Fair!

After a year of preparation and hard work, we have finally arrived at County Fair time! Karisa entered two classes this year, Shooting Sports - Archery, and Unit 1 Entomology. The results are in!

Shooting Sports - Archery:

At the County Shoot, Karisa placed 5th, earned a blue ribbon and qualified for the State Fair Shoot, that means we are having to take the 4-hour drive to Pueblo on the 23rd to shoot!

For her stand-alone project she made a bow stand and painted it camoflauge. Her bow stand and record book won Grand Champion and best record book award! She received a trophy, the grand champion ribbon, champion ribbon and blue ribbon for her bow stand, best record book blue ribbon and Jr. shooting sports best record book special award AND her exhibit qualified and is heading to the State Fair as well! What does that mean? That means we have to go back down to Pueblo to see how her exhibit places at State! Yea! 2 4-hour trips in 2 weeks! Oh boy!

Entomology:

Karisa entered her entomology project, Unit-1 Jr. Class and received a blue ribbon! She's so excited about all her accomplishments and can't wait for next year!

The day was packed with excitement, seeing how she placed in both her projects, working at the Dairy Bar with her club and spending the day at the fair watching Splash Dogs, checking out other exhibits and of course, riding the carnival rides!

She's growing up so fast, we are all enjoying the crazy roller coaster ride of life! She's loving archery and is really considering trying out for the Junior Olympic Team. Ronnie and I are so proud of her!

A day at the Pokey

So, yesterday some dumbass decided it would be a cute joke to open up our gate and let the dogs run free! Karisa and I got home at 4:00pm and noticed the gate open and the dogs gone. After calling the humane society, they had Chance. Ronnie came home and started looking all over the neighborhood for Hunter while Karisa and I ran to the shelter. After waiting 20 minutes for someone to 'escort' me back to see my dog, I found out they had both of them! THANK GOD! Hunter and Chance both jumped up on the gates like "OH HI MOM!!!". I told them they were both my dogs, we went up to the counter (to get wrists slapped and pay the fee) when she looked at me and said I had to prove they were my dogs..."Do you have a photo of them on your phone?" I said, yes, but my daughter is on the phone telling her daddy he doesn't have to keep looking for the dog. You'd think the dogs getting all happy when they saw me would be proof enough!
After going through the whole ordeal about Hunter not be neutered, vaccinated, etc. (he's only 6 months old!) I had to fork over $160.00 to break them out. Oh, and I have the lovely pleasure of making sure Hunter gets his rabies vaccine and they get proof within 2 weeks or I will be summoned to court with a warrant!
So the dogs spent the day in the pokey...

To Kill or Not to Kill..

Karisa spent the weekend in a bowhunter's safety class, required by 4-H to participate in Archery. She was in a class with about 15 adults and had to take a 50-question exam. She passed! She's so excited that she passed! Saturday was filled with 8 hours of book and movie training and Sunday she got to shoot and do trail-blooding. With passing, this allows her to hunt small game, she can't hunt big game until she's 12. As much as she wants to, I had to remind her that just because she has the card doesn't mean she can go out and kill the first squirrel or bunny she sees! She's really enjoying Archery and is getting really good at it! By passing and receiving this card, she can bow-hunt anywhere in the world.

Archery Shoot

Tonight at Karisa's archery shoot, she did awesome! Up until now, she had been shooting at a distance of 10 yards (30 feet). Tonight's shoot was set up with 3 10-yard targets, 4 20-yard targets and 3 30-yard targets. We encouraged her to try out the 20-yard shot (60 feet) and she did it! She did it very well! It took a couple of arrows before she got the hang of aiming higher than your target, but she did better than we thought she would! She had a blast and we (again) were very proud parents!

Way to go Karisa! We had to reward her for shooting so well, we stopped for ice cream on the way home...yum!

Redneck Recycling

Here's how the kids spent their day...
Make sure they are lined up right,
Then stand back and watch Dad...
Love that crunchy sound it makes!
Viola - instant squish!
Not a bad days play, I mean work!

Happy Easter!

To Grandmothers house we went....

We took part in the annual Easter feast at Grandma's again this year. Filled ourselves with food, cribbage games (won some, lost some) and of course - The great easter egg hunt!

Karisa still loves the Easter Bunny!

So does Collin and Hailey!

Hailey lovesssssssssss chocolate and jelly beans and C-A-N-D-Y!! You go baby girl! We had a nice time then came home to unpack the camper from the weekend's camping trip! Happy Easter everyone!

I'm a bit of a slacker...

I was called out on my not blogging recently. So here we go, a mad re-cap since the last blog.

GIRL SCOUT COOKIE SEASON!

More cookies! Sorting the orders is a huge ordeal, Misty came over to help count and sort after having a few adult beverages. When the last order was sacked, I looked over and saw 3 extra boxes of Thin Mints! A bonus? No, miscount! Realizing that Karisa sold 370 boxes, and that two of us personally counted the boxes at pickup - we had to re-open all the sacks and count again! Luckily, we found the order that was missing 3 cookies - only 5 orders in! Then we realized it was me that missed it. So, the adult beverages were NOT to blame.
Then we had a Girl Scout Sleepover! Yeah! 8 of the 13 girls attended, we worked on the "Looking Your Best" badge and had a great time braiding and wrapping hair, making headbands and got hot glue everywhere! The girls finally sat down to watch the movie Troop Beverly Hills at 9:45pm and then to bed at 11:30. We got up at 6:45am and fed everyone and they went home! Karisa and I then ran home, finished packing and loaded up the rental car for the 17 hour drive home to Indiana!

Now the drive usually takes 17 hours, we hit the road right at noon Colorado time, but with only having about 6 hours of sleep and missing an exit, we finally pulled into Aunt Phyllis' driveway at 7:45 am their time. So, do the math, 6 hours of sleep, 18 and a 1/2 hours on the road, up for 24 hours. I NEEDED SLEEP! Cayce was a trooper and stayed up with me until we got back on track (after missing the exit) just before Mt. Vernon, Ill., so he had a good 2 hours of sleep before we got there. Karisa on the other hand...was asleep long before we hit St. Louis, and whined everytime I had to stop because of the 2 5-hour energy shots! Let's talk about those - what a great invention, a shot of some nasty tasting stuff that claims (they lied) to keep you awake for 5 hours for $3.99+! The only thing they did to me was make me have to pee every 20 miles! Just so you know - when you get out of St. Louis, there are not very many 24-hour businesses open! I pondered a few empty corn fields and there were a lot of forest trees that looked big enough to hide my A$$.

Back to why we spent our spring break traveling to Indiana - my sister Stephanie had a bouncy baby boy on 2/27/09! I couldn't wait to see him, so we crammed a trip in between all the busy Girl Scout and 4-H activities going on this time of the year.

Logan Wade

After 3 hours of sleep, Karisa woke me up and asked if I had slept long enough now to finally go see the little guy! He's so precious, a good boy, smells like baby and smiled at me a lot! My sister now has 2 beautiful babies and we are so proud of her and hubby Wade! It's been since Christmas that I saw Maddy, the adorable little (almost) 2-year old niece. Here's her favorite pose everytime I spoke to her or came near her:

Don't believe me? Here's another one...
She's gorgeous! One day she'll warm up to me, anyway, I guess I should be thankful she doesn't call a name that some people call their dog! Sorry Tiffanie, "Fi-Fi" really is cute when she says it! Tiffanie, just think about it, you will always be remembered as "AUNT FI-FI"! :o)

Ok, that brings us up to the 4-H carnival, we could only spend 4 days in Indiana because Karisa had to be back for the 4-H carnival that Saturday at noon. We did not drive straight through on the way home, we decided to stop in Hays, Kansas. Ever been there before? It's a whole lot of nothing, of course unless I need to stop because it's late and I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore...4 hotels later, I was begging! The Special Olympics were in town! REALLY?! HAYS, KANSAS?! Are you kidding me? Spent the last of my cash on the last hotel room available. I was so glad to get home!

4-H carnival, we spent 2 hours stuffing goldfish in baggies, blowing air in the bags through a straw and tying the bags up so the little guys would make it to their new homes just to die a week later! Carnival fish, you know they never last, about an hour into it, I asked Ronnie and some of the other parents that were working the booth this dilemma question that kept floating around in my blonde head, "If goldfish need oxygen, and humans expel carbon dioxide, is our blowing air in the bag and tying it off the reason they only live a week?!" Were we in fact contributing to their early death? Those of you that know me well, understand how this question came to me and bothered me for hours! Luckily (and by much protest), we did not go home with a carnival goldfish this year! YEAHHHHH!

Where was I - oh, we got snow last week, enough to close school for 2 days! Ronnie and I had realized that Karisa is 10 years old and we have NEVER taken her sledding...

First time sledding, pretty pitiful slushy snow.
Look at the smile on her face!

So here we are today, I started this blog 3 hours ago...about 1/2 hour in, we noticed our dog Chance was not here, he escaped somehow and we had to spend 2 hours looking for him. LITTLE SHIT! Ronnie found him behind the Conoco station at I-25 eating god knows what in the parking lot. Now he will be rewarded with a trip to the Puppy spa because of all the snow we just got, the roads are yucky. And now, so is he! God love the dog...