikaela was the only participant from out church able to attend this year but she did wonderful. She got a GOLD in signing for the deaf. While we were there she also got to watch a lot of other events which helped her decide to participate in a lot of other events next year.Sunday the kids woke up to find that the Easter Bunny had found us all the way in Arizona. Mikaela innocently informed us that she knows the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are pretend...but Santa is "REAL", she sweetly kept this information from Cole and Nayana and just played along.


On the way home we drove through salt river canyon WOW how beautiful! The kids really enjoyed being out of the car for a few minutes.


Back at home we have continued to be super busy with Karate 2 nights a week after school art 2 nights a week as well as three pigs and a horse to take care of.

Everything is wonderful here though. We love you all.

Sorry about the double post the first one was incomplete thanks to little boy fingers.