Happy Thanksgiving

Just like that were smack in the middle of the holidays. 

We actually had the most chill thanksgiving ever and it was nice. I kept saying I was going to buy my kids off with any box of cereal they wanted but in the ended we made ham (I don’t like turkey) and mashed potatoes-tortured them with green beens-rolls and apple pie (both frozen) I forgot to make the stuffing. Oh well. Of course we can’t have a holiday without a project 🙄 🤣

Anyway 

I better back up—last weekend we went to Bro Morlan’s funeral then Tanners basketball game. That was a lot for Seth. The bigger boys could handle it a little better. 

That night Isaac had to go to a play for one of the YW (I did NOT volunteer to go with) the boys and I had a family fun night with out him. Colt wanted to make caramel apples 



Pretty much a flop-but a tasty one- we’ll get better. 

We tried again tonight 

Back to Saturday though Cann and I were pretty excited to watch the Utah Oregon football game. I bought a little $10 antenna for our TV and…I probably shouldn’t have. (Really we’ve still only watched 2 foot all games but….we made it so long without and I prided myself on us not having TV. )  anyway it was fun-but way too late. Whoops. 

Sunday Isaac was busy all day it’s getting to be tithing settlement time but the boys and I went over to Riz’s grave. I just don’t go as often when it’s cold and I miss it, and if I’m honest this time of year is a little tough-and January is coming. 

When Isaac did come home he brought that stupid rooster in the house! He was bringing it for Seth to pet! Seth was asleep (it was way too late for a power nap but I was so glad he was asleep) I shooed Isaac out as fast as I could. He then took Roosty down to our neighbors! Thank heaven! Seth is still afraid of the chickens even though they’re not mean but it was time for Roosty to go-I was so sick of dealing with screaming kids that had been attacked by that rooster. 

Monday was a heck of a day but we did sneak in a little lunch date. Isaac had the whole week off but it still sure seems like he’s been busy.

Tuesday the boys came hone with a loot of Thanksgiving school projects

Tanners teacher is the BEST at sending me fun things like this 😊

Since Wednesday with no school the 3D pens have been out in full force. (So have the messes) 



We got to hang out with the Moody kids for a couple hours cuz their little sister came! My kids were TOTALLY hoping for a sleepover but she came too fast and their dad came and got them. 

Then I kinda already wrote about thanksgiving.

These guys wanted to help clean-I said something about picking up the toys in the living room but that wasn’t what they had in mind. Hmm

Then just a man and his Chickens! 

Bout it! 

So remember the movie Mrs. Doubtfire? When Robin Williams say “Do you ever want to freeze frame a single moment in your life, look at it, and say ‘this is not my life!’”

Scratch the single moment-try all week- and it’s probably the perfect quote for the week.😏

Isaac took the youth to an activity Sat morning. It ended up being good they went to Carthage and also up Nauvoo but the activity was volleyball in Macomb and they didn’t want to play. Seems like a long way to go for something you didn’t want ton participate in. 

But I did smile when the stake YW president sent me this. Why make two trips when you can carry 30 pizza boxes at once? So maybe he drove 3 hours each way to be the garbage man? 

Whatever. I took all 4 boys to Tanners YMCA game they were running about an hour and 15 minutes behind so that was miserable! Then the game was…well kindof miserable too. Tanners the youngest on his team and he plays kids all Colt’s age so it’s kinda ugly. 

The first pic is not so bad-the next one was more realistic. He brought the ball up the court this possession, and probably only touched it one other time all game 

I don’t know what else. 

Well I know one thing but it doesn’t need to go here😏

We survived Sunday -we actually it was the primary program and the boys did awesome! So that was fun-and awesome that both grandmas could join in via zoom. I never heard anything about Tanners part until he did it but I videos the other two practicing. Cann’s the only one I got a still shot off 

(I still love that Riz tie) 

https://youtube.com/shorts/qLNvok7nhE8?feature=share

https://youtube.com/shorts/AKG_-TO6q10?feature=share

Then Monday Cannon woke up puking -uggg I’d hoped he would have avoided it but he probably got it the worst. He missed school Monday and Tuesday and didn’t get to go get chickens. 

Isaac came home with 50 chickens. 50! 

He was going to go get them that night then he talked to the guy and he wanted him there before 6. But he had a dept mtg (that usually doesn’t end until 5:30 and the place is 45 min away) I thought he was going to take the trailer-nope, he folded down the seats, got moving boxes from our friends (that gave us the roosters) and our van…the chicken wagon. 

Why can’t we be normal? 

I guess then what would I have to blog about right? 

But why not start with 5 chickens…or 4 -one for each kid? I’ll tell you why, they were like $5 a bird…or something like that-but if you bought at least 50 you got them for $2 a bird.  Of course we didn’t pass up a better deal.  

Heaven help me. 

I refuse to have the chickens I didn’t really want become my responsibility so except that I needed a pic for blog so I finally went down today and snagged this:

Oh and I have them building boxes while dad is in the zoom mtg. 8-10 birds a box 🤣

Anyway he ended up doing the dept mtg via zoom, well the end of it anyway and then his phone completely died. Really you should hear Colt tell the story of him stopping at random houses asking for directions. (Both on the way there and on the way home.) I’m just glad I wasn’t there-for multiple reasons! 
Oh before the chicken fun Isaac and Seth sprayed off his motorcycle! I think he finally finished fixing it Saturday oh yeah it was Saturday or maybe Friday but he fired that thing up and then the carbon monoxide alarms were going off and I was freaking out-it was disaster ?/650 or so but Monday they sprayed it off and Tuesday it was warm enough to ride it. Sweet, at least he got to ride it once. 

Tuesday we had the primary kids out to celebrate the primary program. It takes a lot to trump the zip line but the novelty of the new chickens easily did. The kids were ecstatic -all of them! “It was like an Easter egg hunt, without candy!” 🤣🤣 whatever I mostly stayed by the not so busy zip line. It was fun to have good weather and friends out. 

Wednesday it was the next round of people over, the YM/YW were out and two of Isaac’s students cooked Korean food for them.. 

Probably the coolest thing was thinking of the gal from China who-at least currently- would never hear the gospel in her own country but listening to the YW theme. I thought that part  was cool. It was a super late night though.

Let’s see, Monday late Wednesday late Thursday late (bball) no wonder Tanner is unbearable by tonight! Hopefully he sleeps in! 

Tanner was Kirk’s kid so that was exciting but when his teacher said “tell your mom your good news” at pick up he said it was “we had popcorn and watched a movie in class”  sweet! 

Colt was Kirk’s kid last month and got to bring his picture hone today cuz they were switching them out. 

This evening we left the kids in front of screens and slipped down to Ron Morlan’s viewing. Such a nice man, we’ve been praying for him for a while and we are happy for him to be able to graduate from mortality! We’ll keep praying for his family. His funeral is tomorrow so that means I get to do YMCA basketball with all 4 by myself again. Oh boy! 

I think that’s it. 

Must have been a slow week 

Sat I had a couple pics from Tanner bball and the pics from Cannons football came home with him last Friday. 

I really can’t remember much else from the weekend.

Monday was a late start and we love those! After school that day we did a little open gym at the church. Every. Single. Kid I invited came-plus a few siblings it was so many kids in that tiny gym but I think they were having fun so that’s a win. I also was pumped that I didn’t feel like my team was THAT far behind…but that backfired on me because when we practiced Thursday I was bent on closing that gap and…basically we didn’t have a very good (certainly not fun) practice. Oh well. 

Tuesday Sethy and I got our conference train up-I was pretty pumped about that. It’d been over a year so blame my broken heart whatever we’re glad it’s back. I like studying the conference talks and I really like being able to put faces with them. We also put up a little Thankful tree 😊

Colt was sick one day this week-Seth was sure he was just home to entertain him. Colt was pretty happy to go back to school! 

The only other thing I have pics of this week is Isaac working on his motorcycle. All summer long!!! It’s been down there-trust me the pics do not do the mess justice 😩 I don’t know why he’s so gung-ho all of the sudden (it’s November! We had a skiff of snow today) but whatever! I did fire it up today so something must be going right. 🤷‍♀️

That is really him using my vacuum to suck pieces of a pen he broke off out of the cylinder. There’s a straw taped to the end of it-at one point he asked me if we had any play dough to test if something fit right???

I just shake my head. 

This can NOT be normal! 

His dad used to always say “he knows just enough to make him dangerous” 

I guess so 

Him and YouTube. 

I guess if it keeps him happy who cares??? (Well me when he runs the vacuum in the middle of the night -especially the one we call the “screaming banchi”- but that’s neither her nor there! 

These guys talked me into the library while we were waiting for a Walmart pickup order. It’s fascinating to me the “games” the play with books, but I love it when they play together. 

Just another week. 

I feel like this was a week of raw emotions and it’s the missionaries fault! 2 weeks ago (on the 26-nine months to the day that we found out Riz died) the missionaries asked me if I’d share a story of a trial and how my faith in the Savior got me through it or their Facebook page. I agreed then told Isaac I couldn’t do it-we was like you don’t have to, and you don’t have to do that! But I knew I did. So I mulled it over last week and dealt with it this week. The missionaries said “oh we can come film you” umm over my dead body, no way-I just did it myself. I was done by Tuesday but it was kindof a nightmare getting to them cuz they can’t use YouTube and I couldn’t get anything else to work. When I did upload it to YouTube it got tagged immediately with a copyright claim. I guess even if I bought the songs off of iTunes I still wasn’t supposed to use them on my video (had to be that-I can’t imagine it would have been the conference clips) anyway when I googled it, it said I only bought the right to listen to the songs. 🤦🏼‍♀️ 

Whatever. So I won’t post it here. I don’t know what the missionaries will do with it. At least I’m done. 

Anyway-back to Saturday! 

Isaac took Cannon hunting (so I made some jerky out of the deer meat that was in the freezer from last year—we don’t need more!!)  and tried my hardest to be a fun mom and let (and helped) the kids carve pumpkins. 

Cannon and Isaac went out again in the evening but they didn’t get anything (phew) Monday I heard the story of Cannon not being willing to pull the trigger on a bobcat I guess it was from the morning and it was already 11:00 they weren’t going to see a deer! But it only came up after Cannon was telling me about his buddy going hunting and only coming up with a coyote. 

When Isaac’s students came over one of them left a TON of s’more stuff. I didn’t know what to do with it so we made oven s’mores and took them to his class…Seth helped clean the pan. 

Tan needed a picture of his pets for school 🙄 his sweet teacher (I love her) sent back that she loved getting to see the rooster he’s always writing about. 

We lost Sister Banza to transfers this week-bummer, but that was 7 good months! 

Look how thrilled Isaac is about the selfie 🤣 he’s a terrible faker! (In all things-not just pics) 

Last night Tanner succumb to the flu-bug that has plagued the Primary school. I guess 140 students were out yesterday! Or maybe it was today but at anyway it’s Crazy huh? Luckily Tan is feeling better-hopefully the rest of us can avoid it!! 

Tan getting sick kinda thwarted are temple trip plans but I got the good end of that deal and I went over by myself today. Isaac stayed home with Seth and Tan. They got along just fine-Tan laid pretty low but I don’t think it was too bad, no more puke so he was fine.