SELLING OUR HOUSE!!

We are selling the house! No, not really, just kidding, but we are selling a ton of things in the house, no, not the kids...Dusty and I are preparing for a massive garage sale next Saturday.

Usually Dusty works on Saturdays but he took the day off, because, well, I truly can't do the sale by myself with 5 kids to watch at the same time! It might be funny to see me try...hee,hee

We've been on a selling role around here for the last couple weeks. We sold our big van, our camping trailer, a dresser, table, big framed mirror & some kid stuff. God has blessed us with providing buyers for these items, we sold a few things on Craigslist, but the big stuff was word of mouth. Wish us luck on the garage sale, and if you are local friend, PLEASE COME on Saturday!! Special deals for friends!! :)

The Olsen Triplets?

I decided to blog about this because without fail,
at least once or twice a week, someone tells us
that Alanah looks like "Michelle Tanner" from
Full House. AKA Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen.
Now, if we could just make some college money
for her...I'll let you decide, here are some pictures.

SAY CHEESE!

Grandma & Grandpa are going through grand kid withdrawals, so here's some pictures. These were taken this week.
Here's a picture of Kaianah with the least amount of rash face going on...my poor baby. :(
The Davis Kids

Noah & Alanah were playin' around.

I liked this picture because everyone is looking in a different direction...

Potty Time

Okay, what's the deal? Everyone has told me that potty training girls is SOOO much easier than boys. Well, Alanah turned 2 in April and she still isn't potty trained. Any advice out there? I know what you're thinking... Yeah, yeah, yeah kid #4 I should have this down by now, but it is the first girl! All the games that we played with the boys don't apply here. We can't play "Ready, Aim, Fire!" and we can't play "Sink the Cheerios".
I did all the basics, we got the pretty underwear (Thanks Aunt Ruth), we got a little potty, we have a ring for the big potty etc. etc. Alanah loves her pretty underwear so I told her how important it was to keep it dry and not to pee in it...
Alanah says "Mommy, mommy, I pee!" we drop everything and go running for the potty, she sits for 30 seconds and then gets up and said "I pee". It's turned into a game, and we NEVER see any liquid of any kind in the potty. At least Noah would pour water in the potty and tell us he went. That little one is to smart for his own good.
I asked Alanah where the pee was, she is trying to show me right now! :) It's gotta be in here somewhere...

Water Park!!

We had an opportunity to go to the water park for FREE!! The water park held a private event for the employees at Dusty's work. The kids had a blast and it was really nice that it wasn't packed full of people. Only got a few photos before my camera battery died.

Austin is being such a good big brother, he's taking Alanah down the slide.

Dusty & Noah
Noah
Josiah LOVED this slide.
Alanah isn't sure she likes the water park.

My STUD husband

Dusty had an opportunity to compete in a wrestling competition on Sunday morning. Many of you know that he wrestled in high school and college but it's been pretty limited since. We've been a little busy with the five kids and all, you know.

So, on Sunday he wrestled twice with two different guys in the 198 weight class. He was awarded the SILVER metal. 2nd Place!! Not bad for a guy that doesn't get to train much. WAY TO GO DUSTY!!
The other competitors came from all different areas and had very impressive backgrounds. Most of them still actively training on a weekly basis. These are serious dudes!

Another Step in Our Journey

WARNING: *The following might contain images not suitable for young children.*


As you know we are raising our own chickens. We have been actively involved with the entire process from beginning to end. "End" only because we lost many of our first batch of chickens to a predator. All circles of life contain an "end" and in order to take another step in sustainability we needed to learn how to slaughter, de-feather and preserve the chickens for future use. Lucky for us we have some great like-minded friends to learn along side each other. As weird as it sounds we had our own chicken slaughtering party on Sunday afternoon. The kids all watched the process right up until the blood started flowing, they lasted about 3 minutes after that...in the words of Noah "I'm not going to eat chicken like that!"


So, you gotta catch the chicken first. Jon did that, the next step is to put the chicken head first into the "slaughtering cone"
Assuming you've made it safely pass the protesters!
Now the slaughtering cone...yeah, it's head is getting cut off right now. yuck!
Next the bird goes into scalding hot water as shown above...
Next is the defeathering and cutting off of the legs, cleaning out the insides etc. All in all the process wasn't to bad to watch, I thought it would have been more gross. It was a GREAT learning experience. Dusty, Jon, Jerry & Tyler did four chickens total on Sunday. WAY TO GO GUYS!!!

Storyofstuff.com

Leia here, generally speaking, I don't watch videos online. I know, I'm a freak, weirdo, whatever you want to call me, but that's my reality. So, last night my brother in law sent me a video, normally I would push "Delete" but it was a personal message to me and he said that he thought I would find it interesting, so out of courtesy, I watched the video.

In all honesty, I thought, well at least I can tell him I watch it, but in the "buffering" moments before the video started I was thinking, this is such a waste of time, sorry Jed. :) Then, just before the video starts I see that the video time is 20 minutes, immediately, I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding me! A 20 minute video, umm, I don't think so...I'm wishing that I didn't feel compelled to be courteous, it's like 6:35am and the kids are going to come walking in any minute and I'm not going to be able to finish this video. Whatever I'm watching will be drowned out by loud questions of what's for breakfast. Well, the kids didn't come it, which is very rare, and I got to finish the video.
All this to tell you that the video was worth all 20 minutes! Here's the website. Check it out!! You want to see the movie, not the teaser videos.

2nd Annual Backpacking Trip

Just northwest of Imogene Lake is the upper reaches of the spectacular Hell Roaring Valley and contains one of the larger backcountry lakes in the range. Imogene Lake sits just south of the Finger of Fate, one of the top rock climbing towers in the Sawtooths.

Just northwest of Imogene Lake lies The Arrowhead, one of the Sawtooths most challenging trad climbs. Mt. Cramer sits just to the south of The Arrowhead and is clearly visible from the summit of Imogene. The north side of Cramer contains one of the best kept secrets: the longest rock route in the range at ~ 20 pitches of solid rock. The long approach and other nearby attractive climbs have kept this under wraps for years.

Dusty and two guy friends along with 5 boys headed up for a 3 day backpacking experience, here are some of the pictures!

Noah finds an easier way to make the hike.
All these boys being silly for the camera.
Mr. Noah
The Blanks
The Davis'

The whole backpacking crew! Davis', Blanks & Isaksons
Stopping for a break...the hike is 10 MILES each way!!

Dusty & the boys
The packs aren't light. Dusty's backpack weighed in at a whooping 75 lbs. and Austin's at a staggering 26 lbs!!

Life on the farm

We've been waiting for Dusty, Austin & Noah to return from a weekend of backpacking. Life on the farm is a little harder without all the help! I mowed the lawn this weekend, well I should say I mowed half of the lawn this weekend, a sudden allergic reaction kicked in and my mowing was brought to a sudden halt! You should have seen how cute I was, really sexy...sweaty, red, itchy, and starting to swell in the eyes. CUTE huh?? Just Keepin' it real! (In the words of the Pioneer Woman)
We have a HUGE lawn, 18,000 sq.ft. to be exact, no that's not a typo. It takes about 2 hours a week to mow.

Josiah has been by my side all weekend helping me feed the chickens, collect the eggs, make the bottles for the calf, feed the calf AKA Tri-Tip, bring in the trash cans (which is NOT close to the house), harvest food from the garden & take care of his sisters!

Siah very fond of Kaianah, he tells me daily how much he loves her. "Mom, I'm always going to love her and protect her, she's just so cute, and I'm going to miss her when she get's married."
Those are Siah exact words.

We brought some eggs to the neighbor today...this is what he brought us!! Here's a picture.


BELL PEPPERS!!
And LOTS of them...Josiah and I had fun making a circle with them. We are working on shapes in school, so it was a perfect learning experience.

Josiah and I decided to make some cookies as a surprise for the boys when they return, while we are waiting for the cookies to bake we decided to watch Ratatouille, a movie by Disney. How appropriate, since it's a movie about cooking! :)
Then we got silly with the camera...
Kiss face
Here's the cookies we made, yummy!

More?

Josiah and I have been neglecting our garden this week, we finally got out today and harvested some food. We could have been the poster children for the "Got Weeds" commercial! yikes!! Here's what we found...

Tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, jalapenos, serrano's & green beans OH MY
We started with the basket in the first picture and by the end...
we had to break out the wagon!