Fall and Farm

It's been pretty laid back around here, getting back into the swing of school every day, soccer and gymnastics practice, and daily chores. Here's a little bit of daily life :)

Chloe is 2 or 3 games away from the end of her first Club season in soccer on Heber Valley Storm. She is their center defender and does all their free kicks. She is learning her position really well and gets better every game. He coach is proud of her growth and Chloe has fun stopping those forwards!



The garden is frozen and dead but we sure enjoyed it until sept 22nd when the first frost came. I was able to save the peppers (so juicy and crisp!) and zucchini for a couple days but the frost has come every night and now everything is gone.

sweet Zeyta picking tomatoes with me! I also harvested some broccoli seeds so I'll have to see if they sprout in the spring.

What a haul! Tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries!

 my best strawberries - the plants on the far left closest to the blackberries only give about one strawberry per plant for the whole year, none in the spring and just one big strawberry in the fall.

 The first puzzle Avenlea was able to do by herself!! She LOVES puzzles and does them for at least 30 minutes per day, usually more while zeyta naps. She is getting really good at them and can even do 48 piece ones by herself (although it does take a while)

She comes to get me no matter where I am after she finishes a puzzle "mommy do you want to come see what I did?"

Last weekend I took pity on her after watching her do every puzzle we own about 20 times and bought her 3 new floor puzzles from DI which are in surprisingly good shape!

Big purple potatoes from the garden

 Avenlea's favorite puzzle

Blain is getting a shark tooth! That baby tooth is getting ready to come out!

Blain thinks he might want to be a ninja for Halloween, looks pretty cool to me!

Blain makes himself a peanut butter and nutella sandwhich for after school snack almost every day

 Our neighbors gave us a giant bag of cucumbers so Chloe and I made pickles for the first time! The fridge ones turned out delicious, hoping he canned ones turn out good too!

Chloe slicing the pickles like a big girl!

 Just a little science on the weekend!

Blain can make it up the warped wall!

 Avenlea is getting tons of use out of her pink gymnastics pad that we gave her for her birthday. After her online preschool she asks to go out and flip on the bar with the mat underneath, do back kickovers off the couch or practice cartwheels and summersaults. She is getting so good and her attitude is improving too! She gets so down on herself when she messes up but she is learning to just try again! She can kick over the bar by herself now too!

One on one time with Zeyta while the older kids are at school

1st Grade Picture!

2nd Grade

FInally lost the last of her 4 next to the middle teeth. She got another golden dollar from the tooth fairy.

Sweet little Pre Schooler

Avenlea learned how to pump on her own and she is now able to get pretty high! She and Zeyta love swinging in side by side swings and LAUGH when they go the same way :)

Fun play day at the park. Love how well these kiddos play together

"homework" time after school. They are each supposed to read 20 minutes. For Chloe it's more like you only get to read 20 minutes then you have to go play!! For Blain it's been a little more of a struggle but we've found some pokemon and lego books that he tries really hard to read. Love these 2 readers!

Farm: What a year it's been on the farm. Right when we think things are looking up something else goes terribly wrong. This has been he worst of it. Poor Bella got sick 2 weeks ago and wouldn't stand up. She died Monday Oct. 2nd in the afternoon. We don't know what it was that caused her to die but there was a lot that let up to her death.

With Bella being sick Zeyta and I got to spend lots of time with her. Zeyta was a really good helping tote water and giver her pets





The first things we noticed were mucous in her nose and that she was laying down a lot more than normal. She was really hard to stand up, we gave her pneumonia medication and an antibiotic. She stood up and ate and walked around that night so we thought she was better, but the next day she was back down and we never could get her to stand up again.

We used the tractor to help her stand but all she did was dangle. We had the vet out who took blood, assessed her physically and found nothing wrong with either. He prescribed her pain medicine incase she was sore from being down for a day. So we gave her hay and buckets of water 4 times a day along with rolling her side to side to keep blood flow to her legs. We quarantined her and didn't let the other cows in with her for almost the entire duration. She looked completely normal but just wouldn't stand.

We built her a little shelter from the snow and cold, but she started to bloat really bad. We quickly learned how to treat bloat and ended up treating her 3 times in the next week. She was getting weaker and skinnier though so we thought we should maybe just end her suffereing. But our neighbor who runs cows came over and offered some more suggestions. So we dewormed her, tried a penicillin based antibiotic, and some probiotics but nothing helped.

This was taken the morning that she died. She was looking pretty normal but hadn't been drinking much the day before and barely took a sip that morning. She was such a good cow it's a big loss for us. But I hope she had a happy life for the 2 years she was on our farm. Rest in Peace Bella! Nate buried her in the back pasture next to the rock pile and wild plum trees.

Big Fatty pigs! I think they are ready to go to freezer camp and I am sure ready for more bacon!

Fancy and the chickens who are now locked up again. We lost our australorp IN THE DAY so they have to stay locked up until we figure out what's getting them. We are getting 2-4 eggs per day now! Fancy is turning out to be a really good milk cow too. She stands really still while I milk her and almost always lets her milk and cream down for me without using the calf to nurse and get that big let down. She is giving about a gallon per day with once a day milking. I have a halter on her now but she doesn't like to be caught. Once she's on the rope she leads just fine but she keeps her head far away from me if she can. Olivia is super cute and leads like a champ and doesn't seem skiddish or afraid around us at all. We are planning on keeping them both since neither are related to Prince Ali.

Zeyta helping me carry pig food this morning.

This is the funniest video. I went into the milk barn a week or so ago and Avenlea and Zeyta were playing "milk the cow" Avenlea was Fancy in the stanchion and Zeyta was fluffing her leotard skirt and saying "ch ch ch" for the milk coming out. I almost died laughing so hard.

We spend a little time everymorning after milking watching the piggies which Zeyta loves! I put her up on the feed box and she lays on her tummy and talks to them. Even though there have been so many hard times with the Farmy part of our life it's hard to imagine life without it when it brings so much happiness and sense of accomplishment.