He's 8!

Today is our big boy Dallin's 8th birthday! Can you believe our big 9 lb. 2 oz. baby boy turned into this big man?! He was all smiles all day....well, that is after we told him he didn't have to fast on his birthday!:)
He opened his new scriptures that every Mormon family gives their child turning 8!

Then his new scout shirt and book. He is SO EXCITED to be old enough to go to scouts, so he thought this was a pretty cool present. He is pretty sure that now that he is a scout he is going to get to use his pocket knife a lot more often. So funny what they think!:)

Then he opened some BB's. All he has talked about all week is getting a BB Gun for his birthday. Ryan and I decided to be a little mean (ha, ha - sometimes we have to do this as parents just to get a good laugh) and told him he could have BB's but would have to use his dad's BB Gun to shoot them. He was so disappointed. I wish I would have taken a picture of him with his grump on! We then started feeling kinda bad and told him to go check the closet.

He was SO EXCITED!! We are not Sunday gun shooters, but made an exception and let him go shoot at a straw bale after church. He is feeling pretty big now! He is excited to get baptized and we are looking forward to sharing that big day with him. Dallin is such a special kid. He likes to work and knows how to work hard. He is learning to drive the tractor and 4-wheeler and is not happy unless he is right next to his dad working. We love him and are so proud to be his parents!

Happy Birthday Big Guy!

Surgery #....hmmmm....I lost count....

Well, we are headed in for who knows what number of hernia surgeries in this family once again on Monday morning bright and early. This time (*luckily* - don't tell Ryan I said that) it is Ryan and not me!! He has two hernia's in his stomach above his belly button. He has had atleast one of them since after his mission and didn't even actually know he had two until he saw the doctor this week. He has never had pain with them until these past few weeks. They have been hurting bad enough that he is pretty much worthless when it comes to farming/ranching so we decided we better just hurry-up and get them fixed before the end of the year.....you know....that whole meet your deductable insurance nightmare!:) So off we go! Wish us luck!

and P.S. where are my sisters and Shellee and Hollie when I need you?? It is always so fun to not have sisters or friends live near you when you have to have a run around with kids for surgeries!:( Oh, well....just know you are all missed!

Happy Halloween

AHHHH!!!!!!!!
What a scary pumpkin mess!!

This year Oakley wanted to be a ROCK STAR! Last years clogging costume worked perfect for "rock star gear." We did have to make a super cute black and pink guitar to go with though. She loved the hot pink hair too. So fun!! Laiklie was "Little Miss Tinkerbell." Because it is always super cold here for Halloween I had to throw on the tinkerbell sweatsuit to go trick-or-treating. Atleast it matched! On the way to the ward trunk-or-treat she announced she was so esssiiittted!! (excited)
Rhett chose to be a robot. I got the idea off the family fun site and it turned out super cute. We had lots of compliments on his outfit. He did have to wear superman to school for the party though, because I had no idea how he would sit in this all through kindergarten without getting glitter on EVERYTHING!

We had a hard time with Dallin and deciding what to be this year. He saw a safari dude and thought that would be good so we made it up and he wore it to school, but he was so picky about EVERYTHING that he didn't do it the way I would have liked him to, but atleast he was semi-happy with it.

We had a wonderful weekend with carnival, trunk-or-treat and then a special ending on Sunday when my family all gathered together to be with my parents as my dad was ordained to the position of patriarch in his stake. What a special thing to be a part of.

Pumpkin Patch

We have always been blessed to have pumpkins in either ours or Grandpa Jacobson's garden, but this year we had no such luck. So...we decided that if we had to buy pumpkins, the pumpkin patch sounded SO MUCH MORE FUN than the Albertsons Parking Lot. We went to the U-Pick Pumpkin Patch and they had a FREE (my favorite price) straw maze that the kids loved.

A $2.00 train ride that they also LOVED. It was actually a long train ride so it was worth the money. The kids got to go all around the pumpkin patch and through the corn stalks and thought it was great.

Then we got the family deal where you get ANY 5 pumpkins for $20. We thought it was a pretty good deal - atleast as good as the deal we would have gotten at Albertsons plus the extra bouns of the train and straw maze. We told the kids that they could pick any pumpkin they wanted but they had to be able to carry it to the car. Ya,.....I know I carried 2 pumpkins and Ryan carried 2 so I am not sure if that rule worked out real well.:)

This is Laiklie mid-picking. I am sure this isn't the actual pumpkin we brought home for her. She was funny. She would pick-up one....walk a few feet....put it down.....pick-up another one. She was fun to watch.

Oakley saw this beauty right off and was a trooper to actually carry it the majority of the time. Her poor little arms were dead! She was happy with her pick you can tell by the smile.

Rhett and Dallin were a nightmare. Ryan finally had to set the timer on his phone so that they knew they had to hurry-up and pick one. Rhett carried multipule pumpkins around like Laiklie. He would carry it for a minute and then hand it to me to carry and then go find a new one. Silly man!

Dallin finally settled on this one. I wish you could see in the picture all the rough little bumps all over it like warts. It is a super cool pumpkin.

We thought the pumpkin patch experience was worth the $28 that it cost us. We talked alot on the way home about opening our own Hawkins Family Pumpkin Patch next year. We couldn't believe the amount of money made on their little 2 acre lot. We could SO DO THAT! I guess we will see what next year brings. Heck....if we kept the sheep we could charge a fee for the petting zoo. We would probably also have to have parents sign release forms because of the headbunting thing!:)

Just what we need.............MORE ANIMALS!

Look what cute little baby spent the night with the other animals at the HAWKINS FAMILY PETTING ZOO!!

This little baby calf got left ALONE in the mountains for 6 days. We hauled all our cows home last Friday and then yesterday got a phone call that a guy whose ranch borders ours saw a baby calf. Ryan went and found him, and we were very surprised he was still alive. Problem is that the day before the phone call Ryan had preg. checked all the cows and any that were not pregnant he hauled to the auction yard. This little guys mom was considered "not pregnant" and got hauled away. So, that left "mommy me" to bottle feed yet another animal (did I mention - I AM NOT AN ANIMAL LOVER) last night. He is super cute though! My kids cried and cried this morning when Ryan hauled him over to his dads to hopefully find a new cow mommy.

Our running animal tally is:

1 cat

1 parakeet

1 dang dog (not my favorite - you can tell by the "dang")

5 sheep (did I mention that these ARE NOT MY FAVORITE EITHER!)

1 super cute baby calf (now out of the yard...too bad the sheep didn't follow)

100 other cows

2 mice I saw in our de-ttached garage when I was cleaning it the other day ....super thankful for the de-ttached part!!

Atleast one of these animals has found its way to a new home and the cat did kill one of the mice so we are s.l.o.w.l.y. getting rid of a few of the animals at the zoo! YEAH!!

COME ON PEOPLE......I AM DYING HERE!!

TODAY WAS SUPPOSE TO BE THE DAY! WHY CAN'T TODAY BE THE DAY???

Remember back in April when we got these cute little baby lambs. They were so much fun!! My kids loved bottle feeding them and packing them around. Pretty soon they learned to run and jump and play and my kids LOVED THEM MORE!

Then summer came and the lambs grew and the kids found new ways to play with them. They would herd them (super fun when you are a 7 year old boy) and they even attempted to ride them several times (even more fun when you are a 7 year old boy!). They thought the sheep were great!

This is Rhett trying to protect his sand castle!:)

BUT....the sheep continued to grow and grow and as they grew two of our "sweet little lambs" turned into RAMS. That is right, I said R.A.M.S!! If you know anything about rams you know they like to headbunt. The problem is that our rams chose to headbunt MY CHILDREN!! The sheep all-of-the-sudden weren't so fun anymore. We tried to sell them, but apparently NO ONE WANTS SHEEP THAT HEADBUNT CHILDREN!! One of the problems was that they kept getting out of their pen (we are cow people and fenced for cows, not sheep....maybe someone should have mentioned that minor detail to us BEFORE we got the sheep!) So that left the sheep to be in MY YARD!! I already have "White Trash Yard of the Century," but this year it is 10 times worse because of the dang sheep. We found out last week that every other Monday they have a sheep sale at the auction yard and so I had my countdown going and struggled just to make it through the end of the week. Then.........last night after a quick phone call Ryan found out they are not actually having another sheep sale until NOVEMBER 1!! NOVEMBER 1!! I AM DYING HERE! I can't do two more weeks! THIS IS SOOOO NOT FUNNY!!! 14 more days......336 hours......I don't even want to know how many minutes that is, because it is DEFINITELY TOO MANY!!

Yesterday Laiklie says to Ry and I, "Brownie(Dallin's sheep) is about turnin' into a buckin' bull!" I am telling you people WE HAVE GOT TO GET THESE SHEEP OUT OF HERE!!

I LOVE Where We Live

I am absolutely in love with where we live. I always have been. I love what we do - although, farming is not always glamorous - I love that my kids get THIS as their life!

I LOVEY, LOVE, LOVE this picture. I only wish you could hear her singing and see her cowboy boots on the wrong feet! PURE JOY!!