Cheeky and Friends

We got three chickens. Ari already named one "cheeky."


Joe built this fine coop over the weekend, it's even fully insulated! We still need to put roofing on, add a double paned plexiglas window to the front, and a few more finishing touches. It's pretty deluxe; I will add more photos when we get to the final product. So far Ari loves to feed the chickens and K-So already tried to eat one.

A special thanks to Jason and Amelia for helping make our chicken dream a reality:)

Oppps. Sorry Guys.

Some of you might have seen this, but it was new to me and I had a good laugh. Thanks Olivia.

Please Check on my Boys

I've been out of town now for approximately 18 hours. If you know Joe's # please call him and ask him if he's fed our child anything other than cereal...and make sure there not having TOO much fun without me.

Dancing Hats

Today Ari and I were having our daily dance off. Mid dance Ari pointed to a photo of me where I happened to be wearing a scarf on my head and said "hat, Ari hat, Mom's." I got the young child a scarf for his head then he said "Mom hat" I put a scarf on my head and he said "ok, dance," And dance we did. Joe snapped the following photo during one of our finer moves.

Ari's Pumpkin Gets Fixed

Ari's been on a pumpkin kick. It all started a few weeks ago when Ari got his first taste of outdoor Halloween decor (Bonnie's neighbor). For weeks he's been asking to "go see pumpkins", which we do. I got him a pumpkin at the store last week and yesterday he asked if we could "fix it" so, last night we fixed it. He got a little impatient while we ran the knife so he started coloring on the back of the pumpkin. Ari was very pleased with the end result. Note Ari's smile; I took about 12 pictures of him smiling, in all of them he has the same crazy massive smile. The smiling huge phase is a great one.

A Hippo in Sheeps Clothing

Today while Ari was in the bathtub I could hear him in there with his hippo saying "hippo, bubbles, playing" then he started saying "sheep, baah baah, look sheep." I didn't recall a sheep in the tub... Sure enough it was the hippo in sheep's clothing.

Just Another Beautiful View

Economically Confused? This Post is For You

I know there are several of you who are just as confused as I am about what's going on with the economy in terms of who, what, why... Luckily This American Life has done a few shows just for people like us. Some of you die hard fans may have already heard these programs; I for one am about 20 pod cast's behind. To Joes credit he's been trying to get me to listen to this first one for months; he even tried to figure out a way to load it onto our blog so that people could listen to it strait from here. Wish I would have actually listened to it sooner.

The first program is called The Giant Pool of Money. It was a show produced in May 2008, it talks about how the subprime mortguage crisis happened in the first place. AWESOME program. Listen to it first.

The second one was done on October 3rd 2008, it's called Another Frightening Show About the Economy. This show focus on why/if the bailout is/was necessary; how the housing crisis is linked etc.

For those of you who listen to the show you know that aside from being informative Ira Glass "and Gang" can also be very entertaining. These shows will have you laughing, crying and yelling at your listening devise.

Six Years Ago Today...

...a kid a dog and a basement full of crap later, were still enjoying holy matrimony.

It's Official, He's Two

In my family it's tradition to wake up to proper birthday decor, so when Ari emerged from his room the first thing he saw were balloons, gifts and dollar store birthday decor (left over from the bee lab days).

This was the scene after opening gifts; Ari was watching Curious George while waiting to spend the morning at Kiki's.

Ari's Train (luckily the track also works well for animals and trucks).


Ari helped me make spider cupcakes for his birthday. Can you tell which one Ari made all by himself? He went through lots of candy before any of it actually ended up on the cupcake.


Olivia got Ari a bike for his birthday so he got this gift a few days early. As you can see he loves it.


Blowing out the candles...with some help from Dad.


After eating the candy off the top of several cupcakes Ari then used his new backhoe (gift from Kiki) to dig off the frosting. He's not really into eating food, he mostly likes to taste it then play with it. For the record he never actually ate a cupcake.


Ari in his cool train conductors hat (gift from Kiki).


This may look like a choke hold but really he's giving Kiki a hug.


As the evening wore on Ari stated to fall apart, he was experiencing party/sugar overload.


He was more than happy to get in his new truck PJ's, read some books with Dad and go to bed with Say Say (his bear).


It was a great day, I'm pretty sure Ari had fun because all day he just kept giving me hugs.

I remember Josh and Jill mentioning on their blog at some point (I think it's when Mo turned two?) that Mo "rocked their world" when he was first born. I can't think of a more appropriate way to describe it. Thankfully I've gone from "what have I done" to "what have I done." This past year has been awesome, I can't think of a year when I've had this much fun.

Celebrating at 11,253 Feet

Lone Peak is one of those trails that if you haven't done it you need to, put it on the short list. I won't lie to you, there is some steepness involved. We covered about 10,500 feet in elevation over the course of 11 miles but it was worth every inch. Okay okay, so miles 8-10 got a little ugly due to knee issues but even that was bearable because I had Olivia to be in pain with me. Yes, misery does love company.

The lighting was perfect all day! We had a nice light cloud cover, were able to watch storms skirt around us, had a breeze to cool us on the uphill, no wind when we reached the top, a great sunrise and sunset, and I swear there was an opening of light that hovered over the bright yellow aspens in the meadow bellow Timpanogus all day long. The light just seemed to allow you to see into eternity. Olivia mentioned at one point that the day would be made perfect if that night Lone Peak got snow, well, it did. I mentioned to Olivia that I was pretty sure her Dad was in charge of the weather that day (it was the 5th anniversary of his passing).

If your wondering if Suz has gained weight she has. She's almost 6 months pregnant and was still kicking everyone's butt on the trail.

Thanks for a most perfect day, you guys really know how to celebrate life.

This is a little video I took from the top. I painfully regret not filming the view downward, although you tended to get the feeling you were going to fall off the end of the earth when you looked down. Three of the four sides were cliffs and your up on this little 3 foot by 8 foot platform. It was awesome, I would love to actually climb this thing one day. Camp at the cirque with the kids, take turns on the climb (hethum Claud and Brian) could make for a nice weekend.

Random Photos From My Parents Visit

The horse photos were taken in Paris Idaho. We took a drive to Paris Idaho in hopes that their museum would be open (my Moms Grandma was from Paris). The Museum, along with the rest of the town, closes in September so we had a pic-nic in the cemetery and visited horses. On the way back to Logan we stopped and played in the leaves. It was a great day made complete when my Mom got to dine on bluebird chicken.

You will also see photos of my parents. My Mom couldn't stop cleaning (she weeded my driveway after scrubbing smoke of the walls) and my Dad spent a lot of time bashing our governmental system...and rightly so with the bailout and all. Parents are great, especially mine.

Ari and His Dog

Ari and His Nana

A Bunch of Pretty Fish

While my parents were here we went up to Porcupine Reservoir to see the salmon run. The only other time I have seen salmon run was in the north fork of the John Day Wilderness (ohhh now that's a trip I would like to do again); these were a lot smaller but still fun to watch. So heres some salmon photos as well as a few other photos of the eveing.