Friday, June 19, 2009

How far in the "country" are we really?

In case anyone wanted to know how far in the "country" we really are. The nearest town is 6 miles away, Montevello. There are no services or stores and the population is 300. The next closest town is 9 miles away, Milo. There are also no services or stores there either and the population there is 100. The next closest town is 17 miles away, Nevada. There is a Walmart, 2 local grocery stores, McD's, Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell/KFC, Dairy Queen Hardee's, and Sonic. About 5 sit down restaurants, Sutherland's, Orshelns, a few other local hardware stores, and THAT'S IT!!!!!!! Not kidding! Good luck!

We are 60 miles north of Joplin population: 400,000 (4th largest city in Missouri, and 100 miles south of Kansas City. I hope that helps anyone get an idea how rural we are located. Fun for us! ha, ha.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Highlights of May 2009

I recently pulled out my bike and kid trailer and have started biking again! I LOVE TO BIKE! I have always loved to bike and I live in a beautiful place to enjoy it. We live right next the a Missouri State Conservation Prairie Area on hundreds of acres. So I took out my camera one day to capture some of the views I get to see along the way. I even captured amazing flowers in bloom.

A gorgeous flower I caught in bloom while on our bike ride.

Missouri State Conservation Prairie

We celebrated Annika's 7th birthday on May 14th. We celebrated with our traditional birthday poster. A is for Awesome Student, N is for Nothing sweeter, N is for Naturally beautiful, I is for Insists on being modest, and A is for A child of God. ANNIKA! We love you.

This is Annika and her cousin, Charlotte celebrating their birthdays together.

Chris and I celebrated our 11th Anniversary in St. Louis. We went to the temple and to the Arch. We took Micah with us due to the fact that he is still nursing, we were fortunate to have my cousins husband's family in St. Louis, they were kind to watch Micah for us while we went to the temple. Our other kids stayed with Marci (Chris's sister). Anniversary's are always my favorite highlight of the year.

This is Chris carrying Micah in our Maya wrap. He is so handsome.

Highlights of April 2009

We put our house up for sale in April. We thought we had it sold, but it didn't work out. We had another house 5 minutes from Nevada that we put an offer on but sadly we lost the contract and that house is now sold, so we currently do not have another house that we are interested in. We will be patient and wait for the right opportunity to move.

The kids and I had fun one day flying our kite

Annika and Micah enjoying our afternoon flying our kite.

Eli flying a kite in our front yard.

We enjoyed Easter with the Stocks. This is Chris's sister, Marci's family. They moved to Missouri last July from Lehi. They are the closest family we have here. They live about 1.25 hours to the north of us in Garden City. It is soo nice to have them "close" (well close is relative). We have learned to appreciate our limited time spent with family much more now that we are so distant from most of our family.

Eli hunting easter eggs.

Aunnie & Lizie showing off their easter eggs

"Farm kids" enjoying a sunset on the farm.

We planted a potato patch with 25 pounds of potatoes. About half the plants came up and are doing well. These are our chickens looking for worms or bugs in the new plowed dirt.

Catching up the animals on the farm

This is Bella, she is one year old now, so we will breed her soon. She is a gentle cow, we all like her.

These are one of the three liters our mamma rabbit has had this spring. She has had 7-11 bunnies per litter.

These chicks were hatched over spring break when we were in Branson. This was our first batch of chicks sucessfully hatched from our broody hens. They were a total surprise!

This is our Banny Hen, she hached 5 chicks on Easter.

This is "Babe", our new Jersey bull calf. We got Babe to breed our cows to next year.

Adam feeding Babe. Babe is bottle feed twice a day for 3 months. A lot of work to raise babies but the kids love to help.

Chris and Micah on the farm.

Eli & baby goat. We had a goat and her baby, with the intensions to milk her. But after a few days we decided she would not work out on our farm so we gave them back. The baby was only 5 days old and soo tiny and cute.

Chris,Micah & baby goat

These our guinea fowl we raised from chicks last summer. They are a nice addition to our farm. We originally bought 15 chicks, 3 died the first 3 days after we got them. Then when we put them in the field, a preditor got 6 of them and recently, 3 more disappeared so now we only have 3 left. This is life on the farm, animals come and go.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Branson Trip 2009


Finally, an update! Our computer is fixed, so I have a ton to catch up! We went to Branson with my parents for Spring Break! We went to Silver Dollar City and had lots of fun! We enjoyed our precious time together!