Springtime Fun...We Are So Blessed

Natalie had lots of fun play time with Grammie before she had to go home.

Sorry, I forgot to rotate this picture. It's Natalie riding Bella.

Here is Natalie playing tag with Patches, her new bum lamb from Grandpa Chauncey. Don't worry, she lives at Graendma's until she is old enough to be outside in a few weeks.

Natalie holding Mini-Patches. They were both bum twins, and she wanted to name them both Patches, but we convinced her to stick the "mini" in front of the smaller one.

Natalie and Grandma feeding Mini.

Although it is nechnically spring, we only reached about 32 degrees today with a few snow flurries. We are supposed to get more snow tonight, which is good. We definitely need the moisture. Natalie spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa Tharp's so I could sleep in (THANK YOU!!!), so I went out to get her today and got some pictures of her with her lambs. They wag their tails and follow her, and it is so cute. We (Well, I did. Natalie was asleep in the car) also enjoyed a fun visit with the Forshee's on our way home. Kruze is getting so big and look so much like his daddy! Nate and Adrienne, thanks for the humorous and enlightening conversation...it made my day!



This past week has been busy. Natalie and I made another trip to Cody to finalize some book issues before it goes to print, and we got to play a lot outside. Grammie left Wednesday, and we miss having her around! She was a huge help, and Natalie still asks where she is! We are excited to see the whole Portland gang in July when we go for a wedding. My nice neighbor Cindy is going to help me get my garden ready to plant this week, and Kyle should be home tomorrow! I also hope to start some ground work with my filly this week. Natalie and I will attend Great Aunt Bertha's funeral tomorrow. She was married to Grandpa Eddie's brother and had a wonderful life of 98 years. She was sharp until the day she died, always knowing who Natalie and I were. She even made it to Natalie's baby shower the week after she was born. She was a fun lady and loved by many in the community.



This past week was an emotional one for me, but I know all will be better this next week. We really miss Daddy when he's gone. Hope you all had a fun weekend and have a great week planned. Hugs to all.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all our family and friends! It has been over a week since I posted, but I have actually been getting things accomplished. I know, hard to imagine. We hope you all had a blessed holiday. We spent the day in Hyattville after church, and it was fun to have family from both sides join us. Above is a picture of Natalie with her Tharp cousins and a friend at the Easter egg hunt after church. There was more candy than eggs, so they just threw the candy on the lawn for the little kids. Natalie ended up with several pounds, which Daddy will take to work tomorrow to share with the big boys.
Here is the egg hunter herself. All Daddy got to do was hold the bag...
Here she is showing incredible speed and dedication as she runs to another candy cluster.
And here is Miss Natalie coloring in her tutu that I got her at a craft show in Billings last weekend. She wore it the whole morning! My jewelry show was fun, but not as busy as I anticipated. I was talking to several other vendors who had been there before, and they all said it was the slowest year they had ever had. I think gas prices and the economy are really taking a toll, plus it is not really a holiday gift season. None the less, it was great to see friends and eat at good restaurants. I stayed Saturday night in Columbus with my best friend Suzi, which was a treat.

I was in town Monday and Tuesday, then spent Wednesday in Cody with our publisher for the final run through of our Hyattville book. This project has been four years in the making, and we will send it off to the printer this week! We are very excited. Yes, that is what some of you will be getting for Christmas! Then Thursday Kyle and I took advantage of Mom being here and took off for Deadwood for a couple of days. The weather was chilly but nice, and we got to visit the museum and some historical sites this time. We really got hit hard that we are now getting "old" when we were too tired to go out again after an early dinner Saturday and were in bed at 6:30! My excuse was being 15 weeks pregnant, and Kyle's was he only had 3 hours of sleep the night before because we got there so late. Still, it was sort of a sorry site. It was a really fun weekend, though. Of course there was some antique shopping involved...

Kyle will leave again tomorrow for a week in North Dakota and expects to be busy all week. We said prayers today for a safe trip. I am feeling OK. Some days are better than others, but lately I've been feeling sick again. I still think it's a boy, but Kyle is not convinced. My mom is still here and has been a big help, and we will miss her when she leaves Wednesday. We hope you all had a great weekend and will have a good week. Hugs to all.

Catching Up On The Week...

Here is a pic from last weekend when we were working on the new fence. Natalie thought it was great fun to hang out in the tw0-foot holes! We have since hired the son of some friends of ours to help, and he and Kyle have gotten a lot done this week. It looks great!
And here is Miss Nattie licking the bowl of brownie mix we made for youth group dinner Wednesday night. She had been sticking her fingers in to lick thinking I had not really noticed, then I told her she could "lick the bowl." Well, she took that literally!
Turquoise and Tiger Eye nuggets with Bronzite Cross: And here are some pics of my projects that have kept me so consumed and not a good blogger over the last two weeks. I love working with natural stones and finding all different types of accents and color combinations. I head to Billings for the two-day show tomorrow (I set up tomorrow, show starts Saturday). I am really excited and have lots of new things to display. Kyle has been wonderful today in helping me to get ready and get the house picked up for my mom's visit. Grammie should be here any minute! Hope you all have a fun and safe weekend. Oh, the doc appointment went well Tuesday and things look on track for Little Seahorse (whom I'm sure at this point is a boy).
Angelite stone with yellow jade and sterling silver

Rose quartz, freshwater pearl and smokey quartz with jasper pendant

Google has issues

Well, I have tried to post some pictures for the past two days and it keeps telling me Google has a server error, so I will just give you a quick update and hopefully get some pics up tomorrow. We spent most of Saturday working on completing our new fence, so that meant hours of fun outside. I have some good pics of Natalie standing in some of the huge holes Kyle dug! We got a lot of the old fence torn down and some of the new up, so it was a very productive day. I also took Natalie to her first election process experience when we went to the Democratic Caucus. It was an amazing meeting- very emotional from a lot of people. They gave anyone who wanted to a chance to speak, and many of the 200 local residents spoke up. We had a gentleman who served in WWII and many ranchers and farmers with children now in Iraq, as well as high school students about to embark on their first election process speak. It was very inspirational and moving to see so many people gather in one place with a vision of a better future. For those of you who do not live in rural areas, large turnouts at the Democratic party events is huge. There are more Democrats than I thought that live here, just a lot of them are not as vocal. Wyoming was the only state to hold a caucus Saturday, so we got lots of national attention because of the tight Democratic race. In the larger cities of Cheyenne and Casper they had to move the caucuses to bigger places to accomodate the thousands of Democrats who turned out.

OK, enough political talk. Sunday we went to church and spent the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa checking cows and counting calves. We even got to see a live birth! Then we got to help Daddy and Grandpa milk a cow whose calf had not sucked yet. It was a great afternoon, topped off with a fabulous meal from Grandma Jill. At church, Nattie is now able to help the older kids collect the offering, and it is too cute. She is getting the hang of it and brings a smile to every pew.

Hope you all had a fun weekend. We have a doctor appointment tomorrow afternoon to check on Little Seahorse, so I'll update everyone later. Hugs to all.

Are We Bored Yet?

It was chilly yesterday, so we didn't get outside much except to feed horses and kitties. So we made up our own fun with the bathroom mirror! This picture was an experiment we did. She was having fun making faces and hugging me in the mirror, and she was waving to "us" and saying Hi, so I decided to see if we could take a picture of it like people do when they hold the camera out in front and point and shoot at themselves. It almost worked except for the flash. It was fun and made us laugh, though, which I guess is all that counts.
And here is my sweet baby who somehow got a scratch on her nose yesterday. She likes to do the face that resembles the "Home Alone" face the kid does in the mirror. Not sure where she got it, but she'll put her face in her hands like that and say "Oh, My!" It is adorable.
Kyle made it home Sunday and is now back at work in town. I am up late after Natalie goes to bed trying to get last minute things done before I have to tag all my jewelry, and we are looking forward to Grammie's visit next week. Kyle actually managed to get some time off the following week while my mom is still here, so we are headed to Deadwood for some time together, which will be really fun.
And our last little addition to this post is something new, so we'll see how it turns out. It's a video of us, well just Natalie because I'm filming, dancing to the radio. Our local station just got bought out and now plays some cool music we didn't used to get, so we were jamming out. Sorry about the bumpy footage. I was dancing too!

Fun in the Sun

Well, here are the pictures I promised from last week. I'm sorry to say I have not taken any new ones this week. These are from our hours and hours outside last week before Kyle left. Once again, it was beautiful! Natalie tried her balance out on some scrap wood. A future in gymnastics may be in store...
She also had fun on our last remaining patch of snow under our big pine trees. This week there is just a bit left, but I have a feeling we'll get some more soon.
She was also a "big help" to Daddy as he moved some large stones to cover the top on one of our wells. The cover doesn't fit too snug and she discovered it outside, so we burried it under several big rocks.
And here is our beloved Linus Kitty. He was gone for about three weeks earlier this month and then mysteriously re-appeared. Since we have been chasing off other wild strays that eat our food, our two outside kitties have been around a lot more. We've had to get aggressive with the strays because they were under the house ripping up the insulation! And since they're gone, we are only having to put out half as much food as before. I think they just got mean towards our kitties and ate their food. Ours are on the small side and are very sweet. Anyway, Linus is glad to be back and hasn't left since.
Everything else is fine with us. Kyle will hopefully be home sometime Sunday. With a 10 hour drive I'm not expecting him early! Natalie has a play date with Grandpa this afternoon to meet his new PUPPIES! Yes, he is adopting one-year old and 6-week old catahoula puppies. They are good cow dogs, and the little one is a girl who will eventually be Turk's "wife." I didn't know arranged marriages were still popular. She's so excited to meet the new pups, and I get the afternoon to work on some beading. I head to the Billings show in two weeks! I'm very excited.
In potty news, we had a long play date with lots of kids/moms at the park yesterday, then took the kids out to pizza. The whole trip lasted about three hours, and we had no accidents! I asked her several times to try, and she never went, but she had enough control to hold it that long. I was so proud of her. Daddy will be very impressed when he gets home. It just seems like he's been gone forever this time! All of us moms made comment yesterday that our of all the kids we had there, there was only one boy! Poor Britton was on the outs with some of the girls for a bit, and I said I would do my best to bring another boy to the group this year! Little Seahorse is doing fine. I'm not as sick as I used to be, just tired. I have another doctor appointment before I go to Billings. I think Kyle will try to come to hear the heartbeat if he's around.
Hope you all have a fun weekend without bad weather, sick kids or major inconveniences!