YARDWORK!!!

We have these plants that I tried to get rid of before. I cut them all the way down to the very ground and I thought that was going to kill them....APPARENTLY not!

These flowers are annuals. They get to big and bushy. People that enjoy flowers usually like these, but to me, they just get in the way of my yard. I want more grass and not these.

The people before us REALLY liked their greenery stuff....we do not.

There was this big vine that went ALL OVER THE PLACE. It gave us some privacy from our neighbors, that was its only redeeming value. BUT THE VINES!!!!!!

This picture is actually after I started pulling a lot of stuff out. You couldn't see the bottom part of the porch and possibly even the top, that is how tall those "weeds" grew. It is all weeds to me because I don't want them.

Chris and I finally agreed to get a dog and I didn't want the dog going under the porch so I needed to pull the stuff up around it so I could put lattice around the porch to keep it out.

THERE WERE VINES EVERYWHERE!!! EVERYWHERE!!!!

I HATED IT!!!!!

The vine that went up the porch and around the porch and all through the yard was from this monstrosity. These pictures don't do it justice. Allison and I worked on getting this thing out for a VERY long time. We were able to get ALL of the roots but we tried to get as many as we could. 

I had tried pouring Clorox and other chemicals on this thing to make it dye and it never did!

Michelle also got her shovel and TRIED to help us dig stuff out.

 

I started pulling things up and out and then I went to putting the lattice up. 

Allison did A TON of working digging roots up and pulling everything out.

What a difference!!! 

This was A LOT of manual labor especially with ALL OF THE VINES!!! 

I have never been anywhere that has so many vines.

Allison just needed the motivation of getting a dog and she was the best worker there was. Many hours went past that if she would have stopped, I would have too. She didn't, so I didn't. 

She went to a scout thing all day and then we started about 6pm and worked until 10pm on Saturday and then we went at it again Monday afternoon and got this ALL done!

Baby Wearing Michelle's Old Clothes

I pulled down all of my baby stuff and decided it was time to start getting rid of it. 

HOWEVER....not before the girls found these super tiny clothes that some can SORT of fit on their dolls. 

These are all clothes that Michelle wore.

This is a water baby.....the one I had when I was a little girl. I gave it to Allison when she was 6 and I was pregnant with Michelle.

Allison and Michelle changed their baby's clothes and then they put them in a stroller and took them for a walk. (Allison is specifically not in these pictures)

 

Seeing Santa/Shooting Archery

Yesterday I took Chris to Bass Pro Shop looking for some 9mm ammo but I didn't realize he had never been there before. It is a REALLY impressive store. 

I didn't think that Santa would be able to be there this year, but they found a way!

Today the kids actually had school closed because it rained A LOT yesterday and then it froze overnight so they said it wasn't safe for bus, employees, or student drivers. They started with a 2 hour delay....but then made it just a day off of school (even online as well)

Since we had a day off, we decided to take the kids Bass Pro Shop and they even allow dogs!!!

We thought Yeti was going to FREAK because of all of the people and everything. He did SOOOOO WELLLLL!!!! I was expecting him to bark constantly and I would have to bribe him to stop barking, but he only barked probably less than 10 times and we we were there for about 1.5 hours.

The kids went and did their obligated picture with Santa. (WITH NO WAITING!!!)

 Santa is sitting behind a really big glass! The kids just sat in front of it! How cool was that? (during this time I mean) It was cool that they were still able to semi do the Santa thing. After the picture, Santa had them come around, 6 feet away and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. (I hope he isn't hard of hearing)  Michelle was too scared to even by 6 feet away from Santa to even tell him what she wanted....she started just bawling....but thankfully that was all after the picture!!

After that we took the kids up to the Archery range that they have up there!!!

We found out that this archery range is FREE!!!! How incredible is that?

The kids shot for about 45 minutes. Chris and I took turns taking Michelle to different parts of the store. Yeti did AWESOME just sitting there watching the kids. I still can't believe how good he did. 

 The kids were VERY excited to shoot INSIDE again!!!!

It has been since the morning of Friday, March 13th that they have shot INSIDE!!

In October they go the go-ahead to shoot outside so they got to do that for about 6 weeks and then got shut down again. They were so happy to not be freezing as they shot!

We were planning on buying them a target and then taking them out to Chris's co-workers land and shooting their bows but this place is cheaper than a target, closer than their house, and WARMER than outside!!!

WIN all of the way around. Yeti LOVED going so we will have to take him the next time we go! It was a fun little family outing.

Shooting our guns

 We have had a BB gun for a long time, and then we have had our .22 rifle (the brown one pictured here) for many years as well. We got it some time while we were in Texas. We haven't gotten to shoot them very much because we don't want to pay the money it costs to shoot at a shooting range.

Chris went and got a 9mm (the one in the case). To be honest, I was scared of it and I also didn't really want it in our house. We actually didn't even have any bullets for it for a long time. When we got it though, we showed the kids and talked to them about it. We told them that if they ever wanted to see or touch it, just to ask and we would be more than happy to get it out for them.

We finally went and got some bullets for it and then put a lock on the case. Obviously we are trying to be as safe as we can.

We hadn't ever shot the new gun and Chris's coworker mentioned that they had a shooting range on her property out in the country. Chris finally emailed her and asked if we could come shoot. Apparently they shot through the old shooting range so they needed to build a new one. She said if we came and helped we could shoot!

We were happy to help....but we didn't really help. We got there and she talked to us, while her husband got on the tracker and moved a bunch of logs into a big stack. They didn't have what they wanted to actually get their permanent range up but after we got the tracker unstuck, Chris and her husband Chris, put us a temporary range for us to shoot.

Here is what we were shooting.....and an AR15!!! 

They pulled that one out later.

I definitely was not comfortable with the handgun. I have only shot a handgun one other time in my life. I was more used to a rifle and as a teenager, we went to a boys scout camp for Young Women's camp one year. We were the last group of youth of the summer. I did the .22 rifle and apparently I was really good.  The guy took me over to another area gave me a shotgun so that I could shoot clay pigeons! It was really fun and then at the end of the week, he hand-carved this thing for me because he said out of all of the boy scouts that he had come through that summer, I had been the best shooter.

I was really nervous shooting the handgun....

But apparently I did pretty well!

Chris wasn't upset, but he was playing around and made a SUPER tiny little circle in the middle and said, this plate is Steph's:)

Then we moved onto the rifles, I didn't like their .22 it was heavy and we had to hold it.

I did not do so well with this heavy .22 rifle, it seemed like the scope was off, I was trying to compensate by shooting to the top left, in order to hit the middle, and I never did. Afterwards we realized that it is scoped for like 50 yards or something like that so yeah it would definitely be off this close.

Since I didn't hit the middle at all, I finally switched to the .9mm because I wanted to hit Chris's dot. The first time I tried it, I close above, and close below...but never actually got it.

That bothered me that I didn't shoot his circle out so I shot one more time (about 5 rounds) AND I SHOT HIS CIRCLE OUT!!!!!

It was fun!

I am now a fan of shooting handguns instead of rifles, even shooting his AR15, but it was too powerful for me.

 

We went and got a handgun for me, before laws make it so I can't get one.

Sweet Sister Dance Routine

Allison wanted to make up a dance routine with Michelle and so Allison choreographed a routine taught it to Michelle, and made sure I recorded it. 

As you can see, she even made sure they were matching before they did their show.

You can click on the link below and it should take you to the actual video of their routine.

 Girls Dance Routine Video

PE Class....

Michelle got to do hoola hoops in PE and she really wanted to show me what she learned at school. She sure is LOVING going to school!

 

November Scout Outings

Allison's troop is always very active. They are going on a campout almost every month, or at least every other month. It is pretty awesome! Matthew's troop, not as much. I think part of that (at least what Allison's Scoutmaster says....her scoutmaster is married to Matthew's Scoutmaster and they each have a child in their own troops) they really try to let the troops be led by the Senior Patrol Leader. Apparently Matthew's patrol leader never wants to do anything....whereas the few that Allison has had, they are constantly doing things. In the church troops, it was RARELY boy led, at least the ones I have seen, and mostly adult led, so it is a different approach.

In November there were actually two things that the kids could choose between. Going on a cool, but long, hard hike, or going camping and doing some service projects.

I let each of the kids decide what they wanted to do. Allison was so glad that she didn't have to go on the hike. She really likes the campouts! This was also going to be her first campout as her patrol leader and she was looking forward to that.

They left Friday night, and then did service Saturday. They had to clear out a bunch of trees and brush and stuff like that. Apparently they needed axes and Allison became quite the ax queen and she owned the title. She was fierce. One thing I love about service is that you get to know people you don't normally hang out with. Allison go to know this dad from the boys' troop and they became a great team. Their were many of them all around working but Mr. Masch taught her how to use an ax even better and did a lot of work. 

These are the only pictures of her that I have from this campout, but you can tell, she is hard at work.

I got so many good comments about my kids and how much of a hard worker Allison was, and how well she did overall. 

While she was there, she also did her Board of Review for both her 2nd Class AND First Class ranks!!!! She is now FIRST CLASS!!! She kind of laughs about this, because one of Matthew's friends, that is in 9th grade, but in Allison's troop is now a lower rank than she:)

She has to be in the rank First class for 4 months, and also be serving in a leadership calling for 4 months (as well as everything else) before she can have her Board of Review for her Star rank. She needed six merit badges, 4 of which needed to be Eagle required, she needed to do 6 hours of service, which she has now already completed. She needs to go through Youth Protective Training Pamphlet again with me and do her Cyber chip. To reach the rank of Eagle you need to do 13 of the Eagle required ones, which she already has 9/13 done, and then she needs to have at least 8 additional merit badges done, which she already has 10, completed. If she really wanted to, she too could earn her Eagle at the age of 13! However, I am not sure this troop would actually let her do that, so we will see how that all goes.

I was actually a little surprised that Matthew wanted to go on the hike because he went on this hike with his old troop.  However, he chose to go.  This hike is called Old Rag, which is up on the Appalachian mountains! It is an 8 hour hike!!!! 

That group had to be at their meeting spot at 5AM! The last time he went on this hike, I was grateful that his Scoutmaster was a doctor. This time, there wasn't a doctor, but there was a nurse so that was comforting to me. Also, since he had done it before I was less worried. However, come to find out. The last time he went they didn't actually hike the whole thing, they apparently had only gone up a little ways so he was REALLY glad that he went on it this time to experience the whole thing. He thought it was really cool. I loved that some of the leaders took all of these pictures and then posted them on their Facebook page so we could see how the kids were doing. It was a beautiful day for both of these events. The kids also liked that they didn't have to have their sibling there with them, and I am sure the adults liked that as well. (Thankfully though, now that school has started and they don't see each other ALL OF THE TIME, they like each other so much more.)

He was excited to do on this hike though.

I wish that I could have gone with this group. This would have been fun, and a good workout. I needed to stay with Yeti since both kids were gone all day long.

Matthew got home that night about 8ish and I went and picked Allison up around 10ish. We try not to do camping Saturday night, if we can avoid it.

They both had a great time!