Our Christmas Tree

Here is a picture of our Christmas tree. After weeks of bugging Gayle, she finally let me put it up the Sunday before Thanksgiving. But we couldn't take an official picture of it until after Thanksgiving. She wouldn't even let me turn on the outside lights until after Thanksgiving. Are you catching on? She is a brute, I have had the Christmas bug for that past few months. I am going to get a picture of our house lights and add that later. I again wanted our house to glow so that the astronauts could see it and of course I got shot down on that too.

Here are the kids decorating the tree, we even brought Owen in and let him watch the festivities.

Motel Stay

Two weeks ago was the EMT Trauma Conference in Salt Lake. So we had a weekend at the motel. The kids love motels for some odd reason, I guess they still have good backs. Here is Abby headed for the pool with enough floats to keep a ship from sinking.

Owen even made a pool side appearance.

Bentley, the newly found swimmer, helping or hindering Abby.

The University of Utah Football team stayed with us the night before the "Utah Holy War." So I spread some of my lucky pixy dust on them and check out the results of the game!

A Whole New Cowboy

November 9, and 10, Owen was having rough days and even worse nights. Gayle and I even had the ole respite care or hospital talk. The weekend before we had had a fast for Owen as to what to do. The day we fasted Gayle took the kids to church and I stayed home, I was looking over the ventilator and a thought went through my mind as to the tidal volume. I turned him up 5 and then got scared and turned him back down. Finally on the eleventh, Gayle called me on my way home from work and wondered if we needed to go to a doctors office. We loaded Owen and headed to Dr. Depalmas' office. All along Gayle was emailing Dr. Murphy, before we left Dr. Murphy called and said that she couldn't type fast enough and to get Owen to Depalma. Owen had a sinus infection and two ear infections, and was so badly under ventilated that he was starting pneumonia. We were looking over the normal baby stuff. Gayle and I were both sick! Poor Owen had been trying to get air from a machine that wasn't given it to him. I am still sick typing about it today! We went over to the hospital to get some blood tests run and what a JOKE! After thirty minutes of milking four viles of blood from a heel prick, I took the honor of getting the blood gas test. So add one more qualification to my growing list, but one can only sit around for so long with a room full of stupidity before something has to change. On our way home Depalma called and demanded that we return to the hospital because his blood gas was horrible, we explained the circumstances and she lightened up. Owen is still recuperating and I think he might be getting another cold along with the family. His tidal volume is 35 mL more than it was two weeks ago and I am still training on the ole vent. It is amazing the change in him with more pressure, his oxygen has dropped from around 2 liters to .25 liters and sometimes on room air. He is a whole new cowboy!

Bentley and the backhoe

Here is Bentley running a backhoe. How many other eight year olds could do this their second time at the controls? Proud papa, you bet! I let him dig an old manure pile so he didn't ruin anything. Grandpa showed him how to run it the day before and he wanted to show me. Hopefully the video works, I have been fighting it for the past week!

Doughnuts!

Gayle made some homemade doughnuts for Halloween! They RULED! Beings we don't have a Krispy Creme right around the block, we have to improvise. Gayle could be hired at the donut shop any day, and it really didn't help me maintain my girlish figure.

Trick or Treat

Here are the kids in their costumes. Abby was a pirate, Bentley was Batman, and Owen was a lion. We went trick or treating in town, and even took Owen. Can you see the enthusiasm in the lion? Maybe he is getting ready to pounce the photographer.

I thought I would put a picture of Gayle on because most of the time she is the photographer. She went trick or treating as a mom, doctor, nurse, respitory therapist and a physical therapist all in one. Some times she even gets to be a psychologist when she is dealing with me.

Pumpkins

Here is Bentley and his skeleton pumpkin.

My pumpkin is the face and Gayles' is the singing ghosts. We tried the skinning thing on hers to avoid more pumpkin guts after a few days outside it turned out really good.

Here is Abby and her pumpkin.

Cleaning the ole jack o lanterns!

Owen

Owen finally got a haircut. As you can see how far behind I am, it happened on the sixth of October. His comb over was getting to long so Gayle put the scissors to it. And bless Owens heart he stayed really still through the ordeal.

Owen is growing like a weed. He started liking his binki again, sometimes he chews on it, but at least he likes something in his mouth. We have been battling sickness for the past few weeks and there have been some really short nights. I think that we are on the down hill side of things though.

Payday!

We wait all year for this day, finally we see some money for our years work and we get rid of some calves. We shipped two truck loads of calves two weeks ago, actually the tenth of October. I am finally updating the blog.

As you can tell we were gathering cows before the sun came up. This picture is a cow man's best friend, the semi pulling into the yard to take some animals.

Funny branding picture

A pop and candy bar to the first person that can tell me what Julie is looking at? Or why she is in front of the chute?

Shriners visit, Nine month birthday

Happy nine month birthday Owen! We took Owen down to Shriners hospital in Salt Lake last Wednesday. That place is incredible and the people the same. We met with an orthopedic doctor and had Owen looked at. He said that Owen looks great for the situation he is in, and to come back on six months. We left with good feelings unlike leaving some hospitals. We met Julie for lunch and came home.

Falls' most miserable day, BRANDING

We branded the calves last Saturday. It took us all morning to cut out the animals and we finally started the long task after lunch. Dad and I ran the chute and worked on the animals. We had Nellie and Philip in the back pushing the calves up the alley. And when Julie wasn't at the water cooler or asking for her 15 minute breaks, she was pushing the calves into the chute. We tormented Julie all day about her many years of government work. Nellie got kicked by one of the calves and Julie told her to file for workmans comp. Bracken and Kristi would show up every once in a while to make sure everything was still running smooth. Finally at seven o'clock with eyes and lungs full of dust we finished.

I took these pictures with my cell phone while we brought in the cows. Bentley and Olivia helped out with his four wheeler.

Here is Kristi on one of her supervisory trips, holding up both Julie and Nellie's work.

14 kindergarteners and a goat

The title says it all! Abby had her turn at show and tell last Tuesday for kindergarten. It was letter D day and she wanted her dad to bring down her pet fainting goat Daisy. So I took the family pet to Cokeville and we had a show and tell. To a couple of the kids you would have thought I had a bear at the end of the leash. Some of them wouldn't even pet her. But all and all the day went great and Abby got to show of me and daisy!

Birthday Boys

Last Sunday was Bentley and Bills' birthday. We celebrated both of them at Bentleys' baptism. Gayle made both of them construction cakes, we made Bill's with a trackhoe since he is building a house in Bear Lake and bought one.

Bentley got a new set of scriptures for his birthday and baptism, and an ipod for his birthday and being such a good kid.

Bentleys' Baptism

We had Bentleys' baptism last Sunday afternoon. We did it on his birthday and celebrated with family and friends. All of my family except Joyce came, we even got Julie from Salt Lake there. It is quite the feat to get Julie to a family function. Some friends from Cokeville came too. We took Owen in his fancy stroller and ended up making a bed for him on the floor. The Browns' gave the prayers, Bill gave the baptism talk, and Philip gave the Holy Ghost talk. After the program we ate and celebrated Bentley and Bills' birthdays with cake. Gayle made a cake for both of them.

Owens Bed

Philip and Bill, the two speakers

Congrats Bentley you are a very special boy!

First day of school, Owens birthday, Go Pokes

I struggle with keeping up with this! I am catching up on two weeks with this post.

Here are the kids on the first day of school, Cokeville sends a bus to our doorstep for them. Abby asked the other day if there was summer school she wanted to be involved. We are trying to keep the enthusiasm up! Bentley goes to second grade and has wanted to sleep in since the first day. We are trying to instill some of Abbys' excitement in to him.

Happy birthday Owen! Owen turned eight months on the third. He is still growing and smiling, nothing else to report. He has his two bottom teeth, from the words of favorite Dr. Chan, "they are for biting the people he doesn't like." He needed them in the hospital. We have been very blessed this summer, we missed out on four power outages. The last affecting Evanston, Randolph, and Cokeville lasted over sixteen hours. We had quite a few calls the next morning when the power still wasn't on to see if we were at home or at the hospital. We are having issues with rocky mountain power, they claim they can't red flag us for quicker service because of liability. Our service people come out of Evanston and act like the world will wait for them.

Gayle was feeling a little cooped up Saturday and decided she needed a trip. So Owen and I had a man party at the house. We watched college football all day and hung out in our pajamas. Here we are watching the Cowboys play, I am teaching him young to route on the ole Pokes!

Ten Years?

Today is our ten year anniversary! I can't believe it has been ten years. Poor Gayle thinks it has been twenty. Any who, I got my wonderful wife of ten years some flowers. I tried to think of what I could get her for putting up with me for a decade and I figured it would take bill gates to buy it. So instead she gets some flowers and most important ME!!

And we are back!

We are back! Our trip to Sheridan is over, it actually ended about four hours after it began. We had a few events and came home. The trip started by packing pretty much the whole house, and the people inside. I had an odd feeling to take along a spare car battery incase of an emergency, remember this battery it plays a significant role later on. We started for Kemmerer. Through all the miserable construction the generator died, which means the a/c and Owens power supply died. I thought it was from being low on fuel. My plan was to fuel in Kemmerer because Wyoming gas is always cheaper. We got to sweat out the remaining twenty miles into Kemmerer. I shut the motor home off to fuel and got the generator started back up. I went to start the motor home and it almost wouldn't start. So I sat at the maverick and contemplated the remaining five hundred and twenty miles left in our trip. I pulled the motor home into a vacant store lot and turned it off. I thought it would be better to have the thing die and not be in front of two gas pumps. I went to start it back up and no go! The ole battery was dead!

So I got out of the motor home and started to talk to and like all of my imaginary sailor friends. I grabbed the spare battery that I got for Owen, and muttered under my breath the whole trip around the motor home. Gladly I had thrown in some jumper cables also. I opened the door to see if the outfit would start and saw my entire family, except Owen, on the motor cover between the front seats. I was still talking like a sailor when I asked why in the ------------- is everyone standing in the front. Come to find out my curious five year old found a garbage pail with a dead mouse in it. The whole operation came to a halt until I emptied the pail. So back to my jump starting job, the motor home started. I figured we had only come forty miles, so we better go home and find out the issues. We got home and found out that we forgot to hook up the two batteries that help out the generator. That is why it drained the engine battery. So we all giggled that we had a family vacation to Kemmerer. Abby came down with a cold, so we never did make the attempt to try again.

And we are OFF!!

We are going on a mini vacation, cross your finger, toes and everything else. We are headed to Sheridan, Wyoming, to our calf sale. We might even poke into South Dakota and see the ole presidents. That is if Owen allows it! We borrowed my brothers motor home and just might not come back. We will document the whole trip, as long as our five year old doesn't find the camera.