Light Contest

I have taken up a new hobby this year.....hanging, stringing, pretty much buying Christmas lights. Rocky mountain power employees I will leave my address later in the post for thank you notes.. I got a hunkering to put up lights this year and boy did I. Now the participation part, all of you get to guess how many twinkling things there are and you might win a prize.

This is one of my greatest creations for the year, my stable and star! Had to get the true meaning of Christmas in my decorations this year.

This picture was taken before I got my deer and nativity set up.

Here is the final view.

I have to tell the story of buying the deer. Allwest had a trencher that broke down in front of my house this fall. Being an eyesore, the ole ditch witch trencher was going to get into my decorations. I bought two male deers, some white lights for reins, and some motion lights to go around the tracks. I was looking for a santa to put in the seat and some presents to put on the roof of it. Long story short, it was good that I had to take some calves to Riverton. Cause when I got home from that trip the allwest boys were here working on it and ended up taking it home. So no trencher santa sleigh for me this year! Now I have two male deers! Had to take one back and get a doe, really don't want to send the wrong message in my front yard..

I am adding a few more every day but I am doing the competition as to the lights you see in the pictures. I am working on something for Landry. I guess to be honest I was really hoping he would see the ole house from heaven...

Thanksgiving

Owen's Thanksgiving story hour. It was the week before but isn't he cute in his pilgrim hat?All dressed up and nowhere to go!! We spent Thanksgiving at home with just us again. We feel good about being hermits to help stay healthy. Unfortunately I only got pictures of Owen because Lenn was feeding the cows. Bentley and Abby were out sledding.Lenn has been working on lights for quite sometime. We restrained ourselves and held off lighting them until Thanksgiving night. They look great Lenn, thank you! The nativity came late so we will have to add that later.

That night we also put up the tree and decorated. Notice Lenn at the piano, no he doesn't play. Well he didn't play until Thanksgiving day when Abby taught him how to play 'Happy Happy Birthday'. Good job Lenn and Abby. Now he can play two songs. It was fun to listen to him play as we decorated the tree. Owen was amazed by the lights as always.

This year I decided to have a competition, that is one thing we do well, compete. We all made thankful lists and saw who could come up with the most. Bentley beat us all by a lot. I was impressed I was sure it would be between Lenn and me.

Some of the things on our thankful lists: people who got us home, people who help us stay home, good friends, Owen's equipment and doctors, family, the gospel, prophets, animals, our home and food. These were just a few since we all had around 100 except for Bentley. He had 132!! Good job Bentley!!

We do have a lot to be thankful for. We have had so many little miracles that we probably do not even recognize until later. For example, when we decided to trach Owen we were told he would spent most of the winters in the hospital. Well, he is almost 3 and he has spent one night in the hospital (knock on wood)! That is amazing! That night was to watch him after he had his adenoids out, ear tubes placed and a scope of his trachea. We are not lucky we are blessed. Another miracle is; almost every time Cokeville is out of power we still have power. We have only been out of power two times that were for a longer period of time. Even then we were able to stay home until it came back on. Today I may have found out one reason why this happens. I was talking to a sweet friend who told me whenever she is out of power she prays that she will stay powerless if Gayle has power. That is a friend!! Thank you. I know many prayers are said on our behalf and I would like to thank you for them. We feel blessed to have you all in our lives.

Owen's Big Boy Bed!

We are so blessed in so many ways, and another huge blessing came a few weeks ago.

Abby was playing and drawing with Owen while his new bed was moved in and this is the finished product. I think she did great and the cute thing is that she kept giving him choices and then she would color or draw his choice.
As I mentioned above, this is a huge blessing. I had been working with insurance companies and doctors to get Owen a new bed. What a pain, NOT on the doctors part! I heard others had had a hard time with this but I didn't realize the extent. After I got all the paperwork in we got a call from a girl Lenn went to school with. She works at the Evanston Hospital. She was asking us if we wanted one of the beds they were getting rid of. She suggested that we get our names on one just in case. They had asked us before but it was right after Landry passed away so we did not do anything about it.

We got the bed. We didn't realized how heavy it would be until Lenn went to get it. It took six men to load it in the truck. We weren't sure what to do now. We wanted to wait and see what the insurance company said, but we had to do something with this bed. We decided to bring it in and use it for the time being. We had help from six high school athletes, one of Lenn's tough friends :) and Lenn's Dad. It took all of them and Lenn's one arm to get it up on our deck and into the house. Thank you to all who helped. We really could not have done this without you.

A few days ago we got a letter from the insurance company telling us the bed was denied. We would have been devastated but instead we were thankful to have had a back up plan. Thank you again. While bringing the bed in, they had to tip it on its side and doing that did something to the bed. It did not work right. After all that work, now only the one side would lift. Lenn did a little thinking and then got under the bed with his helper Bentley. He was able to fix it and it is good as new. Thank you Lenn. He can fix just about anything!
Owen in his new big boy bed. A dream of any almost three year old boy, to have a bed that is a machine!! He likes it, mostly because he can watch TV from bed now.

The bed is in great condition and clean. The mattress even impressed Owens' physical therapist.

We are so thankful, he was almost touching both ends of the crib. A normal bed probably would have been the end of my back. Again we have been watched over and taken care of.

Bentley's Solar System

Bentley had to make a solar system for a school project and here it is. This ended up being a family project. The most impressive part is that is was done before it was due!!
Bentley was so funny he studied the pictures of the planets and then wanted to paint his planets identical to the pictures. That just doesn't happen in our household! He did a great job though!