Happy Halloween

Since Halloween is on Sunday this year, the Primary Presidency put on a Halloween party for the primary and nursery kids!  It was a lot of fun!

Emry dressed up as Tinkerbell, we found the costume at Costco months ago and that day she decided she wanted to be Tinkerbell!  The next time we went back to Costco she wanted to be Sleeping Beauty!  However, she looked adorable in the little green outfit, the colour really seemed to suit her!

I found a Tiger costume for Calum at Old Navy, I was really impressed with the price of the costumes and for the quality of them as well!  When we put Calum's costume on him the other day he stomped around the house roaring at Emry, trying to scare her!  

I decided to dress up a little too!  I have an orange shirt, it is a little tight on my bulging tummy, so I cut out a pumpkin face and loosely sewed it onto the tummy part of my shirt!  It was perfect, it actually looked like I had a pumpkin stuffed under my shirt!  Everyone at the party thought it looked brilliant!  Calum of course was terrified!  For some reason he really doesn't like the faces carved on pumpkins!  He wouldn't let me hold him while I had the shirt on, he would keep pushing his feet against my tummy trying desperately to get away!


The party was fun and at the end all the kids went around to the different classrooms at the church that people were assigned to decorate and pass candy out, for only trick or treating around the church they sure brought home quite the loot!  On the treat bags I passed out I put a little Halloween joke on each of them, some I thought were cute I will jot down here...Why was the skeleton afraid to cross the road?...Because he didn't have any guts!...What is a vampire's favourite flavour of ice cream?...Vein-illa!...What kind of car does a ghost drive?...A Boo-ick!...What do you give a vampire with a bad cold?...Coffin-drops!...What can't skeleton's play music in church?...Because they have no organs!...What wasn't Dracula invited to the party?...Because he is a pain in the neck!...Happy Halloween :)

Obsessed with Toy Story!

Since Calum was about a year old we have tried and failed miserably to take the kids to the odd movie at the big theatre!  Emry loves the experience, Calum is just too young!  I usually see all the coming attractions about the first 10 minutes of the actual movie and the last 10 minutes!  Calum and I would end up walking around the lobby or empty theatres!  That is until we took them to Toy Story 3 on Canada Day!  He actually sat through the entire movie!  The next day I dug out David and Myrna's Toy Story 1 and 2 on video cassette to see if he would like these as well!  It turns out he did!  Some weeks we would watch it everyday, and if not everyday we could expect to watch it at least twice a week!  Whenever he wants to watch it he grabs the case and says "Budz, Woodsy...Wheeze?"  He has the cutest little voice it is so hard not to give in!  Thank goodness mommy and daddy got a little tip from Santa, he is going to bring Calum either the Buzz or Woody doll for Christmas and we will get him the other!  It is hard to say who is his favourite because when they come on the show Calum is equally excited about both of them!  I am also thankful the Toy Story 3 DVD is coming out next week, a great stocking stuffer for the little man!

When he sees that I am putting the movie in for him, he runs to the couch, covers himself up with the blanket and lays back against the pillow!  It is so cute!  He doesn't stay on the couch the entire time, he usually ends up playing with his "broom, broom babies!"  But he is captivated for the entire show!

Pumpkin Carving!

It seems we have made this a tradition in our home to carve pumpkins for Halloween together!  As tradition would have it, it usually ends up being Emry and Jared carving while I watch!  Well I usually dig out the pumpkin seeds from all the guts with good intentions of roasting them, but it never seems to get further than separating them from the bowl!  Emry picked out a little pumpkin that she wanted to carve all on her own--can you believe it was more expensive than the big one I got for Jared to carve!  Jared started with the big one so Emry could see how to scrape all the innards out!  She would keep saying how disgusting it was, but truly you could see how much she was really enjoying it.  When it was her turn to clean her little pumpkin out she got right in there!

We all had a lot of fun designing different faces by drawing them out on paper before hand, but as usual they turned out to be pretty normal faces!  Calum liked the pumpkins until they had faces carved in them.  He would bring his little hands to his mouth and shake and say "Ahhhh!"  Sometimes it sounded fake, like he wasn't really scared, and other times his shaking was so real we could tell they really did frighten him!  The faces that Jared and Emry decided on weren't even scary, quite normal looking actually, even too happy for Halloween pumpkins!



We set them up on the counter when they were all finished and Calum is still a little cautious when he walks by them, he has to make sure he says "punkin" as he walks by!  But like most parents (I hope anyway that we are like most parents and not just mean parents!) we would keep shoving the pumpkins in his face to see his reaction, to see such a tough little man shake at something so not scary is really quite funny!

Grandpa's Best Kids Club!

Grandpa's Best Kids Club ID cards!

 Ever since I can remember my dad always told my sister and I that we were members of the coolest club!  It was in fact called "The Nerd Club"!  I am reminded quite often of the time when I came home from school crying because another little girl laughed at me when I told her I was part of "The Nerd Club", my dad told me that it was a secret club and that anyone who laughed just wasn't cool enough to be a part of it!  Well, my dad has carried on the tradition with his grandchild, they are now part of his club, only the name has changed!  The girl's are "Grandpa's Best Girl's Club" and the boys are "Grandpa's Best Boys Club"!  He made each of us an ID card, he even had them laminated!  Well to go along with Grandpa's Best Kids Club, every so often he takes either just the boys or just the girls and does something special with them.  He has taken Gilbert fishing a couple of times and even camped over night for one of the fishing trips.

Just recently he took Emry and Lily to The Build a Bear Workshop.  First he "let" Arren and I have lunch with him and the girls at East Side Marios, it was too much fun just the girls and grandpa!  Emry and Lily had a great time building their bears, I think as much fun as grandpa!  He said it was so cool watching them, they had to pick out the empty shell of the stuffy they wanted, take it to the stuffing machine and press the pedal to fill it up and then they were each given a heart that they had to warm up and then they put it inside their stuffy.  They were then able to pick out an outfit, and name it, and at the end they each got a birth certificate.

Brown Sugar Puppy

Emry picked out a puppy stuffy, and named her Brown Sugar Puppy, she dressed her up in a ballerina outfit!  Lily picked out a teddy bear, and named her Dimples, she dressed her in jeans, cowboy boots, and a peace t-shirt!  They were both so proud of their creations!  Again, probably not as proud as their grandpa!  Overall it was a terrific day, one the girls will always remember.  When Calum and this baby are older, dad will have his hands full!  By the time he is ready to tackle Calum and this new baby the boys will out number the girls!



I am thankful for the relationship my dad has with all his grandchildren!  It is such a special memory for them to have!  The one they will never, ever forget is how embarrassing grandpa can be...even when Arren and I were young he would do this...whenever we were in a store, so there is usually a lot of people around, he would fall like we purposely tripped him.  He would fall right to the ground and wiggle around like he was in severe pain, and all we would do is stand there in shock.  Lily and Emry thought it was so funny, Lily had this evil laugh!  A lady at Walmart even came running over to see if he was okay, meanwhile the girls are laughing hysterically!  Good old dad, always great for a laugh and for making someone smile!  Thanks dad for just being you, I hope he never changes!

Grandpa Glen with his gang!  Every Halloween he brings them something, last year it was Dracula fangs, this year the glasses, a little less slobbery!

Adding to the Excitement of Life...and Busyness!

Friday brought us a little bit of excitement!  We preg tested our cows!  The weather was so weird.  The day started out to be sunny, cool and crisp, when Emry got on the bus I thought to myself how crazy the weatherman was for forecasting rain for the day, until I turned on the news and saw that it was actually snowing in Calgary!  Jared helped Dave with the finishing touches on the waterer for the cows before we headed over to Buck's to sort the cows from the calves and then preg test them.  By the time we got to Buck's it had indeed started to snow, not a lot, and it wasn't really that cold, just a bit of a nuisance.  It only took us 45 minutes to sort the cows and then we waited for the vet to come!  Finally, after being 45 minutes late he arrived!  Jared ran the shoot and sprayed the cows with a type of Ivomec (a de-licer!), I got to record which were bred and which were open, Arren called out the numbers, Buck and John moved the cows into the shoot, and the vet had the privilege to stick his arm up the cows bum to see if the cow was indeed pregnant, that is after he cleaned the poop out of the way!  I am so grateful we use more humane methods to determine if we are pregnant or not!  We had a great time and really enjoyed the experience!  Since we only have 57 cows and 19 of them were open we will be retesting those considered open in about a month, the bulls were taken out a month later than usual so there is a high chance that the majority of those open will actually be pregnant, it was just too early to tell!

What's going through Jared's head?-"At times like this I am thankful I am not a vet!?"

After the preg testing was done, Buck, Jared and John loaded up two stock trailers at a time and hauled them over to our farm!  It took 8 loads of going back and forth, so I guess that would be 4 trips, but in the end was well worth it!  I don't know what it is about having animals at a farm, but now it really feels like a farm to me!  Maybe because we help out a little more than we ever have with seeding or harvest.  The kids and I have gone out with Jared a couple times already to "help" feed the cows.  We actually just stand guard at the gate while Jared goes in and out with the bales.  Calum loves to ride the tractor and literally pulls Jared by the finger and tells him to go while pointing with his other hand to the tractor.  A real farm boy, and not a bit afraid of the cows!  He trots around the corals like he is in charge and those cows better watch out!  When Jared fed the cows tonight Emry was his little helper, she too is a farm girl through and through!  And she loves being her Daddy's little side kick!  I am so grateful that we can raise them on the farm, things seem so much more carefree, there isn't the constant complaining that they are bored, there is always something to do, if not inside, then for sure outside!  And what a wonderful opportunity for them to take care of the cows and see the results when they are well cared for!  When Emry and I were giving Charlie his milk last night she said quite seriously and with a little bit of sadness to her voice that she doesn't want to sell Charlie, she wants to eat him so that he will always be a part of us!  She definitely isn't naive about where the meat we eat comes from, especially since her dad has always told her exactly what the meat is that we are eating.  When we would have steak for supper, she would for quite awhile correct us saying it wasn't steak, its cow!

Martin and Gibson were in seventh heaven when the cows stepped off the trailer!

Another thing that goes along with having the cows here at home is feeding them!  Jared and his dad were able to take the sides off one of the grain trucks so he could haul the bales from the sandy land 3-4 miles south of the home quarter back home where the cows will stay for the winter!  The truck can carry 7 bales at a time, so Jared figured it would take 74 trips to get them all home!  On Saturday Jared spent the afternoon hauling bales, he was able to bring 4 loads home and a fifth loaded and ready before he had to bring the tractor home to feed the cows.  The four loads will last the cows 8 days, so guess what Jared will be doing next saturday :) or should I put :( ?!  The handy thing about David's grain truck is with the hydraulic lift Jared can just simply slide the bales off the truck, instead of having to have someone else bring the tractor back with each load to unload the truck!  It has been fun, and I am sure once things get going and the rest of the perimeter fence is up and the cows are out in the field, life will slow down a little.  Well, except for the fact that Jared will be back to working on our house!  The silver lining there however, we are probably going to have Adam, a friend and excellent mudder, painter, and finisher of houses, do the rest of the inside work on our house!  My fingers are double crossed that his price is right, Jared hides his stress well, but one more thing added to the list may just make him crack!  I guess it is official, we are ranchers!  One thing is for sure though, you will still never catch Jared wearing wranglers, a cowboy hat or cowboy boots!  He is a cowboy on the inside, a cowboy at heart, just one who dresses much better!

Who knew this could actually be done so smoothly!

So Many Things to be Thankful For!!

It was a very beautiful Thanksgiving this year!  On Saturday the kids and I went to my Grandma and Grandpa Scheibner's in Coaldale.  All of my mom's siblings were there, two of my cousins, my sisters, and my nieces and nephews!  It was a lot of fun catching up!  You are always guaranteed a good laugh when my mom and aunts get together!  The food of course was excellent and the pumpkin pie my 21 year old cousin, Brandon made was actually very delicious!  The kids spent the afternoon outside playing in the sandbox, climbing the big evergreen tree, and running around the yard playing tag!  Calum even managed to keep up his daily tradition of hitting his head in some way!  While he was playing at the picnic table with a little house and people he fell backwards and smacked his head on the cement!  Being Calum though, he whimpered a little and then went right back to playing!  Meanwhile, Auntie Bonnie and my older sister Avi threw their tea cups and practically dove to save him!  I think he recovered before the speed of their palpitating hearts did:)

Sunday we had Thanksgiving dinner with the Puzey clan, again a lot of fun!  I am so thankful to be apart of such a wonderful family and the for the great examples they all are to me.  We had another fantastic meal, and even a special talent show that Cora organized!  Everyone was to come up with a talent and perform it.  If you know me, you will know that I have absolutely no rhythm.  Even when a group is clapping to a beat, I usually end up out of time with everyone else!  Anyway, I did, jokingly, tell Mom Puzey and Jared that I was going to do an interpretive dance, or maybe even a belly dance!  On top of being uncoordinated, being seven and a half months pregnant would only add to the hilarity of it all!  When I told them I was going to do this both Jared and his mom burst out laughing!  Sadly to say I did not share my talent!!  Everyone who did perform did an excellent job!  Mom and Dad Puzey started the show by doing a lip sync of "I've Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher, and even dressed the part!  Emry then played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the piano, Grandma Puzey was so proud of her timing (she is her teacher!!), Blake played an original song on his guitar, that he alone wrote, called "Everyone Wants Their Own CD and Radio Babe"!  He just belted it while strumming randomly away on his guitar, no shame at all!  It was so cute!  Ashton sang an Aladdin song and then a song about killing Barney!  Bowen sang "Follow the Prophet", Jason did a couple of card tricks, that had all the kids stunned!  Mom, Rachel, and Lalainia sang "Boogie, Woogie, Bugle Boy", Lalainia played a ragtime number on the piano, and sang a song while playing the guitar, Leah sang a song, Cora did handstands, Cora and Leah did a dance together and then sang a song from the Barbie movie "Diamond Castle", and finally my favourite, Jared sang and played his guitar to a song called "Let Me Hold You Little Man", it is from a movie we saw, it is a spoof protest song about the unfair way little people are treated and it is really hilarious!

We always have such a great time together, even though it can be chaotic when all kids get together, I know they have a lot of fun and being so close that they can all grow up together is a blessing in and of itself!  I am so thankful for family.  My absolute greatest blessing.  I am thankful for Jared, my best friend, Emry and Calum and the baby that constantly moves inside me.  I am thankful for my Mom and Dad, I look up to both of them and appreciate all they have taught me and for all the love I feel from them each and every day.  I am extremely thankful for David and Myrna, and for the acceptance they have shown me by welcoming me into their family as a daughter of their own.  I am also thankful for the closeness they share with Emry and Calum and for all they are able to learn from them!  I am also extremely thankful for my membership in such a wonderful church!  Being baptized into the LDS church 10 years ago was one of the best decisions of my life.  Never have I felt so content and so happy with the meaning my life has.  Without this wonderful gospel I truly would be lost and discouraged with all the horrible things the world throws at us.  I am thankful I can raise my children in a gospel of peace, love and equality among all.  I am thankful for a husband who treats me like a queen, who is patient with me when at times I am sure it is hard, who provides for our family so I can be home with our children, who has built our home with his own hands, and for the father he is to our perfect children.  He truly is a great man, one I admire more and more each day!  I could go on forever, my heart feels very grateful right now!  I hope this season of thanksgiving will last for months to come, the beautiful fall days wouldn't hurt either!

Four Major Projects On the Go...Two Done:)

Our dream home!

Since the summer of 2008 we have been building our dream house!  We have had some hiccups on the way, but slowly and surely it is coming along!  That fall we had our second baby, a boy!  The next spring Jared broke his knee snowboarding and was off work for 5 months, during which time he actually got quite a bit of the finicky work done on our house!  

2010 has been a year of surprises for us.  We decided to get back into cattle with my step-dad this past spring and we were eventually working towards bringing them permanently to the Puzey farm.  Dick had helped us get some of David's poorer land seeded to hay, which produced amazingly this year, and when time permitted we would build a fence and corals on the home quarter to winter and calve the cows out.  However, things changed quite quickly when my step-dad passed away early this summer and sort of forced us to take action.  Dave wanted to partner with Jared in regards to the cattle and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do just that!  Since around August of this year the guys have been working steady getting things ready.  Sadly though, our house was to be put on hold!  Haying, building a fence and corals, and putting a water line in for the cattle took priority before freeze up, which in this country could be any day!  With Jared taking a week off work and Dave coming out between shift work and much needed sleep, they have been able to check two things off their list as of today!  

A very precarious situation!

They finished the water line, including all the necessary shut-offs, and back filling, as well Dave was able to finish baling! 

 

The whole family was in on helping!

Calum was so upset when he had to get off the tractor!  He kept saying, "A-broom, broom, Daddy, no!"  

Dave refilling his stock of baling twine!

Bailing at dusk on such a beautiful day!

Both of these tasks came with many challenges, a lot related to all the rain we have had!  The hay had been cut in good time, but was not able to dry or cure quick enough due to all the rain we have had.  The trench for the water line didn't take too much time to dig, but the saturated dirt would keep caving in, which led to many hours of re-digging, and Jared almost being buried!  The guys were able to rig up some supports to protect them from falling clay when they had to be down in the trench!  They are quite ingenious!  With this beautiful autumn weather this past week and a half, much was accomplished!  All that needs to be done now is the divider between the two corals, and the rest of the perimeter around the home quarter, just over half of the perimeter left.  The fencing actually goes quite quickly, I know they will be able to get that done before the ground freezes solid!  And on top of all this great news, David has all his swathing done as well, a few days of warm, windy weather and he will be combining!  My favorite time of year is autumn, especially when we are treated to such beautiful, yet still crisp, days!  I also feel like it is a perfect time of year to bring family together, I have really enjoyed watching Dave and Jared work together!  I look forward to the many adventures that lie ahead!  Feeding cows and calving will be exciting, and may even break up the long days of winter that are sure to come!