Spring Break 2013

We went to Silver Mountain for Spring Break, leaving behind the sun for some rain and wind!  The kids had a great time at the water park though and Madi and Dallas found some bikes to ride.  Most of the time was spent on ipads, ipods, computers or video games though.  It was very relaxing and I got my book read.  SUCCESS!

Spring 2013

Carson's first machine pitch baseball game of the year.  He did great!  His throwing needs to slow down if he wants his teammates to be able to catch it though.  Poor Brady dove out of the way when Carson tried to throw someone out at first.

EVERYONE IS HOME!

We are so happy to announce that everyone is home!  Quick take a picture!  It is a rare occasion that we have everyone here at the same time so we are very excited.  Our home seems to be bursting at the seams right now.  The older kids are all working at different times and so we haven't really all been together yet, but we look forward to some family time.  Colton and Daniel are working the night shift in the cherry orchard so when the girls (Chelsea and Madi) get off of work at the Country Mercantile, the boys leave for work. 
The younger crew is staying busy getting the pigs ready for the fair.  They have started walking and washing them.  Some of the pigs need to slow down on the weight gain and some we need to push so it's difficult to keep a balance.  The boys are in football camp right now with their Dad and having a good time.  Wayne finishes up his job for the Wildlife Department on the 10th of August and is going to Tennessee with Ashton to visit Grandpa and Nannie Riner.  I'm sure they will be having a great time!  Next week the younger kids and I are going to the Oregon Coast with the Nielsons.  They are so excited to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  I'm not sure they really comprehend that it is not a southern California beach though.  The forecast is for temps between 60-70.  Kinda cold compared to the 95 degree weather we are used to. 
The end of Summer is coming way faster than we have anticipated or wanted and it's time to buckle down and get practicing on our reading and math again.  It's really hard to get the boys to stay in the house that long though.  They spend most of their time in the pond hunting poly wogs and the older guys are usually shooting guns or wakeboarding. 
Hope all your families are enjoying the weather and outdoor fun while you can too!  It's going to be gone before we know it. :(

We're Down A Skunk...

Summer is in full swing at the Riner home.  Guess what?  We caught the skunk!  He moved in under our house so we finally had to put an end to his stay with us.  I will have to upload the video on here later.  It was quite comical.  We caught him in a skunk trap (which is just a wire cage) and Wayne and Carson were trying to throw a blanket over the trap.  They kept missing and the skunk was just staring at them like they were crazy!  They finally got it and Wayne carried the trap out to the garden.  He was late to work so he just left the skunk in the cage covered with a blanket for the whole 90 degree day.  Then by the time he came home, he was feeling so sentimental about how nice that skunk was for not spraying him, that he had a hard time closing the deal. :)  By the time the rest of us got home from picking cherries at Grandma's we could smell that something had happened.  We had a 4-H barbeque in half and hour so we were really worried that this could be bad, really bad!  The wind was in our favor though and our barbeque went off without a hitch.  Except Dane felt the inclination to go check things out over at the trap and came back not smelling too rosy!  HAHA

Madi's Junior Prom

We spent last Saturday getting some more baby pigs from the neighbors and then Madi had prom.  She got home from her track meet the night before at 1am and had to be to work at the Country Mercantile at 8am.  She got off work at 1pm and her date started at 3pm.  They went shotgun shooting and then had dinner at 6pm.  She looked beautiful and went with a really nice boy from our ward.  She had no problem making it home by curfew however, because she was exhausted!  Besides that, he date stepped on the back of her dress and ripped it right in half at the waist seam. HAHA  She was a good sport about it, but it kinda topped off a very, long, exhausting day.  She was ready for bed!

Baby Pigs and other Guests

We were happy to welcome some visitors from Salt Lake into our home last night. We have been testing out a new curriculum for the church in our stake this past year. The audio/visual department sent out some of their members to film some lessons as examples of how these lessons are taught. Then they came around and interviewd some of the youth individually. They are just great people and

we enjoyed having them over for dinner before they filmed Madi. One of them writes alot of the youth songs you hear that go along with the themes for the year. Another films the Old Testament videos, etc. They are all very talented and kind. Lots of traveling involved for them. They just came from Peru on Wednesday and filmed here Wednesday night at the church.
Colton arrived home in the middle of the night on Thursday. Madi's main concern was her dress of course. She was so excited! My main reason for wanting him home was to help me build a new pig pen. Grandpa's wish was for him to come help him on the farm for a while and Dad's wish was to get to drive the pickup. No wonder he's only staying a week! HAHA
Today was the day to go pick out our baby pigs. THe girls wanted first pick so they ran over to the Scott's house before school and tagged their pigs so no oneelse can get them. HAHA! They were late for school and screaming about no breakfast, but they got the important part done.
Wayne will be working for the McNary Wildlife Refuge this summer so that will be great. ALso, he is working on getting an applicator's license to spray for bugs.
Fun stuff!

Spring Break and the Latest with the Riners

So it's been a couple of years since I've blogged anything. Colton is home from his mission and Chelsea is headed back to college. Madi's at the end of her Junior year and Cassi is almost done with her freshman year. Time is flying! I have had Colton's updates on his mission blog so I figured that was as much time as I could spend on such things. Now that is over maybe I can find time to update everyone on the rest of our lives.
Colton is coming home for a week before he goes to Arkansas for the summer to sell Home Alarm Systems. We just went to visit him during our spring break the first week in April. We really loved to see him again. After his mission we only got to see him for two weeks before he left for school so we really miss him. He has had a fun time in school this winter except for getting boots put on his tire for parking in the wrong place. That's $50 and he's had that a couple times. NO place to park a big pickup in Provo. I think he's decided to take his car with him next semester! He's majoring in Exercise Science with hopes to get into med school eventually. At least that's the plan for now.
Chelsea has been home during the winter semester because her track is Fall/Spring. She has been working at the school as a teachers aide and I think she actually enjoyed it. She has had her fill of liitle kids though and is very excited to get back to the college life. She has been dating Ty Bigler from Blackfoot and he is a really nice boy. He returned from his mission just before school began last fall and they met in their Book of Mormon class. One of the highlights of her first semester of college was winning the intramural football championship with a team of girls mostly from our ward in Basin City. Their coach, Edgar Mendez, was very proud of them! He's great and they are looking forward to another season of fun this spring. Chels is going to school to become a dental hygienist so far but she has really started to enjoy weight lifting and physical stuff lately so it may change to something in that kind of area.
Madi is getting ready for the prom. She bought her dress down in Utah while we were on vacation and then we accidently left it at Uncle Mike and Aunt Sha's house. Woops! Colton now has it in his possession though and it should be headed up to Washington in about a week. Just in time to be altered and ready to go. She is in track right now and just finding out that she's a hurdler. Her dad has been trying to get her to try it for a long time and she finally did. In her first race she took third after falling over the last hurdle! HAHA So she did great. She also long jumps and runs the short relays. They are way ahead in those races. She has a fast team. Now if we could only convince Kenzie and Jessie to come run with them, their team would be unbeatable!
Cassi is doing so great in school. SHe is very good about doing her homework and tenacious about learning what she needs to know. One of her teachers stopped me at a school event to tell me how impressed she was with Cassi's persistence in asking questions and not stopping until she understands what she needs to know. The teacher said she works really hard to earn her grades. She is trying to get a scholarship to school at BYU and has a good start. She is also running track and doing the hurdles. It's so fun to watch. The hurdles are about as tall as her and she really does good. Aunt Steph did her hair while we were in Blackfoot over spring break and it's pretty dark now. She loves her long hair and Steph helps her keep it just right.
Ashton is a hard worker in school too and is running track also. Her main concern is keeping everyone on the right track. She got brave and let her bunnies run wild around our yard. They seem to really love it and hop everywhere. WE just have to make sure they aren't under the car before we leave in the morning. Thumper is about 7 now and she got him from Nannie when they lived here. She really loves that rabbit. After the fair last year she and Payton decided that they were going to invest their premium money in a rabbit and raise bunnies to sell. Well that was over six month ago and still no bunnies. Ashton was going to do her FFA project on raising bunnies. So she had to document everything she did. She thought a poster of the process would be a great visual aide and would earn her a good grade. Well she put the rabbits in the cage together and then decided after the first couple of seconds that she wouldn't be documenting it on a poster afterall! HAHA
Payton just finished wrestling season, which Colton talked him into. He did great and got lots of medals. Before that he was playing Basketball and would love to play that year round. Football was in the fall and their team did okay. He has just purchased an airsoft gun and he and Carson are shooting up the neighborhood. I despise those little orange balls everywhere! I'm going to make them recycle them if they want to have ammunition I guess. He has been a huge help lately with planting the raspberries and flowers. Never complains and does it without being asked. What more could a mother want? He does however hate to feed and water the chickens. He and Carson split time doing that. He loved going to see BYU football practice while we were in Provo, but insists he will be playing for Georgia when he grows up. Hum. We'll see.
Carson is the self professed top reader in his class. They take tests on books that they read and he apparently has the most points by far. He is also taking piano lessons and while he satred out loving it, he now dreads it. What can I say? To get a boy like him to sit for more than two minutes is a challenge. He would much rather be riding his motorcycle or shooting something. He too played football, basketball and wrestled this year. He is starting to get that competitive nature. He's good too! He's very strong and if he doesn't know alot of moves, he will just pick his opponent up and slam him down to the ground again in wrestling, to get more points.
Kellen is just happy to be the baby and will tell you that. His teached told him to write his name in class. He told her nah, that's okay, I don't want to. The teacher said well you need to. He told her, No, I don't know how, you can do it for me. (He really does know how), but in typical Kellen form, he usually gets someone to do everything for him. Bad, really bad, I know. He just has seven older brothers and sisters to do it, so why should he? He wrestled to this winter and earned a first place medal on his first tournament. So cute! Then he didn't get any medals for the rest of the season. His dad asked him why and he said, Dad it's cause I suck at wrestling! HAHA Bad word, I know!
Wayne is in track season as a coach right now. He has applied for the head Basketball coaching job too. And they won the football state championship this past fall. Crazy year. We will see what he decides to do. Head coach of three sports may just make him have a heart attack! This summer will be filled with camps and games of all kinds. Hopefully he will have time to squeeze an actual paying job in there somewhere.
Me, well I'm working for a marketing company part time now that the kids are in school. I leave after they do and then get home before they do, so they don't know the difference. I have been the math team coach for Payton's class and help out in Kellen's classroom. Carson has been feeling slighted cause I haven't been in his class. I'm the Beehive teacher in church and have Ashton in my class. It's alot of fun and we are preparing for camp in June right now. Other than that, I'm just doing a lot of homework with kids, trying to get a garden planted and keep up with the bills. Fun stuff you know. WE just had a great time during spring break. Saw Colton, went to BYU football practice and got to see Spencer Hadley. Then we stayed at Shannon's house. We watched conference with them and then went to the house of one of Colton's mission companions. There were a few other RMs from his mission there too and we had fun playing Just Dance with them on the Wii. Then we went to Vernal to visit Brian and Mikes families. SO FUN! The kids all loooved to be with their cousins. We went to a dinosaur bones exhibit and Payton got to work on his archeology badge for scouts. The kids spent alot of time at the Rec center swimming and climbing the walls, literally. We went to the movies and saw the hunger games. I would recommend it. Very action packed and went fast. The next day we went to Blackfoot and visited with Steph's family. The girls all got their hair done by aunt Steph and were spoiled. Chelsea went with Ty and we didn't see her after that until 15 min before we left there. The boys had a blast with Ryker too. Wayne and I went up to Rexburg to help Chels with some things but never found her. We did, however, find his old football coach from college and he spoke with him and his wife for a long time, oh the good old days. THen we came home a little lighter, with no money in our pockets but some great memories in our hearts. Some things you just can't buy. Thanks to everyone who opened their homes up to us and played with all the kids. They had a great time that they will remember for a long time to come.