Christmas Orchestra Concert

 Kamryn has continued with her violin. It is a small group but she is learning alot. She is the first chair in her orchestra and she takes it seriously.

Early Christmas Present

 We borrowed an egg incubator from our friends and decided to give it a go.

 It was the coolest thing watching them hatch. It took 21 days to the day for them to hatch. Doug took great care with them the whole time. He rolled them and 3 times a day and candled them and loved every minute of it.

 They were so cute once they fluffed up and started walking around. 

The miracle of life for Christmas.

Derrik's Deer Hunt

Derrik is going to write about his trip since I wasn't there.

From Derrik: Over thanksgiving my dad and I went on my second lifetime deer hunt. It was a New Mexico rifle hunt near Eagar. It was a hard hunt. We only saw one buck the whole hunt which was the one I tagged out on. We were walking and we saw a big group of does and we watched for a long time then they ran off and the last one in the group was a buck! We tracked the herd through the snow for 2 miles until we saw him. There was a lot of trees and only two possible places to shoot at him. I aimed patiently waiting for him to clear the trees, then I fired and he jumped once, took a few steps and then quickly expired.

 

Dum Dum Dum

Today is the day the pigs go to slaughter. I know it is sad. Especially when you raise it yourself. It is something you just have to learn how to not think about it. We raise our own animals. A lot of people don't want to know where their food comes from but we do even though it is hard when you have become attached. Both of Doug and I have been raised that way so we are good with it. 

Doug picked up this perfect size hog trailer for a couple hundred bucks from a guy at work. The pigs haven't moved much from the pen so getting them into the trailer was going to be a challenge. We discovered they LOVE pancakes so we made a little trail to follow into the trailer. It took a really lot of convincing to get them into the trailer but eventually they went.

Doug was so happy when they finally got inside. The butcher isn't too far away.

 They really turned out to be great size pigs. 

 They came out a lot easier than they came in.

Bye Bye Pig. Can't wait to see you again in our freezer.

We got a few more piglets to start on the next batch.

Sadie's 4th Year Young Women's Camp

Our ward does their 4th year Young Women's Camp Adventure separate than Girls Camp at a different time so they don't miss out on other camp stuff.

They did a this fun obstacle course. Sadie was kinda scared but she did it!

The Magic Cupcake

For Derrik's Home Ec Class he was given the assignment to make a commercial. His friend, Calob is a competitive hip hop dancer so they decided to use his skills. I was the photographer. The story went that the dancer was not dancing good so Derrik gave him a wonderful cupcake and then the dancer really busted a move. Pretty funny.

High School Choir

Sadie is all ready for her first of many high school choir concerts.

Kamryn Turns 11

 Kamryn wanted a party with all her new friends. She wanted to copy Sadie with her Minute to Win it games so she enlisted Sadie to help.

The kids ended up having more fun than Mom was going to allow and they had to be yelled at just a bit. They thought it would be ok to have an ising fight in the house.

 Crazy Kids.

 Kamryn made her own cake again. She also did cupcakes. 

Loco Bike Rider

Doug wants to stay in shape and ride his bike to work to stay in shape and to save fuel. Too bad it is 15 miles one way and it is AUGUST in the desert.

Loco.....

Shooting Bows

It is so nice not having close neighbors and a little bit of elbow room.

Derrik and his Dad Shooting their bows.

Love my guys!

Hot Garden Building

We got the garden all built and ready in time to plant the fall garden. It was super hot and sticky outside.

Kamryn is always so willing to help when we need her too.

Making Cheese

Well having a gallon of goat milk every day has made me a full fridge of milk. I have been reading up on how to make cheese. I have made Mozzarella successfully thanks to YouTube but I wanted to try a hard cheese. I made myself a homemade cheese press.

You have to wax it to seal it when it is curing in the fridge for 3 months. I understand now why cheese is so expensive! You have to tons of work. You have to turn it a bunch of times during the process.

Getting the wax during the hot summer months was a challenge as well. No one would ship it. I did find a place online that shipped it in a cooler overnight for a fee.

Doug got involved and made me a better press.

 UPDATE: After all the time and work the cheese was terrible. It is such a shame that you have to do so much work and then find out it wasn't even good. Not sure what I did wrong. I guess it is back to the drawing board or I can just stick to soft cheeses!

Subject Kamryn

 Sadie is taking a photo imaging class in school and had an assignment to capture emotion with her camera. Kamryn volunteered to be her model.

It took great concentration to show the different emotions. Kamryn usually is just happy all the time!

Isn't she a beautiful model?

Can't forget Bisket

Modeling has hazards.

BUGS!

At least we got an emotion of scary pain.

confused maybe?

Thoughtful pondering

Surprise!

What great skills. Even a tear.