My 33rd Birthday

Wow, I can't believe that I am 33. The years go by so fast. I decided that I didn't feel like sitting around the house. I decided at the last minute that I wanted to go for a picnic. I invited my sister and then Friday night I called Storm and invited him. During the day I was really wishing that I had called Sam and invited him and Jennifer out. I didn't have it planned out soon enough to give them time to plan. So next time I will think a little better.

My day started out waking up early and had the kids get all their chores done for the day so we wouldn't have to worry about getting home before dark. Deten's scout leader called me a couple days ago and said that there was going to be some stations set up at the Ouray bird refuge and the scouts could go pass off one of their badges. There was going to be 12 stations for them to go to. I had no idea what to expect, I asumed it would be 12 stations that we would walk around and look at. NO we drove to each station. There was proboally a couple miles of road. We had so much fun and learned so much. ALL of the kids enjoyed it. It ended up taking us 3 hours to go through the whole coarse. We learned about Aquatic Insects, Ouray Hatchery, Jones Hole Hatchery, Birds and Beaks, Bird of prey, Wetland birds, Invasive weeds (very, very interesting), Song bird mist netting, Wetland metaphors, Build a bird house, Jr. Duck stamp.

After we finally got done at the bird refuge we picked up my sister and her husband. We met my brother at the visitor center in Jensen and then we all went to Josie Basset Cabin. WOW, it was so much fun. You used to not be able to go in the cabin and now they have it open so you can walk through it. There were two trails that you could hike on. The first trail we went on was box canyon. It was perfect weather, just a little breeze. We took a ton of pictures and had such a good time. All of my kids loved it. After we got off the trail we decided we were ready to eat. We had a BBQ right there by the cabin, thank goodness most of the people were gone by the time we came back from our hike. Storm cooked our food for us, thanks to him it was very yummy. The night before I made a potato salad and we had a few other things to eat. It was perfect. Oh I even made myself a birthday cake. It turned out really good. After we got done eating we put everything away and went on the second trail up to Hog canyon. After we got back from that hike we ate cake and went to Grandma and Grandpa Knutti's to share some cake and then home. It was such a fun day!!! Thanks to my kids and my family for helping make it fun. I so wish that Billy could have been there but he was working in WV. When he gets home we will have to plan an outing.

Easter

This is a late post, but I guess better now than never. I decided to let the kids decorate some eggs at our house for Easter, as they were doing them it dawned on me that we usually do eggs at my Grandma Knutti's. So I told the kids that we would only do a few. We loaded everything up and went to Grandma and Grandpas and surprised them to color eggs at their house. Grandma was so excited. She said that she wanted to do eggs but there was no one to do them for. We had a really good time. Ashlee came over and helped. She said that she didn't remember the last time she had colored eggs.

On Easter we went down to the Postma's farm and had a BBQ, egg hunt and the kids played softball. Billy's cousin Charlene made a spot just for Jesee since she is the only baby. All the other eggs were all over out in the field. I think all of the older kids had a really good time. Jesee loved picking up the eggs and putting them in the basket. There was tons of yummy food that everyone brought. I think the food is one of my most favorite parts. One of the friends there had an explorer that had some racks up on top and some of the older kids were sitting on top of it just visiting. Before too long they were begging their mom to take them for a ride in the field. She drove really slow and they looked like they were pretty safe. It was pretty funny, it looked like they were on a safari ride. One of the grandma's was having a heart attack. The kids had fun though. Years ago the whole Postma family would have Easter at the farm before Grandma and Grandpa passed away and they would play softball, it was a lot of fun back then. Deten took all of his baseball stuff with him and all the kids played softball. Grandpa Bill even got in a played for a few minutes. We had a really good time with the Postma family. Billy was not able to be home for Easter because he was in West Virgina working. After we got done we went up to the farm house and visited with Aunt Jill and took some left over food and saw some of her animals. He did get to spend Easter with a family that he met and he had met and had a good time. It beat spending it in his room all by himself.