Monday, July 22, 2013

Baby animals make your heart melt

One of our neighbors up at Scofield is the sweetest ever.  Pace and Tonda are so cool.  Pace always comes out to talk to the kids.  For the past few years Tonda has taken bum lambs from sheep herders and takes care of them.  She keeps them mainly down at her house in Price because she has so many.  She also has milking goats to help feed the bummer lambs.  Well, this past week Tonda brought up two bummer lambs and 5 goats for the kids to pet, play with, and help feed.  It was so fun!  The kids love going over to pet the lambs and be with them.  I love going out and "talking" with the lambs and goats. They "maaaa", we "maaa", back and forth it goes.  So fun!
 Peter with the lambs.
 Caleb named this one Popcorn.  Tonda said that was a very appropriate name for the lamb.  Tonda said when she found that lamb in the pen of the sheep herder it was almost dead.  She took it home and tube fed it every hour until it could survive.  Tonda said, "So, Popcorn popped out of it and is alive now."
 Now, this has got to be the cutest thing we saw all week long!!!!!  As we were getting ready to leave Saturday night Tonda came back from feeding her other lambs with this precious bundle wrapped up in a blanket.  Tonda told us that right before she left Price one of her goats gave birth to triplets.  This little sweetie was not able to feed off the mother and Tonda did not want it to die.  So, she brought it to Scofield with her so that she could feed it and care for it through the night.  We were so lucky to be able to see it.  This little goat was named Brownie and in this picture it is only 2 hours old. 
 All of them together; Tonda, Brownie, Caleb, William, Peter, and Cia (Tonda's niece).
We all LOVED the baby goat!  Haley even pet it, she is usually afraid of animals approaching her.  But this sweet little goat was not intimidating to her.  We got to watch it take its first walk around the place, on wobbly legs at first and then with more strength the longer it was there.  But soon it got tired and started to lay down.  It was so soft, with long velvety ears and the cutest, smallest little baby goat sound that I have ever heard.  Tonda is so awesome to bring up the lambs and now the goat for these kids to be around and experience. This is something we will never forget.

The best, most magnificent days of summer

Basically, this is the best place to be in the summer!  Swimming, jumping off docks, mud, wildlife right out your front door, friends to play with, summer sun and family time.  We love this!
 The boys are very fond of mud pits that allow you to sink and squish and play in.  Gooey, muddy fun. And the best is that the lake is right there.  After you get muddy, go wash it off in the lake and then do it all over again!
 Playing in the water together!
 Swimming races and being brave in the water.  Peter and Caleb are experts at swimming and jumping off the dock.  William is getting more brave by swimming far out from the dock and putting his head under the water now.
 Being brave enough to grab crawdads right out of the water and show them off for mom.
 Spending time together is the best!
 Swinging, swinging and more swinging.  One of Haley's favorites.
 Having fun and acting silly and wild on the tube.
 Not only seeing elk and mystery birds and deer on adventure drives, we also see the occasional fawn.
The boys found a shallow river bed to walk along and splash in.  They also found mud to sink in and pelicans to watch and then chase away.  Haley and I were there too, just not quite as wet. 
 We read books a lot and look for Waldo.
 We wake in the morning and find ducklings nesting on our dock and once in a while find a blue heron walking along the beach.  So cool!
The at night we heave a sigh of happiness, read stories, snuggle down in cozy blankets and dream about more of the fun we will have the next day.  Summer is the best!

Peter-Parker Day

No, it is not what you think it is.  This is not a celebration of Spiderman.  Nothing at all related to the web-slinger.  It was celebrating the two cute kids in the picture below and the friendship that blossomed the week of the fourth.  Parker is a little girl that lives in Salt Lake but she has a cabin near ours at Scofield.  Peter and Parker became instant friends.  They both have names that begin with P.  They are both 7.  They both had a gap in the same spot of their mouth from a missing tooth.  And they hung out together all week long.  I think they they were only apart to sleep, use the bathroom, and when I made Peter give them some family time.  Other than that they were shadows of each other.  They did everything together.  Swim, play in Parker's hot tub, play games at Parker's cabin, eat lunch together, go on walks to look for rocks and crawdad claws, and they just wandered the campsite talking with each other from sun up to sun down.  So, on the fourth, Peter told me that the next day would be Peter-Parker Day.  They came up with it all on their own.   They came up with some ideas and I helped out a little too.
 The two best buddies.
 They ate lunch together and not pictured they also painted sun-catchers together.
They went on walks along the beach to find bambi or rocks or just to talk.
 In the evening Peter came up to me asking for toys that we do not play with anymore so that he could put them in a box.  Upon inquiring why he said that he and Parker would be making a time capsule and opening it in when they turn 11.  They went along collecting the funniest of things.  Rocks, broken glass from the beach, a ball.... all random stuff.  I convinced them to write a note to themselves in the future and include that in the time capsule also.  
Then we buried it behind our cabin to be opened in 4 years.  What cute kids!

A Decade

Robert Caleb Gray was born in July of 2000 and every summer since we have been at Scofield.  We celebrated his first birthday at the cabin.  Watching the fireworks of the dock and playing in the water.  So, he would have it no other way.  This very important birthday, 10 years of life - A DECADE!!!! - would be celebrated and remembered at Scofield.  So, what did we do to help Caleb feel special?  What did we do for the happy 10 year old?  We played and celebrated all week long!
 Swimming in the lake and jumping off the dock with gorgeous weather.
 The happy boy coming up from the lake.
 Playing with the other kids' toy car. It was awesome!  They would start at the top of the road, which goes down the hill.  At first start pedaling, then let gravity take you the rest of the way down as you steer with the side controls.  It was awesome to watch them zoom down the road, curve off into the fences or grass, flip over every now and then or make it successfully all the way down without a crash.
 Catching crawdads, feeling brave enough to hold them and then watching them swim away off the end of the dock.
 Tubing!  We were lucky enough to have the boat in the water, and get it fixed after a minor setback of rocks + propeller = bad news.  This is the last picture of Caleb being 9 and there was a smile on his face the whole time he was in the water and being pulled by the boat.
 The day finally arrived!  10 years old, and we did all the things the boy wanted.  The parade (which was very short), candy, rock wall, played tag and other assorted games, swimming, and the fireworks.  Of course the fireworks being shot from the island, sitting on the dock and watching them shoot up in the sky while being surrounded by his family.  That is the way to do fireworks.
This was the cake I made for Caleb.  It was supposed to look like a castle, with oreo watch towers, a kit-kat draw bridge, and chocolate everywhere.  It was yummy, but I think Caleb had already gotten full from all of his other favorite foods.  That week we served Caleb his favorites.  Navajo tacos, orange chicken, cafe rio pork, and we ended it right with country fried steak for his birthday dinner.  My favorite quote was from Pa.  After we pulled out the cake and sang happy birthday to Caleb, Pa asked, "Why is there an 'I O' on the cake?" Seriously?  I looked at Pa and asked, "How old is Caleb?"  Pa still did not get it.  He asked again why there was an I and an O on the cake.  I had to explain that it was a 10.  Yeah, funny grandpas. 
This boy is awesome!  He is tender-hearted, thoughtful, creative, very smart, helpful when he wants to be, faithful, and really tries his best to be his best.  What more could you ask for?  We love him so.