Ben's Birthday

My dear sweet husband shares his birthday with Christmas Eve. We had a great party with family to celebrate.  Even Uncle Dale (Ben's brother) made it after driving into town all the way from Utah!

If the birthday boy looks a little crazed he has the right.  It was a crazy day! He had to work extra hard to get water for the cows because of some electrical workers in his way, then Gray came down with a stomach bug minutes before everyone arrived! He made a quick recovery though, and we were still able to enjoy the night.

Then because it was Christmas Eve, the kids got to open a few presents too.

Then Santa came!

Visiting Santa

This year we went to have breakfast with Santa at the local fire station. 

I finally have a kid who will go see Santa! It was really cute, Santa was upstairs and took the time to talk with each child a lot so they could get comfortable.  Gray said he wanted a "blue truck".

But he wasn't happy when I backed away to take the picture. Classic! But he got a candy cane and was quickly happy about it all again.

Cattle

We have cows...

We have COWS!!!

We have spent the last 3 months preparing to bring the first residents of our farm home.  It felt good to finally get them there!  We now have two mothers with their year old daughters.  They are Highland Cattle.  They are a very docile, low-maintenance breed.  We are raising them for beef and if all goes well we may end up growing the herd.  And I love that they have the same hair as me, except theirs is way warmer.

Right now we have a friend living right next door in the apartment in our house, so we brought him along and invited Gramma and Grampa to welcome the cows to the farm.  

Wow, this is crazy!

An Indian Summer Day

We were blessed with an especially beautiful day a while back, so we took advantage by going down to Beavertail with the boys.  We hiked down to the rocks along the ocean and played in the tide pools.  Grayson and Tucker most enjoyed the periwinkles, while Russel still talks about the crabs and trying to catch little ghost shrimp with his bare hands!

Then we hiked back up and enjoyed the fields and the old bunker and war ruins.

It was beautiful!

Jog-a-thon

The boys' school does a Jog-a-thon to raise money for the PTO.  They had to find sponsors to pay for each lap they ran. It was a pretty cool event. 

Gray even had fun dancing to the music during Tucker's turn!

Off he goes!

Tucker amazed us all and ran 19 laps which comes out to 2 1/3 miles!

Each class chose their favorite literary character for their team name.

Tucker with his class/team the "Very Hungry Caterpillars".

Then it was Russel's turn!

He loves to run

Russel far exceeded our expectations and ran 34 laps which comes out to 4 1/2 miles!

He's ready for a 5K!!

Russel with his class:

We were super proud of our runners.... even though they cleared out the grandparents wallets!

Great job guys!

Firehouse Dinner

Our friend John volunteers at one of the local firehouses.  So one rainy evening, we and some friends ventured out to their pasta dinner and the boys enjoyed exploring the firetruck. As our friend Laurie said, it was a quintessential small-town good time! 

Good Food!

Good Friends!

Good Fun!

BOO! Did we scare you?

We are still alive and a lot has happened.

First, we moved to Rhode Island!

We bought a house and 38 acres of farmland... that we actually plan to farm (translation, we are crazy) So yes, we are busy, stressed, overwhelmed, and HAPPY!

Here's our guys from Halloween:

Russ(7) the Mummy

Tuck(5) the T-Rex

Gray(2.5) the cute little boy...

He refused to wear a costume so he wore sports PJ's and a baseball hat and it worked!

Jack-o-Lanterns!

LOL

More to come!