Beautiful Kids!

Here are my beautiful kids growing up! This picture is taken on the first day of school, 2010. Adam is now in 5th grade, Annika is in 3rd grade and Eli is in 1st! They are all doing very well, we are so proud of them!

Annika's Baptism Video

This is a slideshow I put together for Annika's baptism. It is 14 minutes.

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.

Planting a garden is fun to do!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

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.

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!

Happy Holidays

Dear Family and friends; Thank you for stopping by the blog. We had hoped to get some really cute features on here for our Christmas letter but alas, our old computer is moving so slow and is so temperamental that it is just not working out the way that we wanted it to.

Nonetheless, we really want to give you an update on how things are going. We have been in Missouri now for over a year. We have a wonderful life that is full of blessings and trials. Each member of our family contributes to the love and joy that we feel at this Christmas season.

Adam was baptized a member of the church this year. He is in the third grade. He continues to do very well in school especially in thereading, spelling, english, etc. part of it. He has been improving his math scores as well and is making steady progress. Adam enjoys cub scouts and is almost ready to get awarded his wolf cub award. We love him for his real true desire to follow the Savior and deal with lifes challenges the way that Jesus would do it.

Annika is 6 and is loving school as well. She is learning to read and write. She is very diligent at doing her homework and studying hard. Aunie has some really sweet little friends here and really loves her Sunday School teacher (sister Shelton) and her bus driver (Pam). It is interesting to see how she has really taken to these wonderful women and what joy they bring to each other. She also really enjoys being a little mommy to her brother Micah. She watches Stacy close and follows her lead in taking care of the baby.

Eli is a bundle of fun. He is always smiling and happy. He does joy school with a couple of his little friends and is learning about values. He helps mom a lot and really enjoys the time that he spends with her. It is difficult to express how truly cute his little personality is, but he makes us laugh a lot moan a little (he IS four you know) and pretty much everything else in between.

Micah our tiny baby is enjoying his first Christmas on earth. He is getting very big. We guess that he is about 18 or 19 lbs now and, like our other kids; he is a chubby little angel. He smiles and talks a lot and is very popular with the ladies in the ward and in the community. In fact he is popular with the guys too. He enjoys going out and greeting his public.

Stacy continues to be as busy as a mom can be. She is toughing it out in the country. She is a farm mom and does her chores out here. She also runs the joy school without any help, takes care of the children and occasionally makes the 20 minute trek into town in order to enjoy a bit of a social life with friends or at church. She is still active in her Moms of Preschoolers (MOPS) group. She is the education counselor in the relief society and enjoys serving the Lord by serving the women and families of the ward.

Chris changed jobs in September and is now working as a therapist on the acute mental health units at Heartland Hospital. Chris works just a few hours a week at Nevada Mental Health and will continue seeing a few patients there until they terminate from therapy. Chris serves as the elders quorum president in the ward. He really loves being involved in missionary work and the spreading of the gospel message. When he is not at work he works hard trying to stay on top of the farm chores. There is alsways a project that needs doing and it often seems that there is not enough time to get everything done.

We wanted to recap our year by listing our top ten things that we are thankful for after experiencing our first year in Missouri.

10 We did not blow away in a tornado. Missouri set records for the numbers of tornados that touched down in 2008. None of them came close to us though.

9 We did not wash away in the floods. We had one of the wettest years on record and water was everywhere but it didn't bug us hardly at all.

8 We got a cow (Nana) and she had a little heifer calf. Nana, who starred on our Christmas card, is a wonderful addition to the farm.

7 We have a newfound appreciation for electricity and running water. After being without electricity for three days due to an ice storm and without running water for three days due to frozen pipes, we now count those among our luxuries.

6 New friends!! Between church, schools, neighbors, etc. We have been given so many new friends and relationships that we cannot even count them all. They have blessed our lives in numerous ways with love, advice, prayers, and acts of service. .

5 Animals, animals everywhere. As many as 32 chickens, 12 cats, 2 cows, 8 rabbits, 15 guinea hens and a duck have called our farm home this year. That does not count the wild critters that frequent the barn, yard and fields around our little house.

4 Sunrise and sunset. We are surrounded by natural beauty of the highest order. The beginning and the end of the day are the most beautiful and make us feel blessed all the time.

3 We get to witness miracles as the Lord does his work in this area. The ward is growing like crazy including people moving in, convert baptisms, and investigators attending church

2 We have had great health and no major injuries. Doctor? What is a doctor? Even Stacy’s delivery which was all natural was about as smooth as we ever could have hoped for.

1 Micah, he is an angel straight from heaven and adds a ton to our little family.

Halloween 2008

Kids had a fun time at halloween this year. We went to a pot luck at church then Trunk or Treating after. We won the best decorated trunk this year. We brought the truck and decoraded with haybails and a scarecrow. Adam was a ghost, Annika was Princess Annika, Eli was Hopper from a Bugs Life, and Micah was a puppy. They were all so cute. Dressing up is the funnest part of halloween!

Micah is growing!

Micah is sure growing! He is now 2 1/2 months old and he has already doubled his birth weight! He weighs 15 pounds! We love him to death! (ok, more like forever) He is such a good baby! He is happy most of the time and we love to make him smile and laugh! Every ounce of pain to get him here was worth it! When I look at Adam and my other kids and then look at Micah, I realize how fast time goes and kids grow up so fast, so we are enjoying every moment with Micah. I'm sorry to all my family and Chris' that we moved so far away and that you cannot hold or "squish" (as Chris' family would say) little Micah. I know he loves a good "squishing."

Produce from our garden

We grew a large garden this year, probably our biggest garden yet! We enjoyed the fruits from our labors. We were somewhat limited as to what we could grow this year because we planted late in the season. Veggies we grew this year included: bell peppers, tomatoes (5 different varieties), zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, beans and okra. We gave a lot away and also canned and froze some. Probably one of the best parts about our land is that we have 2 large pecan trees and several black walnut trees.

This one was hiding.

New Addition "Columbus The Duck"

We have a new addition to the farm, his name is Columbus. Adam named him. He was given to us by a friend together with three hens and a rooster. Columbus makes a nice addition to our farm. We like him. I love hearing his quack, it is a new sound from the familiar "Cluck, Meow, Mooo, and Cock-a-doodle-doo."

Happy Birthday to Stacy!

We spent my birthday with some friends who are members that live by us. There names are Janet and Gary. We ate heart kabobs with vegies and rice. It was a gormet meal!

Our Baby Micah is Here!

Announcing the new addition to our family, Micah Thomas!
Born: August 9, 2008 @ 5:20 am
Weight: 7 lbs 8 oz
Length: 21 1/2 inches
He is absolutely beautiful! We all love him so much!
Labor and delivery went well, he was very anxious to get here and wasted no time. Happily, to mom and dad, he waited long enough until we could get to a hospital. We arrived at the hospital at 5:00 am and he was born shortly after at 5:20 am. Stacy and Micah are home and both doing well.