Missin' Sara

I've tried not to think about it much, but tonight it hit me. I saw pictures of Sara posted on facebook by her mom tonight. She started 3rd grade today. Sara is my niece... my brother Jeff's kid. We haven't seen her since Valentine's Day; 6 months and 8 days to be exact. I miss her. My brother has lost custody of her for a while. Not because of what the Judge has said, but because of Sara's mom's and grandma's decision. It's a long story that I don't want to get into, but it isn't right. Tonight, seeing those pictures, I realized how much she's grown up since we've seen her. Last February she didn't have her front teeth, but now they've grown in. I can tell she's taller. And she just plain looks older. We miss her. My boys miss her so much. When making Cody's baptism movie, we put in pictures of her with our boys. Instead of watching this movie and being excited about all these fun pictures of growing up, they saw Sara and realized how long it's been since we've seen her. Hunter said, "What happened to her?" 'Bout made me want to cry. How do you explain this to kids? How do you tell them we don't know when the next time we'll see her is? For now, I'll add in some pictures of her that I love, and hope I can add some new ones in soon.

Sara giving Cody kisses. They are only 5 months apart. Cody loves Sara.

I love this picture of Sara with T.J.

My boys with their cousins Sara and Teegan.

Love this cute face! She's a spunky little gal.

She got to come to one rodeo with us.

Took these next 3 at our house. Love these pictures!

Love the wrangler butts! Cody and Sara were checking our the fish in the horse trough so I snapped this fast.

Horseyville is such a tease!

Love this picture of Sara and Jeff.

She loved riding the 4-wheeler with the boys.

Such a tease to Grandpa!

Sara with our cute puppies.

Sara signing the sign in book at Jim and Cherie's wedding. She looked so cute that night!

She always wanted to ride a horse so Jared saddled one up for her. She wanted to dress like the boys to ride so she wore chaps and a vest that were too small, some of their wranglers and a pair of boots. A country girl at heart!

Cody and Sara both lost their front teeth for Christmas.

This is a picture her mom put on facebook of her first day of 3rd grade. Made me cry seeing these pictures of her.

We miss Sara so much. Sometimes others don't realize how the choices they make really affect others lives. My boys miss their cousin, I miss my niece, my parents miss their granddaughter, and so on. Break-ups are hard on the families, too. I know we'll see Sara again, just wish I knew when. We love you Sara!

Psycho Birds

I was out feeding tonight, in the dark cause we are at football till late, and Jared is gone overnight with Young Men's stuff. I knew the turkeys were out of water, so I thought now would be the perfect time to water them since they were all bedded down for the night. So I open the turkey coop, step in, and shine my light around to make sure there's no birds. Coast is clear. So I start pouring the water in. Next thing I hear is some cooing from the turkeys. I thought to myself, "This isn't good." I looked all over but didn't see them. So I continue pouring. I can still hear the cooing but still see nothing. I'm trying to hurry as fast as I can, I finally finish, then it hits me.... look up. Let's just say I had a mini heart attack. Here's what I saw....

Four stupid turkeys peering down at me from the rafters. Oh... my... gosh! Seriously... mini heart attack.These birds are psycho. If you've seen the movie The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock, you might have an idea of what I mean. These turkeys are crazy! We've never had turkeys like this. Usually the type we get are so sweet they just follow you around the yard. Not these stupid things. They fly all over the place like we're going to kill them. I hate walking into the coop when they are in there. It's a sea of feathers when we do cause they freak out and fly around crazy in that small coop. I usually refuse to go in there. I make Jared do all the watering, but I had no choice tonight. (I think he did this on purpose to teach me a lesson. Didn't work.)

I wish the camera could have gotten all four turkeys so you could see just how scary it was. But my small light would only shine on two. These birds are pretty big. I'm guessing at least 25 lbs. on the hens, and the tom around 30. That's a lot of crazy bird to be flying around. Not sure why the stupid things are perched up there. Jared built them somewhere to bed down, lay eggs, etc. But nope, these birds are picky birds and would rather be in the rafters so they can scare the livin' day lights outa me!

Poor Jeffery. He's still so scared! Found him outside in the turkey run with is head hiding down in the dirt. Hopefully one day he will learn to like other turkeys. Guess that's what happens when he only sees humans for 2 months. Still can't believe he's the only turkey that hatched.

T.J.'s Practices...

I am really impressed with T.J. and how far he's come with 3 weeks of football. He's hitting harder, running faster, and understanding everything so well. He really likes it. The hardest part is having practice every day, plus school, and homework. Football and school have become his life. He has no time for anything else. He's happy it gets him out of scouts, but it doesn't leave any room for down time. Once games start though, it will go down to 3 practices a week plus games every Saturday.
Our practices got moved to the field by our library in Riverton. It's still about the same distance. I like being right by the library because the boys can go check out books and read while we are right there, plus stuff gets turned in now so hopefully no more overdue fines.
Here's some pictures and movie clips from this week's practices...

Watching from the side lines. See how close we are to the library.

What we do during some of the practices.

My favorite thing to watch!! T.J. is like this solid, steady steam train that comes busting in. He's doing really good at this. He doesn't run the fastest, but he's got the power to make up for it.

So very thirsty. They have to take their helmets off to get drinks so they can cool off a little more.

They played their first scrimmage game yesterday against another B team. Our team CREAMED them!!! That's when Jared was really impressed with our coaches. He could see just how much more work and training our boys get. I love our coaches. They are so upbeat and positive for these boys. Plus, they are very organized. We start right on time, each coach knows exactly what they are doing, and we end right on time.

Jared giving tips from the sideline. I wish so bad he could have coached this year.

Coach had every kid take turns on each play giving each member an equal chance to play.

T.J. was not afraid to hit this team. He was definitely more aggressive. I think he isn't as much with his own team because he doesn't want to hurt them. T.J. is right in the middle. He has just a touch of green on under his jersey.

I love this picture even though you can only see part of it.

Warm ups today. One of the coaches kid is helping this year train ours. He was playing last year and got his head cracked so he can't play this year. (Scary!)

Jumping Jacks. They call them Wolf Jacks for the Riverton Wolves.

T.J. has been so excited for this practice!! His team was playing a scrimmage game against Brodie's!!!! That's T.J. blocking Brodie! They had it set perfectly so he could block him! He was so excited.

T.J. blocking Brodie.

And again.

And again. Both T.J. and Brodie are good at blocking. T.J. came out and said, "Brodie's a lot easier to block then I thought he would be." I said, "Ya, cause you've got 50 lbs. on him." Haha!

They did good against this team. We tied them. I think we could have done better but our team didn't seem to have their hearts there tonight. Probably cause of the heat and humidity today. It's been a hot one. So glad we moved to this park with more shade for everyone.

Jamie, Cherie and Jim came to watch this scrimmage.

More water.

I love this football!! I don't understand it very well but I can see myself getting very hooked on it. I'm already cheering at these scrimmages! It's so cute watching these boys out playing real football. I love hanging out with our boys. I'm so glad we had 3 right in a row. I love boy stuff. I love boys period!

Making Sauce

I LOVE to cook. Most people look at me like I'm crazy when I say this, but I really do. And when I say I love to cook, I mean those types of dishes that take hours to make because of the many steps, and the awesome flavors that come out of it. It's a science to me. I love taking something and making it better.
One of my favorite things to make is spaghetti sauce. Our friends that we used to do rodeo with are Italian. And every Sunday this spaghetti was their family dinner. For years when they had extra spaghetti left over, they'd call us or Jared's dad and tell us to come get some. And you better believe we'd rush right over. It was like a contest between us and Jared's family to see who got the spaghetti. It's that delicious!!
So one day I got smart and decided I wanted this recipe, hoping Freida would share it with me. And she did!! I was so excited to make this. It takes me 2 and a half hours to make this, and 4 hours of simmering, but it is so worth it! Besides spaghetti, we also make extra meatballs and use some sauce for meatball subs. Oh so yummy!!
I made this sauce today. It's a great recipe to make and put into smaller dinner size bags and in the freezer for future dinners. And with football practice every night, I need something I can just throw together fast.

First we start with this huge thing of tomato sauce. And that's not all I put in. I do two more smaller cans, plus two cans of tomato paste, plus water. I told you this makes a lot of sauce.

Fry this all up and that's what gives the sauce that good flavor. Mmmmm!

Add in some spices.

Some chicken.

And 56 meatballs.

And simmer. This big pot is almost full of the most delicious smelling sauce! Simmer for 4 hours on low or it will burn with all the meatballs on the bottom.

With sauce this good, it's no wonder there's no leftovers. And spaghetti leftovers are the best!

I love this sauce. It's time consuming, but so worth it.

Recess

Hunter told me today he and his friends are now chasing girls at school during recess. He used to chase that bully kid that punched T.J. but he's moved on to girls now. (It's funny to think a first grader was chasing around this 5th grade bully kid!) First thing I asked Hunter was, "You aren't kissin' them, are you?" I was very relieved when he answered, "No," with a turned up nose towards the idea. But then he said, " My friend did though." Oh great. Hunter's the one I worry about with girls. Cody and T.J. could care less about them. But not Hunter. His two best friend's are girls. I can't believe I'm already having to tell him not to kiss girls. Heaven help us with this kid!

Our 11th Anniversary

We made it... today was our 11th wedding anniversary! (I didn't have any doubts, I promise!) I can't believe we are already here. It doesn't seem like it's been 11 years, but it has. Guess that's what happens when you are having fun!
Because T.J. now has football practice every night, we decided to go play during the day. What we didn't plan on was Hunter coming down with pink eye and staying home from school. Thank goodness my mom said she'd watch him while we went 4-wheelin' so we had a little time to our selves.                                                             We went to lunch at Red Robin. I've never been there before (shocking, I know.) It was really good. Hunter tagged along on our date for lunch. He was so funny. He knew it was our anniversary, but he thought since he was going to lunch, he could pick the place to eat. He thought he was in charge (like always). But then after lunch he said, "Pretend I'm not here." I said, "Why? Because we are on a date?" He said, "Ah huh." But then he kept right on chattering away until we pulled into Grandma's. Funny kid.

Playing tic-tac-toe with Dad.

I think Hunter was having a little too much fun on our date. Knowing him he'll try to come again. I love this picture of these two.

I got some kind of a spinach chicken wrap thing. It was so good! Jared had some kind of pineapple burger and macaroni and cheese.

We stole my Dad's Kabota and went 4-Wheelin' up to the end of YellowFork Canyon, hiked a bit, then drove down and drove up Rose Canyon before going back to get Hunter. This is one of our very favorite things to do on our anniversary - go 4-Wheelin'. We didn't have much time today to go around a huge canyon so we settled for a close one. But YellowFork has turned into one of our favorite places to go. It's nice and close, and pretty.

Jared took this picture of me in the rear-view mirror. We were just leaving my parents in the fun kabota.

Look how much water is still coming out of the canyon. usually by now it's just a trickle, but we got so much snow this past winter that it's still coming down pretty good.

Us by Dad's Kabota. I love driving that thing.

Our shoes were full of stickers by the time we got back from our hike.

My cutie.

I can honestly say I love Jared more today then I did when I met him, and I never thought that was possible. He is my bestest friend. We were talking as we were 4-wheelin' and I told him that I found myself  because of him. I can't imagine my life any other way. Ya, there would be a few things I might change here and there, but not Jared or my boys. I love my life with them. They are my world. I love my boys. I love my Cowboy. I love you Jared. Thanks for putting up with me these last 11 years. Thanks for making me so happy. I love you. Happy Anniversary!