Accomplishments for August

1.  Learned how to say I hate you to me and Scott when she is mad.
2.  Loves to run around naked.  We are potty training and have figured out that if we don't put panties or a pull up on her she will go to the toilet all day long.  Of course she loves to wear dresses and so we find her lots of times out of her dress and just running around naked.
3.  Loves painting.
4.  Has learned what double digit numbers are and can recognize them.
5.  Likes to tie things up with ropes.
6.  Is totally fascinated with canals and that you can die if you fall into a canal.  Thank you Butch Otter and Oscar the Otter for the ads you run on TV talking about canal safety.
7.  Loves to watch Cyber Chase and is okay watching the Electric Company now.
8.  She can spell her name out loud.
9.  She can spell Exit and watches out for it every where we go.  She usually tells me how many exits each store has by the time we get out of there.
10.  At preschool her duties were the greeter, and the substitute.

EISF

This year we made an effort to make it over to the Eastern Idaho State Fair.  It was our first time taking Rachel and we weren't totally sure how she would do.  We meet up with Kristi, Doug, James and Kristi's parents.  We were at the back of the fairgrounds and so we went to the petting zoo first.  They had some very unique animals.

 Letting the goats lick her legs.

 

 A giant goat that wanted out of his cage.

 

 The pigmy goats.

 

 Rachel eyeing the bull.  She wasn't afraid of any of them.

 

She also got to milk a cow to get a bottle of milk.  It was root beer flavor and she wouldn't drink it either.We ended up splitting after getting some food.  We wanted to head back to the girls of lumberjack to see their show.  I ended up seeing my Aunt Maxine there.  They were at the fair to see Afton compete.  We enjoyed going through all the exhibits.  We even ended up hooking up with Paul for a little bit. While we were looking in the campers Rachel got grumpy and wanted to stay in the stroller.  So we left her in the stroller right outside the door of one of the campers.  We were only in there long enough to see the price and she had ran off.  Scott and I were so panicked.  Paul, Ashley, Scott and I were going in and out of the trailers looking and yelling for her.  She we gone for about three minutes but it sure felt like an eternity.  So we ended up sending her with Paul so Scott and I headed back to the food court to get a few more food items to take home with us. 

 

Last of the Strawberries

Rachel was so excited to go pick strawberries out of our patch all summer long.  This was the last batch of strawberries we got out of our patch. 

 We barely made it into the house to wash them before she started to chow down on them.

This is what happened when I turned around.  She had eaten them all and didn't even share with me.  She loves the strawberries. 

Calico Picnic

Kristin wanted to have a picnic for everyone who comes to Calico.  It was a quick put together and not attended very well but we had lots of fun.  As we were the 1st ones there we got to see this sight as we were getting set up.

A momma deer with her babies.

Scott ended up being the BBQer and I helped get everything organized.  Sarah isn't good at doing this kind of thing at all.  The kids had games to play and the adults just hung out talking.  Rachel and Liam ended up going at each other and they both gave each other a run for their money.  Afterwards we took everything back to the clinic.  For the 1st one it was alright.

H & W Day at the Zoo

Today we got to go hang out with all the foster families in Ada County.  They had Panda Express food to eat and then we got to go into Zoo Boise.  We also got to see little Cameron while we were there.  He looked good.

They had a really good turn out.  The line went fast to get food so that was good.  After we ate we went into the zoo.  Rachel was pretty excited to go see the animals.

 She was such a little stinker today.  All her pictures have her posing like this.

Posing as we are going through the gate.  So funny.
So one of the things happening at the zoo this month is dinosaurs.  So as we went through the zoo we spotted all the dinosaurs that they had there.  Most of them even had sounds that they made as you walked by them.

 This was the first one we found.  The rest are in order of us finding them in the zoo.

 Run Rachel before the T Rex gets you.   ARGH!

I can't remember most of the names of these dinosaurs.  I should have taken pictures of the plaques that were by them so I could remember.  Oh well life goes on.

 She loved seeing the baby giraffe.  I know it's a statue but it was "Sooo Cute" as Rachel said.

 We actually got to see the giraffes this time at the zoo.  Last time they were in their house.

Rachel was so upset that this elephant wasn't spraying water this time.  They must have turned it off since the zoo was only for foster families.

 The lion.  He was up and active today.

 Our friends the Lemurs.

 Zebra

 We got to see the bear this time also.  He was looking pretty scraggly and was actually smaller than I had expected. 

 The petting animals.  You know we stayed in this section for awhile.  She just loves animals and she doesn't care what kind. 

The ground hog exhibit was open this time also.  She had so much fun having the ground hogs come right up by the glass.  She looks so funny in there.  After this we headed home because she was getting grumpy and was tired of walking.

Feed Hawg

We were heading down to Montpelier this weekend for Scott to help get wood for his dad.  We had to stop at Grani's house to pick up some stuff she wanted to send down to Jamie for Jamie's preschool.  So we stopped to pick up the items and while we were there we of course had to go out to see Hawg.  Grani had a wonderful treat for Rachel though.  That was being able to feed Hawg WORMS!.  Of course she isn't afraid of the worms and just loved it.  She got to feed all the fishes their dessert of worms.  We only got a few pictures but it's totally her loving every minute of it.

 Getting the worms out of the bowl of dirt.

Hanging the worm over the pond waiting to see who was going to come up and try to take it out of her hand.  It was actually pretty fun to watch them eat them.

Rachel's Craft

Rachel likes to craft and she got this rubber ducky for her birthday and we just finally got around to painting it.  Here is the finished product. 

 One side of the duck

The other side of the duck.

Schaffer Family Reunion 2013 (Cont.)

Today was the day of the family reunion.  Everyone was to show up by 10:00 to start pictures.  We got ourselves ready for pictures and I wanted Jamie to do Rachel's hair for the pictures.  I love what she did to it.

 Front View

 Back veiw

So once everyone got their hair done we started to get pictures.  Rachel of course wasn't willing to be very good during the pictures so we didn't get any really good family pictures.

 This was one of the best we could get.  As you can tell Rachel was being shy today.

She sat in these flowers and so this is the best we were able to get of her.  It was her idea where to sit and so we just went with it.

 Tracy & Brad Schaffer (aka Grandma Tracy & Grandpa Pooh)

 All the grandkids

Back: Colby, Kylee, Hallee

Front: Bryson, Aubree, Karlee, Rachel, Emmory, Lexi

 The kids.  Youngest to oldest.

Jamie and I monkeying around with the camera because you know we wanted our picture taken also.

The siblings with spouses.

Grani & Bop

 Grani & Bop with the grandkids.

Grani & Bop with all the great grandkids  Yeah it was rough getting them all to look at the same time. So we got what we could get.

After the pictures we started the talent show.  Almost all of the kids on our side of the family did a talent.  Rachel wanted to sing and so here are some pictures and the video's of her singing her songs for the talent show.

I love you song!

Best of Friends

 All the guys in our family decided to do a lip sync as their talent.  It was so funny.

 Here they are all getting ready for their big show.

Singing their hearts out.  Scott's eye's wouldn't stay on his chin and some of the hats wouldn't stay on.  They sang the song Barbie Girl and Send me to glory in a glad bag by Voicemail.

Here are the video's of those two songs.

Barbie Song http://youtu.be/XDp6Pz0yUh0
Send me to glory in a glad bag
http://youtu.be/J7BqNPLBJnQ

Grani then wanted all of our family to sing Love at Home.  It was alright but we didn't practice so it could have used a little more help.

 Grani read a story that was hilarious about getting older.

The end of the talent show was all the "B's" did a tribute to Grani & Bop from poems that Aunt Brenda wrote.

After the talent show we all got to fill our bellies up and then it was time for the kids to do all the activities.

 Rachel getting her 1st bag from the fishing pond.

 She was pretty excited about it even though she wanted to be in the water.

 Super Hero Glasses from the 1st bag.

 Her is Rachel getting her 2nd bag of goodies from the fishing pond.  I let Uncle Ty take over getting the bags because he is taller than me.

Rachel was so excited about this baton from her 2nd bag.

This is the pinata that the kids got to hit.  After they get it open they get a little bag of candy but then Grani has them go on a scavenger hunt and they get to have another bag full of candy.  We get all the games done for the kids and then it's time for the big kids and the auction.  We got some really good things this year but we decided that we each need to not bring multiples of the same thing because the bids don't go up very high when there are multiple things.  After the silent auction it was then time to gather up everything and head home.  We were one of the last ones to leave because of how the camper was pulled into the driveway.  Scott had to change his idea of how he was going to get out so that we wouldn't scrap the sewer system.  On the way home Rachel got to have her own movie theatre.

She was so excited that we got the sun out of her eyes.  We had a wonderful weekend and camping in the camper was so much more fun than sleeping in a tent.  ;-)  Grani does such an awesome job with the family reunion that we love going.