Cutting up Cow 101...

#1 Have an amazing uncle who can get a killer deal (no pun intended) on not one....not two... but three cows!
#2 Have that same guy kill the cows.
#3 Have a place to hang the beef #4 Have MANY willing family members cut, chop and grind the meat.

#5 You must have a strong stomach for this procedure.

#6 Discard any excess fat and bones....(watch for certain person initials JMK girl 8 years old) to hide souvenir bones in car....... #7 Wrap and label meat and quickly freeze!

We were rewarded for our efforts over 700 packages of ground beef and almost 100 roasts to split between our families. YUM YUM!! (OK, I know it doesn't look yummy here but it will be later in delicious dinners!)

The girls were troopers and helped out alot. (even some cutting) They all decided it wasn't as bad as they were expecting it to be.

Well....check off another first!

Fall fun

Fall is here! Grandma and Grandpa Manwaring have some big trees in their yard and the leaves have started to fall like crazy! The girls were so excited to be able to play in them. They made Grandma and Grandpa promise that they wouldn't get rid of them before they came home from school. Unfortunately Michelle was gone trying out for basketball so she missed tonight's fun but there are still a ton of leaves in the trees so I know she will have another opportunity.

Rachel and Jenna completely buried in the leaves. (just one of the piles)
Swimming in leaves!

Gandpa's truck filled and tromped down by Rachel, and this is another of the piles!

It's raining leaves!!!! Yay!!! Silly girls!! I didn't know how deprived they were!

They had alot of fun but the rain came to end it.

Conference in Africa

A new day in UgandaThe saints gather to watch and listen to our Prophets....4 weeks later

but still the same none-the-less.Sweet little smile to warm your heart! Brad is doing very well. He has had a bit of a cold but that is the first since he left. He hit his 100 day today. The time has flown by so far. He loves the people and LOVES the work. How blessed we are to have the gospel.

"How do you pick potatoes?"

We will make "farm girls" out of our girls yet!! Grandpa Kendall was kind enough to plant an extra row of potatoes for our family so on Saturday we set out to harvest them. The girls wondered how we would "pick" potatoes. ha ha... they now know that they grow IN the ground and that you dig them up. Jenna had fun helping Spencer and Michelle and Shannon were a team.

Rachel was helping Grandpa pull out the old tomato plants. The "farm girls"

After harvesting the potatoes, we washed them off. She looks more like a city girl but that farm girl blood in there inside her somewhere..... Michelle helped Grandpa too when we were done with the potatoes. We had some of the potatoes for lunch with creamed peas....DE-DOUBLY-ICIOUS!!!!!! Thanks Grandpa!!

Happy Halloween?

Halloween is so NOT my favorite holiday....if it were my decision, we would skip it all together!! Good news is I only have to come up with costumes for 4 more years. In our family, you only get to trick or treat till you are 12, then it's over! Yippee!! Although, Jenna really doesn't get to "into" the candy so it might be sooner!!

We did however recycle Jenna's Dorothy costume from last year and Rachel came up with her own so I guess it wasn't all so bad. We almost missed our "trunk or treat" due to a time mix up. And we had a total of 5 trick or treaters so we did have candy left over..... :( Rachel went to a Halloween party with a friend from school. They watched a scary movie which she closed her eyes and plugged her ears for most of. She ended up falling asleep during the movie.

Shan and Michelle just watched a movie together, the plans they had made fell thru. Oh well...another one past and gone!!! yippee!!