My baby

I can't believe in less than a month my "baby"

will be 5 years old!  I'm glad he still likes to get in bed with me in the morning and snuggle.

Shearing Day

I thought you might want to see how the girls sheep looked BEFORE the fair.

First, they deep wash the wool to get all the grease and weeds AND manure out so the clippers can bite into the wool better. Last year we didn't know that and we found out it was impossible to shear them.  Don't ask me how the professional sheep shearers do it because I know there is no way they hand wash all the sheep in the huge flocks before shearing.  But we do! 

Washing:

Then we put these super tight covers on the sheep to keep them clean until shearing.  I despise these covers.  It's like putting a tight turtle neck on a sheep and they don't like it and don't cooperate!! Next year I want to sew some that have Velcro and open like a coat.

Here is Taylor testing it out before putting it on the sheep.  They are snug!

Shasta probably wondered what the heck was being done to her. :)

Clean and fluffy: ready to be sheared!!

Shearing:

This is Pansy and she was very, very unhappy that she was being sheared!  She was always the friendliest sheep until we started washing and shearing.  She never quite got over it or trusted us again, even at the fair. 

Don't you feel sorry for the poor sheep?  What an awkward pose, but it's the way you get to their under bellies. 

Joel sheared the second lamb and did a great job!  It's a little bit like cutting hair and he's good at that too! :)  Even though the sheep dislike the handling and the buzzing clippers, it must feel better to get all that thick wool off during our summer heat!

It was so kind of Courtney and Nick Bennett to come and help out and let us use their shears. It's quite a job!

Fair-- part 2

The night before the pig show, the boys practiced with their pigs in the arena, trying to get their energy out.  Last year, Reagan's pig was running around wild and fighting with other pigs during the show and it was quite entertaining.

See how the pigs are blurry?  They were running around like wild banchees having lots of fun.  

Show day- Taylor is ready to take Colonel Von Chop-Chop into the show ring if it will turn and go the right way! :)

Reagan showing his pig, Chops.  (The boys must have had pork chops on the brain when they named their pigs this year!)  Reagan's pig weighed 245 at weigh in.

Reagan was working on breaking Chops to ride.  

Reagan really loves his pigs!!!  During fair he spends a lot of time hanging out with them in their pen.  It's fun to hang out with your pig when it's all cleaned up and oiled with baby oil. :)

 

Hailey enjoying our other favorite part of Fair-- the Rodeo!  There are 4 evenings of rodeo.  Our favorite events to watch are the bronc and bull riding events and the wild horse races!

Owyhee county fair-- 2014

I thought I'd post some pictures of our week at the fair. This year Taylor and Reagan did swine projects and Hailey and Heidi brought lambs.  Taylor's pig did not make weight (it weighed 219 pounds the day of weigh in so he missed it by 11 pounds) but he had an awesome showing in the photography class-- bringing home 10 blue ribbons, Superintendents Choice and Reserve Grand Champion for his pictures.  Hailey and Taylor also performed in Owyhee County's Got Talent and won first place! It was a GREAT year and being able to borrow a camper with air conditioning made the experience even that much better. :)

Here are some miscellaneous photos of the kids washing, practicing, and showing their animals that week.

At the wash stations- one of my favorite parts of fair is washing the animals. Era laundry soap gets the lamb's wool so white and then they smell amazing too. :)

This is Shasta.  She wanted to nibble the camera.

Heidi and Shasta are ready to go out in the show ring.

Lining the sheep up for the judge to look at:   Heidi is on the left and Hailey is in her Rimrock FFA jacket on the right.  The girls were in the same quality class because their sheep both weighed exactly 129 pounds.  (We thought that was a strange coincidence!) For showmanship class they compete against kids their own age.

I'm going to post the boys and their pigs in part two because this long post messed up last night and I'm having to redo the whole thing!

Some random things we've been doing

It's been a fun busy summer!  I haven't taken photos of a lot of it but here are some:

Swimming and playing at the lake-

Playing at cement slides-- we took the YW too.

We had a fun end-summer-reading party--

We read books about water then played in the pools and other messy activities!

I went white water rafting with a bunch of girlfriends-  awesome day!!

Had a late night at the city pool with lots of friends when our next door neighbors rented it.  

Our Young Women also sewed quilted bags.  They turned out great!

That's all for now!  :)

Part 2

To continue with the catch up post:

Leif wanted me to put a picture of the kitties in this post.  We have 2 sweet kittens that are so much fun and Leif and Heidi play with them all the time.

Hailey ended up qualifying for state in the 100m dash and the triple jump!  It was so exciting!

She ended up getting 8th out of 18 in the triple jump.  The day of state she broke her personal record by 2 feet! She and her coach were so amazed.  :)

Peaceful sunsets and sunrises over the reservoir.  I'm always finding pictures like these on my phone.

The kids enjoy the beauty here as much as I do.  Sometimes we talk about if we should buy a house and move to Mountain Home, but for now we love the farms, reservoir and relative isolation of living here.  With the bridge out, the drive to Mountain Home is 45 minutes instead of half an hour but that's okay.  It's kinda funny.  Here, so many people have lived on remote ranches that they think Grand View and Bruneau are really close to town and are almost too populated!  I think it's just right.  Except for the bugs.  Too many bugs!  :)

Heidi found a baby killdeer that was lost from its nest.   She is my animal lover.

Lily and the other exchange students prepared food from their countries of China, South Korea and Thailand for our combined YM/YW activity.  They also shared power points and talked about their countries.  It was so delicious and informative!

Taylor right before getting braces on.

His teeth weren't really that crooked but he had an underbite that was grinding his lower teeth down. The dentist said he needed braces or he'd have lots of problems down the road. Right now Taylor has the mechanism you have to turn with a key every night. It gets in the way when he eats and makes him slobber so he's all ready counting down the days to getting them off!      

Time for a catchup post!

I apologize to my two readers, Grandma Clayton and Grandpa Pearson, for being so neglectful of this little blog!  We really are still alive!  Of course, I saw you yesterday, Grandma Clayton, at Roaring Springs for Reagan's 10th birthday.......thank you SO much for coming and making him that cute soccer ball cake!  :)

Anyways, I will post some random photos from the last 2 months to share with you some of the activities we've been doing----

I never finished posting about our trip to Oregon- whoops.  But here is a family picture from the morning we left.  Pacific City was a really nice place to stay.  Next time I think we want to be a little closer to Newport though.  By the way, our exchange student Lily is now back in Thailand but we have a new one- Chan, a South Korean boy!  

Taylor and Reagan are doing pigs for fair this year.  They've all ready grown a lot since this picture!  We had trouble this year with them having pink eye, which wasn't any fun but we got to experience wrestling them down while our very helpful friends gave them injections. Wrestling pigs is always crazy and not to be missed!

Torsten, Hailey and Taylor traveled to CSI in Twin Falls with their FFA team for a leadership convention.  During the talent show portion of the convention, Torsten accompanied 2 singers on the piano and Taylor and Hailey performed an acapella clogging duet.  They all did outstanding!  Hailey was chosen as the Riimrock FFA Vice President for next year.

Leif on the new rug at the library......did I ever mention I was hired last fall to do children's programming at the library in Grand View? I do elementary, preschool and teen programs and weekly outreach to the elementary school.  Currently I do Summer Reading activities once a week for the whole family.  Anyways, I applied for a small grant for a rug because our programs are held in a room that doesn't have carpeting.  

Oh and I clean the library once a week too.  Leif and the girls help me out.  It's so cute-- Leif knows where all the cleaning stuff is and he helps out by mopping, vacuuming, wiping tables and sweeping cobwebs off the exterior.

Reagan received Student of the Month.  This was his most favorite teacher ever-Mrs Lisle.  Her family just moved to a remote ranch in Nevada so we are so glad we got to have her for at least one year.  Reagan's school in Bruneau was so small that the classes are combined.  He was in a 4/5th grade class.  Even when combined there were only 13 kids in his class!  

In fact, here is his entire school on the last day of school. They had a big water fight and water games.  Lots of fun! I think there were quite a few kids missing but it still gives you an idea of the size.

This is Heidi doing her 4-H presentation for county oral demonstrations.  She did such a good job this year!  Last year she was really nervous but this year she said it was so fun she wanted to do it again.  I think wearing a silly headband helped! Ha ha :)

Here is Reagan doing his pig presentation.  He did a great job too!

Torsten is working as a laborer on the bridge construction job by our house.  It's a hot hard job and he comes home filthy and tired every day.  And I do mean filthy!

Look at this arm!  He washed his hands to eat lunch. Good thing.