My Birthday

Hey, what up?

I come to you tonight one year older.  That's right, I am now...

34 

years old.

no big whoop. 

right?

my birthday was 2 days ago, actually.

the kids didn't have school that day, so we got to sleep in.  that was a gift right there.  thanks, school district.  i talked to my sister julie on the phone in the morning, then skyped with my polish-serving missionary parents right after that (that's always fun).  i love seeing them face to face from half way across the world.  they are definitely 2 cool cats!

i got off of skype right when some friends pulled up.  They drove all the way up to the ranch to bring me some lunch, and cards, and gifts.  Alise, in the dark red, made the yummy lunch herself and brought her teenaged daughter up to babysit so that we could eat (semi) childless.

sooooo sweet and so awesome!  tammy, my friend with the babe there on the far left, made the most delicious carrot cake from scratch.  it is all the best ingredients (even organic carrots).  

what great friends i have.

my friend becky canned 24 quarts of peaches for me!  awesome, huh? and she gave me 5 18-count egg cartons.  that cracked me up.  but seriously, if you have chickens, and never buy eggs and therefore never buy the egg cartons with them, then you probably know how great it is to get new clean egg cartons for your eggs.

i am just finishing a piece right now. mmmmmm.

mid afternoon we headed up the mountain to the upper part of the ranch for a wood-cutting campout with our family friends driving behind us.

on the way up...

i love seeing my rancher while camping.  he is so natural and good at it.  he always has everything set up within like 15 minutes after we get there: tent up, camp fire started, everything unloaded.  he also does most of the cooking.  excellent.

it is so funny to see what the kids pack when we go somewhere.  on this trip, spencer packed 4 sweatshirts, and like 2 short-sleeved shirts, and some jammie pants, but no pants.  ezra packed a pumpkin lookin' bag with his journal, a stuffed horse, his pick-up sticks, a car, his hat, and his fox in socks book that he has been working so hard to get through by himself.

he is making this face just for the camera, by the way...

gathering firewood, finding cool mossy branches...

this just cracks me up....

timmy and spencer just chillin' on camp chairs on a big dirt pile.  

nice hair. owning the age. weston thought it was some sort of gang sign that i was doing at first...

peek-a-boo...

cuddly cozy in the tent...

2 of the 3 toddlers.  

it was starting to get cold.  ji is in love with his red coat (that i got from target for 3 bucks).

buds.

more buds.

and more buds

(+ more)

the kids sat on this rock forever.  it was the cool place to be apparently.  it looks like from the picture that if they fell off they would be toasted, but there really was plenty of room in between.

apple crisp was packed to the brim in the dutch oven.  it was soo yummers.

tammy and her littlest 2 (one in the play pen) of her 11 kiddies. 

zoe loved talking and laughing to the baby through the play pen netting stuff.

we ate yummy roast, taters, carrots, onions, apple crisp and ice cream, and then hung out around the fire 'til dark.

then we listened to stories and sang a song, the happy birthday song to me. 

that night, with all 7 of us like sardines in the tent, was such a lo.o.o.ong night. for me. and for weston, too.  i was actually wishing that we really were sardines because at least they are at room temperature and not 20 some degrees.  zoe was in my sleeping bag with me, and although i am glad that i knew she was warm by me, it is so hard to sleep in a single sleeping bag with anyone else, no matter how small they are.  

when dawn finally came, and weston got up to go out and start the fire, the tent shook with him zipping it and what not, and frost fell onto our faces.  yeah, it was that cold.  

the hood of the car's frost reflecting the rising sun...

it actually and honestly wasn't that bad.  i don't like being cold, but i was fine.

after cooking up a 24-egg eggy breakfast that he made (and leftover apple crisp), weston got right to work.  he does not like to sit around when he could be doing something, that's for sure.  he started cutting up dead trees that were on the ground.  the kids and i helped load and when we were done we went exploring.

zoe won the 'queen of stripes' award for the day.

the older boys chopped down 2 dead  (small) trees with a hatchet and carried them over to the big dirt hill where they started building a fort.

ezra, the wizard, and savannah, on the other hand, carried a tiny limbless tree alllll over with wands in their hands.  i wonder what they were pretending.  jiles followed along. 

savannah turned 7 the day after my day.  

it was a super pretty morning.

jiles was bummed about something here.  maybe the wizard and his pal left him. ?.

there's still some smoke in the air.  you couldn't smell it; it just made everything look hazy for a while.

weston found some kind of cool orange fungus.

spencer and kate had piano lessons to go to, so we had to leave in the early afternoon.  but, oh yeah, don't forget to load up the (extremely dense and heavy) firewood.  that was the purpose of the campout right?  sorta?

we had our first fire of the season when we got home after that.  i had left a window open while we were gone (oops) and it was 55 degrees in our house when we got home.

we still need a couple/few more loads of wood before winter.  but i think that we are going to pass on the camping part of it next time.