Amy, Tim, and Juliet's Visit

Juliet and Nathan both fell asleep on my bed at the same time.

     Amy and Tim were planning on coming to Ridgecrest for a couple of weeks after Tim's classes ended.  But Amy and Juliet ended up riding home with my mom and dad from the Moffitt family reunion a couple of weeks earlier.  So we got to see them for almost a whole month!  I was so excited to see Juliet because I hadn't seen her yet except on skype and pictures.  She is such a happy baby and has the cutest smile.  I was also excited for Amy to see our new little baby boy.

     While they were here, we had fun doing photo shoots of our babies, playing Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, going for smoothies, and making hair bows, among other things.  I really didn't get a chance to try out DDR, but it looked pretty fun.  I think we got Amy hooked on Guitar Hero.

     Now they are in Virginia with Tim's folks until Tim has to go back to school.  Then they will come back to Ridgecrest to pick up their car.  I already can't wait to see them again.

Amy is a rock star!

Juliet! (Juliet is a very fun name to say)

The McFarlane Family

Our New Shed

     We finally did it.  We broke down and bought a shed to store our extra junk in.  Right now we can only fit our van in the garage, and we'd really like to be able to fit both cars.  But there was just too much stuff on ground with the lawn mower, bikes, etc.  We ordered the shed from Cotco.com and it came as a kit.  I believe it showed up soon after Nathan was born.  Having a new baby made it very difficult for me to get out and help Daren put the shed together.  And not having my help made it difficult for Daren to get it together.  Ronelle Cannon's brother Thomas offered to help Daren and Daren took him up on his offer.  We are so glad that he did.  Thomas was an immense help to Daren and without him it probably wouldn't have gotten done.  It still needs paint and shingles, but aside from those things, it looks fantastic!

I didn't think to take pictures of any of the earlier stages, so this is the best "before" shot I have.

Daren and Thomas with their masterpiece.

"Do" Over

     Since school is starting in a little over a week, I needed to get the girls into Jack and Jill's to get those haircuts fixed.  It meant going a little shorter than I like to go on them, but I know it will grow out eventually.  And they still look adorable.  We only did Natalee and Mackenzie because Haylee's really wasn't so bad.  And in defense of the girl who did the bad haircuts (because I really do feel bad picking on her like this) she did do some really cute cuts that day.  I saw some of my friends' haircuts at church that Sunday and they looked great.  So maybe she was just tired and does have a future cutting hair.  Although I do wish I had a picture of the faces of the ladies at Jack and Jill's when they saw Natalee's hair. 

Aaaahhhh, much better!

Families Can Be Together Forever

Kathy Hardy Ricks

October 23, 1957-August 12, 2010

     Families Can Be Together Forever is the caption at the top of Ray and Kathy's blog.  Kathy has been fighting cancer for several years now.  She returned to her heavenly home around 9am this morning.  Her husband and 6 sons were all with her.  Their son Josh is getting married tomorrow and Kathy so badly wanted to be at his wedding.  Her liver had failed and the doctors were doing their best to get her stable enough for a quick trip to Utah.  It wasn't looking good though.  Ray wasn't planning on leaving her side to attend either if Kathy was too sick to go.  As my mother-in-law pointed out, the silver lining in this dark cloud is that Kathy is definitely going to be at the wedding tomorrow.  And Ray too, of course.
     The first time I met Kathy was at the first Hardy Family Reunion that I attended the summer of 2002.  Since then, I've only seen her a couple of times-the '06 and '08 reunions.  We weren't able to go this year because we had a brand new baby.  I was sad because I knew it was probably our last chance to see her.  Despite only meeting her a few times over the years, the girls and I have developed a deep love for Aunt Kathy (Daren of course, has always loved her).  Probably because she's the oldest and remembers the best, Natalee especially adores her Aunt Kathy.  She is the kind of woman that I strive to become and she has raised 6 sons to be strong, righteous men of the gospel. 
     A special memory I have of Kathy was from the time we were at the 2008 Hardy family reunion in Price, Utah.  We did a white elephant gift exchange so before the reunion, I took the girls to the dollar store to pick something out.  Natalee and Haylee both picked a plastic horse.  When we got to the reunion, Natalee got to be friends with Daren's cousin Misty's daughter, Emmalynn.  Emmalynn loves horses too.  When it came time for the gift exchange, Natalee fully intended to pick one of the horses.  Before it was her turn though, another child got the first horse.  Then, Emmalynn's turn came.  She opened the second horse.  She was so excited.  Natalee was devastated.  We told her that part of the game was that you could "steal" a gift that you liked from someone else.  She thought about it but she couldn't bring herself to do it.  I thought she was okay with it, then all of a sudden, the tears came pouring.  Emmalynn saw how sad Natalee was, and she took the horse over to her and gave it to her.  It was such a thoughtful thing for such a young child (I think they were 6 at the time).  But then after it was over, Emmalynn was feeling sad and was crying.  So we told Natalee that if she gave the horse back to Emmalynn, we could just get one when we got home.  So she gave it back.  Then Natalee was sad.  It was a terrible cycle. :)  Aunt Kathy was also very touched by their concern for each other.  She took both girls aside and gave them each a dollar so they could both get a horse from the dollar store when they got home from the reunion.  Natalee never forgot that.
     We will really miss you Aunt Kathy, and we are grateful to have been blessed to have you in our lives.

Attack of the "Killer" Scorpion!

     This is the scorpion that stung me tonight.  It's a close-up so it actually looks bigger in this picture than it was.  It was a pretty small one.  Daren had just sprayed poison yesterday so I'm sure it was half dead.  The poison takes longer to work on the scorpions but it makes them really slow.  It was on our bedroom floor.  Daren put it on this book (can you name the book?) to take the picture for me so that you could actually see it.  I'm really regretting going with the beige carpet right now.  The original purpose of going with beige was to try to match the dirt so that the dirt wouldn't show up so easily on the carpet.  Apparently, other things that try to match the dirt also match our carpet.  I noticed that I was stepping on a slightly darker spot just before my foot went down but I didn't think enough about it to change where I was stepping with my bare foot.  I immediately felt the pain and thought maybe I had stepped on a goat head.  Then it made sense and I knew what I had stepped on before I even looked.  I completely freaked out and started screaming for Daren.  Kelsey was with me (part of the reason I was so freaked out was that she had just been walking in that same spot right before me) and so watching me freak out made her start crying.  I felt bad when I saw how scared she was so I made myself calm down and she immediately calmed down.  It helped that the pain started to go away pretty quickly.  But I am still completely disgusted that there was a scorpion on our bedroom floor (actually this was the second one this summer-we just didn't step on the first one) and I don't think I'll be walking around barefoot for awhile.  We also might have to move.  This is a definite drawback of living out on land!  And Ronelle had a snake in her yard last week.  (shudder!)

P.S.  Daren looked up online to see if I would need medical treatment and discovered that I would not.  I didn't think so since I was stung by a scorpion when I was like 5 years old and didn't go to the doctor back then.  But it was nice to have the reassurance.

Pierced Ears for Haylee-Finally!

     Haylee is only 7 years old, so by finally, I don't mean because she waited so long.  It's because she has wanted it for so long and we have gone to get it done SO many times only to have her change her mind once we're there.  She has been wanting pierced ears but has been too afraid to go through with it.  So when she actually went through with it today, I was stunned.  We all went to Wal-Mart for a few things we needed (diapers, salt, and night lights).  Daren and Haylee split off to do a secret thing while the rest of us shopped for school supplies and other things.  They came back and Daren whispered to me that Haylee wanted to surprise us by getting her ears pierced but the lady wasn't going to be back for 15 minutes.  I said that was fine, but I didn't really think Haylee would go through with it this time either.  But when they came back, Haylee had a big surprise for us.  She sure enjoyed her sister's reactions!  The thing that surprised me the most was that there was only one piercing person there.  So that meant that Haylee had only one ear done at a time, instead of both at the same time like her sisters.  I probably wouldn't have let her even start if I had been there.  I am always too afraid that they'll get one ear pierced and then lose the nerve to do the other ear.  But Daren let her do it and she did just fine.  She's very excited and they look really cute on her.

Haircuts!

     School is starting next month and it was time to think of haircuts for the girls.  Usually we go to a place called Jack and Jill's Cuts for Kids.  The girls love it there because they get to play video games while their hair is done and after it's done, they spray it with glitter or put beads in it.  We were intending to go there, but then we heard about a friend whose daughter was looking for haircutting jobs to earn some extra money.  I was a little hesitant since she is still in beauty school and I had my own bad experience with a beauty school haircut before.  But I knew she might also be very talented and if she would do a good job, I was willing to help her out.  She's a single mom and needed some extra cash for her rent.
     Being the chicken I am, I waited until she did a few friend's haircuts first so I could check out her skills.  We went over right after the Cannons and I have to say that Katie and Grace's haircuts turned out very adorable.  So we decided to go ahead with the haircuts for the oldest three girls.  As a quick disclaimer, I just want to say that the girl who did their hair is a very sweet person.  So I feel kind of bad that this blog post comes off as pretty unkind to her.  But she isn't done with school yet and it appears that she struggles with very thick, straight hair.  So that's what she can focus on, but I sure won't be the one to tell her.  Anyway, here are some pictures of her work:

She did a pretty good job with Haylee's hair.  (I need to trim about 2 long hairs hanging down but that's it.)

And Mackenzie doesn't look so bad from the front.  And her left side turned out pretty good too.  However on the right side, as you can see, the front is much shorter than the back.

And Natalee...

     Natalee's hair, like Mackenzie's, isn't too bad from the front. And she did a very nice job with Natalee's bangs. But the sides and back...Oh My!! The funniest part is that the girls have no idea that they got bad haircuts. Natalee said to me, "My haircut is different from the other girls." I asked her what she meant. "I have layers," she told me. "Layers," I said. "So that's what it's called." "You didn't know what layers are?" she asked. I decided not to answer. I prefer that the girls keep believing they got great haircuts. Sometime soon, we'll come up with a reason to visit Jack and Jill's. Preferably before school starts. Unfortunately, that's less than 4 weeks away!