Snow Party

I was wondering if anyone was interested at all in coming up to McCall for a snow party during Christmas Break?  I was thinking possibly Thursday - Saturday (December 30 - January 1).  We can do a New Years Eve Party here - no sitters, no traveling... just games, night tubing or snow-mobiling, whatever you want to do!  Anyways, would anyone post a comment if that is something that sounds fun to any of you, or if you have any suggestions. 

Happy Halloween from the Land of Oz!

This is a picture from our ward “trunk-or-treat”.  I would love to see other pictures of family posted, so that we may see what each of you dressed up as for Halloween.  Thanks, Tami Jo for the lion costume for Eli!

Does anyone know what Thanksgiving plans are brewing???  I am not sure it is in our budget to come down another time, but we will be down on Friday & Saturday, November 19 & 20…maybe we could see some of you???

Upcoming Events

Megan is turning EIGHT this year and we will be baptizing her on Friday, October 1st @ 7 PM at the McCall LDS Church. I understand this is General Conference Weekend. Because we live so far away from our Stake Center (the Weiser Stake Center), they allow the children up here to have their own baptisms, rather than travel down to the Stake Center. Therefore, we have set Megan's baptism for 7 pm at the church. For those who would like to come and stay overnight, we would be happy to accomodate you. This is just an invitation... I know you all have busy lives, but I just wanted to invite you all.

Second, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a Blacker Snow Party...say over Christmas Break? I am thinking sometime around the end of the 2nd week of the break, around New Years Eve... say, Wed or Thur (12/29 or 12/30) thru Sat (Jan 1st). I thought it might be fun to get the cousins together to come and play in the snow - tubing, snowmobiling, sledding, snowboarding, fort building, snowball fights, hot chocolate- whatever you want to do in the snow. We live in a Winter Wonderland and we want to share it with you! Let me know what you all think...and what would work best (if anything at all) for your families.

I believe I have accomodations for everyone to stay here (if you are all comfortable with that). I have a double - full/queen/queen/king bed for the couples and bunkbeds, twin beds, foam pads, cribs, and floor space for the single ones (oh...and a lazy-boy for you, Dad...and uh...a roll-away for you, Mom). Does that sound like fun to anyone?

...and maybe we could celebrate our Christmas Party then??? And do our exchange at that time??? Becky... I am not sure what Ashley's schedule is for coming home from college, so I understand if you will want to spend time with her. I am just putting a "feeler" out there to see who is interested at all. Let me know!

Hopefully everyone is in the swing of school and busy life! Hope to see you perhaps for a Halloween Bash???

Reminscing Part Two

Some of you may not be able to view the email that generates automatically from a new blog post because there are too many pictures to view. Should that be the case... you need to actually go into the blog itself (and it wouldn't hurt to vote while you are there either).

In case you forgot, the blog address is... www.blackerfunnyfarm.blogspot.com

Reminiscing

I was browsing through the pictures on my computer this morning, in search of some good family pictures for the Grandma Lily "B" Bash, and I came across these. I just wanted to share them with all of you... good times. No one has really responded as to when you would like to get together this summer, and maybe it won't work for some of you (or most of you), but if we could throw something together for a few days, I think it would be fun - June or August??? If you would still like to get together, let us know!!! Have a good weekend, and hope those of you who are out of school (and off in Hawaii) are enjoying yourselves... think about us, flooded with rain (parts of the Payette Lake is overflowing even!) and with one more week left of school. Happy "School's Out for the Summer"!!! Wahoo!!!

PS - And I reopened the voting poll in the upper-right hand corner of the blog, so you can all vote when you would prefer to get together, if at all.

2010 Blacker Reunion

Greg has taken the initiative this year to organize another Blacker Family Reunion and I am just the mouthpiece to spread the word for him (since he can't figure out this blog thing). Currently, he is suggesting Thursday - Saturday (June 24th-26th). He is willing to help me plan it and organize it. If that sounds like it would work for your family, please leave a comment below and let us know. (You can't reply to the email you received, you actually have to log into the blog and post a comment).

If there is a weekend in July or August that you would prefer, please mark the survey on the blog, or leave a comment. We want to see what works the best to get ALL of us together. Right now. a tentative date is set.

We understand that with the busy lives of ALL of us, it may be difficult to settle on ONE weekend where EVERYONE can come for the ENTIRE time. If you can come - GREAT. If you can't come - hopefully you can come next time! No pressure, but we would love to get everyone together. We just wanted to allow everyone the time to arrange their schedules, if possible.

So... the details thus far are:

Date: Thursday, June 24 - Saturday, June 26 (subject to change by popular demand)
Location: McCall - Pannell Home (subject to change by popular demand)

We were thinking of assigning out one meal to each family (including all the fixin's, paper products, etc for your meal) and we will base that upon who is coming and when. There will be SIX Meals - Thursday dinner, Friday breakfast, Friday lunch, Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast, Saturday lunch.

Please reply to the comments and let us know your feedback on what you would like to see happen. Hope to hear from you all!

The Unwanted Visitor

It is about 7:30 in the morning and I am taking a nice hot shower. My good husband is downstairs making breakfast for my children and getting the big kids ready for school. I have just lathered up my hair with shampoo when suddenly I am smelling something a little odd. Normally I would be smelling my favorite shampoo, but this time it smells very different... and oh... not so good. I really don't stop to think twice about it and carry on with shaving my legs, etc, until I am interrupted with a knock at the door.

"What do you want? I am taking a shower." The reply is muffled and barely heard through the shower's running water mixed with the bathroom fan. So, I simply repeated myself, but this time with a little more annoyance, added by, "I will be out in a minute. I will talk to you then." Again, the words are shared with me, only this time louder, and still I only caught the word, "Dad".

I finished my shower, taking my time. And while I was getting dressed, noticed out the window, the car driving down the lane. Good, my husband was taking the kids to the bus. Check. Now I could take my time... fixing my hair, doing my make up. All was good. But... wait a minute. What was that funny smell?

Pause... go back two nights ago. Jason and I go out on a date with some friends. Upon arriving home late at night (past dark), we pull up in front of the garage and notice something inside of our garage. We keep a tupperware full of cat food on the shelf of our garage for the cats to come eat out of. From the lights of the truck it appears that one of the cats is feasting on the food, as they always are. But, as we looked closer, this cat had by far a BIGGER tail and very defined STRIPES. No, this was not our cat at all.

At this point my husband is sneaking out of the truck, so not to be seen or heard. Yet somehow a 6'5" guy weighing about 230 has a hard time being quiet on the dirt/rocky/muddy driveway, and the unwanted visitor hops down from the shelf and scampers into the garage. WHAT? As we watch him scamper into the garage, we can't miss the hobble of his back leg being injured and not allowing him to scurry away quickly. And the chase begins...

Pause... go back about two months ago. My brother, Greg, and his family decide to come and visit us during Martin Luther King weekend. This unwanted visitor made his presence known on multiple occasions and was quite annoying for my brother. In fact, the SKUNK was annoyed back. He had the audacity to spray my brother's car on his way to church - just to spite him. And, I add, the stench lingered for days. My brother spent his vacation hunting down the poor skunk, who...

Pause... and go back even two more months. A pesty skunk keeps rummaging through our garbage, so my husband (the hunter) decides to end his limitless feast. One night he sets a trap, sees the skunk, and seeks him out to end his hunger (and his life). Unbeknown st to my husband, the poor skunk survived his extermination party and has lived until now to haunt and pester us.

Fast forward to the night of our date. So, after seeing the poor wounded skunk off and on for the past four months, we now knew he was getting into the cat food in the garage. Jason hunted outside for him with flashlight AND gun in hand for about fifteen minutes. I had seen him go through our breezeway and when I saw Jason in the backyard searching for him, walked inside through the breezeway hearing strange noises and did not want to go any further, in fear of what I might find... or smell.

He gave up after 15 minutes of searching, we went inside and went to bed. Sunday morning was filled with getting ready for church, preparing for Tyler's first talk, blah blah blah. We didn't think much about the "cat" poop we noticed in the breezeway on the floor. There is cat litter in the garage and a hole in the screen of one of the windows in the breezeway that leads to outside, and the cats have NEVER had an accident in the breezeway or garage. So, this really was out of the ordinary... ALL of the kids and I saw it... but no one thought twice.

Fast forward to today. I came down the stairs to find just about EVERY candle in the house lit, Kimberly spraying Lysol through the air, all the fans going, and windows getting opened. What smells worse than a bad perm? Yep... a skunk. The nasty little wounded pest was SLEEPING at the foot of our breezeway door (the same door that exits from our Office/School Room en route to the garage where we get in the car and drive away). He had found a nice warm spot on a piece of carpet that we had specially placed to wipe off our feet before we step into our house! And well, guess he thought it was good sleeping grounds.

Jason had grabbed our recycling bin and headed out to the garage to dump it and start the car. He opened the door to find the wounded pest SLEEPING at his feet. Realizing what he was seeing, he quickly slammed the door shut, but the skunk beat him to the punch! The spray was in the house and all over the door. And ughhhh... skunk smell CLOSE UP is MUCH worse than skunk stench far away.

It has been over 12 hours since the incident. I am thinking I might just bottle up this smell and sell it. I am actually becoming fond of it... and if you stick around long enough, you can't smell it anymore. We had many travelers by the road who said they could smell it from the road (which we are about a good 300-400 yards off the highway). We have opened the windows, lit the candles, ran the fans, and still.... it smells like skunk in here.

I went to the dentist office this morning to have my teeth cleaned. I had showered this morning, so I had fresh smelling hair, perfume, lotion - I was smelling good! Upon sitting in the chair, the hygienist says, "I am gonna have to tell the other gal that we need a new vacuum because that one smells horrible. It smells like it is going bad." And as the "gal" walks by she proceeds to tell her what she told me. The "gal" replies, "Oh, really, I didn't smell anything when I was vacuuming. But, oh. Maybe I do smell it. You're right. That is bad!" And it was then that I realized, because they were only three feet from me at this point, it was me they were smelling... and quickly confessed with a hilariously hidious story. I had carried the skunk stench WITH me to the dentist office, and Jason would be soon to follow me in an hour.

Who would have thought that that smell could carry throughout a WHOLE house... and a big house at that? It smells better OUTSIDE my house right now than it smells INSIDE. But, the poor little guy will get what he has coming to him - oh yes. He has been sleeping under our wood pellets, chewing little holes in the bags and feasting upon the wood... peeing all over next to them... and pooping on my floor! The hunt is on and he will be exterminated - poor little wounded thing. It is unfortunate that Jason didn't finish the job the first time.

We are holding out for Greg to bring his family up next week during Spring Break and help Jason finish what has been started a few times now. The little guy has destroyed his last bag of pellets, eaten his last bite of cat food, rummaged through his last garbage pile, and marked his prey for the last time. The predator now becomes the prey. The hunter now becomes the hunted. Game on. I am sorry, poor little skunk... but you have caused me too much STINKIN' misery with extra loads of LAUNDRY, AIR FRESHENER, and CANDLES. You have tainted me with your scent and robbed me of my fresh air! Prepare to meet your maker! Or just go pester someone else... you UNWANTED VISITOR!