gingerbread wonders

some good friends invited us over to make gingerbread houses. they had us a house all ready to decorate (and made from scratch), with all the candy and trimmings that you could imagine for us to stick on. who is that nice, really? apparently they are. apparently i am not. if i had gone to that much work, i would decorate it myself. instead they shared it with our family and their family shared one to decorate. really really nice. wow. i have a lot to learn. anyway...here is the house.




do you see the section of roof that jake was in charge of. it took me a moment to not freak out that it wasn't all lined up and stuff and then i remembered that i didn't even make the gingerbread house or buy the candy. i could share in a little generosity with our little elf.

anyway, Merry Christmas to all of you out there that we love so much! sorry, no Christmas cards this year, but we are thinking of you and hope that you have a wonderful holiday season!

Christmas joy

the evening started out so nice...my boys were even matching (not intentional, but cute nonetheless)....


and then we saw santa claus or as jake calls him "Noah". an experience that jake will not soon forget.

i really love these guys!

They are "On the Rocks" an acapella (spelling?) group from University of Oregon and they are hillarious.

jake loves...

his animals! we all know that cows are his favorite, but he occasionally distributes his time with the other members of his farm. he feeds them, they kiss, when they fall down he rocks them saying "ohhh" and then asks "okay?" with his head tilted to the side. his animals also have to go "night-night" and he makes sure to snore for them and then he says, "wake-up" and helps them stand up. i love to just watch him, but he usually ends up wanting me to play too. i don't mind that either.

the blue shape is where they eat, but of course you already knew that.

when he goes to bed, he gets to choose two animals to take with him. it works like a charm. who needs a soft cuddly stuffed animal when you have a hard animal toy to leave imprints on your face?!?

corn maze

we took jake to the corn maze, but funny thing was, we never went in. we just played around in the kids play area. we had a lot of fun, but ran out of day light. what is it with these short days???

go ahead and make fun of his hat that is too small. i hadn't tried it on him yet this year and guess what...his head is bigger than last year. i don't know how that happened. it looks like one of those little jewish caps (minus the skull and bones of course).


the first (and best as far as jake is concerned) thing that jake found was the cow.

he could have stayed there the whole time. who knew cows could be so exciting?

you would think that after seeing all of grandpa's cows all the time, a single calf would not be all that exciting, but there is never quite enough cow time.

what is he looking at you may be asking yourself. well, we had moved on, but he is looking at the cow.

the goats were okay too.

running through the kids hay maze was awesome! jake loved it and we loved that he was somewhat confined.

all tuckered out, but we will go again next year....hopefully during the day.

a look at halloween

we kept it simple for halloween. jake was a monkey and he didn't love his costume, especially his hat. i really should have dressed him like a cow. he would have liked that.
we went trick or treating to grandma's and then went to the neola carnival. i think that he had a good time.

at grandma's he was more interested in her toy cows than he was the candy.

"get this banana hat off my head!"

"just leave me with my cows and i will be happy."

jake loved all the games at the carnival and matt was such a great sport to take him around to everything. they even won a cake in the cake walk.

this may be what we are doing again next year. so nice to be inside, warm and dry (it was raining outside). i have great memories from the neola carnival when i was a kid. i love that it is still going on and it is the same as it was then.

a day of fencin'

at the end of september, us locals gathered at my parent's farm for a good ol' day of fencin'. we had lots of fun working with the family and doing all we could to keep those darn cows in. hope it helped.

after a day of hard work, this is how some of us looked:

ty

mia

emma

jake

grandpa

ty (and carrots, i think)

koy and mia

ty and sai with blake in the background

jake

there is nothing like a good day of hard work. i am so grateful for grandma and grandpa rass and their farm. many happy memories are made there!

wonderin' where i have been?

well, i am pregnant! yay!!! but i have been miserable, laying on the couch for a couple of months...not yay!! i think i am getting better now...so maybe i will return to the world of blogging. that was a maybe. i still feel a little (or a lot) lazy.

father/son time

matt and jake are getting more quality time together lately, especially with my new calling (stake young women secretary). i love that this is one of the perks. the part that i don't love is that matt always says, "we had so much fun! he is so different when you are not around. no whining, no crying, etc." he even took pictures to prove it...

come to find out...they watch t.v. a lot.

johnson mill

some dear, sweet people gave us a gift certificate to johnson mill bed and breakfast in midway. they also kept jake for us overnight. what a fun labor day weekend we had!



there was a pond behind back with a canoe for romantic boat rides. we decided to take advantage of this. let me tell you, the water looks pretty, but it is actually really creepy. you can't see down, the water is dark and stinky with occasional plants coming up toward the surface. i was expecting to see a human hand or face like on lord of the rings. i prayed and prayed that we wouldn't tip over and have to touch that water. i sat as still as i could while matt rowed us through the water at sunset. all of the sudden, matt got freaked out too and paddled as fast as he could back for the gazebo. it is one of those moments that i will never forget. i started laughing and couldn't quit. my nervousness contributed i am sure, but i was hysterical, tears coming down my face. i was rather relieved to get back on solid ground.


with our big camera, this is what we get when matt tries to take a portrait of both of us. we really need to figure out the timer.


the waterfall was really cool. we stayed in the waterfall terrace that has a balcony that looks 40 feet straight down on this waterfall. the sound was awesome.

the building really was cool.

after leaving the johnson mill, we went to swiss days where there was a lot of things to buy and a lot of women there to buy it.

we also went to the soldier hollow sheepdog trials. so cool. you have to go sometime. we started with the splash dogs. the contest was to see how far the dog could jump off the dock. really was fun to watch.

some of them would get out there 23 feet.

the border collies herding the sheep were amazing. they would follow whistle commands from the shepherd and bring a herd of sheep down from way up the hill (by where the field starts). i am zoomed in on this picture, but believe me, it is a ways away.

on the way down, the dog has to bring the sheep through some gates then directly to the shepherd. they then have to take the sheep around the shepherd and separate two out of the five and keep them controlled. they then have to take the sheep back to some gates on the left and through and then to some gates on the right and through. back to the shepherd and then they have to pen them. this all has to happen within a time limit. amazing to watch.