PE Fun Day

2 Monday's ago Jenae had her reading award program & her PE Fun Day!  It was a warm day with lots of sunshine & a little breeze.  Jenae did really well in some of her events.  In Chambers, they keep track of times/distances but they do not really publicise them so it is hard to know how the kids do for sure.   One of the fun things about PE Fun Day is that the kids know summer break is right around the corner!!!   Jenae had a great group of support for the day.  Kyle, me & the girls, Chip, Marilyn, Hope & Trey all were there to cheer her on!

Jenae getting her reading award.  She had more AR points than anyone else in her class. 
I am so proud of my little reader

Jenae at PE Fun Day.

Whitney cooling off with an ice cream treat!

Aubree & Annabelle

Aubree & Trey

Jenae racing on PE Fun Day

Mother's Day

After having a big day on Saturday, Sunday morning I was feeling like taking it easy!  Kyle left early to spend the day at the Burwell High School rodeo.  He went down to haze for a couple kids.  There was no Sunday School, so the girls & I skipped church.  I felt a little bad about not going to church, but it sure was nice to just be home and relax in the morning!  The rest of the day I spent catching up on housework.  We met up with my family in Clearwater for a Mother's Day Supper.  You never know what it is going to be like going out to eat with 12 little ones, but the kids all sat really good at the restaurant & all ate really good!  After we ate we all went to the park in Clearwater for the kiddos to play. 

My family at L-B in Clearwater enjoying a nice Mother's Day supper with 12 kids :-)

Whitney & Jace

The kids at the park.

My Dad & Whitney at the park.

Kassie's Graduation

I am still trying to get my blog caught up!  A week and a half ago we made the trip down to Franklin to Kyle's cousin's graduation.  Kassie is the sweetest soon to be Freshman that I know!  My girls adore her and we were so happy to be able to help her celebrate her day!  Kyle was home so that was an extra bonus for us to have him be able to go along with us. 

We left about 9:00 Saturday morning & stopped at Texas Roadhouse in Grand Island for dinner.  We met Marilyn, Hope & the boys at the restaurant & had a nice early Mother's Day celebration.  Then it was on to Franklin. The girls traveled really well & sat really well though the graduation.  We had a great time getting to see all the Franklin relatives. 

We headed home around 5:00 that evening & stopped by a Chambers graduate's party on the way home.  I do not think we go home until almost 10:00 so we were all exhausted!!!

Aubree, Jenae & Kassie with Kassie's super cool cake!

Whitney with a little boy born on the same day as she was.  This picture does not do a very good job showing how fond of each other they were!

Whitney, Kyle & his Uncle Bernie

Kyle on the porch swing at Melinda's house with Aubree, Trey & Whitney.

Kassie with the kiddos!  Whitney was not happy about this picture!

Aubree & Trey riding the horse statue at Kyle's Aunt & Uncle's house.

2012 Branding

Well, here I am 2 weeks behind on my blogging!  Time is just flying by & I am finding it hard to find a few minutes each week and write.  Since the branding was 2 weeks ago, I am guessing I have already forgotten many of the details of the day.  I will do my best to recap it. 

We were so fortunate to have lots of good help & a beautiful day to brand.  It was cool & cloudy all day.  I do not think it got out of the 60's all day.  They were predicting temps near 90 & my parents who live just 75 miles from us did have a day in the 90's.  They also branded the same day, I feel bad their day was so different than ours.  The Morton family & the Newberg family came down from MN to help with the day.  The girls had a blast playing with the Morton kids.  We had lots of help from local friends & neighbors.  Burton, Valerie & Hagen Mikkelsen also joined us for the day.  You will see in the pictures to follow that Aubree & Hagen kept themselves very busy!!!

Kyle was pretty wore out from his trip to Guymon.  He got home late Friday night & got up before dawn Saturday morning to start saddling horses.  After branding all day Saturday he left  at 2:00 Sunday morning to go back to Guymon for his 3rd steer.  Even though he was exhausted it was worth the trip.  He ended up 6th in the round & 4th in the average.

The Morton family stayed until after breakfast Sunday morning.  My girls were very sad to see them go!  Hopefully we will see them again soon!

I am sure there are so many more things I should write about, but for now I am going to call it a night & put my little darlings to bed!

Jenae & Firecraker before sun up Saturday morning. Kyle was up saddling horses at 4:30 in the morning. I fed the crew breakfast around 5:00 & by 6:30 they were off to the pasture gathering up the cattle.

Chase & Whitney hanging out in the house while Marilyn & I were getting things ready for dinner

Jenae & Donnae.  They had so much fun riding toghter.  They are good buddies, if only they lived closer than 6 hours away!

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

Kids watching the branding.

Never a dull moment at the Whitaker Branding! Hagen & Aubree found some blue oil based paint. They thought it was their war paint!

We were not sure how to get our blue kids cleaned up.  Soap & water would not touch it!  After trying several things, Valerie thought we should try peanut butter.  As crazy as it sounds, the peanut butter worked!!! 

Aubree & Hagen adventure continued yesterday. They decided to play in the mud. Aubree got stuck in the mud & had to have Valerie pull her out. I would love to have heard their conversation along the way of their adventures.

This photo really doesn't do show the whole picture of this adventure--unless you can see that on Hagen's feet are his once (although probably never again) white socks! And you can't really smell that it wasn't exactly "fresh" water they ventured into!

A busy week

Life does not seem to be slowing down for us at the Whitaker household!  The weather has been so nice & we have even got some much needed rain over the past couple of weeks. 

The weekend before last Kyle & Chip took Jenae & Aubree to a rodeo in St. Paul MN.  They left a day early so they could spend the night with some friends.  They had a BLAST!!!!  Whitney & I took advantage of some nice quiet time with just the 2 of us.  Whitney is such a good baby & really entertained herself really well while I got some much needed cleaning done.  Kyle & the girls got home at 2:00 Monday morning.  It made for a long day of school for Jenae! 

Monday Kyle spent most of the day helping his Dad get set up for the branding we had on Saturday.  They had lots to do & little time to do is.  Kyle left for Guymon OK on Tuesday.  Thankfully he got most of the lawn mowed before he left J  He had a steer on Wednesday morning & another on Thursday morning.  He made 2 nice runs and qualified for the progressive round on Sunday. 

Jenae & Aubree had their AWANA award program Wednesday night.  Jenae got her award for finishing her 3^rd book as a Sparky & Aubree got her award for competing her first year as a Cubby!  The Cubby’s sing at the program every year.  Aubree’s class got up to sing and not one of them sang a word!  Then her teacher got up there with them & Aubree really got into it & sang really good!    I asked her several times that day if she had learned a new song for the program and she would start singing a song about the Lord & flowers.  Come to find out she was just making up a song as she was going along!  She was being her normal silly self on Wednesday.  She had wanted to eat some little candy things that I had.  I told her  she could have 5 of them.  I was folding laundry and not really paying close attention to her, but I heard her counting “1…2…3…1…2…3” Then I realized what she was doing.  She was counting to 3 over and over again then she never got to 5.  When I confronted her about it she said, “Well Mom, I keep losing track of what number I am on so I just start over!”   I spent much of Wednesday getting my house & yard in shape to gear up for the branding.  While I was out working near Aubree’s play house she said to me while holding a cell phone “DARN IT!!!!  That Boy is calling me AGAIN!!!!”  Just playing along I said “What boy?”  Aubree quickly said “I am just kidding Mom!!!”  I am not sure what we are going to in for with our little Aubree Joy!  She keeps life very entertaining! 

Kyle made it home about 10:30 Thursday night & we were all so happy to have him home again!  Friday we were busy getting ready for the branding.  Kyle, Chip & Jenae moved some pairs from our place over to Chip’s place.  I stayed up past midnight making  food for the branding crew, but I knew if I did not get as much as I could done on Friday that there would not be enough time on Saturday to get everything done that I needed to. 

I will post pictures and write about the branding in my next post!

Aubree & her fellow Cubbies at the AWANA program.

Aubree with her AWANA Award.

Not a very good pictuer of Jenae with her Sparky group.

Trey was at the program watching Jenae & Aubree.  He was such a good little boy.  He sat so still & quiet!  I have never met a 2 year old that is that good in church!



The entire AWANA Group



Aubree was sad that AWANA is over for the year.