Bellamy Moon Allred is here.

Bellamy Moon Allred came into this world two weeks early weighing 10 lbs and 2 oz. She was 22 inches long. Heather kept saying she was so big that this baby was going to be big, but when I would see her on skpe I didn't think she looked that big. Heather became allergic to this baby and had been itching for a couple of weeks. Her hip was bugging her and she was pretty miserable. Now we understand why. She went to her check-up and was dilated to a 7. They sent her to the hospital where she sat at a 7 until they broke her water that night. My daughter is a super woman for delivering that big of a baby. I can't imagine what Bellamy would weigh if she had gone full-term.

She has lots of black hair and those cheeks were made to kiss.

She was having trouble breathing so they immediately took her and hooked her up. It was a scary night for Heather and Kevin without alot of sleep. That morning she was breathing better and they got to hold her. She would forget to breath when she was eating and Heather said would turn a dusky color. They think she had swallowed some of the amniotic fluid and had an infection. They put her on antibiotics and she was kept in the NICU

Even in the NICU her sister got to go in and see her.

Braelyn told me that when she would talk to Bellamy, she would open her eyes and try to look at her. I'm sure she is very familiar with her sisters voices. I remember when my Mom had my brothers and sisters and we weren't even allowed to hold them, so it's nice that they got to be that close to her.

I asked Heather if she was about 3 times the size of all the other babies in the NICU and she said yes. I just talked to her and her infection is gone, but she has some blockage problems that they need to figure out. Yesterday she did not have a wet diaper. So she is back on the IV and they won't feed her with a bottle today until they figure out what is wrong. Thank goodness for modern medicine and the power of prayer. It's great to belong to such a big family and know that you can count on their love and prayers. We hope they can figure out this latest development and soon be home with her family. I told Heather that they better get all the holding in because once I'm there that baby is not leaving my arms. Love you Bellamy.

Time to close up.

I remember the first three years of building the cabin and come September we had worked so hard I was ready to close it up and rest for a few months. But now anymore. We both dread the coming of winter and having to say goodbye to our getaway. We made the most of fall and Steve got to play cowboy many times. Here he is with my Mom and two nephews. They brought the cows down. I did my part and drove the truck and trailer.

Steve usually has to go on a four-wheeler run to check out the deer. This first shot he couldn't figure out what was wrong with the camera and it came our pretty neat. This is what he was trying to take.

Finally the weekend of November 19th I made him blow out the water pipes and shut the place down. I will admit I was a pretty sad as we drove away. Steve came up with an excuse to head back out yesterday to install some parts on the electric baseboard heaters we installed. The good news is next time we open it up Taylor will be with us and in the summer we will get to introduce our newest Granddaughter to the cabin.

Best $99.00 I have ever spent.

I never watch infomercials. But the other weekend up at the cabin I was bored and flipping through the guide when I saw a show called never rake again. Each Fall raking our scrub oak is the worst job every and I do not look forward to it. So I clicked on the show and they were advertising the worx tri-vac. It's a blower, vacuum and mulcher. You do not have to change parts and you switch from a blower to a vacuum by pushing down a lever. It will also mulch down 10 garbage bags of leaves to one. I wrote down the name and thought I would call when we got home.

Looking at my leaves Monday morning, I looked it up on the website. It had a 4 1/2 star rating out of 5 so I decided I would give it a try. I ordered it on Monday and I had it by Thursday. The best part is the shipping and handling were free. Friday morning I got up to try my new toy.
This is what the scrub oak looked like before I started.

This is what it looked like 2 hours later. I spread some mulch on my garden and the rest filled a garbage bag and a half. Compare that to last year when we filled the back of the truck and our trailer with leaves It also would take me about 8 hours to rake it. What you can't see with the picture is all the new growth that catches your rake. That is why it took so long to rake. Most of the time I would have Steve take the trimmer and cut all the new growth out so I could rake it. I was able to listen to a book on tape while I vacuumed my leaves and wasn't even sweaty when I finished.

I love it! It was worth every penny and right now is my favorite thing. Can't wait for the apple and cherry tree's to drop their leaves.

General Conference Weekend.

I accidentally deleted this picture and now I can't get it back in order. So we will start with it. Lauren's cute family.

Lauren's family joined us at the cabin for Conference weekend. Her family is great and very easy to have up there. I feel like all I do is sit and they cook and clean-up so it's great. Saturday in between sessions we headed up Rhodes Canyon. Greg and the girls all took a turn on the swing.

The colors were gorgeous. My Mom was at the ranch so we had her bring her Ranger and go with us on the drive.

We drove up to the top and they valley you can see is North Fork. You can even see the road that you take to the bottom of the Grand Daddies.

For Christmas Taryn wanted to get a picture of me and my Dad to put up in the cabin. As I searched for one I realized that my options were very limited. I'll never have that opportunity to have a great picture with him so I'm trying hard to take more pictures of the people that I love. Now I just need to remember to do that at reunions and family parties. Her is me and my cute Mom.

Finally Steve got done talking to a group of riders and I grabbed him for a picture. I've been up here many times, but am still amazed at how beautiful it is. It was a wonderful weekend. I felt like every talk was just for me. I loved it and spending it with family friends made for a awesome weekend.

Guns, guns and more guns

The last two weekends out to the cabin we seem to have a theme going. Steve got a shotgun for Christmas and this is only the second time he has got it out. Lauren's family came out for General Conference and after the second session before they had to leave for Priesthood we got the guns out. I even tried the shotgun and the 22. Neither of them have a kick so it was fun. The 22 I could hit the target, but I missed the clay pigeons with the shot-gun. Lauren's sister Sidney came out to shoot with us and even hit one of the pigeons.

I then had to bring out my 9mm and let everyone try it out.

It is a fun gun to shoot, but really loud. I am proud to say that I hit the target with my gun.

Larry brought out his 22 to practice with.

Last weekend our friends the Yardley's came out and Brian brought a couple of his guns. Steve and Brian spent a lot of time shooting.

Brian brought out his 223 assault rifle. They stuck some cans across the river and the bullet would shatter the cans. I had to try this one and could not get the scope to work for me. It was loud but did not have a kick at all. I am going to have to practice looking through a scope so I can one day hit a can with a rifle.

Both Kayden and Keyana shot it. It is nice that we have a place where it is safe to practice shooting.

It doesn't get better then this.

Steve wanted to take the boat out one last time before we stored it for the winter. He talked to Taryn and she was able to come out that Friday. We were up to the cabin and when we woke up it was 35 degrees. That really doesn't make you want to get your swimming suit on.

We meet Taryn in Duchesne and headed up to the lake. The site that greeted us was pure glass.

Steve hasn't had really nice water this year so we let him go first. He said that he couldn't figure out what this sound was when he was out skiing, but it finally dawned on his the water was so smooth you could hear your ski cutting through it.

I went next and words can't describe skiing on glass. I almost fell twice because the water was so smooth that my ski slipped on me. I do remember going behind the boat and thinking it was rough. Which is funny because you usually go behind the boat because it's smoother.

Have I ever told you that Starvation is my favorite lake. Not to mention but I was baptized just over to the right of this picture. It was a great day just us and a few fishing boats.

I blame my parents.

We were lucky this week and got to go to the cabin Wednesday after I worked. Our goal this week was to paint the wood stove in the sheep camp and put in a new floor. When we were done with that we were going to rest and relax and just enjoy being up there. Wednesday I did relax and after cleaning up all the flies. (That is the part I hate about Fall up there) I just relaxed and laid around. Meanwhile Steve went on a four-wheeler ride up to the troughs to see if any of the cows were still up there and saw a herd of elk with a huge bull. He said they were running really hard, so he started to look around to see what they were running from and saw a huge bear. He was a long way away so he wasn't worried. I told him that when he goes alone on these rides is when he sees things. Thursday morning we took a long ride up Rhodes Canyon looking for cows, then went down to visit with my Mom and I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the cabin and cooking dinner. Friday morning we were up early and I was ready to do something. Two days of not accomplishing anything was killing me. I helped Steve get the stove out of the sheep camp and then hauled 15 wheelbarrows of dirt to cover up where we had run the sprinkler lines and thought I would work a little bit on the top half of the rock wall.

This time we used bigger rocks from the field. It only took about 10 trips in the ranger to get all the rocks. We have worked that vehicle to death and at times had it so loaded down with rocks that Steve had a hard time getting it to turn. Once I got going I knew I had to finish it this weekend. I think it looks great and to think that it cost nothing. The test will come next spring seeing if it will hold up. Steve laughed at me and told me that he knew I wouldn't wait until next year to finish this wall. I blame my parents for teaching me how to work and not be lazy. Now we just need to lay some gravel down on the four-wheeler road and we are good.

Steve put this new floor in the Sheep-Camp and it looks much better then the old one. We ran out of paint for the stove so pictures of that will come later.

We are done, at least for this year.

For the first couple of months this spring this is what our yard looked like. We were full of water. Poor Steve spent weeks digging a trench to try and drain all the water, he even ran a big pipe at the base of the dam all the way through the yard to the other end of the fence to try and dry us out.

His next plan after getting all the water drained was to pull down some of the side hill and fill in the low spot and level out the yard. Our wonderful neighbor Tom is very generous and told us that we could use his back- hoe anytime. The only problem was this summer Tom and his back- hoe were not at his cabin. We were getting ready to call and have someone come do the work for us. By some miracle Steve ran into Tom's dad and discovered they were bringing up the back-hoe that day and wouldn't be using it for a couple of days so it was free for us to use.

Steve is pretty amazing and leveled it out pretty good. The only problem is every square inch of earth up there is full of rocks. So after he leveled it all out, we spent weeks raking up and getting rid of rocks.

This is what my socks would look like at the end of the day. I also have the habit of wiping my face with my gloves when I sweat so my face looked about that dirty also. I didn't let Steve take a picture.

We had the problem of what to do with all those rocks and we also needed to secure the hillside so I thought of stacking the rocks up to build a wall. We had to make a four-wheeler road and used rocks to section that off. Up above the lower rock wall is the road for the four-wheelers. I am not finished with the wall, but the other half will happen next year when I recover from all this work. We will cut back the hill all even and terrace another rock wall up to the top. I wanted to plant some plants in the lower terrace but the fill is all rocks so I am thinking that will be a rock garden and the grandkids and Taylor can put their cool rocks in it.

I'm excited that our lawn about doubled with this and hopefully next week I will see evidence of new grass.

It is amazing everything we have done with rocks up there. We had to go looking for some big rocks to be our base and it's amazing that within 1/4 mile of the cabin we have four very different kinds of rocks. Hopefully it will all blend together and look great.

Cabin Time with the girls

We had the best three weeks when Heather and the girls came out for a visit. We were lucky and able to spend every weekend up at the cabin. The girls loved fixing pretend meals in the sheep camp. They were able to spend some time with Grandma Moon.

Greg and Lauren and Taryn came up to visit the first weekend so the girls got to sack out in the loft on the bean bag mattress. They look pretty comfortable.

Getting ready for a four-wheeler ride. This was their pirate imitation.

Berkley loves our puppet monkeys and this one kept her entertained for hours.

Greg was playing hide and seek with them. We told them that if they stood by the bear and were really still Greg would not be able to see them. I love the look on both of their faces as they watch Greg come find them.

It doesn't matter how old my children get they still will not be serious and take a good picture. Heather should know better since she has to try and get her girls to take good pictures.

Kellee brought her girls up on Saturday and we went up to Tom's pond to fish. Braelyn tried for about 20 minutes to catch a fish but we had no luck this time.

Me and Kellee were in the ranger with all four of them and Kiley turned to Braelyn and said "Why do you have to talk all the time?" Braelyn didn't seem offended and replied back "because I like to talk".
And she continued to talk the whole ride with papa on the four-wheeler. She turned to him and said "We both like to talk".
I don't know how but Taryn spotted this rope hung from the tree on the road and had to give it a try. Luckily it was sturdy enough.

The next weekend Kevin was flying in so we took the two girls out to the cabin with us so Heather and Kevin could spend the weekend alone. The first night we went for a ride and saw a couple of deer out in the field. We got out and tried to sneak up on them, but of course they ran away. That night we put the girls in the blue room. We have two double beds in that room and it was the first time at the cabin that they got their own room and their own bed. They were so excited and the next morning Braelyn told me that it was the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in.

We sat the pool up out on the deck and spent many hours out there playing. By afternoon the water was bathtub warm.

Steve had rented a trencher this weekend to put the sprinkler system in. Braelyn helped him for about an hour shoveling rocks.
Too cute, papa taught her how to lean on her shovel like a real farm girl. He taught her that last year and she remembered.

Berkley put in her time and helped me mow the lawn. We went out on Thursday and Saturday afternoon came too fast for me. I could have stayed another couple of days with them.
The next weekend we spent the day at Starvation and then to finish off supper we built a fire and made smores.

Berkley loves her food and the smore was no exception. I think she ate two of them.

I think these three liked their smores too.