Chance and Santa!

Last weekend was Preston's Holiday Festival, complete with a parade of trees and Santa Claus. Chance's daycare had a tree and all the kids had their own ornament on it. It was just Chance and I since Travis was busy hunting so I didn't get a picture of him with the tree. We did go over to Santa's house so I could snap a quick picture of him on Santa's lap.Hopefully this baby comes soon so we can get a picture with Santa and both boys this year, but I am not holding out much hope for that!!

Deer Hunting

Bud, Payton, and Paul Juilfs spent the weekend at Travis and Kerry's so they could go deer hunting with Travis and his group. Bud got the first one on Saturday.



Payton was as proud of it as Bud was! Travis got two late Sunday. Payton shot his gun but didn't get one, and Paul had several shot then a misfire and didn't get one. As you can imagine Payton was full of stories!

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The Happy(?) Family

Why weren't we looking happier????  I know I have an excuse...8 months pregnant, no sleep because I was in the truck with Bud all night trucking, and a lot of work to do for the party.  What was wrong with the rest of you?????????

Family Photo

Sometimes pictures are better than words...

Trina is due on May 6, 2012. She feels pretty terrible all of the time. If it's anything like when she was pregnant with Grayson, she only has to deal with it for the first 20 weeks.

Chance is Two!!

Ok, so he has been two for a little while, but I just got around to taking pictures. Luckily we found a neat little town in New Mexico to stop at for a quick photo shoot. Here are a few samples.




There were lots of "big trucks" going by, so he was always on the look-out for them!

Thanks to Dean and Gay for taking us out to the house at Ute Lake, otherwise we never would have seen this spot!!

This might be a concern for the guys for next year, I think it will be hard for Chance(who lives in Iowa) to take the guys hunting in Texas. Biut ya'll might talk to CHASE (who lives in Texas) to take them hunting . Just a thought to plan by.

A Great Time Hunting!

Bud wants to send out a big thank you to Crossthread and Wingnut Guide Service, and the Graham B &B for a great weekend.



He enjoyed the good company in the evenings too. He would like to make it a yearly event--so get ready Chance and Curtis because he's planning to bring Tanner, Mike, and Kyle in addition to Travis and Clint next year! The only thing he missed was seeing his favorite mother-in-law!
(scribed by Kim in Bud's words!)
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The third post of the day. Kadelynn and Chance playing in Texas.

Kadelynn posing for the camera.

Took a few pics of Chanse'e the other day. She is 6 months according to me , she says she is 24 weeks. Whatever she is pregnant with our first grandson that is the most important thing.

Update

Whew! What a summer we have had!!! We have been very busy! The house is coming along great. Not as fast as I had hoped but it is a process!! Let's see, the main floor is done as of yesterday. Our contractor finally came back yesterday to finish up. Of course he only came back because I called the company. We just have to hang pictures, curtains, and outside lights. We will be moving the rest of the stuff out of the old house this weekend. I don't know where we are going to put everything but we need to get out of there. I just feel a little overwhelmed and in limbo. The basement will get painted this weekend. The mudding and taping will get finished today. Once the basement is painted then we will get the flooring in. So I am guessing it will be a couple weeks yet.

School got off to a great start for Payton, Cael and I. Payton is in the 5th grade, Cael is in 2nd grade and I am working in the library during the mornings and one-on-one with a student in the afternoon. I am glad to be in the library. I love the books! I was sad that I don't get to work with the one student from last year. I enjoyed working with him. But change is usually a good thing. Nate started school on Monday. Today is his second day. The staff had to peel him off of me for me to be able to leave. He does not like change!!! They said that he did great and had fun. I am not to worried about him. It will just take time to adjust. He gets a ride back to his sitter's from a family friend. It went well on Monday but the gentlemen said that Nate didn't say 2 words to him. :( He will be talking his ear off by Christmas! Mike is still on 1st shift. There have been some layoffs but he doesn't seem to worried about them. It is time for the contract to be renegotiated so of course there are tons of rumors floating around.

I will get some pictures taken this weekend and get them posted on Monday.

Announcing!!!!!

Clint surprised Kayla with a diamond today!!!! She said yes!!!



Zoom in to see the beautiful ring on Kayla's pinkie.(it has to be sized)

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What Happens in Chicago Stays in Chicago

Lake house at Ute Lake in Logan New Mexico.

According to Dean this is the front of the house.To everyone else this is the front of the house because it faces the road and the driveway. Dean thinks the back is the front because it faces the lake.

And They Have a House!!

Trilby and Mike's house was delivered in two sections on Wednesday and Thursday last week.  It was quite muddy from all of the rain we've been having so they had to pull at least one of them into the lane with the tractor!  Friday morning they were set to start putting them on the foundation at eight o'clock.  We went to watch about nine, and low and behold, they already had them on the foundation!

The boys enjoyed watching the crane work.  It's down and ready to load in this picture.  This is the front of the house and the side is where the garage will be eventually.

This is the best view of the back that I have.  The door in the basement leads to a hallway between the mechanical room and the bathroom.  The door on the back of the house is wrong, and it will be changed to a patio door.  The open door at this end goes into the mud room where the washer and dryer will be.
Now, the work begins.  The contractor has to do a little drywall, then we can paint.  We have to put down underlayment and then they can lay carpet and linoleum in the first floor when we are done painting.  The electrical and plumbing and heating have to be put in and hooked up.  We have to finish the basement. And the septic has to get done.  Let's hope a lot of people want to work really hard in the next six weeks so they can be moved in by the end of August.

REALLY??

Someone in this photo is an imposter!  Can you spot him/her???  And tell me why???

Chance's Big News!!

Chance has been doing a great job keeping his secret, but the news is out now.
That's right, around December 19th Chance is going to be a big brother!! When you ask him, he usually tells you he wants a puppy. Hope he is happy with a little brother or sister!

Here is NEWS from Dalhart. Chanse'e and Josh will be harvesting a carritt in January. Yes they are expecting. YEA another grandchild for us. They are a little hush hush on names. They have told us the boys name will be Graham, but we don't know if it will be the first or middle name. If it is a girl we don't have a clue what her name will be. Chanse'e has promised that she isn't nameing her the name that she chose in high school,Divinity ( like the Christmas candy) THANK GOODNESS.So the girl's name will be fine as long as it isn't a food group.The blog will not let her post so she let me put it on here for her.YIPPEE number two for Dean and Gay.

The Gimpy Couple

36 years ago these two tied the not!!

Here the are currently!!

This is a belated happy anniversary to Mom and Dad. Although I don't think this is how they really wanted to spend it!! 

Progress!

We stopped over to check on the progress of the basement. This is the back of the basement which will be open and have a door. The "experts" checked things out:

This is the front of the basement. It will be filled in with the house on top.

This is the east side(faces the road), where Payton and Cael will each have a bedroom, hence the egress window wells.

The farm boys were there too.

Nate is showing the view from the southeast corner of the house.

And yes, he went to the ballgame in those shit boots!

Payton is standing (posing, remember he's a fourth grader:) more east than Nate.

Then there is the techno geek  aka, Cael.

This view is south of the house.  You can see Mark and Jeannie's house down the road.

Everyone is excited!  We'll keep you updated.

THEY ARE DIGGING!!!!

The backhoe showed up this morning around 8:30. They started to dig around 11:00. Pat, our contractor just sent me this picture. My sister-in-law also sent me some pictures that I forwarded to Mom. Hopefully she will be able to post them for me. We are going over there tonight to take some more pictures. 

Before.....

Mike has been working his tail off the last two weekends getting fencing ripped out and moved and rebuilt. Our nephew, Trent, came up last weekend and helped him and Payton. This past weekend Mike had plenty of help from Payton, Cael and Nate. Nate took more of a supervisor roll than anything else. I even went over on Saturday afternoon to help pound posts. Mike had to work overtime on Saturday morning, so the boys and I tore out the fence at our house. We only have to pull up the wooden posts and it is done. Mike and I went to the bank last night and signed papers for the construction loan. They are supposed to start digging this week. The house is scheduled to come off the line on June 10. So things are moving. Not fast enough for me but they are progressing. I have taken some before pictures and will get them posted. The land looks different without the fence there! We have started to pack boxes. A little at a time. I have tried to do some things in the boys' rooms but they flip out and think I am getting rid of it instead of just packing it away to move!! 

On a sad note. We had to say goodbye to our cat, Fluffy, 2 weeks ago. We are not sure what happened but think he got into some poison somewhere. Mike had to put him down. The boys are saddened by this and I have found myself looking for him and then remember he is gone. We will not be replacing him anytime soon. I am hoping that I can convince all of them that we don't need any inside pets. I have enough animals in the house with Mike and the boys there!! Maybe a puppy outside but that is down the road. 

The Ultimate Baby-sitter!

The Grahams

Newest Additions

The first weekend in March we traveled to Fort Madison and Payton picked out 4 pigs they are about 55 lbs each. Three boys and a girl. He has a black and white one whose name is Boss Hog, the gilt is named Daisy, the blue butt is named Roscoe, and the white one is named Cletus. Do you detect a theme? Yes he is a fan of Dukes of Hazard. He is really enjoying having them. Nate loves them too. He has become the Dr. Phil of pigs. He will go and sit on the straw bales and talk to them. He also loves to try to shoo them. Of course they don't always listen. :) 

On March 27 Payton and I made a very fast journey to Travis and Kerry's to pick up Trixie. She is a 60 lb angus heifer calf. She is precious and very sweet. Payton is thrilled to have her to start his herd. What farmboy we are raising!! Again, Nate loves her too. On the ride to get Trixie, Payton was talking about changing her name because she was now his calf and there was already a cow named Trixie at the farm but after seeing Chance and hearing him say "bye Rixie" we knew we couldn't change it. 

Payton will be showing the pigs, Trixie and a heifer of his uncle Mark's at the Iowa County Fair. He will also be doing some other projects to display but we haven't decided what yet. We are hoping maybe we can talk Nana and Grandpa into letting us borrow their camper to have there this year. It would save on time and money going back and forth and food. But we haven't brought that up to them yet. We will have to sweet talk them a little. :)

So Payton and Nate love to be at the farm with the animals and being outside helping Mike and all that good stuff.  Nate also takes time to help Grandma Shirley make stuff, cinnamon rolls were on the list last time. Cael likes to be over there too but, and we have Grandpa Bud to thank for this, the first thing Cael does when he gets to the farm is go in the house and ask Grandma for some ice cream and popcorn!! Grandma Shirley doesn't mind. She enjoys having them around and likes to feed anyone who comes over. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise they would never get any food! Just kidding. It seems like we can stuff them full of a great breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage etc, and the first thing they do is ask Grandma for something to eat!!

So the house is coming along. We have had the survey done. We are just waiting on the abstract to come back and we can sign the papers and start digging. Here is are the plans. We have moved the 2nd bedroom wall 2 foot into the living room to make it bigger. Otherwise these are it. We are all excited and nothing is moving fast enough!!! I have become a pain to the people working on the abstract because I want it done ASAP!! I hound them continuously!! I will keep everyone posted as things get moving along. 

 

Happy Birthday Kadelynn Ann.

Thanks for the Help!

Thanks for all of the help at the benefit.

You worked REALLY hard.

And we couldn't have done it without you!!

(Or your checkbooks!!)

Happy Birthday Nater Tater!!

Today is Nate's 4th birthday. Unfortunately he is sick and we are headed to the doctor at 1:00. I am guessing it is an ear infection on top of something else. He did get to celebrate over the weekend. On Saturday night we celebrated with the Owens' family. He made a haul as usual. Grandma Shirley scored with a very noisy and annoying chainsaw. He loves it! He had a Mickey Mouse themed party again and had a great time with everyone. He also got to celebrate with most of the Juilfs family on Sunday. We took a Mickey cake that he had helped me make but wouldn't let anyone cut it and cried the whole way to CR because we brought it with us. It was supposed to be his cake, no one else's!  He didn't get as many "fun" gifts but he got money deposited into a savings account for the future. Which is terrific and much aprreciated! I can't imagine how much college will cost when he gets there!! 

Owens Update

Hey everyone! Wow how time flies!! We have been busy, just like everyone else. Payton and Cael are loving the snow these days and are not thrilled that it may be melting this next week. They have a huge fort built at the farm in the 5 foot drifts. Nate is still his very naughty self. He turns the big 4 next week. We have his "Christmas" party tomorrow night with the Owens family. We can't say that we are having a birthday party. I don't know for sure why. He just hates it. Like he hates everything these days. Mike has been enjoying his time with us at night but he will be going to 2nd shift for a couple of weeks. It is supposed to only be for a couple of weeks but we will see. I am still at the school. Some days are very challenging to say the least. I have not been working at the VF lately. I will start getting a few hours starting in March. I quit working at Bath and Body early in December. Which was a blessing! It was way to stressful to try to keep track of where I was supposed to be when etc. Thank goodness Mike was able to keep the house going and keep up on homework with Payton!

Another update- the status of our house. Mike and I went to the bank last night. We did get our pre-approval but there are still some hoops that we have to jump through before we can finalize and get started. If you go to this website http://www.stratfordhomes.com/admin/images/Homes/Alston%20II.pdf

you will see a floor plan that is what we started with. We are going to add 4 foot to it and make it a 28x44 house. We will be adding a laundry room between the kitchen and the bathroom. On the other side we will just add more room to the living room/master bedroom/bathroom. We will be finishing the basement ourselves. Payton and Cael's rooms will be down there. We will also have a bathroom and a family room down there. It is very exciting to have this actually happening for us. It is long past due!! I will keep everyone posted on our progress and add pictures as things happen. 

Hi everyone, so glad to finally have a day home. Picking up, putting up, and just enjoying the day. Decided I wanted to cook a homecooked meal for Dean. Haven,t really made time to do that for awhile. So a recipe for mushroom and carmilized onion tenderloin, YUMMY. Got out the meat and thawed in the microwave. This particular tenderloin came all the way Iowa. I had Dean come home to look at this particular speciman of an Iowa tenderloin and I am sure you have all guessed we have decided that Texas tenderloin is a hundred percent better than Iowa tenderloin.Have a great week Kim , Kathy, Trilby, and Trina. Always something to keep in the back of ya'lls mind , ONE GOOD DEED DESERVES ANOTHER.

Update from the Carritt's

Hello everyone! Just dropping in to let everyone know what we are up to these days.
Josh is working in Vega hauling dirt for an oil rig and to build a road to the oil rig. He leaves at 5:45 in the morning and gets home about 7:30. In his free time he is in his shop working on the trucks or finding something new to tinker with. I have been keeping busy doing things around our house. There is still a few things that I need to get done before I go back to school this semester. I am taking 12 hours this semester. 9 hours on-line and I will have to drive to Canyon on Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm ready to go back and finish my degree.
Josh and I have a new addition to our home, she is a Pointer puppy we have named Guzzie. We have just recently found out that she is deaf. I was concerned about her safety and how I would train her. I tried to find someone to adopt her but because of her disability I have been unable to find a suitable home for her. So we have decided to go ahead and keep her. I started training her using sign language and she can now sit and come when she sees me give her the signal. She has surprised us because she is so smart.
I will post pictures of the house soon!
Hope all is well for everyone else :)