...still: the farm

I wish I had a picture of the  giant, (but safely buried) rectangular trampoline and the 11 more kids that were on that at the time of this picture! And take note that it is Carter GETTING the underdog and Ethan JUMPING off the swing and flying through the air.

a perfect wyoming sunset

I recently filled out a get to know you survey at a church activity and one of the questions was "where is your favorite place to vacation?"  This was actually my hardest question.  I thought back to trips as a kid to Ocean City, MD or the Adirondacks.  I thought of my girls trip to San Diego this past spring.  I have never been to Europe or Hawaii but would like to go someday. I remembered our fun family trip to Seattle when the boys were little. All of the times in Jackson Hole, or Vail, stuck in Sidney, Nebraska in a blizzard (remind me to tell you about that sometime...), the camping and adventures here in Alaska...

But what I wrote down was The Farm.

Oh the farm is quite possible one of the least relaxing places on the planet too!  This year there were LARGE portions of our trip where at any given moment there were 17 children and only 2 moms to be found.  We had a revolving door of visitors outside of our immediate family that constantly changed the routine of daily life.  We had dads Jeff and JaDee go home leaving me and EmRee husbandless.  There are ditches full of water for children to fall into.  Little boys asking for matches (which we have to hide). Big boys wanting to shoot air soft guns and fireworks. Pirate ships and broken arms (that happened after I left).

And of course 3 meals a day.

Plus snacks.

But as hectic as it is, I guess when I think of where I would choose to spend my airplane tickets, I would almost always choose to do it here.

First day of school and the last of vacation 2011

Here is Carter on his first day of High School.  High School!?!?!  How did the that happen!!  

Ethan on his first day of 5th grade.

And here she is on her first day of Kindergarten!! I love how big their back packs are!

OLIVIA!!!

In her classroom by her desk.  Love it!

Carter has to leave at 6:30 to get the bus at 6:35. He has gotten up and out the door every day on his own, with JaDee taking him to the bus stop...He makes his own lunch and has done his homework every day without being asked. Even a couple of essays with hardly any help from me.  I tell you, we should have started with high school! It is amazing.

Ethan got the teacher he wanted so he is very happy.  We have to sign the planner again, but as usual, I don't do it unless he brings it to me.  And when he does it is all filled out, and all of his work is done.  It is going to be a good year for Ethan.

Olivia was so excited!  I was too....But I surprised myself by actually crying when I dropped her off.  It started when we walked through the doors of the school and I kept it together until I took this picture.  Then I kissed her quick and left. I didn't want her to see me teared up. She was fine...of course.


The last few days of vacation were on the farm.  JaDee and I celebrated 15 years of marriage and went to Red Lodge, MT.  He surprised the "socks" off of me (I was going to say "pants" but I figured that was TMI) with a pearl necklace.

At Clark's Fork Falls and its amazing high water this year.  There is me with my pearls and my gray hair.

Olivia with Uncle Rod.  He saved the vacation and had chickens.  JaDee's mom didn't have chickens or a baby calf to feed this year so we had to go to Uncle Rod's to collect eggs.  We did that a couple of times. Oh and Uncle Rod lives 30 miles from JaDee's farm, so it was bit of an effort to get there.

Farmer Livs at Uncle Rod's coop.

I swear, if Carter was ever smiling in any of these pictures.... Here they kids are with JaDee's grandparents. Grandpa is 91 and Grandma is 88.

here are 2 gals I don't see very much...All of our husbands are cousins.  Kristy is holding her baby boy #6 and Jackie is pregnant with baby #5.  I have no plans of catching up, but I love these ladies.  It was so funny, Kristy and I both confessed to worrying about each other. I worried about her with all her 6 boys with a husband who is a pilot and always gone; she worried about me getting dragged to Alaska.  We both assured each other that we are fine! Now we can stop worrying and know that we are both loving where life has taken us!

And cousin Matt (Jackie's husband) is giving Olivia a ride on Oreo.  Olivia had to wear cowboy bots for the event.

What is that face S!!  Here with his arch nemesis, Ethan...  When Ethan was little, he could really bug Cousin S. Now it is so funny to see Carter and a couple of his younger cousins have the same relationship these two did a few years back.  Now they are grand friends!

My dad and Carol came from Arkansas to Utah, so we got to go back to my sisters house and see them for a bit.  Here they are with all the Smith grandkids.

We went to the Dinosaur National Monument and hiked up to see fossils still in the rocks.  Olivia got a ride on Grandpa's shoulders.  Courtney is behind them.

I got to carry Miss B because I had a water bottle.  And my sister is brand new pregnant and it was hot and I didn't want Courtney wearing herself out.  That's because I am nice.

Here we are at Courtney's new house.  I look really short with my cropped pants and my tall sister, but the gray hair is gone from my hair thanks to a much needed coloring appointment in Wyoming!

So pictures I didn't take and could kick myself now are none of my kids with my mom or JaDee's parents, not enough of the cousins together, none of them swimming in grandma's pool and none of me with CaMee and EmRee.

Next year for sure.

still on the vacay wrap up: TREK

A huge focal point to our summer vacation was our trek to Martin's Cove Historic Mormon pioneer site north of Rawlins WY and outside of Muddy Gap. The visitors center at the site plays host to about 4000 visitors a   week (yes that number was 4000) who honor the Mormon pioneers by participating  in Handcart Re-enactments.

See in the 1850s Brigham Young had an idea that instead  of coming to Utah in wagons, companies could cross the plains faster and cheaper by pulling a handcart and allowing 17 lbs per person to go in that handcart.  After quite a bit of research and prayer the first handcart companies tried it and proved it a successful way to gather to Utah. Many of these people were coming from the British Isles and Europe and had no experience with livestock and had no possessions when they came to America anyway, so it worked really well.

In 1856, 2 companies, however, the Willie and Martin companies so named after their captains, had a tragic experience. They got started from Iowa City late in the summer. They were unable to stock up on supplies along the way since the trading posts were closed for the season and they got stuck by a freak early snow storm high on the Wyoming prairie. About 1000 people between these two handcart companies, and two wagon companies travelling with them were stranded with nothing more to eat than 1/4 cup of flour per person and water for rations.

A single rider, Franklin D. Richards, bound for Salt Lake came upon them and rushed ahead to tell Brigham Young that his people were stranded and in dire need.  Immediately, on the first weekend in October, men from the Salt Lake valley loaded up wagons and horses and hurried to their rescue.  They were not in time to save them all, but no one would have made it without their rescue.

The stories that came from those both in the companies and from the rescuers are faith inspiring tales of miracles,compassion, and love.

Last year JaDee's sister CaMee decided to organize a trek for our family reunion.  This was a huge undertaking. EmRee was enlisted to partner up for this event. They went to a training weekend at the visitors center for Trek leaders. They researched, emailed, made phone calls and cooked. On July 7, 8, 9, we had 56 members of JaDee's extended family on the prairie in WY and all dressed in pioneer garb.  We had 24 children ages 1-12,10 teenagers 13-15, and 22 adults.  We pulled 8 handcarts for 3 days over a course of 10 miles.  We crossed a river, sang songs, square danced, played games, shared pioneer stories, ate, made pioneer toys, helped one another, and felt the Love of our Heavenly Father both for us and for the people who died along the very trails we walked, so many years ago.


I cannot fully convey the feelings of faith and love I felt on the trek in this post.  The stories and music moved me to tears of joy and hope.  I am posting a video of a song that our girls sang on our opening day, the pictures aren't from our trek but the music is so sweet and we looked a lot like this group :)

Yup. Here I am in my pioneer clothes at the entrance to the visitors center. Even if you aren't doing an organized trek like we did, people can stop in and tour the site. There are always trekkers getting ready to go out, so you almost guaranteed a chance to see some "pioneers" on the prairie. There is a blacksmith shop, a fort, and other buildings to visit that all give you more information about the Willie and Martin Handcart Company experiences.

We had to "name" each of our handcarts and make a flag with our cart's "name" on it.  I made this one because given the group that we were with and the track record the Moncur/McNiven's have for health and injury issue, I thought it was appropriate!

Olivia singing Somewhere There's a Mountain with all the girl cousins.
PS- I made Olivia's dress and pinafore at my mom's house the week before and I French Braided her hair all by myself!

Olivia with cousin S. He was Olivia's best buddy!

Carter and cousin J. She is one of JaDee's cousin's daughters. The teenagers all hung out together so well! They helped with the little kids (there were 24 of those remember) and were such troopers and good friends. Not one  complaint from any of these guys or gals.  All of them are such awesome young men and women. I just want to squeeze them!

Camp:  Oh were we blessed with the Army tents.  We had 4 for sleeping,2 HUGE ones for eating and cooking and if you know anything about the Wyoming wind you know why we were glad to have these!

Ethan and cousin C. They were part of the "Little Middles."  All around 9 or 10 these guys were so fun! They too, loved each other and could be found hanging with the teenagers or playing with the Little Kids.  They had fun in everything! They were also Most Likely to Get Bitten by a Rattlesnake since they were constantly off the trail, peeing in the bushes, or forgetting to tell us where they were.  Just boys on an adventure!

Mom M  and CaMee.  Oh how I love these women! They are the hardest workers I have ever met.  We nicknamed CaMee, Cinderella, since she was always cooking and cleaning. She literally cooked ALL. THE. FOOD. for 56 people for day ahead of time.  She had baskets of cornbread muffins that she made, and chili and bbq beef and biscuits for breakfast  and oh I could go on.  Mom was the re-heater and camp cook. She just followed CaMee's orders and  kept us fed!

There are my little pioneers!

The beautiful prairie looking out from the actual Cove that Martin's company took refuge in the storm of October 1856. It was -11 and the blizzard dropped 18 inches of snow one night.  15 people died that night.  As they buried the dead the best they could, the wolves dug up the graves and loved ones watched as the bodies were eaten. One sweet girl lost her fiance and instead of letting the wolves eat her betrothed, she dragged his body up a tree and tied him there; hoping that come spring, another traveler would cut him down  and give him a proper,deeper burial

There's our kiddos playing games while we break for lunch.

We had a photographer who took other pictures too. 1500 other pictures in fact.  My kids loved this.  They felt the power of the Spirit that dwells along these prairies. We had a theme for our reunion: SEE the goodnes of God in the face of Adversity.  To "SEE" we learned we need to Sacrafice, Exert effort, and Endure to the end.  This experience taught us that in all things, in all trials we have the love and Goodness of God to see us through it.  We have our families, who are the most important.  We have our pioneer heritage to stand upon and give us encouragement through the stories they left behind.

And it is awesome!

On Tour: Ma Familia

In Utah we stayed busy and out of the heat doing some fun things with my mom, my brother Ben and his wife Katie, my sister Courtney, brother Jared and niece Brooke. Ben and Katie are leaving their home in the Avenues where Ben lived for 6 years and are currently on route to their new house in Maine!!! But for the last hurrahs of UT we did all things Salt Lake.

Eating WAFFLES at this awesome place in Salt Lake by the Farmers market.

With my mom, who the kids call Nona, at the farmers market in SLC

Brooke and Carter. Carter could get Brooke to do anything. When she wouldn't hold Courtney's hand (and pitched a holy fit) to cross the street she would hold Carter's.  At the zoo she wouldn't ride in her stroller unless Carter was pushing. She and Olivia played play-dough at my moms and Ethan could get her laughing. We love cousin Brooke!

Afterwards we went to the Discovery Gateway museum...Sorry Anchorage Imaginarium, this one has you beat hands down, as the funnest place to take kids. Ben built towers and a giant pipe maze with the boys.

At the Art Market. I stole this picture from my sister's blog but I need her to email me the original since this one came out all grainy.  We went for the food and here we are eating fruit kabobs.  I also picked up a necklace from an artist in Park City and a print from another Utah artist.  This was really fun since just Ben, Katie and I got to go. We were only missing Jared and of course Steve and Brie live in Tennessee...that would have been nice to hang with them too.

Sitting with Ben on the Y in Provo.  We woke up early one morning to hike to the giant 300 foot long Y that hovers above my Alma Mater BYU.  The last time I did this I was a freshman in college.  We had a ton of fun. After getting some shots of us at the bottom, Olivia wanted to go to the top. So mountain goat style she scrambled the rest of the way to the top. After the hike we hit the bookstore and decked ourselves out with hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts.

And then we went with Courtney and Brooke for some bowling!  I won...with a score of 103.  Oh and we had the bumpers up.

Ben and Ethan at the zoo.  Courtney and I took the kids and met Ben early for breakfast at Ruth's Diner up past Hogle zoo.  There I had some of the best biscuits ever.  How do they get so light and fluffy yet still maintain the integrity of a biscuit is a mystery I am sure I will be trying to solve the rest of my life.  But the zoo was awesome. This was the number one thing Olivia wanted to do on our trip since she informed me that she had never seen a giraffe.  

With Uncle Jared at the pool. I think we did this 3 times.  When we lived in Utah we went to the pool several times a week.  It was so nice to lay in the sun, eat sandwiches and nachos and rest.  There are no such pools in Alaska and probably the  thing I miss the most about Utah Summers.  The boys also got to do guys night with Ben and Jared. They went and saw Green Lantern and had a sleep over at Jared's bachelor pad.  The day included breakfast at Denny's and lunch at Pizza hut.  The boys love their uncles and I love them too!  Oh, Ethan wanted to know if I had ever eaten at Denny's.  Ranae, have I ever eaten at Denny's?  Can you say Moon over My Hammy!  Only every weekend of my high school existence!! Denny's is a right of passage!

On tour: Utah boating

After flying all night and landing in Utah on June 22, we went to see this cutie patootie and her family for 3 days. We played, boated and enjoyed our first days of HEAT in a year (it was 50s and raining when we left Alaska, and its been 50s and rain for all but one of the 5 days we have been back).

OK I tried to post this at the end,  but here it is. The Amazing Mitch has been wakeboarding for 15 years (or more) and finally has his own boat to take out all the time and practice on! Sadly he broke his ankle just this past Saturday doing more amazing things on a wakeboard and is out the rest of the season!  PS he can do cool stuff like this on snow skis and so can his brother...my own husband!

Olivia and Marin talk about each other all the time.  And with cute letters in the mail to each other and the occasional Skype and phone calls, the girls keep in touch.  Marin blesses the people in Alaska in her prayers and bystanders who don't know where we live think she just has a soft spot in her heart for those who live in the 49th state.

 One of the things JaDee and I always wanted for our kids was to be as good of friends with their cousins as JaDee is with his. The 26 McNiven cousins grew up like one big pack of brothers and sisters.   So to start of our trip we went to Logan to visit Mitch's brother and his family.  Since they just had a new baby Mitch wasn't coming along for the Trek reunion or joining us on the farm, so Olivia and Marin had to steal a few days together.  They are so cute. Ethan played with them a ton and when the other 5 year old cousin (a boy) showed up, the girls were over heard "marrying" him in their games of house.  JaDee remembers many a game marrying his cousins as the only boy in the pack of girl cousins his age too!

I also had to bring the new little man his present.  I made this quilt for Andrew. He is the first of my nephews or nieces to ever get a quilt made by me.  The rest have to wait til they get married.

Boating!!!

This was the only happy picture on the tube. Shortly after this shot the tube got swamped.  Olivia fell head first overboard, Marin got left behind several yards behind the tube.  Ethan and Carter held on but Carter had to put his Boy Scout Lifesaving Merit badge to the test!  After rescuing Olivia and getting her on the raft (crying hysterically), Carter dove in and swam out to Marin and got her safely to the boat.  Yeah, we never got Olivia on a tube the rest of the trip.  I got up on the wakeboard on the second try after almost 8 years since the last time I did it and cruised along nicely.  I even made it out of the wake!  I have those pictures somewhere....

oh here it is...

Teaching Andrew the finer points of being a boy, since all he has is 2 older sisters.

The Moncur Crew!

On tour

When I was in high school I loved music.  I still do, but not to the extreme that I loved it then. I saw, Metallica when I was 16, for my first concert.  Shortly after, all my spare time and money went to see a bunch of others: Smashing Pumpkins (twice), The Lollapalooza 1994 tour, Soul Asylum, Goo Goo Dolls when they were just a garage band, Tori Amos, Pearl Jam, Grateful Dead, Sponge, and several others.  There was one that I missed seeing and that was Skid Row.

I remember the day when 95X in Syracuse, NY announced that they were coming to the Carrier Dome.  Ben and I were so excited.  I still remember the sound of his feet pounding down the stairs from his bedroom to tell me he just heard the announcement while I was unloading the dishwasher. We bought our tickets, saved the date, replayed our old cassettes until they about wore out in preparation for the day...we weren't going to be one of those fans who only knew the words to the songs overplayed on the radio; we were going to know everything ever written.

And then they cancelled.  Sebastian Bach got bronchitis in Toronto (or Buffalo or wherever else they were before landing in the Dome) and they were supposed to reschedule (I rememeber Ben's wails of despair over that announcement as well).

They never did.  Come to think of it, I hope I got my money back.

I bring this up since much like my bands of yesteryear, I too was on tour.   From June 22-July 5 I was in Utah and from July 5-21 I was in Wyoming.  JaDee joined me from July 2-14 and so for a majority it was me and the kids and a smattering of relatives.

I know I didn't see a lot of you. I didn't even tell most of my dear friends and extended family that I was in town.  I didn't want to be like Skid Row and make promises I couldn't keep. See when it is just me, sans kiddos, I can run the Wasatch front from Spanish Fork to Logan like it is my own neighborhood and go to lunch everyday and see EVERYONE...but with 3 rugrats in tow and grandmothers to placate, I had to keep my visiting outside of family to a minimum.  Its not that I don't love you, because I do and rumor has it that I will be making a trip by myself in Spring 2012. But don't buy tickets yet...because just like Skid Row, I may have to cancel due to illness:)

When I woke my kids up EARLY one morning to hike Y mountain in Provo, my brother Jared said, "Geez, this is your vacation?!?" I said, "Are you kidding! you should see my life!"

Our tour was packed with a new baby cousin, a baby blessing, my dying aunt and subsequently her funeral; a family reunion to Martin's Cove for 3 days of Pioneer Trekking, a brother moving to Maine (Ben), a sister moving to Minnesota (EmRee), cousins coming in from Tennessee that we hadn't seen in years, my dad and Carol coming up from Arkansas to squeeze a quick visit in, 3 trips across I-80 and 8 different beds to rest my head.

In the words of my kids, "It was epic."

Stay tuned.