Home Sweet Home

Rambo! We brought this big boy home last Saturday. He comes from a breeder out of Maricopa and just hit his year birthday on Valentine's Day. Our ewes should be ready to breed within the next month or so (hard to believe because they are so petite) and Rambo is ready to breed now, so let the good times roll out there in the stall I guess...

Valentine's Day I don't have a bunch of pictures to document this day, but I wanted to note how incredibly thoughtful Justin is. I pretty much handle all the finances in our home and Justin rarely really knows what is going on with our money. Because of that, it's hard for him to surprise me with anything because I'm always checking our bank and credit card accounts almost daily. We also have a budget spreadsheet that I update every month so I know how much we can spend or put into savings. This month we had extra expenses for fruit trees, the kids lunch money accounts, Home Depot (for gardening and around the yard project stuff), and a splurge I shouldn't have made for some bedding. We were already over budget and I told Justin this and I really didn't want to spend money for Valentine's Day. I ended up buying Justin a pretty affordable electric knife online (of course not in time for it to get here on Valentine's Day, I'm so lame...) and figured I...

  A weekend alone...ALMOST! Last weekend Justin decided to take Brighton, Adaira & Dale up to Seligman to visit his parents and give me a sweet semi-break with just this sweet thing at home:  It was so nice and quiet. Honestly any time I don't have to chase Dale around the house to keep him from causing one disaster after another, it is a relaxing time! Unfortunately a new workout that Justin and I started about a week and a half earlier had caused a bulging disc in my back (which I ignored and continued working out, only making the back pain worse and worse until I finally realized what it was) and I could hardly do anything that involved bending over all weekend. It hurts just to pick up Daisy out of her bassinet! So I had plans to get a lot more cleaning done than I actually did because I was laying down on the couch most of the time. Regardless of that misfortune, I was happy for a break, and the kids had a great time up on the ranch. A few of their favorites: Sm...

 Playing some catch up! It's been really hard for me to keep up with blogging lately, I've got to do better! Pictures below show what you can do with a bunch of expired pancake mix from the cannery instead of just throwing it away (granted throwing it away would have been a much cleaner and less sticky solution). The kids each had their own bag of mix and made their own super sticky bowl of dough. It's funny how much they loved just sitting there and squeezing it between their fingers. They played with it over the course of 2-3 days until I finally made them throw it away and clean/scrape up their mess. The dough dried up a little more each day and it was really tough and gross by the third day. Even so, Brighton tried to hide his bowl in the outside closet so he could still play with it later. Brighton, when will you learn you can't trick your mother? I might not find out right away, but I WILL find out...  So Adaira loves being in front of the camera. She wanted t...