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Dear Family,
It has been so long since writing you about some things is seems almost not note worthy, however I will include what has been going on and then some random pictures. We planted a garden in April and shortly after doing so the neighbors' dogs came over and dug up a good portion of it. Zeke was nice enough to find a contractor and we had a fence installed. Now the back yard is completely enclosed. |
| Since we had a fence we decided to get some chickens. After some research we purchased 4 barred rock hens that were about 4 months old. When they came to our home Carson was fascinated with them and kept putting his hands in their cage. I thought we would get his finger pecked, but after putting the digit in question into the chickens' eye with no reaction I was sure that we had some very slow chickens. They started out by laying 1 egg every other day. After some calculation I discovered that they would have to do that for a full 55 weeks before they started to pay for themselves. |  |
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However at my house we go through phases on what we eat for breakfast. Lauren is allowed to request what we eat and as such we have a lot of the same thing for periods at a time. We went through an oatmeal phase and the leftovers were fed to the chickens. I then noticed that they would lay about 4 eggs a day. Now that we have had them for several months they enjoy waffles, oatmeal, spaghetti, casserole, and yogurt. I had not realized how much they are like pigs, in the sense they eat anything. |
| We did let the chickens out of their roost, after clipping their right wings, they roam around the yard eating anything they can catch. Also in the morning time as I go about doing chores the chickens will follow me room to room. In the kitchen they jump on the outside table to peek inside. If I go to the bedrooms they will sit under the window clucking at me. No matter when I go out side they all come running to see what I have brought out for them. I am normally scared of animals but find that I am really enjoying these chickens! |  |
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In other news my kids have discovered that if I have the camera I will want a photo and it is to their advantage to just look at me and say cheese. Carson will say it as long as he can hold it then take a deep breath and repeat he does then until I put the camera away. Kids are so fun! |
| Lauren is much like me as a child in that she like bugs and wants to keep them as pets. We found a frog living in the well of our peach tree she was very upset when I told her we could not keep it. |  |
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It has become warm here and my garden is doing really well this year. I did not think it would do so well after the dog incident at the beginning, however the seeds sprouted up and the majority of them were along my fence line which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The plants that sprouted were squash and I'm very happy that they are growing up the fence instead of all over the ground as we did last year. I planted 5 tomato bushes thinking that most would not do well. I also found the plants on sale for 89 cents a piece. They all made it and are almost as tall as I am. We are already getting cherry tomatoes. I had friend try to grow tomatoes on her patio but the plants were too big for their pots so I put her plants in my garden as well, so now there are 13 tomato plants. If nothing else I will have LOTS of tomatoes this year. The peach trees were in a location we did not like so we moved one and lost all the peaches from that guy. The second peach tree did well at producing but the butterflies ate them before we could get them. |
| I also have jalapeños planted and so far one has been picked. Zeke said it was like a bell pepper with a little zing. I think I picked it too early, but we will see with the next one. We have two mulberries and one of them produces so we got them already for the season. My black berry bushes came back after being trampled on my father-in-laws' horse last fall and while there are not many berries there is not much left of the plant so I'm hopeful that it will only get better. Zeke's mom brought us raspberry bushes, and grape vines. We also have a fig tree, vanilla bean, and the avocado growing. I think that the 200 dollars plus we spent last year is going to start paying off. |  |
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Next bit of news is a funny story. So as most of the ladies I hang out with are from Utah find that they still would like to do things as if all the members lived in a 3 mile radius. So I was at a slumber party and we decided that we would go and decorate our latest YM who was about to leave on his mission. This is something that we have done on several occasions. By the time that we got organized and were ready to leave it was about 3am. So off we went We pulled up to the house and went straight to work. After about 3 minutes we turn to see Brother Minter (the missionaries Dad) standing at the corner of the house with a shot gun in his hand. You could see the recognition go across his face, first these are not thieves, and then oh my these are adult ladies......who are in our ward! He did not have much to say other then "Oh I'm sorry.....its okay.....yeah okay......good night? Then his wife came out and she was beside her self that her husband would pull a gun on us and we are probably so upset. Oddly enough it did not phase any of us however I did learn a very important lesson. I'm an adult and as such I need to call before going and doing such things. So the next time we went TP-ing we called the husband to ask permission to TP their house. As a side note if you use food coloring one can decorate the toilet paper and get a very cute and classy result! |
| I did not get accepted into the Dental Hygiene program. After going to a seminar I discovered that it was a result of not completing two pre-requisite courses, as well as failing a Spanish class I took my first semester of college over ten years ago. I would caution the younger readers that it is very important to either drop or withdraw from a course if you do not intend to put you feel effort into it. Next time should be better but time will tell. |  |
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Zeke has been busy repairing things here at the house I ran over a rock with the lawn mower and broke a pin that holds the two gears together so he fixed that. Then another friend did the same thing to their mower and Zeke knew exactly how to fix it. There is something to "any job is easy, as long as you know how to do it." Zeke worked on out mower for 4 days after trouble shooting, locating problem, finding a store in which to obtain parts, and then doing the work. However, when fixing the second mower it took all of about 2 hours. |
| We once again had a chance to find out how some of the store workers have no idea about the products that they sell. Zeke needed a new carburetor for our chain saw as it was not running and cleaning it did not fix the problem. So he called out local "All Saw" and asked how much one was and if it was in stock. They told him they only sold the rebuild kits. He called back a different time, sure that they sold the carburetors and was told the same thing. So he went to E-bay and found one, bid, and won. Then we paid for it and for it to be shipped to the house. Upon opening the box we found it was from "All Saw" and was shipped form Tulsa OK. |  |
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Carson will start nursery this Sunday and I could not be happier. I think it will be an easy transition since Lauren is in there as well. |
| Lauren has been doing lot of changing over the last couple of weeks. She is becoming more of an independent little girl. As well as speaking more clearly. It is so much fun to watch her as she figures out things on her own. With that comes some rottenness of its own. If she makes a mess I make her clean it up... That does not sound unreasonable. She poured out all the baby power over the couch so I got out the vacuum and she cleaned it up. However it must have been lots of fun because she then poured out that bottle of hand sanitizer as I was putting away the vacuum. So she cleaned that up then she dumped the flour on the floor of the kitchen and ran to tell me that she needed the broom so she could clean it. I then decided it was time to tell her about being wasteful. |  |
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We had girls camp two weeks ago and I watched some kiddos so mom could go. Yes I would have rather some one watched mine so I could go but it did not work out that way. So at one point I had six kids and to keep my insanity we were going to all go out side and play in the kiddy pool we have. |
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I sat everyone down to take a photo to remember the occasion and after looking at the picture, found that I could really see a difference in the skin tones of my kids vs the other four children.
That is all for now hope you all are doing well. Love ya, Zeke, Mylinda, Lauren, Carson Ellis |
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