Canning, Canning and more canning!

So what did you do this weekend Halie? "Canned again!" I responded when my friends and family ask what I have been up to. I think they all think I have went canning crazy!!! I keep thinking I am winding down on what I have to can then I think of something else. Today a fried of mine asked me if I was wanting any more apples that she was going to try to go apple picking sometime this week and I could sure come along. I told her I was not sure to ask me before she went and I would decide. Friday night I made some watermelon jelly and some more peach jelly then I canned what peaches I had left on Saturday. The girls kept busy making crafts at the kitchen table while I canned. They had a lot of fun playing together this weekend. It seems that they either love to play together and get along really good or they fight over every little thing. Luckily this weekend they had a lot of fun together so I was able to keep plugging away on my canning projects.

Also this weekend I went to my cousin's bridal shower in Norfolk. Kyle was home and it was a beautiful day so I left the girls home so they could get some time in the saddle. It sounds like they had a blast, I knew they would. Aubree even got in on her first little cattle drive on Beauty. She has helped move cattle several times while riding with Kyle, Chip or me, but this was the first time she rode on her own horse. It sounds like it went well, I guess Beauty was trying to eat grass so Chip had to help her out a little in the pasture. Other than that I think she did it on her own. Jenae of course also helped move the cattle and I think she also got to run barrels. It will not be long and Chip's main ranch hands will be Jenae & Aubree, Trey will not be far behind them in helping out on the ranch as well.

Ben, Hope & Trey came over so we could get some family pictures of them. I think they got some good ones. Trey is such a photogenic little guy. He always has a smile on his face!


Jenae with our pumpkin crop from this year. It was a pretty small crop compared to what we had last year. We did get 2 big pumpkins that are not in the picture.


Jenae thought it would be funny to have a pumpkin nose.



Aubree pulling Jenae in the wagon. She pulled her all over and Jenae is twice Aubree's size but Aubree pulled her all over like it was nothing.


Jenae had the bright idea to have Buster pull the wagon. He was not crazy about the idea. One time he took off and Aubree went flying out of the back end of the wagon. The girls giggled and giggled and giggled.

Happy Fall

lovely rainy fall morning!!

Well we are having a very soggy start to the fall season. Fall has always been one of my favorite seasons, but after having such a long, cold, & snowy winter last year I am not sure if I am as excited about fall as I have been in the past. Last year we had snow storms in October. I am excited to pick the pumpkins from the garden and decorate the house for fall.

Yesterday I spent most of the day canning apples. I made apple sauce, apple butter, canned apples for apple pies, 2 kinds of apple jelly and some wild plum jelly. Kyle, Chip & the girls had picked a bunch of apples this weekend and I did not want them to think I did not appreciate them so I used every single apple. Some of the apples had bad spots on them that I had to cut around but any good part of an apple was used and they had picked a lot of apples!!! Jenae loves apple butter. She was so excited to come home from school and find that I had made it. It was then found out she was planning to give some of the apples to the horses. That would have been useful information to know a couple hours earlier when I was so tired of pealing and slicing apples :-) She was so tickled with her apple butter that she really did not seem to care that Beauty would be getting any apples. I still have some peaches that I want to can and I have a couple more little canning projects, but I am getting close to being done canning for the year.

Happy fall everyone!!!

Weekend

We had another eventful weekend! Kyle & Chip took the girls along with them to some rodeos this weekend. They went to Iowa & Minnesota. It sounds like the girls had an absolute blast!!!! They left on Friday morning and got back last night. It was our open house at work on Friday which make it impossible for me to take the day off to go with them. It was really hard on me to think of them being gone 3 whole days, but I knew they would have a lot of fun and that there would be plenty of rodeo wives around to help take good care of them.
Some of the highlight that I have heard about are the following:

*Jenae running barrels in a practice arena on Kyle/Chip's calf horse, Comet.
It sounds like she went really really fast on him.

*Aubree having lots of fun with little Miss Lainee Burks. Kyle over heard Aubree
saying to Lainee "You have beautiful black hair just like me....Don't you think
my hair is pretty"

*Chip, Jenae & Aubree picking lots of apples for me off of Matt & Missy's apple
tree.

* Missy spoiling my girls with Alvin & the Chipmunks movie & a whole lot of
Cabbage Patch Kids to play with

I am looking forward to hearing lots more from them. We only had about an hour from when they got home until they went to bed. They were exhausted!!!

Fun at rodeo! Just had a cookie

Pictures forwarded to me from friends at the rodeo with Kyle.




Marilyn & I took a road trip to Denver for the weekend. Her sister, Sandy, has been diagnosed with cancer and we went out to visit her. The plan was that she was supposed to get to go home on Saturday and we were looking forward to spending some time at home with her. We drove to Denver late Friday night and got up early and went to the hospital. Sandy was doing great when we first got there, but shortly after our arrival she started having some compilations. Needless to say we did not get to take her home. We spent the day at the hospital with her and her daughter. The hospital staff was great and she was doing much better yesterday.

Sandy is such a cool lady, I always enjoy my visits with her. She is a college professor and supervises student teachers going into elementary education. She has some really neat ways to work with kids to help them in the learning process. I love picking her brain for ideas that she has to work with my girls. I would love to have her come stay with us for a bit and work one on one with Jenae or take Jenae to Denver to visit her sometime. I know Jenae would love it! For now she need to focus on beating the cancer.

On our way home Marilyn & I found a Colorado Peach stand so I am thinking Wednesday will be canning day :-)

I hope you all have a great week!

It was another busy weekend!

Is it just me or does the work week fly buy and the weekend zoom by even faster??? I was driving to work this morning thinking back over the weekend and how fast it went. I know the week will fly by and it will soon be the weekend again. I just wish I could slow everything down.
Friday night we had a nice quiet birthday evening with Aubree. Kyle was gone but Jenae & I tried to make it special for her. She chose to have pancakes for supper then we watched a movie and she opened a couple little presents. I wanted to save her main present for when Kyle was home but I also wanted her to be able to open something on her birthday.
Saturday the girls were so excited for their visitor! Kyle's cousin Melinda and her daughter Kassie came up for the weekend. It is always a great joy to have them come for a visit. Saturday afternoon we took Jenae to a horse show in O'Neill. It was a 2 day horse show and we only planned to enter her in 1 day of it. I did not realize until we got to the show that poles were Saturday and the barrels were Sunday. She won the poles and entered in a couple of other fun events. We were really excited when we got there Jenae spotted one of the puppies we sold. It was neat to see her, she seems to be very happy with her new owner.
Kyle came home on Sunday morning. We had a birthday party for Ben & Aubree. It was a lot of fun. Lots of good food. It was fun to have Melinda & Kassie join us for the party.


Jenae taking Speedster's shipping boots off of him.



Jenae's cheering crowd at the horse show.



Aubree with a puppy of Buster & Lucy's. The girls were so happy to see her. She was pretty bashful to start out with but it did not take her long to warm up to the girls.


Jenae in the Egg & Spoon contest. The object is to be the last one standing with the egg on the spoon. Jenae was mad because Hippy jerked his head causing her to loose her egg.


Trey & Aubree on Hippy. They both fit so good in a saddle together and they LOVE to ride.


Aubree & Kassie. Aubree was really upset that Kassie had to leave.



Ben & Aubree were blowing out the candles. There was one that was left.



Ben & Aubree singing "Happy Birthday" to each other.



Ben opening his presents.


Aubree opening her presents.


Jenae, Trey, Kassie & Aubree.


Melinda & Trey

">
Aubree and her main birthday present. She got a big girl bed!! She was so happy to have a bed just like Jenae's. Aubree has always been a good sleeper that I left her in her crib for a long time and have left her in a toddler bed a lot longer that I did with Jenae. It was time for her to have a real bed now that she was 3. She was very excited to have a pillow pet of her own as well!

Happy Birthday Little Miss Aubree!

My sweet little girl is 3 years old today. Time has gone so fast. She is growing up and turning into a little lady!

Last night I was rocking her in her room. Here is a recap of our conversation:

Aubree: Mommy, I love you so much. Do you love me?

Me: Oh honey I love you more than you will ever know!

Aubree: I love Daddy & Jenae too. Do you think they love me?

Me: I KNOW they love you very much. Do you want to call Daddy to talk to him?

Aubree: Yes
We got Kyle on the phone and I listen to her tell him how much she loved him and he responded by telling her how much he loved her.

Aubree: Are you at a rodeo Daddy?

Kyle: Yes I am

Aubree: Oh

Kyle: In a couple days I will be home.

Aubree: Ok....You take care of yourself Daddy

It was so cute!!! I am sure I did not remember it word for word but this was the best I could recall it.

I LOVE being a mother. I do not think until you have children of your own that you have an understanding of how much your own parents love you.

I hope you all have a great weekend and are able to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather!

Recap of the Week.

Wow where to I start! I guess I will go back to last Saturday. Jenae had her first "play date" with a classmate of hers. Her classmate had invited Jenae to spend the night, but Jenae is no where near ready for slumber parties. As it turned out we had her friend come to our house for the day. Her Dad dropped her off around 11:00 in the morning and picked her up at 9:00 that evening. They had a blast I did make them let Aubree play with them she tagged right along. I kept busy canning while they played. In the afternoon I took them over to ride. They had great fun with that. Then we went and picked wild plums. We made some supper and then they went right back to playing.



Jenae with her classmate on their play date.


Sunday was a nice day to be home and get caught up on house work. That evening we got Jenae, Aubree & Trey together for some pictures. The wild flowers are in full bloom right now and we got some really good ones.



Kyle got home Monday morning. It was nice to have him home on Labor Day. Chip sold some cattle on the Labor Day Sale in O'Neill so Kyle spent a lot of the morning helping get them loaded out.


I was having trouble finding a time that would work to celebrate Aubree's birthday with my family. It seems that life has been crazy lately and planning a birthday party has not be a real high priority. I was thinking that later in the month might work but since it has dried up so fast harvest it right a round the corner for my parents and I knew it would be hard for them to get away during harvest. Saturday I was talking to my Mom and I said "what do you think about getting together this Monday" She thought that would work so we had a very last minute birthday party for Aubree on Monday. We planned to meet in Clearwater at the park and have a picnic for her party, but Mother Nature did not cooperate. It was cool, wet & windy. We ended up having everyone at our house. Lacey had to work so she was not able to come, but Jacque & Riley still came. Erin called me first thing Monday morning saying that they would not be able to come because Brooke had the stomach flu. Danielle and her whole family came and of course my parents. My Mom always makes the cake for her grand kids birthdays. Brooke had a horse cake for her birthday back in April and Aubree has been wanting one ever since. Even though it was a last minuter party my Mom still had time to make the cake Aubree wanted. She was very excited to have a horse cake of her own. Mom made sure to have the Whitaker Brand on the cake which was a nice touch! It was a nice day. The kids had lots of fun playing.

Aubree and her cake.


Aubree & Cooper. I guess they got married that day :-)



The kids taking a break from playing to eat some cake.

That evening Hope came over and took some family pictures. She did a great job and has a real eye for photography. I was worried because I knew the girls were really tired from playing with their cousins all day but they were troopers and did pretty good!

This was one of our blooper pictures. We knew the girls were done with pictures at this point! You will have to wait for our Christmas card to see our good family picture!

We are looking forward to this weekend. We are having some visitors which my girls & I are very excited about! I think we are going to take Jenae to a horse show to run barrels & poles this weekend & We are going to celebrate Aubree & Ben's Birthday on Sunday so we are looking forward to that as well. It is going to be a fun filled weekend!

What a week!

I can't believe it has been a week since I posted anything thing. The time goes so fast.
I was so happy to get home from my meetings in Omaha Thursday night. I missed my home and family so much. I am not cut out to have an occupation that involves a lot of travel. Kyle did a good job keeping the house in order. I was very impressed. There were no dishes in the sink and the house looked very similar to how I left it. I asked Kyle if they even ate at house. He said "no, Mom had us over for supper & she gave the girls their baths too" I told him that really was not fair he was supposed to get a taste of what it is like to single parent the girls like I do when he is gone. He assured me getting the 2 monkeys to bed was hard enough.

Friday night we got word that the horse Kyle has been hazing on the past few years had coliced and had to be put down. It was a very sad time. Sandburr was such a good horse and he will be missed greatly at the Whitaker Ranch.

Aside from loosing Sandburr we had a really good weekend. I will try to get some pictures posted from our week/weekend tomorrow.

Away from Home

I have been in Omaha for meetings since Tuesday. I am so ready to go home to my family. I do not envy mothers that have to travel with their jobs and have to be away from their kids over night. I feel very fortunate to have a job that I get to go home to my kids every night. I think this is the first time I have had over night meetings for State Farm since Jenae has been born. It sounds like things are fine with out me home. Hope took these pictures while I have been gone. My meetings are over at noon today so I will be headed home in not too long. Kyle is home with the girls. I hope my house it not a total disaster when I get home ;)

Aubree riding Hope's Barrel horse. He looks pretty clam with her on.


Chip and Jenae riding off to doctor a calf.


Aubree in her swimsuit! (Again!) I sure hope she is past this phase in her life before the snow starts blowing!

Busy Weekend

We got up early and went to my parents house on Saturday morning. It was fun to spend the day there. We mostly sat around and visited while the kids all played together.
Kyle got home early Sunday morning. It is nice to have him around for a while again! We went over to Chip & Marilyn's to celebrate his birthday and to watch Husker Volleyball. It was a fun evening.
Bree & Brooke riding Pepper

Jenae riding Pepper
Brooke, Aubree & Buster playing with Buster. Yes Buster! I had a weak moment when the girls asked me if we could take him a long for the day. My Dad was a little nervous when we showed up with him since they have a female Blue Healer that has not been fixed. I told him that Aussie/Healer cross would be a good puppy, he did not appreciate my humor.

The kids playing at my parents house.


My Dad with Aubree & Brooke watching Jenae ride Pepper. I think they were supposed t be taking notes!



Aubree enjoying having Kyle around.




Hope playing Old Maid with Jenae & Aubree.


Trey & Marilyn watching Husker volleyball.

Aubree sound to sleep at Kyle's Birthday Party.

Kyle with Jenae & Aubree.