Tending Ava Belle

Such Cute Girls. Mom loves to dote on Ava. Notice the outfit, bracelet and bow. (She's glad Brandi's having a girl, in her words they are much more fun to dress.)

What a doll

She's taking after grandma with liking green apples

At first she was just sucking on it and then she actually got a bite out of it.

Polly The Paint

Hello all,

I am officially breaking the Tait's horse, Polly the paint. She is a two year old paint mare who has never really been handled. She was born in a stall and stayed there until we brought her over here. As a concequence, she was an absolute nut. She would strike and kick and bite, nearly all at the same time. :) She was also terrified of nearly everything that is not commonly found in a stall.

The Tait's are on their mission and want to see her progress so I thought the easiest way to stay in contact with them would be to make a blog of her training experiences. I made a link on the side under OTHER LINKS and you can see our progress as well. Since the Tait's are going to be following it closely you can make comments here. Or if you want to comment there, just don't say anything that might offend them, like, "That's the dangum uglest hearse I iverdun sawed!" :)

Love ya all.

Rob

July 4th

It can't be the 4th without a parade, though we were seriously considering not going. In the end it was fun. :)

We sat by some pretty cute kids, and I got a few new painting ideas.

I laughed so hard when I looked over and saw this! Mom is holding Tell, (you can see by the watch) and the way loud sirens are going by so she's trying to block his ears with Maji's help... You can see by Tell's face that... I don't even know.. He's scared? Purplexed? About to cry? Enjoying himself? Regardless, I thought it was exceptionally funny.

GRR!

So apparently I post what I would feel is chronologically, however the stupid blog thing doesn't do it that way.. If you have a trick which remedies the situation I'd be pleased to hear it, or just keep your mouth shut and read the post's backwards.

Family Hike, CONTINUED!

Mom packed snacks. Isn't that nice?

Hiking... Uphill... On the craggy rock... I'm out of breath.

And the rains descended and the floods came and beat upon the earth... and us.

So that's about the end of it. We got to the Durango and drove on home.

Family Hike continued

Wait for me!!

So, we saw this REALLY freaky sign... It creeped me out and guess what trail we took!? Uhuh! My overactive imagination began to take hold with it's suffocating grip...

Do you honestly believe that is rust on that screw? I bet it's the blood of some helpless victim

Okay, this is the pinicle. That terribly lacerated pictocram would normally be depicting a hiker... And on this deathly hollow trail, hikers seem to be unappreciated. I began to feel afright!

Family Hike, continued

Mom fell in love with these flowers, but when a sign asked ladies like this to abstain from picking them a photo had to suffice. (but do you think she really heeded the sign?)

Dad was feeling quite artistic and pointing out sketching opprotunities to me... I thought his pose was funny. Like a communion with nature sort of thing.

That's a composition.

So cute.

Family Hike

So, to fulfill a stupid geology 1050 assignment, I coerced the parents into going to a national park

It was a rather beautiful drive

I just love southern Utah. NEARLY everywhere you look there is a beautiful painting waiting to happen... Nearly everywhere.

wowza. It was better in person.

SO funny

So Jer sent me this really funny email about funny metaphors used in high school essays. These are a few I thought were particularly funny:

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Note to Jami: I have mixed emotions about you teaching kids like this... :) It should be entertaining, but you might have your work cut out for you. Good luck!