LOVE

If you need a natural high today, look no further.

This afternoon . . .

 . . . while I was doing this (BORING, I know)

the rest of the family was doing WAY cooler stuff!

Mariah and Mylie were pretending to be bug doctors--that's right, bug doctors.

Giving the meds.

A little acupuncture.

Connor and Mylie (she bounces around a lot) made these sweet wallets out of duct tape!

And Tony and Brady were doing a little of this.

Life is simple, but good.

My Brave New Self

I've been thinking of doing this for quite awhile now.  And thanks to my sisters both cutting their hair in the past couple years, I finally decided to go for it!

And although it's only been a few days, so far I LOVE IT!!  I told Violet that I feel so much cooler with this haircut.  So cool, in fact, that I can even imagine myself wearing skinny jeans, boots, and a scarf!  Not saying that I will--just that I can now imagine it.  But my favorite thing of all? This hairdo, wet to finished, takes me less than ten minutes to do!  Oh, how I've longed for this day!

Brady--3 months

Somehow, as much as I'm trying to slow things down, Brady is already 3 months old.  It has been a crazy 3 months, trying to balance it all--school starting, volleyball practices and travel, and learning to manage 4 kids and all they are doing.  But it has also been a wonderful 3 months!  Brady has brought such love into our home.  I love seeing the older kids as they love him and care for him, and how much they want to interact with him.  They can hardly wait for him to grow up and play with them! 

He continues to be a chubby little guy.  We haven't had an official weight on him lately, but using the weigh-yourself-then-weigh-holding-the-baby method, we think he's just over 16 lbs.

Brady is getting close to figuring out his hands, but for now, he is constantly clasping them together and then trying to shove both fists into his mouth at once, which can sometimes make him crazy with frustration (not my favorite developmental milestone, I might add)!  He has also found his tongue, and loves sticking it out all the time.  Connor thinks this is a sign that he's going to be like Michael Jordan someday.

Brady is a really good night sleeper, and does ok during the day. We are struggling to find some consistency with daytime naps, as they sometimes only last 45 minutes, but other times will be 3-4 hours.  I never know what to expect.  But what has been consistent is that he either sleeps through the night (like 10-11 hours) or only wakes up once.  LOVE that!

Although I can rarely get him to do it for the camera, Brady smiles a lot, and already laughs!  I'm thrilled about this since Mariah didn't laugh until she was a year old.  He laughs when he's tickled, but has also laughed several times just because somebody does something funny. 

And since we couldn't get a smiling picture anytime in the last week, I'll just end this post with a pic that made me smile--the squishy-face photo.

Halloween Fun

Halloween really isn't a super big deal at this house.  I'm kind of the Halloween grinch, I guess. I don't dress up, don't really decorate for it, and generally just don't care all that much for this holiday.  But my kids do.  So I tried to do a few fun (but extremely SIMPLE, since that's how I roll) things this year.  Here's what we did:

Carved pumpkins, of course!  This year, we grew our own and ended up with two decent-sized ones.  We did one traditional scary-face jack-o-lantern, and then tried Connor's idea of a bucking horse, which turned out awesome, thanks to our talented carver, Tony.

And then we ate the seeds!  I roasted these with a little butter, garlic salt, and pepper. I think the kids liked these just as much as their candy.  They sure disappeared in a hurry!

Family Home Evening treats at this house are usually extremely simple--instant pudding or ice cream.  But I really stepped up this time, and made these fun whoopie pies with Halloween sprinkles.  Okay, they were from a boxed mix from Walmart, but my kids thought they were awesome!

Since I was going all out this year, we even did a little craft for our candy to hand out at the trunk-or-treat.  These cute little ghost pops were extremely simple (a tootsie pop covered with a tissue, tied with yarn, and then a little face drawn on) and fun for the girls to help make.

And the best part of all . . . the costumes!  This year, we had a football player, Hermoine, a ladybug, and a bumble bee.  (I really should have gotten one picture of them all together, but it didn't happen. Oh well.)

One final word on Halloween.  I've heard many mothers complain that the worst part of Halloween is having to manage all the candy consumption for weeks afterward.  I have a simple solution for that.  Just don't manage it, and the headache will be over very quickly.  The candy in this house was all gone in just 4-5 days. And if you want to speed up the process, just sneak a few of your favorite pieces here and there.  It works great!!!

Bull Sale 2012

This year's annual Micheli Bull Sale started the same way it has for the past couple years . . . with SNOW!

Well, it was actually beautiful and not blizzarding or too cold that day, so it was okay.  I wanted to get a cute pic of my beautiful girls but with the sunshine and the snow it was just way too bright.  Still kinda cute, though.

Here are some of the pens.  They sell about 35 hereford and 35 angus bulls each year. 

Tony has the job of making them look good in the sale ring.  He starts a week or two before sale day by "torching the bulls."  Basically he gives them a nice short cut using a torch, which is WAY faster than clippers, although he does use clippers on the head.  It's about the stinkiest job ever!  If you've ever been branding, you know the smell.  Now times that by about a hundred and you can imagine how bad it is.  I think it should be featured on Discovery's "Dirty Jobs."  But it's totally worth it when they look as good as this guy!

Then on sale day, they blow them off and brush them before the buyers show up, then again right before they head into the sale barn.  I'm always amazed at how great they look, especially on a mucky, muddy day like it was this year.  (A funny little side note on torching the bulls: The week that Tony torched them, I asked Connor what he was going to do that weekend.  He said, "Probably help Dad torture the bulls." I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I asked, "Torture the bulls?"  "Ya, torture the bulls."  Apparently that's what he thought it was called all these years.  HAHAHA!  And really, it's not torture for them.)

And speaking of Connor, as I headed out of the sale barn after the sale, I looked across the ranch and saw this.  Ya, he's just hanging out on a roof.  No big deal.  What a kid!

Life in October

October was a great month for our family. I always love fall! Here are a few random things from our October.

Volleyball was in full force, and my girls get into it a little more each year.  This fall they played a lot of balloon volleyball. Mylie even came up with a way to make some sweet knee pads out of mismatched socks from the pile. How cute is that!

After months of the kids begging, we finally tried out the cabin with a sleepover down there. We relaxed, watched a movie, and had some popcorn.  The kids thought it was cool to sleep up in the loft.

One day, we discovered these baby raccoons hiding out in our garbage can. Why they thought this was a safe place is beyond me! Anyway, they stayed there for a couple days until Tony and Connor finally hauled them off.  Cute faces, but they honestly scare me to death. I hate raccoon hisses!

We had a nice harvest this fall with LOTS of potatoes.  We didn't get very many carrots--lots just didn't germinate--but the ones we did get were huge and tasty.  We also had a couple mutants like this interesting one.

Finally, October was filled with lots of loving on our little Brady.  He has his siblings wrapped around his finger.  They just adore him.  Mylie loves reading to him, and Brady loves it too!