Playing with Cousins

We had so much fun last week that I'm just now getting to writing it down.  On Monday evening the girls got to go over to Grandma and Grandpa's to play with one of their cousins.  Of course we stayed up too late.  Wednesday we had cousins come over here to play.  We got out the swimming pool I borrowed from my parents and blew it up.  It has 3 inflatable layers, but only the bottom one will really hold air.  The top two lasted for a little while, though, and the kids alternated between getting wet in the pool and jumping on the trampoline.  They had a great time, followed by a hot dog roast and dutch oven dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's.  It ended with the 3 oldest kids staying the night and sleeping in tents.  Dusty, Grandpa's dog, stood guard between the two tents.  He would have slept inside either one of them, but he was kicked out.  On Thursday I watched the kids at Grandma and Grandpa's house so that Grandma, Melissa, and Tarilynn could go to the temple.  Grandpa took Reid and went to the mountains to get firewood.  They had a good time, all except for the tree that fell on the truck rack.  We did try to get the kids home early that night because they had all had way too many late nights.  Friday we played again for a few hours, but being gone too many days made for some chores to catch up on.  We were sad to see everyone leave Saturday.

Saturday we also got to go to Rupert for a family reunion for my Dad's side of the family.  I got to see some cousins that I haven't seen in close to 6 years.  Some of my cousins had children that I had never met.  It was good to sit around and eat and visit.  I wish we could have visited longer, but life has been so crazy.  Maybe at the next reunion we will plan for more time with family.

We also received a wonderful blessing last week.  We are making arrangements with a neighbor to expand our sheep herd, but we've been wondering where to put them.  We have a place that would be perfect, but it needs fenced in.  We heard about someone who had taken down a whole bunch of fence and had it rolled up alongside the road.  They didn't want it and said Robert could come and haul it away if he wanted.  It looks like it might just fence in everything we were hoping for.  For us, it was a little miracle.  Robert has been spending a lot of his "free" time putting fence posts in and getting ready to put the fence up.  Pretty soon here we are going to have our own little farm. 

We were also able to sell many of our little chicks that we got in May.  We tossed around the idea of raising them for meat, but they were really layers and wouldn't get too big.  So, Robert put an add out and we found homes for most of them.  Now we have just the number of layers that we want, plus the ones we are raising for our freezer.  It is nice to have fewer birds around to take care of.  I will be happier when our freezer is full, too.