Mustache June

As one of the originators of Mustache May, Tyler was ashamed to learn that he had completely forgotten about the annual event. When I showed him a few pictures of some friend's mustaches, he decided he needed to grow one in solitude, to show his penance....or in his words "suffer". Tyler says this because in the past, people have openly laughed at his attempt at a mustache (thanks a lot - reject who works at Auto Zone....you can hardly take that one seriously). Anyway, this isn't a great picture of it, but you get the idea.

Tyler shaved his stache off a few days ago because he thought it would make me more excited to mend the holes in his work pants. (I still haven't even fixed my dress that Cameron cut holes in, which I unfortunately didn't discover until I was at church.) Until next year, I bid the mustache a fond, fond farewell.

Life Through the Eyes of a Four Year Old

Ian likes to take pictures....A LOT. If there's ever a chance to snap a picture with mom's camera, he does it. While this gives me serious heartburn (it took months to get it fixed last time), I decided I couldn't just erase his pictures.


Here are just a few:


Taken while spinning around in circles at the shop.

Definitely can't get rid of this one! This is what life is like at our house. We don't normally have pictures of this.

Never thought to take a picture of that.

Tyler will want you all to know that he cleaned off those shelves and reorganized them. This is us packing up after our spring open house at the shop.

Cameron doesn't look like he was expecting a photo shoot.

Grandma's green umbrella. It was supposed to be part of his Little Black Sambo outfit. Instead we used it to shade the kittens if it ever got to hot. I did erase the 30+ pictures Ian took of the same 2 kitten's backs.

Uh. This is Ian's foot.

Dad at the computer.

Dinner time at the Livingstones.

There you have it. Are you inspired?

Kittens

So, our cat had 5 kittens about 5 weeks ago. We probably have enough varmints to keep all 5 busy, but we just can't justify having 6 cats. I mean we already have stuff stacked up outside our house on our dirt patch. We're totally white trash. (Luckily both of our cars are still running - but that could end at any minute). We'll have to keep one kitten to replace our ill fated Weazy who disappeared a few months ago. Just look into these kitties eyes and tell me you can resist them. Their mother is training them well in the mousing arts. There are usually at least 3 dead animals laying around their house at all times.

We call this one runt. He's just so much smaller than his fluffy brothers and sisters.

This is Rocky Blue. Some of our friends recently named their baby Rocky Blue, and Ian loved the name so much, he was going to name all the kittens Rocky. If we hadn't had kittens to name, he probably would have insisted we give the name to our next child, regardless of the gender.

We named this one Eloise, out of remembrance for our other fluffy black cat that disappeared. We hope this one is as good at mousing as she was.

You have to love Guido. We call him that because he's so enormously fat. (No offense if your name is Guido.) He is fluffy, but it's not all fluff. He's got a belly on him....and his tail is really short. He's almost a perfect round ball. We think he might be better at eating than mousing.

We don't have a name for this one. We don't really know the gender of any of them yet. I'm saying, if it's a boy, we should call him Lyle. If it's a girl....Ramona. Don't tell either of these actual people we want to name our animals after them. The fact is, we have so many animals that drift through our lives, everyone has to have their turn being named after something. We still have two calves to name. Like I said...everyone will get their turn.

What We've Been Up To

First of all, I'd like to say that I've been highly dissatisfied with spring. We've had a hard time climbing out of the 50s. I went to the doctor the other day, and she said that she could see that I liked to be outdoors. (I wonder what, exactly about me, screams outdoors.) Listen lady, where I'm from, there isn't anything except the outdoors. We only have two choices: in or out. So, anyway, we've been spending a lot of time indoors because snow, we can handle. Blizzards aren't so inviting. I don't think that makes for very exciting blogging.

1. Ian finally learned to ride a pedal bike. No, I don't have a picture of him riding. I say finally because he's been riding his Boot Scoot bike really skillfully since he was 2 1/2. I've been trying to get him to just try a pedal bike for a year. He wouldn't do it. Then one day, he decided to try, and it literally took him less than 5 minutes to master it. Hooray for the Boot Scoot!

2. We go on "adventures" a few times a week when the weather is nice. This is at Brighams, a sort of developed camp spot on the ranch where my dad grew up, and where we lived for our first 2 years in Ruby Valley. We didn't plan on building a fire, but Tyler happened to have some flares that the Volunteer Fire Dept. uses to light back fires. Man, that's the way to build a fire!

3. Charley is way too gentle for his own good.

4. What do you do when it's 30 degrees outside? Get ready for swimming season, of course!

5. Ian calls this his horse. Her name is Chipmunk, and she needs to be ridden more. She barely tolerates out little outings.

6. This is Cameron riding Boach, Tyler's "new" horse. Boach is 20 years old. Ian has renamed him "Geo".

7. Tyler built a sandbox for the boys. It is now full of sand, but it's been too cold to enjoy playing in it. Hopefully we'll use it more if summer or possibly even spring ever arrives.

8. Who doesn't love to ride/drive a four wheeler?

9. On an adventure near Indian Rock and the Bat Caves. We walked around Indian Rock, and I don't know how we ever got up to the top of it. I wouldn't go up there without climbing gear now.
I really want to find the time capsule we put up there, years ago.

10. I don't have a picture of them, but we now have 5 kittens. Margie had her babies two weeks ago, and shortly thereafter, Eloise (her sister, who was also pregnant) disappeared. We don't know if something happened to her, or if she just ran off. We're really sad to lose her because she was a much better mouser than her sister, who is now totally preoccupied with her babies. Let's hope the kittens get trained in the art. And, incidentally, if anyone is looking for kittens, we are willing to part with a few of them!