Happy Birthday Jasper

Jasper turned 4, June 16th. Victoria baked him a dog friendly cake. It had yougart, peanut butter and banana and then all the regular ingredients for a cake. She was all excited. She frosted it with a peanut butter frosting. It smelled really weird when it was baking but either way, she was excited to have birthday cake with Jasper. Heehee.

Jasper is literally her best friend. She will do anything for Jasper. Since her head injury, he has become very protective of her. It has been interesting to see how it all happened. He knows when she isn't feeling well. He's sensitive that way.

Jasper loved his cake. He thought it was delicious!!

Victoria was determined to enjoy birthday cake with Jasper. So she got out plates and was wanting to serve up cake to everyone. I declined. I just couldn't bring myself to eat Peanut butter cake. That's just too weird. But Victoria was all in to eating cake, until the first bite. I love the look on Jasper's face. It's priceless. He saying, "Don't you like it Victoria? It's really good huh?"

She almost died, it tasted so weird. Not quite what she was expecting which made us laugh all the more. Jared, who can eat almost anything, just had to try a piece of cake. He is so heavy handed with Jasper. He will grab him and not let him go, freaking Jasper out. Henry used to love it when Jared did that but Jasper is always not sure about anything Jared does. So I thought it was funny the way Jasper is watching Jared eat his cake!

Jasper looks pretty satisfied that Jared ate his cake!

 

4-Her of the Week

Victoria is awesome!

She was nominated 4-Her of the Week in Cache County.

She is in 4-H Teen Council

She is in the Cache County 4-H Dog Program (8 years)

She is a Teen Leader in the Dog Program

AND, she is working on her State Ambassador project to hopefully become a Utah State Ambassador.

I think leadership positions run in the family.

 

Baby Goats are the BEST

Mama Paisley is a pretty noisy gal. She is extremely talkative. She was literally born hollering! So when she was about to give birth, I left my window open as usual to listen for her hollering. Lizzy always cried out when she was giving birth so I figured that for sure Paisley would be really loud.

I thought wrong. She was as quiet as can be. Whenever baby goats are due to be born, I barely sleep. I wake at the slightest sound. Paisley was super quiet, never made a peep. And then I heard the tiniest little baby sound. I jumped out of bed announcing...We have babies!!! Victoria and I ran outside to help if needed. Paisley had given birth to all 3 of her babies. All by herself! I was so impressed. And they were all so quiet. 

This is Sebastian. He looks the most like Jacks. Victoria taught him to fist bump on his third day of life.

This little cutie looks just like Mama Paisley, so we named her Petunia. She was probably the most vocal out of the three.

This little guy is Ollie. He was the smallest and ended up growing to be the largest. We, at first thought we were going to have to bottle feed this one. We didn't think Paisley could feed three babies. She actually did and they grew big and strong. Paisley turned out to be a really good Mama Goat. I'm proud of her.
 

Sprinkler Fun

This is Jasper and MerkTavitch's favorite thing to do.

Play in the sprinklers.

We have done lots of recall training using the sprinklers. They are both getting a little better at it.

These sprinklers pump out a ton of water out of the canal behind our property so they are instantly drenched. The grass greened up pretty fast, once we started watering it.

 

Grandma and Grandpa Headley

We don't see Grandma and Grandpa Headley very often. I nabbed this photo off Facebook. I think Jen or Scott Headley posted it. I thought it was cute. I can't remember the last time Kirk and I walked holding hands. There is always something getting in the way, dogs, conversations, speed....

They live in Grayeagle, California. It's a dry forest with huge pine trees. Beautiful and warm.

I look at how small they are as people and wonder how in the world Kirk grew to be a big guy, 6ft tall? 
 

Nap Time

This is where we find Victoria when a storm is approaching. Since her head injury, she has developed Dysautonomia. When the barometric pressure rises or falls with storms, it wrecks havoc with Victoria's body. She feels like either the air is pressing into her body or she feels really loopy and loose, losing her balance. Life for this girl is not fair. She didn't ask for this. She didn't ask for part of her cerebellum to grow down her brain stem and put an end to competitive figure skating. Most of her friends have no idea what she has sacrificed. So this is where she camps out, holding her head. Headaches, brain fog, hard to speak, hard to think, totally exhausted....that's her life. 
Sammy has become her napping friend. We are pretty sure he misses Henry. He has become clingy just like Henry did when he was about Sam's age now. Dementia has set in. We find him wandering down the street and around the corner if we don't keep an eye on him. When we approach him, he doesn't seem to know who we are sometimes. It's frightening to see that clueless look in his eye. We love him and will protect him to the very end. 

 

The Patterson Family

Our little kids are all grown up.

Timmy and Jared used to play swords together. I used to hold Catherine and play with little baby toys, and serve her ice cream. Her favorite. Mary wasn't able to come. She and Daphne would have loved visiting and catching up.

It was so fun! We literally started where we left off. Literally!! We haven't seen each other for 10 years!!

All those years of homeschooling together. All the way back to Alemany High School. All the way back to 4 years of Homeroom, with me, Pamela Thomas, sitting behind Maryanne Thomas. It was the highlight of my days spent in High School. 

We had lots of fun together. And then we got married and had children. And had lots more fun!

They were only supposed to stay and visit for a couple hours. They were on their way from Yellowstone down to Zion. Of course in true Headley - Patterson fashion, we talked and talked and laughed. There was never a lul in the conversation. The kids never stopped talking! It was awesome.

We are the same....just older.  Something really neat, Daphne and Maryanne share the same Birthday of October 25th. Oh and John too. 

We were so sad to see them go but thrilled to have had the opportunity to see them here in Utah!

 

It just a small hole

Jared claimed that he needed to drill a small hole to run the wiring. Just a little one. And then he walked in with this drill. What?? NO! That is not going to be a small hole. I just cleaned up ALL of the plaster dust from tearing out the front door and half of the wall! NO, that is going to make a HUGE mess again! I purposely held the shop vac right next to the hole being drilled. Jared was so tolerant. He didn't get totally annoyed with me trying to keep everything clean. I know he says the things he says just to tease me. I love him. He's everything I always imagined him to be.
 

Cache County 4H Dog Camp

I am so impressed with Victoria! She planned out and ran our very first 4H Dog Camp! It was a jam-packed 4 day camp. We had 21 kids and their dogs working on Showmanship, Obedience, Rally and Agility! It was so much fun!
 

Ding - Dongs

Some how Victoria and I got on the topic of Ding-Dongs. I can't remember how or what we were talking about. I told her about the little things that I would sculpt from the little tin foil wrapper, wrapped around a Ding-Dong. Later the same day we happened to be at Lee's Supermarket, so we picked up a box of Ding-Dongs. I have to say that as an adult, I have only bought about two boxes of Ding-Dongs. I just could never feed my kids Ding-Dongs, other than just having the opportunity of trying a Ding-Dong so they had the experience of something that I am sorry to say, I had quite a few growing up. OH! I remember now what we were talking about! I was telling Victoria about the Burro in the middle of Death Valley that was super friendly. He stuck his head through my Mom's window of the Jeep that had zipper windows and nabbed one of our Ding-Dongs and ATE it foil and all!! That's when Victoria claimed to not know what I was talking about because she had never had a Ding-Dong before!

We remedied the situation. Now she has officially had a Ding-Dong.

We both agreed that it wasn't a super significant experience.

Okay, the crazy part was they were a fraction of the original size that I remembered AND they were not wrapped in FOIL! They were teeny and wrapped in clear plastic cellophane!! So dissappointing!
 

Jasper

Sleeping on the wrong bed again!

 

30 Years

May 4th usually comes and goes quickly. It's right in the midst of our busy lives. Usually Kirk is out of town on Workshops for work but ever since Covid, his workshops are online. This year, Kirk was home for our Anniversary. I only knew of one thing we could fit in to celebrate our anniversary this year. We didn't really want to go to a restaurant and sit so we picked up Mexican food, and drove in to Green Canyon. We parked in a camp sight, lit a fire and sat in peace and quiet. It was beautiful. Quiet. Pleasant. And away from all the construction in our house. It was glorious.

I think back as to how we spent our Honeymoon, camping in the Sierras. Of course we would find it peaceful to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary sitting beside a campfire in the Logan Mountains.

Here's to Us, Kirk. We will survive all the life challenges. We are tough, we are resilient. 

We can do this.

 

Spring is in the Air

Brody enjoying the fresh shoots of grass

Nana's 78th Birthday

Playing LIFE with Paige, Jasper and Victoria. Jasper just had to sit next to Paige. It was cute.

Merky got a bath!

This is probably the most exciting news of the year! The 4H office got us a 12 ft trailer for all of the Dog agility equipment!! It is so awesome to have a trailer for all of our 4H stuff!!!

The most beautiful sign of Spring.....peach blossoms on our young trees, which means they will have lots of peaches. They did in fact, have lots of delicious peaches. We ate them all. No need to can, we just ate them. Unfortunately, our two apricot trees did not survive. They got their blossoms and then it snowed. Froze the tree. Killed them both. I am hunting for late blooming apricots now. Ones that will bloom after the threat of snow.
 

Nap Time

Kaleb walked in from work exhausted. I turned around and saw him sleeping with Merk on the dog bed.
 

Barn Yard

It has been so long since I have been posting on our blog that it's always a surprise to come across photos that I don't remember taking. Every winter, I grow sprouts for the girls. They get so happy when they see me coming with their pan of sprouts.

 I love how Blossom the bunny is hanging out with the does sunning themselves. They have adapted quite well. Blossom will eat out of the same bin of alfalfa as the does do and they don't seem to mind.

Sneaky Jasper

 Jasper is so big that when we tell him it's time to go to bed, he just jumps into Victoria's bed like it's his own. He takes up almost the entire bed! I walked in and found him peeking out from under her quilt.

Home Alone

 It is a rare chance that I am home alone! Victoria is the instigator tonight and got the boys and Kirk to go see the new James Bond movie. The first thing Kirk said was that I wasn't going to be home alone. Yes, I will because Daphne, is so quiet that it is like being Home Alone. She is the only one of the kids I can do this with. So Daphne is home alone as well....doing her thing....quietly in her room. So other than the racket of noise that MerkTavitch and Jasper are up to in the dining room, I am all alone.