Tate

I took Tate to get some updated pictures last week. He did pretty good, here are some of our favorites.

NFR

Shane & I just returned from a nice little trip without kids. We went down to Vegas to the NFR, for those who have no idea what that is-National Finals Rodeo. It happens every December in Veags, and its 10 days long. We had a blast, we went with our friends/Aunt & Uncle(they are both, sounds weird I know, they are the same age as us!)Anyways after a couple nights of the rodeo the guys actually surprised us and took us out to a Cirque De Soleil show which was awesome. It had people doing all kinds of amazing stuff that you wouldn't think possible. Afterwards Shane said he was feeling pretty whimpy after seeing what some of those guys could do! The other part of the trip that was awesome was the shopping. We spent all day shopping everyday pretty much, and Shane didn't mind,(this is the guy who has been in a mall once with me)!!! Well, that's because it was at Cowboy Christmas and Country Christmas... Consisting of everything western. Shane was in heaven, and so was I. Next year we just need to save up LOTS more money to spend! Needless to say our wonderful trip is over, but it sure was great to get home to our kids. Thanks to everyone who helped watch them!

Tate's First Birthday!

I can't believe it has been a year already! Time is just really flying by these days. We celebrated his birthday with some family. I spent hours making his cake, and come to find out he didn't like the frosting!!! He was gaging over it! So that spoiled the fun of making a mess out of his first birthday cake, but we still had some good laughs watching his face when he tasted the frosting. He loved getting new toys. He didn't understand the unwrapping yet, but once he saw what was underneath he got excited. Christmas will be a blast this year!

Halloween

Ok, so it's not the easiest thing to get all my kids to look at the camera at the same time and all smile. This was as good as I could get before they all got mad at me! But you get the idea. Bricker & Madelyn went as Woody(+ Bullseye) & Jesse from Toy Story, and Tate was a lion. He growls at us all the time, so the lion suited him. The kids had a blast trick or treating and spending time with the cousins. Tate has now found that there are much better tasting foods than his baby food, thanks to candy!! This kido has a major sweet tooth, he gets that from me:)

Daddy's Helper

Shane took Tate out Sunday morning to go check on a couple calves we have that have been sick, and this is how he brought him back. Yep, that's poop on his head! Shane stepped out of the truck and left the door open and of course Tate wanted to follow, and did! He tumbled out onto Shane's manure covered boots. When Shane got home, he had me hurry and take a picture. Poor baby I thought! It will be a great photo to bring out when he's older!!

Lesson Learned

Lately my washing machine hasn't been draining the water after the rinse cycle. So I've had to turn the knob back and re-run the rinse cycle to get it to drain. Well Monday morning it finally completely stopped draining and left me with a big wet mess and lots of water. So I broke down and called around for a repair man. (P.S. usually the repair man @ our house is Shane, but he's been elk hunting and I needed a washer, with 3 kids you can only go so long without clean clothes!!!) Well come to find out, my drain pump died on me and it was going to cost $266 to repair! I was thinking maybe $100 to fix it! I told the guy, "My word! That's half the price I paid for the machine!" He gave me his sob story how the economy is bad, and business has been slow, and he's just trying to make it like everybody else. He was sorry it was going to cost so much... Well I had to fork out half the bill for him to order the part. The next day, I am still sick about how much it's going to cost to fix it and decided to research it a little. So I check out the kenmore website and look up my part I need, and guess what, it only costs $57. So that means I am paying the guy $209 for installation and labor. Seems pretty high to me. Well I called his office and asked for a price brake down on my bill. They were charging me double the price for the part, I told the lady I found the part for half the price, gave her the number she could call to verify it etc... In the meantime my repair man calls me, says his receptionist contacted him about my call. Basically he gave me another run around speech how if I didn't use this part he ordered for me I had to pay a 20% restocking fee, and that Sears(the company that I found the part for $57)wasn't a reliable source, and I would have to pay a fee for not using him to install the part. What a rip off!! So I had to brake down and tell the guy to go ahead with the repair, cause it was going to cost me more to cancel the repair. So I learned a lesson, do more research next time.

Family Pictures

We had some family pictures taken this week, and I wanted to share because they turned out great. Thanks to Shane's friend Jason who took them, he did an awesome job. So here are some of my favorites...