A Glimpse into my Life.

On the way up to Yellowstone, we stopped at Bear World in Rexburg, Idaho. It was pretty interesting, because by stopping by there before we actually got to Yellowstone, the kidlets got to see some of the predators that live in Yellowstone, but are sometimes hard to see.

All I could think about when I saw this bear is: "Look for the bear necessities, the simple bear necessities, forget about your worries and your cares..."

This is why my daughter now rawrs like a predator. As long as it's a bear, cougar, lion, dinosaur, etc al. she gets it right. If you ask her what a cow, dog, cat, horse, bird, or frog says she still rawrs.

They had a couple of wolves in with the bears, and they didn't seem to mind eachother too much, except when it came time for food. Then the wolves didn't want to share.

This little guy decided to get a little up close and personal. I think we're BFF now, or at least my car is his BFF. We sustained only a few scratches to the paint, and a few on the driver's side hubcab. Not too bad, considering he tried to open the driver's door to the van and since he couldn't, he decided to try the passenger door. I hate pictures where you see the reflection from inside, but it was the only one where you could see what was going on, and they don't allow you to drive with your windows down for obvious safety reasons.

Uh oh! Caught by the wildlife keepers! Time to book it! I seriously thought he was going to take the side mirror as a souvenir!

Rynie captioned this one: "I'm love it because the bear is sitting up saying I'm here, I'm here!"

It was really interesting to watch the bears come up to the feeding truck and be fed. Some of them would even wave at the people on the truck that were feeding them.



Some albino elk!

Well, you all knew I could, but did you know I have a budding fashionista on my hands? I really do. She normally picks which flower (pretty) goes in her hair everyday, and she loves to combine red and pink. If she's wearing a red dress, she likes pink tights and if she is wearing pink, she wants red tights. But yesterday and today... Look out world, she's come up with some interesting combinations.

As she shows off her ensemble, she is wearing her winter hat, two different gloves belonging to Rynie, his bathrobe, two small belts of mine, and topped off with her suede booties.

She got her glove stuck in the too big sleeve!

Taking a break, it's hard work picking your own outfits!

A little big camera shy and grumpy. It's almost naptime so she is trying to tell us how she's feeling about life.

Okay, I'll cooperate! What you can't see are all the flowers on the back of her head.

And yes, that is yesterday's belt making its reappearance as a necklace today.

Really, do you think we could have got a few more flowers in there?

She is wearing the dress that we got her the last time we went to Scotland. Since Rynie left his water pistols laying around, they are fair game.

Little Miss, never a dull moment!

So, some days I wonder if I am a crazy mom or not. Not in the sense that anything remotely bad happens, but we'll get something for the kids that in hindsight seems a bit odd and after they've used it for a while I wonder what I've committed myself to. Also, I seem to be the only 'adult girl' I know who chases after livestock and wildlife in skirts and dresses.

Case in point #1:

Rynie worked very hard to keep his fingers out of his mouth and it took him almost 2 months, but he earned himself a mini set of bagpipes! Now most people might find that a bit odd, but it was something he's wanted since he found out that Scotland existed and they had bagpipes, so I thought it would be a good incentive for him to break a habit that I'm not particularly fond of. Now, he knows how to fill up the bladder on it, and use his mouth and arm to make noise, but he can't get notes done yet. It sure makes a lot of noise! We've had to put the rule of not playing it while anyone is asleep, because he wants to play through naptime for Little Miss! Little Miss wanted in on the action, so she picks up the bagpipes any which way, and then she hums to try and make the right sound. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of him playing yet, nor of Little Miss playing, but soon!

Case in point #2:
Brownie points to anyone who knows what this little guy is! We came home from Church a few weeks ago and this guy was holed up under our back steps!

Here is Dad trying to get the marmot out from under the back steps and the grill so we could use it!
Rynie and I made up part of the guard detail to try and 'herd' it in the right direction.

The marmot sure scared the bunny though. Since it was running everywhere, the bunny didn't know where to hide so she just held completely still and hoped for the best!

Finally! It is heading for freedom!

Thankfully, he hasn't been back to visit. Spitfire was outside while this was going on and was very vocal in her displeasure over the uninvited houseguest!

In other news, we found out that Baby #3 is a little boy! Rynie is so excited to have a little brother to play with. He has been making plans for them to play Army guys, trucks, robots, fire-guys, you name it, they are going to do it. I've been trying to explain that this little man won't be up for doing rough and tumble for a little while and I hope that theory is sinking in. Little Miss on the other hand, was in denial for a bit. She thought we were getting another kitty for some reason. Lately though, she's warming up to the idea, but I think it'll still be an adjustment for her more so than Rynie.

Playing with your big brother is serious business!

I love that Little Mister looks a bit surprised at whatever Little Miss is doing with her cars.

Little Miss is watching to make sure Little Mister knows the rules of the road!

I'm not sure what she's looking for, but this seems to be her preferred method of trying to find things. If she can be upside down and looking from above, all the better!

I don't know that she found it, but I just love her hair and questioning expression in this one.

Easter morning, Little Miss decided she wanted to be the Easter Bunny and laid a trail of chocolate eggs for everyone to find.

I love the look of contentment on his face as he's eating his chocolate.

Par for the course! Don't touch my chocolate, and I WILL make a mess of everything while I eat.

She inhaled the ears on her bunny in about 3 minutes. We were chatting with Floolie on the computer and suddenly Little Miss pulled the bunny back and the ears were all gone!

Little Miss wants to be a big girl so much. She is always trying on our shoes, and found her Dad's work boots one morning. They go well with the pajamas.

Yes, I'm sure that is a shock to everyone. This is just a quick update to say we are all still alive here, and the crazy is settling down to a manageable level and I'm working on organizing pictures to do some blog posts with actual content.

A quick run down of what is happening/what has happened since Christmas:

Rynie ended up pretty sick, then he shared with the rest of the family. I ended up sick for almost 2 weeks and it took a while to get back on my feet. It's no fun being sick over Christmas! At least he was better before Christmas and Hubby wasn't sick until the beginning of January.

My dad came into town for work in mid-January. He wanted to take Rynie home with him to Scotland so they were off and flying. Little Miss and I followed a week later. We ended up staying until almost the end of February. It was a wonderful break from life and Winter in Utah. Hubby had to stay home because of school and work.


When Hubby was sick in January, his immune system decided it didn't want to stop fighting, so it turned on his skin and gave him a severe case of psoriasis. He is having to use a pine tar soap, take pine tar baths and slather lotion to try and keep it under control. Plus the initial doctor gave him some steroid pills to try and knock it out, which works pretty well with mild cases, but made his flare really bad. The dermatologist has been giving him weekly shots, and after 3 of those, he is starting to lose his leper look. It'll take another 2-3 months for him to finish healing from this.

Last week, Little Miss became really sick. Throwing up, fever, lethargic, and other nastiness. We ended up taking her to the Emergency Room because we were concerned that she'd become dehydrated, and they put 800 ml of fluid in her and had to give her anti nausea tablets that I had to put under her tongue. It really helped, and we are on the mend from that. It's going to take awhile before she gets her body back to normal function though. I lost track at around 20 loads of laundry for that week. That is really not an exaggeration, some of her stuff had to be washed two or three times to get it back into usable condition.


Tuesday night, we got a call from my mom's tenants, the washing machine was broken and flooded the main level and basement of her house. A valve broke on the washing machine, and they'd thrown a load of towels in to wash before they left for work. The machine ran all day long. We've spent the past day doing clean up and damage control. It's involved moving furniture, ripping out carpet and carpet pad, and getting fans to dry everything out. I've spent a decent amount of time talking to insurance people today and getting things ready for the adjuster to come and look things over.

The best news for last though! We are expecting again. This little critter will be here sometime in August. Rynie is so excited and can't wait to get another sibling. Little Miss just really doesn't care one way or another, but I think she's in for a rude awakening. She is quite the mama's girl and doesn't like to share me with Rynie or the cat much, but will grudgingly do it sometimes. Things are going well, and if we want to, we find out what we are having at the end of the month.



Time to dash and get ready for a date with Hubby and make dinner for the kidlets. Ta ta for now!

I love snow. I love the crisp air, the frost patterns on the windows, and when we are lucky enough, icicles hanging off of anything and everything. Rynie and I took some pictures when we had the farrier trim the horses hooves last week and here they are. It was about 0°F/-18°C that day but beautiful in spite of the cold.



I did get my car stuck in a snow drift, but thank goodness it was easy to dig out. Rynie had fun taking pictures to show Hubby how stuck we were.



Here he is surveying the car to make sure there was no damage to it.



I love going out to my parents' old house. The views are incredible, and I love to watch the seasons change on the mountains.












Even though it was freezing, it ended up being a very good day with an awesome little helper guy.

We have been decorating our house for Christmas and even though we are not done yet (really, how much more can we do?) we have a lot of stuff done. The tree still needs the gingerbread people put on it, but they are made. The gingerbread house is being finished as I am typing, and the cat hasn't eaten too much of the popcorn off the garlands.

Rynie is studiously concentrating on coloring his gingerbread boys and girls.

And here are two of Rynie's people!

Little Miss is doing something. I wasn't fast enough to get her coloring her gingerbread girl, but she sure was fascinated with getting to use markers.



Here are some of our finished gingerbread people. They were a lot of fun to do!

Here is Little Miss admiring the Christmas tree. She kept pulling the jingle bells and bows off the tree and trying to put them back on. She was completely fascinated with the tree and lights.



Here is Rynie's cheerleader. She isn't sure she likes what we are doing with the gingerbread house, but she'll watch and clap.

Here is the gingerbread house:









I'm not really sure what the fixation with green windows was, but hey, Rynie enjoyed it!