Yea- outside again

Yea- outside again. The weather has finally warmed up and stopped being rainy!! Here Katie is enjoying a mud foot bath- and free at that!














Bella is also enjoying the outdoors. Be prepared for future pictures of a diaperless baby though as we being "POTTYTRAINING 101" located in the Boytim front yard.....













And Card- just being a barefoot boy.....

Bella at the party

Bella went with us to a b-day party for one of Katie's friends. It was a dress up party, so she joined right in!

OJ

I have been craving orange juice this pregnancy. I just got my electric citrus juicer today- YEA! I have been juicing 3+ glasses by hand lately. Last week we got 15# of oranges from our organic food co-op and they did not last all week! We got 23# this week- we will see how it goes......

Cards toolbox

Card and his toolbox- yes he asked to take it in the bath and to bed with him!

OUR FIRST EGG

We got our first egg today!! Yea!!! It was a green egg and Katie found it. It came from a layer we just got yesterday- her name is Peaches and she is our prettiest chicken (even the roosters think so!)

Praire Days

Katie is taking a class called "Pioneer days" where she gets to learn all about the Pioneers, how they ate, lived, played, etc... Today will be her second day- we go every Friday. Card likes it just as much as Katie does!






All these guns and no gun belt!!




















Katie in her praire dress!

Bella ate the tractor!

Bella decided this morning that Card's new tractor would taste really good- I think she got more than she bargined for! Card got this adorable tractor from his Great Aunt Kathy. He and Bella love playing with it. You can see the trailer that goes to the tractor to the left of Bella- that is what she tasted this morning!!

Card's plant

Card gives me the sweetest things. Today he actually dug up an old pineapple plant and brought it to me. He worked so hard at it too! What a sweet boy!

Bella 1 year!!!

I cannot believe my baby is one year old today! We woke early (not mama's choice!) and has smoothies for breakfast. Then we played inside and Bella laid down for her morning nap. After she got up we all went outside and got good and dirty. Bella loves playing outside and will stand at the door asking to go out. After outside time we all came in and the little ones took baths. Then we ate lunch- mama had an orange, Katie had a sandwich with PB and raw honey (YUM) and then we all had a yummy raw dessert (pb with raw cacao---hard to explain, but it was GOOD). Then everyone under 3 layed down for a nap (boy I wish that was me!) Katie and I did some school and then I layed on the couch for an entire 10 minutes- then Bella woke up. We made our special dinner and banana bread for Bella (Banana and bread- Bella's two favorites!)
Daddy missed our celebration :( because he had fiddle lessons. That is ok- we will be treated with listening to him kill cats--- I mean play the fiddle really soon!


Katie and Bella with Bella's new tricycle.
They all love to ride it!





















Bella enjoying her first spagetti.
Katie picked the special birthday dinner.





















Bella enjoying some banana bread.













Bella and one of her baby dolls.

Sunset

This was a beautiful sunset that you could see from our front window. I was laying on the couch today (for like a whole 10 minutes) listening to the frogs, birds, etc.. and just thanking God for giving us this place.

Ducks

Here are the four ducks... I bet they are cold tonight!!

Bella walking

Yep--Bella has started taking her first steps!
She motors about 5 steps before she puts it in hyper-mode and goes into 4 wheel drive (crawling!!). Sorry we did not get better pictures of her first steps- I was just excited to get a picture at all!

Family

Here is a family picture taken in November. A good friend of ours, Shona, took it for us. We were at her house for a Reformation festival- which explains why we are dressed in period clothes. We had the Apothacary booth- it was a lot of fun.

Me and Kids

Here is a picture of me and the kids at Mercer. We took this in November... I can't wait for the weather to warm up again so we can go back- probably Thursday or so :)

Runway model

Thought this was an interesting picture of a model......

Bella's Green Drink

Bella drinking a green drink. She loves them- as do Card and Katie. They usually include bananas, lots of spinach, some sort of frozen berry or fruit and water. I have to make a full blender full just to feed the kids. It is a great way to get their greens down them though!!

The message

The kiddos- email me with any questions..........

Katie- 8 years
Card- 2 years
Bella- 10 months

What exactly is this you are feeding me mom??

The Nanny....

Bella is "doing the Nanny"......

Sorry this is in no particular order....I wish I could figure out how to arrange my post the way I want them to show up..

The Lachney Family!!

Card is doing some serious golf playing!

We visited the Seven Acre Wood a few days ago. We played minature golf, saw the animals in the petting zoo, and had a generally great time!

She was so pround of herself!

Bella standing...

Bella standing by- self

Church family

Card's personal favorite- The Guthrie family....

Church family

The lovely Ramos family- they will be having their 6th baby in Jan......

Some Church Pictures

I have been taking some pictures for our church directory- I thought I would post some of our families here. We go to a wonderful church with great families.
This is the Welch family- I am missing their oldest son- he is in the Marines.....

Katie

I suppose she gets her seriousness from her Daddy......

Card 2006

Card in one of his favorite Christmas gifts (the hat, not the swing!) some of his other fav's included the trampoline (seen in the background), tractors, a play dough table, tractors, remote controled truck, tractors, lots of books and of course, tractors.

Very serious

My very serious husband!

Katie and Card

This was a really cute picture of Katie and Card. Their Great Uncle Jimmy got this really nice birthday card a few days ago and ---- well, you see the results. I believe the card said something like "It's your birthday- I'm so happy I could fart". What a clever family I have...

Then we had Christmas AGAIN at our house. Here is Card with two MORE tractors given to him by his Uncles Edward and Merritt and soon to be Aunt Julie! Talk about Santa's- those three went all out this Christmas! It was a great time (I think....) I missed most of it due to my untimely illness..... Sorry guys!

Christmas 2006

Then we had Christmas at Nanny's house. We opened lots of gifts and Will and the kids ate too much. I was sick though and did not eat much. I actually did not eat much for the 4 days after Christmas either- boy, a whole week sick. I cant remember when I was last sick! Boy, this one made up for lost time though!

Here are Nanny and Arabella

Christmas 2006

First we had Christmas at our house. This is Christmas morning. Card is getting two tractors at once! Katie got him a special wooden one (he has been instructed by her not to take it outside) and he got a red tractor and trailer from mommy and daddy. After opening gifts we read the Christmas story out of the Bible- one of our traditions!

Bella's Christmas 2006

Bella's first Christmas! She got lots of gifts and loved tasting all the different varieties of wrapping paper!

Garden pond

Cards absolute favorite thing was the fish pond at the Gardens! He loved this and would have stayed there all day! He was scared of the really big fish though. It was a black and white fish that was about a foot long. He said it would bite him and would not put his finger in the water.

Katie and Card played Indian the other day and painted theirselves up really nice! It was another rainy day on the farm- well actually a rainy week! Light rain though, so the house did not wash away!







Katie had Card in the Bjorn. He loves for her to carry him around. I love that she is learning how to be a mommy with her little brother and sister. Today when we got to CVS she got Bell out of the carseat and carried her around the store. Bell thought it was great to have her big sister carrying her!

Card by the waterfall- he loved the water falls.











Bell, Katie, and Card enjoying the day together. I am so glad I have all my little ones with me all the time. It is so great to see them discover new things and they love being together.

Gardens

We visited Mercer Arboretum last Wednesday. We had a really good time looking at all the gardens. We had packed a lunch so we went to the playground there and had a nice lunch and played. I took lots of pictures. I will try to load some more tonight.

Hickory Horned Devil Catapiller

Really neat catapiller Katie's Great Uncle Brady caught for her. It was about the size of a hot dog. It looks pretty gross, but it does not bite. It lives in trees during the pupa stage, then falls to the ground and burrows under for about 2 years, it turns into the Royal moth (the moth with a 6 inch wingspan).

Katie and a few of her friends.

We had a church campout last weekend and the girls had a great time. I got them to slow down for a minute to take this picure...

From L-R (kinda..) we have

Grace Bailey, Aubrey Young, Katie Boytim, Eva Harris, Marot Smith, and Claire Stevens. They make up most of our Little Women of Virtue group. I think only Rebecca Robison and Emma Reith are missing. Little Women of Virtue is a girls group that we go to every other Friday and it teached the girls different "girl" stuff like sewing, latchhook, baking, manners, etc...

Card, Bella, Sara, and Lauren

The Guthrie girl, Card and Bella

We had a work day at Debra Rayberns ( a widow from our church) and this is where Card and Bella stayed. Card LOVES the girls and Bella is getting fond of them too. The girls actually babysat for us this last week so we could go Christmas shopping.

Arabella 9 months

Arabella Colleen Boytim
9 months old

Bella is standing all by self these day. That is until mommy yells "YEA!!", at which point Bella gets frightened and sits down. She enjoys playing "tea" and "house" with her sister and "screa," with her brother. I guess "scream" is a way of communication among little ones- they really enjoy it until mommy's nerves get rattled.

Rough day for the animals.....

The kids a couple of weeks ago.
Katie is still 8, Card is 2, and Arabella is 9 months old now!!!

Rough day for the animals today. We built a yard for the ducks, but made it where you could open the door to the duck coop and it became the door for the yard. We figured we would just see how the doves did (we have been told that they do not go far). They did not go far, but they also can not go very high. I think their wings are too weak from being in a coop all the time. So they could not really get off the ground when are dogs come by....... well having a bird dog and one very good hunter dog..... yep- one of the doves became doggy food today. By the way, the other doves flew back into the coop- I guess they are smarter than we thought.....
So fast forward a few hours----- Blue, the famous Bette, who lived approx. 7 YEARS, died this afternoon. Katie mentioned that it has just not been her day today. Poor girl, losing two pets in one day. We will probably replace the fish tomorrow and Will is buying a gate for the duck yard so we can let the ducks out and leave the doves in. We will eventually enclose the yard so the doves can fly around it and not get out. That is not very high on our list of "to do" things though. Now we just have to keep Ralph the bird dog out of the duck yard and we will be good.