July Happenings

Our wildflowers in full bloom.

I'd love to have a miniature horse like this little one!

Hiking to White Pine lake.

First Day of High School

Can't miss a first day without a picture in front of the infamous yellow slide.

Where has all the time gone?

Look at this little squirt!
She was always all about, I can do it too!

Time just flies by. Daphne was almost 16, Jared was 13, Kaleb was 9 and
Victoria was about to turn 5.
And Victoria is still saying,
I can do it!

High Creek Waterfall

It's only 5 miles they say....

What they didn't mention was that it was up hill the entire way!

It was still worth it though.

We lost Kirk and Daphne for a while since they were the caboose.

Kirk had a migraine headache. Literally.

He also has Fear of Missing Out. Which is why he went on this strenuous hike,

With a Headache!!

Jasper ran out in front to run along this log until he got half way across and realized there was deep water rushing underneath! Then he back tracked until he reached Jared who wouldn't let him pass.

He took one look at Jared and figured he better just go across.

Jared has a threat of authority over that poor dog without even trying.

 I think he makes Jasper nervous.

He got over it pretty fast, and moved on.

Then he waited for the rest of us to come over. 

He wouldn't leave that spot until we were safely on his side.

I wonder what he was thinking.

These three hike fast! I could barely keep up with them.

Half the time I was alone in my own thoughts enjoying nature.

This waterfall was really pretty but in complete shade so 

I couldn't get a decent picture...not that it would have turned out. 

Daphne smiling after a bit of rest.

We hiked up to the mouth of the spring. There was a ton of water coming out of this hole at Kaleb's feet. We filled up all our water bottles. It was the best tasting water I have ever tasted. It didn't taste like anything, just clean fresh water.

Lame-O Camping

I demanded a camping trip to somewhere peaceful and quiet, 

next to water, under some trees.

I didn't win. Kirk was too tired and didn't want to go anywhere for the weekend

so we stayed at home. He did pull the trailer over to the trees for me to stay in.

I was determined to spend the entire weekend outside.

I succeeded at that complete with cooking out and a campfire.

It's crazy what you will settle for when you are desperate.

I was desperate to stay put and spend it outside.

I left my phone in the house all weekend.

It was actually kind of nice.

I did run an extension cord to our electric griddle. It did make flipping pancakes a little easier.

The turkeys and the chickens were a little bummed because we didn't let them out all weekend. So they would stand at the gate and STARE at us the entire time.

I felt bad...for a moment.

Terrain Race

Kaleb ran his first Terrain Race in August. It was 3 miles long with a bunch of difficult obstacles.

Did I mention it was in the mud? 

Just before he left I had asked him if he was going to bring a change of clothes.

He debated and then ran up stairs to grab some.

I'm glad he did!!

It's Fair Week

I am the head leader of the 

Cache County 4H Dog Program.

And you can tell when it is fair week when we have ribbons all over our dining room table.

It is so much fun but tons of work. I think it is worth it. The kids grow so much during the year working with their dogs. They show so much progress and then who knows how the dogs will act at the fair. It can be quite a gamble.

We started the week off with the Dairy Goat show.

Both the girls are showing their goats this year. This is a first. In the past they told us we couldn't because our goats have horns and then we found out that they can. 

Daphne is showing Paisley in the Open show. She received 6th place. It was a good start and now she knows what to do next time. I think she is hooked.

We had to shave them for the first time ever.
They actually liked it. Lizzy acted like she was at a spa.

I think they look cute together.

Daphne actually bought Paisley from Victoria.

Daphne did great her first time showing an animal.

Paisley is a really noisey goat...AND we discovered that she was still nursing on her Mama even though we had separated them. So she wasn't too happy being separated from Lizzy when Daphne took her to the show ring.

Victoria was warming up her little golden girl, Bonnie.

Bonnie is a total bottle baby. She was the last one out and not super strong when she was born, so Bonnie will follow Victoria everywhere. She just looked around, like, what are we doing next?

They were getting in a last minute cuddle before it was their turn.

We observed the need for positive reinforcement training by the other handlers with their goats.

It was hard to not critique their handling abilities? I had to stop watching. Just because these animals are livestock, does not mean that they can't think. These animals are smart, it ends up being that the handler is the one that is dumb.

Lizzy hanging out waiting for the Dam/Daughter category. Victoria showed them even though her udders were lopsided from Paisley sneaking nips of milk. Her milk was supposed to be dried up by then....obviously not. They still did really well though. They placed 3rd.

Victoria and Bonnie placed Reserve Champion in Showmanship.

You would think that for someone who breeds and raises goats, that she wouldn't hang all her ribbons on the corner of the goat pen. Lizzy ate all the ribbons down to the metal ring, including the rosette ribbons. I took the strings up to the judges table. I didn't have to say a word. Everyone was laughing because they knew exactly what had happened. Victoria got all her ribbons replaced.

I just have to shake my head. 

Maybe these kinds of things only happen once.

We then moved on to Dog Obedience and Showmanship to end the week with Rally and Agility!

Kaleb, this year, having graduated from the 4H Dog program over a year ago was our obedience judge. He LOVED it and the kids LOVED him! We have missed Kaleb so much in 4H. He was my right hand man with EVERYTHING! Well, we have discovered that Kaleb cloned himself in Blake. Blake is now my right hand man. He is always there to help with equipment or wrangling dogs. It is crazy how alike Kaleb and Blake are.

Victoria was so worried that Jasper wouldn't behave with Kaleb judging. So Kaleb stepped out of the ring and said hi to Jasper so he would be calm when he was in the ring. It worked. Looked how good he is behaving? 

This dog was created for agility!

He did awesome. He is so close to being off-leash. 

Jasper is such a good dog. He wants to please Victoria. I can see it in his face right here.

There is so much that goes in to the fair and running all the events.  I love organizing it to leave the dog things to our experts, Jill and Rachael. They are awesome! Our family loves them!

This shot is awesome how he tucks his feet to jump 24 in.

He got tired on the second day and didn't want to jump so Victoria actually chose to take the point deduction on her time as a major deduction for dropping a jump height and they still placed really high in their division.

The kids run the dogs in three types of agility events. One is Standard with a regular obstacle course of 10-12 obstacles. They have one minute to run the course without faults. If your dog runs past the obstacle or knocks something over then you get a fault on your time. Victoria is experienced but Jasper is only 2 so he still has a ways to go with training. They do really well together. Victoria was super frustrated with this particular run and Jasper was feeling it. So at the end, rather than running out of the show ring, Victoria got down and played with him for a couple minutes. I had tears in my eyes. She let him know that it was okay that he wasn't listening to her. That she still loved him.

He was better after that. He is such a good boy.

Our dog expert Jill, made her an example of how to treat your dog even if it isn't going well.

Okay, so I forgot to finish the three types of agility. Standard is a regular obstacle course with all kinds of jumps, tunnels, a dog walk, an A frame, a teeter. FAST is really fun. You put a bunch of obstacles out and each one is worth a different point. So jumps are worth 1 point, and tunnels are worth 5 points, and contacts like a teeter is worth 10 points. So the kids have 30 seconds to collect as many points as they can by going over the equipment. I like this one the best. And then the last type of course is the JWT course, which is Jumps with Tunnels. So the course will have all types of jumps and several tunnels. This one goes really fast. Most dogs like the tunnels so sometimes the kids have a hard time getting them out of the tunnel. It gets pretty comical sometimes.

On Saturday night while we were all totaling up scores and figuring placements, we have family run the dogs and see if they can beat the handlers scores. It is actually quite comical watching mom's running with the dogs. Most times the dogs cooperate with Mom's. We handed out all blue ribbons for family running with their dogs. It it wasn't for the parents, the kids wouldn't be where they are today. So Mom's and Dad's, brothers...etc....deserve a blue ribbon.

Kaleb ran with Jasper. Jasper LOVED it. He acted like they were doing something super exciting because Kaleb, in his true form, was very loud and exciting. At the end he yelled out 

YAY WIGAMAPOO! Which is his nickname he made for Jasper to irritate his sister.

You gotta love brothers!

This was an awesome group of kids!

I think I say this every year.
Of course my daughter is the only one that is behind someones head.
Oh well.

Camping vs. New Door

I had camping on the agenda for the weekend and the boys had...

install the new basement door agenda.

Guess who won?!

Kaleb cracks me up with his old costume shirt of Chick-fil-A. He painted that during my art class one day. He put a cow bell on Sammy to be a cow. It was pretty funny. So I looked at this all day.

It was worth it because they installed the beautifully etched glass door to the basement that used to be to the garage. Now we get to see it lit up with light coming from the outside basement door.

I kept my contractors well fed and happy while they worked.

It was worth missing a camping trip.....

Bear Lake

Probably the best part of Summer is hanging out at Bear Lake.

I love it when it is warm and breezy but it isn't too bad either on the cold days at the 

beginning of the season either.

Daphne enjoys coming if her kayak comes too. The kayak solves some sensory issues that she has with the water. It allows her to hang out with the rest of us if we are floating around being totally lazy....notice that Kirk has TWO tubes.

The two Grandmas.

We had a very cold June. Of course we picked the coldest day of the week to go to the lake.

We can't sneak away without Nana tagging along. She says it's the next best thing to the beach, just no salt or seaweed. We even have seagulls. Yeah! I know....what are seagulls doing here, but they are. Fighting over food in a bag just like anywhere else.

On this particularly cold day, the kids decided to still go swimming. They all got hypothermia. Kaleb pulled out his emergency blanket to warm up. He said it really worked. He looks like ET.

Jared, trying out Victoria's paddle board.

It's crazy how shallow the water is right there. 

Boats can pull up to shore to where you just walk out to them.

Kaleb and Michael making themselves very small to warm up.

The conversations that day were pretty hilarious.

The three boys get pretty whacky at times.