This is what family time looks like for us... I didn’t get pics of Cannon cuz he went early with Isaac and by time Colt Tanner and I showed up it was their turn. 

But I think we’re mostly done with that project (for real this time🤞) that was Saturday, he went again Tuesday night and the boys and I went to the Volleyball game. End project, end!!!

Saturday night Cannon talked us into family fun night at his school. -slightly more conventional family time but let’s be honest it’s just fundraiser!- but the boys did have fun. So a win! 

Saturday night I was up super late preparing food for the bishops youth discussion here. And back up Sunday morning, I ditched Sunday school to get the rolls in and pick up the house a little-you know, clean 3 cereal bowls off the table left because I’m adamant we’re on time for church kind of mess. Isaac said “oh aren’t you going to stay and eat with us?” I said no we had 3 kids at church that the primary wasn’t technically responsible for and that I would be going back for 3rd hour. He needed the van to haul kids in which left me with the “privilege” of driving little green. 🙄 And as I was headed back I passed and waved at Isaac. Because we’d survived sacrament mtg I just left my church back home. Well little green has NO supplies and long story short I walked in the back door of church to find the nursery leader peering in the window of RS with Tanner who had pooped his pants by the hand. He hadn’t had an accident in 3 weeks! He’d even slept one in undies one night. Not that any of that mattered. I’ve been a parent for a short 7 years now, that’s was easily the worst mess I’ve had to clean up. I’m voting it was a little upset stomach issue on top of a regular mess. Yikes! And I had nothing. Bummed some wipes and a diaper from a friend but holy cow! I ended up with 2 garbage can liners from the member work closet, one for what I was willing to keep, which really only landed his shoes which were off before I got to the mess, white shirt and tie-still managed to get poop on the tail of that shirt though too! And the other liner for the dumpster, my friends entire pack of wipes, the socks, the undies-sorry it was your favorite pair Tan, their gone! And pants-the suckers were hand me downs for Cannon, they’d done their time it was no hesitation, just throw them away! By time I got him “cleaned up” not only was he naked except a diaper, there was only 15 minutes of church left anyway. So I just grabbed the other boys early and went home-sorry youth, don’t might us showing up, and put Tanner right in the shower. It was a crappy little disaster for sure! After that all I know is I took a much needed nap! 

Sunday evening we went for a walk and the Jaggers invited us over for dinner on Monday, they are super nice and we had a good time. 

Ray always takes awesome pictures of the sunset—and he got me trying. Ha! 


As mentioned, Tuesday we did the volleyball thing. Last week I wouldn’t take them to the Mother and Son stampede because it’s at Truman Farms, and you ride a tractor then wait in line for at least 20 minutes to shoot a B.B. gun then roast a hot dog etc... I couldn’t do it, not when we live here, we can build a fire and roast hot dogs whenever we want, they shot a .22 for the family home evening activity and so on. So because I bailed on that last week I took then to waffle cone Wednesday this week and we had our own little mother and sons date. I think we had fun. Colt didn’t like the ice cream he’d picked but by the end he’d snapped out of it. 

Wednesday is Isaacs church night and he also did a little service project and brush hogged for a lady at work. It was all Wednesday that wasnt church’n it and all of Thursday after work but we did stay up late to get to see him because I was dealing with kids used to seeing their dad that hadn’t since Monday night, it was 2 seconds but it was better than going to bed without the routine-again! We got away with it because there was no school today, professional development. But Isaac didn’t have to go into work until a little later so this morning  so they the rode motorcycles and pressure washed things and that was good. 

It’s crazy but I have terrible allergies out here-worst I’ve ever had, it’s like when I used to get in the hay back home...ok maybe not that bad, but bad. So even though Cann had the day off school (Colt always has Friday off) we just stayed inside, because I did clean the car out and I paid for my time out there in sneezes! 
But we played lots of games and play dough and did a puzzle and they found Isaacs old, WAY OLD, iPod in little green today and they listened to music, I think they had a fun day. Battleship is all I got documented though...

Cannon smoked us...gee I wonder why...

I think that’s about it, the only other pics I have are the little monster doing his “then I will get it myself!” thing when I didn’t get him his milk. 

And Cann’s Christmas list requesting $500...I mean there’s probably $500 worth of legos requested on that thing too, but...sure Santa I’ll $500 bucks too

I see some Monopoly money in our future.

He “helpt” his brothers write their lists too and anything else he thought of made their lists. Funny guy. 

Until next week.

Oh boy, Time out for women was a blast. Ok the actual thing was good-a little heavy on the desbook advertising for my taste but whatever- the messages were good, I enjoyed it but hanging out with these gals: UNMATCHED! So dang fun. I had a great time.

Cheesecake factory above, a little dutch bakery in Pella Iowa below (there's windmills all over that town -through the window pic but whatever-  I guess they have a tulip festival in May, we'll have to hit it one of these years) it was a fun little last stop.

Sunday was anticlimactic (For me I'm not the one who had all his speakers bail on him. Ha. Bishop problems. His backup plans turned out fantastic and we had a great meeting. So that was good.)
For my birthday I told Isaac I wanted him to work on being more thoughtful. (To which he replied "How?" and I said "That's what you've got to figure out.") Side note :I have a goal of teaching him how to celebrate...its a still in the distant  "Someday" stage. But I might have help, after he had the girls camp kids speak on Fathers Day and announced from the pulpit that he wasn't into holidays but invited others to help in see it differently Bro Gillette did give him some good reason, so file that-bro Gillette, a good resource. ANYWAY. I asked him if he got me anything for my birthday to which he said yes, but I made sure it wasn't a big deal because I did feel kinda bad the year he got me my Utah necklace and I bought myself tickets home. Anyway, I'm holding my ace still, not really getting to go to Time Out last weekend was a GREAT present, but he did come through with a bag of chocolate turtles. Colt LOVED them and told me I better put them away or they were just going to be gone in two seconds. Ha funny kid. Oh and I found about 4 of them stashed in his backpack. Tanner thought they were pretty ok too.

The boys rode around in the wagon and shot the .22 for FHE and we talked about President Nelson's message to the saints in the Northeast for a lesson. We finished the day off with cheesecake. The boys figured if they each got a candle that would make the 3 and I could have 7 on mine. 37...hmmm I don't particularly like the sound of that. Oh well. It was a good day though, even thought we didn't do anything specific to celebrate that day. My friends (all knew my birthday from the week before we might mom set up and started the spoiling) so they were offering right and left to tend so we could go out or something but I kept telling them we'd been celebrating all week-and I had, so we kept it simple.

I snagged these pics of the boys playing together and reading together yesterday...sometimes I just need a little reminder that its not all fights!

Oh and the boys talked me into the library yesterday. It was Lego day! Who knew? They were in Heaven, and I thought...why can't we just donate ours and then come play with them here once a month??? There were TONS but my guys especially liked the lego cannons. 😊

Today the bug man came...lets call that another birthday present. Isaac said "but we probably won't keep having them come back right?" I thought uhhhh we could have sprayed ourselves any time since April and we haven't. Soooo the jury is still out of that one but I'm pretty convinced my sanity is worth it. Anyway while they were spraying inside they boys and I went outside and I had my camera in the car so we ended up taking pictures just for fun. Its crazy how different they look when I load them on the blog but...when I was looking through them on the computer these were a few of me favorites.

I'm sure there's more. I went to RS enrichment, we tried to go to a soccer game but didn't last, the young man in our ward wasn't playing anyway so we didn't care. Isaac filled in as the seminary teacher twice this week. He rented a skid steer tonight so he is STILL dealing with that stupid project property. When I took the boys over tonight we couldn't find him but his phone is dead. So who knows??? I don't know what all...
I know we moved in June and my journal journal is still packed away in a box...I think its the box in my bedroom...but I know I'm losing the details of the days! Also its easier to keep the blog the happy little family journal when I have a different place where I write some of the more frustrating parts of life. Writing things out is just good for me. Soooo I probably need to get that out! Any in the meantime forgive me if a little grouchiness seems to slip in here and there.

Until next week...

A busy week! 

We did go to Mt Pleasant and help with the clean up project, the plan was to come back while Isaac headed over to mtgs but at the mention of Nauvoo the boys begged to go (I love that they love it there) so we did. We got home late and it was a long day and eating a lot  of fast food (or convienent store pizza) but we had a blast so we’ll count that as a win, and worry about gut health later. 

Never seen Isaac in so much protective equipment? Me either!! It was required though and they supplied it. It reminded me of my firefighting days. That poor guy though, there were two cemetaries we were working at but they sent all the families with kids to one because there were less of the really dangerous trees with snags and such. But there was still a ton to cut and he ended up being the only chainsaw guy!! The other place had 12-15 or so! So he stayed busy, and we helped the best we could dragging limbs and such. He did admit to having a sore forearm afterward. The kids did good...but only lasted so long before they were building tunnels through the piles and such. Before they tuckered out on us, As we walked from one tree to another Cannon said “I love doing service.” I just thought: good enough, mission accomplished! 

After Mt Pleasant we headed for Nauvoo, not the original plan but the boys knew Isaac was going and didn’t want to miss out. And it worked out perfect because Uncle Bryan was there setting up for the face to face so we got to see him and got a special tour! It was awesome






After that we met back up with the Lingwall’s and we found the Droste’s our walking the new baby calves they are training. The boys loved it! And after that adventure we found the Williams kids-it was a great day! 

Sunday we went for a walk, Monday Isaac wanted to fire up our fireplace-he totally smoked us out because it wasn’t cleaned out. 

Wednesday my mom plotted with my friends and Cassie and I hung out while Michelle tended my kids. Manicure...not really my thing. But we still had fun.

I took this next pic as proof I try! But really our house is always a disaster! 

And finally tonight I’m in Des Moines with a bunch of gals from the 1st ward going to Time Out for Wonen. So far it’s a blast. I’m sure my guys are having fun too. 

Oh and another bat. Ug!!!! But we had the bat man there today—best money we’ve spent in a long time!!!

Until next week...

So the bat disaster last week...wasn't a fluke. Sunday night we woke up from being buzzed by one of those little suckers. Isaac went in to pee before he took care of it--and found another one. Bats aren't his thing. At one point he said "Hey do you want to do this? I haven't heard you scream." I answered "No" and explained that me mumbling curse words while hiding under the covers was my version of a scream.
Yikes.
Thankfully Monday was Labor day and he had it off. So he got the sheetrock up in the laundry hallway. Oh because ultimately what happened was he did catch and get rid of the one in the bathroom--he thought he had the other one corned in the workroom and just opened the window trick again, but he didn't. And that morning he found it upstairs and...its a long story and I really would need pictures to do it justice but ultimately he did catch it. Walk clear out away from the house and threw it then watched the little sucker fly right back into our basement. I haven't been down there since. But it started more projects--like we're ever at a loss for projects. But he got that sheetrock up so it was an open hole from down there and started working on that french door that is busted. We haven't had bats since but I was still ready to light a match to this stupid place and walk away!! This "farmhouse" is turning me into a city gal QUICK. And I hate spiders, just for the record.
It was a nightmare.  

Jumping back to the weekend, we hit home depot day, then it was a day FULL of getting ready for the ward BBQ out at Bishop Sorhus's house. It was a long day but I think everyone had fun.

Other than that it feel like it was really a slow week. Well we're finally making progress in the potty training land, I guess that's noteworthy. And everything Tanner says is funny, but I can't document it all. My favorite thing he says right now is "ooo thank you mommy" It comes with fair amount of not so cute things too--but that's my favorite.
Tonight we vetoed the Mormon Helping Hands (do we still call it that?) project up in Iowa because it was supposed to rain the whole time, but when I got back from the 1st ward activity tonight Isaac said he had rechecked the weather and we might be back on.

Other pics: 

When dad was gone church’n it on Sunday night, we found a treat recipe in the friend magazine. 

And we might be venturing into Halloween stuff-they want to be paw patrol pups, of course. But Colt wants a big long teeth on the sides cuz that’s what Belle has (“and her is a real dog”🤣) so...how bout these. 

And I took this next pic about 20 minutes too early-before there were 6 more papers that looked like the one in front of Tanner. Our kitchen table looks like this pretty much every day. And we are always excited to go get our Cann man! 



Picking apples at our neighbors.

Hunting flies with the Salt gun. Ug we have so many flies!