The Beauty I try to see here, and babysitting the Bunting kids

So the other day I was driving the canyon and got behind a long line of cars stuck behind some jack... sorry going about 25. So instead of getting road rage I pulled over and took a few pictures of the canyon. This place is usually so ugly, but after some good rain there are some very beautiful views.

I LOVE watching the Bunting kids. They are so fun. I do realize that I forgot how hard it is to watch little ones, but I LOVE when they laugh that deep belly laugh and cuddle up to you. And the dinner Karrie brings is a huge bonus because I don't have to cook that night, and it's usually something that's not on our "regular" menu list.

By the way, I LOVE when I run spell check and it says "No Misspellings found" it makes me feel smart.

Video

I love the fact that Jim has a video on his blackberry. Hope these aren't all of the same things, but blogger sometimes takes a long time to upload a video, if they are I'll try to fix it later. I love the memories of our anniversary, and the horses.

The kids reward for all their help

Here we are all eager to go. Boots on and as many cowgirl shirts as possible.

Tori on Hazel (who is difficult to ride, but for some reason Tori has complete control over that mare. And Jimi warming up Abbi with either Trever or Tylee on the back.
Tori and Jimi excited to get going.

I think it was mainly Jimi who recruited Tori but they helped make our evening dinner so amazing and memorable and I really couldn't thank them enough. The only way I knew how was to take them horse back riding. Tori sometimes begs to go and loves all horses, even if she doesn't get the chance to ride she is happy just cleaning pens or running them. And not to knock any of the others but Tori is a born natural on a horse and we are really proud of her. The problem is there was no school Monday and it poured rain in Canebrake to the point it almost flooded. They were all troopers and hung in there. We ended up taking all of our kids plus Toni, Tori and Tylee.

We let Trever ride Abbi all by himself. This is me on Kayak with Tylee on the back. Tori is ahead of us riding Hazel.

Here we are coming back from our ride. You can see how deep the puddles were and how cold we all looked. This was Tori's second ride right in a row. What a trooper.

I know this looks like Jim but I borrowed his hat and it's me riding Kayak with Tylee on the back.

Off we go!
Trever has wanted this colt since she was born. Hazel is her mom and we don't know the daddy. She is only 3 years old and he has almost broke her. I saddled her up and threw him on, with no reigns yet and led her around. She, and he did amazing. Next time I will bridle her up and see what happens. It's a secret so don't tell.

Jim has even more pictures so I will post those when I get the rest of his others.

Our Anniversary Events

With not a whole lot of money that we would want to spend on our anniversary and the fact that this could be the last time I ride my horse (since she has technically been sold) Jim and I both combined and made our own plans. He took Friday off of work, I thought was extremely thoughtful. We loaded up the horses and went to one of my favorite places to ride, the lake bottom by rabbit island. He packed a lunch and off we went. I love this place because it has a mostly shallow stream and my horse LOVES the water. Jim has more and better pictures and even some video but he has been too busy to let me transfer them on the computer so there will be more later. We sat by the old look out tower and had a nice lunch and just talked. It was really amazing, we couldn't have asked for better weather. Because the lake is low and the bottom is fairly flat Jim and I raced (since my horse is a race horse) Kayak won, but as soon as Hazel heard him coming she kicked into gear and wow she was fast.

See the spread he made, it was so yummy!

This was one of my favorite parts of the day. He went onto this hill and wrote in the dirt J+D=Love forever. It's hard to see because it slid on the hill but it was still sweet.

This is the beginning of the stream. After Hazel splashed and soaked both of us pawing and splashing in the water. It was so cute we didn't want to stop her. Jim has a cute video of it.

This was Jim hiking up to write his love for me in the dirt. AAAWWWHHH

One of the highlights/scariest part of the day was when we came up to a very large "pond" around the edges you could see the bottom so I figured it wasn't too deep. Jim too the other way around and Hazel and I thought we would cut through, little did either one of us know her hooves would sink and that it got super deep. My horse is HUGE and we had water up to my saddle. Her butt was under water, my boots were FULL of water. He back fee started sinking so she would rear up and try bend her back legs and try to lunge from the deep water. She was starting to panic, Jim was starting to panic but was still a long ways away. I wasn't panicking yet. It did cross my mind to jump off (I'm a good swimmer) hold on to the horn or get out and help pull her out. But luckily right at that point she got us out. We were both soaked, my saddle was soaked and as I said my boots were completely FULL of water. We had a great laugh and I took her back into the water and she didn't seem to mind. Good horse. And a good experience for me.

So it was my turn to plan the evening. I knew we would be busy all day Friday so I did a lot of preparing on Thursday. I made home made manacotti (Jim's favorite) a home made NY style baked cheese cake that turned out perfect. Salad, and garlic bread, oh and artichoke dip. Jimi, and Tori helped set up to make it look like a restaurant which will their reward will be posted later. But it looked amazing. We had a great day and a great night and both Jim and I agree it was one of the very best anniversary celebrations we ever had.

That is sparkeling Palmagranit cherry cider, it was really good!

I can't wait to see Jim's pictures and videos!

Happy Anniversary To Me!

Today is Jim and my anniversary. This one is more special than a lot of the others and I think I know why but I am extra mushy about it. Things have literally never been better in our relationship. I think we finally grew up. I am queen of arguing and either he learned to ignore me, or I've learned to choose my battles, or a little of both. All I know is that I'm excited to see him when he gets home from work, I miss him when he's gone. He's the first one I want to tell about anything that happens in my day, good or bad. The only one I want to cry to, the one I love to laugh with, and I know he knows me better than anyone ever has before. He's stuck by my side when it wasn't the easy thing to do and when I pushed him away the hardest. I knew he was hard headed but until now I thought that was a bad thing. Now I know it's just how he had to be to put up with me. At 35 years old I still think he is the sexiest man in the world and just check out all his hair! He makes me laugh and pushes me to do things that he knows I want to but that I'm normally too afraid to do. He is a great dad and I never worry about my house when I leave him and the kids alone, he takes care of it better than I do when he needs to. He loves babies and it melts my heart to see him hold and play and love and kiss a baby. I love his romantic side and how sentimental he is, it's taken a long time but he's finally rubbing off on me I think. All I know is that I am truly blessed to be his wife and I can now say that I KNOW things will only get better as we go! I don't have a lot of wedding pictures, mainly because we only planned our wedding in 2 days. We had planned on getting married in April but we came out here to California to help Kenny and his family move back to Colorado and so that I could get to know his family better. His mom mentioned us getting married in Vegas on our way back home. I knew my parents wouldn't miss a Vegas trip so we did it. My parents met us there and we tied the knot at The Little White Chapel on the strip in Vegas at about 11pm. My sister was there and all his siblings (except Tami I think) were there. I found my perfect dress on clearance at JCPennys for $40, I wore white lace, lace up cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat with a veil. Jim wore black wranglers black boots and a black vest and a yummy black cowboy hat. He looked so so so good! We only dated for about 3 months before we got married but there was no doubt in my mind he was the one I was supposed to be with forever.

Later we were sealed in the Portland Temple but I will go into those details on that anniversary!

Motivation or Stupidity?

So I'm having cub scouts like I'm supposed to every 2 weeks on minimum days. Marcus and Trever get this great idea that they want to climb the mountain behind us. There is an old Indian burial ground and I USED to run up to it and around then back down, it was a hard run because it doesn't look like it's too much of an incline, but it is. So we get up to than, and the boys look up and say "we want to go to the top". I say ok and we were on our way. This was such a steep climb that we would slip a little in places. At one point I was dying and stopped to rest, I was ready to be done but they convinced me to keep going. We didn't get to the top but we got pretty close. I want to think I could have done it, a little slower, but we ran out of time and had to get back down. I promised to do it again when I was in better shape. Marcus won't let me forget it!

This is at the very bottom where we started. You can barely see the circle cut trail at what looks like the bottom. That's the burial ground. We were headed up to the point on the left with the little (from here) rock on it.
That flag was the highest I got. Sami and the boys went a little further, not much because I didn't want them too far, maybe 10 yards is all. The top left is still where we were headed. As you can see, it wasn't far.



This is where I was, looking down at my house which is not the first group but the second one on the left. I was dang high up.

I'm a little excited to try it again, with more time.

What Motivates You?

Stupid thing that's on my mind lately. Who knows if it's because of New Years resolutions or that my house is spilling over with un-organized junk, but I am the most un motivated person I could ever meet. I KNOW reading scriptures daily blesses my life, I've done it, experienced it, loved it, and influenced my family... but I don't do it. I KNOW that exercise makes me feel so good outside and in, it brings up my mood, it takes out aggravation, and it's addictive once I start... but I don't do it. I LOVE a clean organized home, for years I was a neat freak (before kids) it's not really not that hard to keep up on, I have kids to help... but it's not always clean and definitely not organized. So as I talked to a friend yesterday, about the exercise one, she helped me realize I'm just not motivated. So I'm trying to think of HOW to get motivated. There used to be a time when my house was clean and I was doing crafts and I was actually BORED. And that's when the kids were little! I guess it's just different now. I do run for the kids most of the time. And where I live does not make a quick trip to town but I would love to be bored just once. So I'm trying to figure out HOW to get motivated to do any of these things. Every time I walk into the girls room, I back out and shut the door behind me. By the way... thank you Alex for a semi-clean room. I love you!