Top Ten Things Learned by The Rickett Family-2008

1. Chickens need a coop or at least a fenced in yard to survive the neighbors dogs.
2. Transformers are so dang awesome (according to Kirby)!
3. It only took Tammy three tries to come up with a spending plan in Quicken, and she almost has all the charts figured out. (Who knew that you had to list your paycheck as income instead of expense?)
4. Jared built a shed from scratch, without a recipe!
5. Murphy started piano lessons and played soccer again
6. Kirby played something that resemble tee-ball (Little League, what do ya expect!)
7. We learned how rainy Pennsylvania can be in August, but we still managed to have a fabulous time at the Rickett family farm house!
8. Tammy took a trip to Texas, (how’s that for alliteration!) to photograph Andrea & Rob’s wedding, and learned how great Texas is.
9. Jared learned how to bring batteries back from the dead (and only blew up a few in the process!), and the proper use of transistors.
10. We learned again how grateful we are for our wonderful family and friends!

Merry Christmas!
Love,
Jared, Tammy, Murphy
& Kirby Rickett

(This was our Christmas Card that we sent out!)

December Blurrrrrr

I made it through the Christmas season! This month has been a blur of work at MasterLab, photography, MasterLab, snow, cat issues, and MasterLab! I think I saw my family sometime during this last month.....Anyways, another Christmas down! Maybe tomorrow I'll have enough energy to take down the Christmas tree!

On Christmas eve, we went to my inlaws house, and had a crazy fun time. They had a video camera hooked up to the tv, so you could see yourself while it recorded. Kirby had a great time with this. Here's the video:

Yep, that kids got some moves! I thought it was so cute!

November in a Nutshell

It has been a crazy week and half! I went on a much needed mad cleaning spree of our house. You know you've been doing too much laundry when you start to find little urchins in your dryer!

I also decided to cook my very first turkey this year. We were only having a small group of relatives over, so I figured if I gave them salmonella, it wouldn't be that big of a deal! I was grossed out by the turkey innards, and just about got frost bite trying to remove stuff. Here's a picture...

I was going for the Mr. Bean look, but didn't quite make it! Thanks to Dottie's speacil recipe, the turkey turned out alright, and people actually ate it and said it was good! So far, no illnesses reported...

So I finally had a chance to relax today. I was quietly reading my book, when Kirby asked if he could take some pictures with the digital camera. I said sure, whatever it takes for me to be able to read in peace! I also thought, hmmm. what a great way to get him interested in art and photography, maybe someday he'll follow in my footsteps. I was so proud watching him, he took 112 pictures! Here's a few of them:

Then Murphy thought it would be fun to get in on the action. Well, one boy with a camera is ok, (in fact, I've let Murphy do this before) but two boys with a camera can become a problem!



See what I have to deal with???? Boys and their obsession with toilets and poo

I was appalled to see this last one. Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to get the point across of how inappropriate this picture is, the lesson was lost on them! Jared was laughing so hard too, that he was no help either!

Here's hoping December is a little less crazy! (Yay right, it's the Christmas season!)

Lucky 7!

Murphy turned 7 years old a couple days ago! I would love to come up with something funny to write about, but my brain is fried and I have two boys behind me bouncing a basketball in the living room! So here's some photos....I spent a small fortune on cupcakes for the whole class

Murphy got two more Lego sets...That brings us up to about 1 billion Legos!

Here's my pyscho cat Dazey about 2 seconds before she tried to bite my mom.

2 Days later, we've built the Lego car!

Close up of the cool Lego car...he also got a Lego airplane.

We couldn't find the birthday candles, I think somebody must have broke into our house and stolen them all! Along with several spoons and the scissors! So, we had to improvise. It only took him 10 tries to blow them out!

Halloween throughout the Ricketty Ages

One of my friends did this on her blog, and I thought it was so cute, so I'm copying her! Here's some of our Halloween pictures throughout the years!

2002

Murphy's first Halloween

Yep, this is my hunky pumpkin head hubby!

2003
My sweet little lion

2004

I know this doesn't look like much of a costume, but Murphy was 2 (almost 3!) and he refused every costume I suggested. So I decided he would be a hippy protestor, (seeing as he was so good at protesting!). Ironically, this was his favorite shirt, and on Halloween, I had to beg and persaude him to wear it!

Kirby's first Halloween, there was a cute little hat that went with this bumble bee costume, but he wouldn't keep it on.

2005

I had better luck getting Murphy to wear a costume this year. He wanted to be Darth Vader because it was a "boy" costume.

Kirby was Cookie Monster!

2006

Darth Vader again, and no Kirby is not a bride, he is a ghost!

2007

Kirby's turn to be Darth Vader (yep that costume got used a lot!) and Murphy was a Ninja. He was originally wanted to be the "Scream" guy, but he didn't like how I did his make up, so we borrowed the Ninja costume

Here's my pimp!

2008

Costumes for the School Carnival

No, it's not the Jolley Green Giant, he's an alien! Yep, I had lots of fun painting my son green!

Kirby started out as a vampire, but the cape was too big, and he quickly got tired of the fangs. So, he is a pale faced, purple headed ghoul!

Easy!!!

Showing my mother in law how easy it is to do a blog

I'll love him, and hug him and call him George!

Jared found this huge spider in our window well, and he was all excited about it. It's the biggest spider he's seen in the wild! So, he pointed it out to me, and I caught it for him. How's that for true love? Of course once I caught it, I had to photograph it, (can't help myself!).

Here it is next to a quarter, for reference. Isn't it a beauty? Don't worry, we did a catch and release with this monster. After the photoshoot, I put him back outside! (Makes ya wanna come visit my house huh?)

While we're at it....

Here's a cockroach we found at Disneyland last year! Look at the size of that motha!

And here's our cat! Why, next to that quarter, he's huge!!!!!

World's Worst Aunt!!!

Ok, so it’s not bad enough that I’ve warped my own children, I have moved on to scaring other children! Yep, I will now have to add more money into the “therapy jar” for my poor niece, whom I gave a heart attack to tonight. I was walking into Wal-Mart (I know, what a sick and wrong way to spend a Saturday night, and yes I had the boys with me, see how warped their childhood is? Wal-Mart on a Saturday?!?) when I saw my niece and sister in law. For some strange reason I thought it would be fun to play on trick on the sweet little 6 year old girl, so I ran up behind her and grabbed her and started to walk away with her! Yah, she didn’t think it was very funny either….I did apologize repeatedly for freaking her out. Luckily her mother was able to make it into a learning experience, “what to do it somebody REALLY tries to kidnap you”. I owe her at least 4 or 5 therapy sessions….

On a brighter note, I found another self help book! Reading self help books is one of my hobbies. I now have a family motto with a “rallying cry” and a new “savings plan”. If I ever get to the point where I can control my impulses (or at least think jokes through first!) I’ll write a self help book on it, and the title will be “Putting the Reigns Back on Bozo: How to Tell What Jokes Really Are Funny!

Because I’m a photographer, and this is a blog, here is another random picture:
Murphy took this one, it's a marble run that he built. I couldn't resist, here's my brother in law's cat checking out our rat:

Get Crazy with the Cheese Whiz!

I had to use it! That's one of my favorite lines from a song, (yes April, I'm copying you!)

What a day it has been! I woke up at 8:53 am, I was supposed to be at my nieghbors house at 8:50 for the carpool, so I jumped out of bed, threw on some pants and ran out the door. The kids had to make a run for it to make it in time for school (sorry Dixie, and Steven too!). Last night I had to work late, and I've decided that the job "Digital Retouch Artist" sounds a lot cooler that it really is! I mean really, all you're doing is touching up zits and bags underneath the eyes! How exciting is that? Yep, I've been busy!

Also had to take the cat to the vet today. Last week I picked her up, and she peed on me! (all though that day was just an all around bad day for being peed on, the rats managed to get me too!) So, my cat has been diagnosed with a UTI. I thought it would be fun to try to get her to drink some cranberry juice, but that sounds like too much work, guess I'll just stick to the medicene!

Seems like there was more, but I'm tired now, so here's one more photo of the cats and then I'm off to bed!

The Path!

We got the first part of our path done! It's about 3x6 and it took forever! I thought it would be cool to have a winding path going throughout our huge backyard, so I started digging. Wow, digging is hard work!

Then my wonderful hubby took over! (thank goodness, I was already bored with building it!) He put cement at the bottom, and then did the brick work, and all the other finishing touches so that it looks nice.

Time to write SOMETHING!

Wow, I'm so impressed by all you who actually write things here on a regular basis! I figured I should write some more, so here goes. Hmmmm, I was up at 4:00 am this morning trying to come up with something interesting.....well, my hubby used the "Neti pot" for his sinus's last night. Whoopi! (yep, I'm stretching for things to write here!) Oh, I know, how about a random picture! Yes, that is a litebright! Ok, now what? Gee, my life really isn't that interesting, yet I seem to be busy, almost overwhelmed! Moving on to the children....here's a random photo of Murphy: He's really liking school, but he keeps getting chased by the girls! I've decided that 1st grade girls are really aggresive! Maybe I'll have more to write after I get back from helping out in his class. Here's a black and white of Kirby. He likes school too! I got a few questions, how do you add a "friends and family" gadget? Also, what are all of you doing for dinner this week? I hate coming up with menus! Any ideals for leftover chicken?


Coming soon.....The blog you've all been waiting for! "All the places that I've been stuck!"

Our Pennsylvania Trip!

This is basicallly the email I sent out a while ago, but seeing as I'm blogging now....thought I'd put it here too!

We had a fabulous time in Pennsylvania! We arrived in a spectacular rain storm, and we didn't dry out until we got back home to Utah. We spent most of the time on the farm, and it went by way too fast, although I did manage to get 633 digital pictures! Yep, I was in shutterbug heaven! In fact, my insane picture taking caused a few stirs, I have this annoying habit of seeing something while driving, and pulling over to photograph it. At one point Becky and I ended up in a shallow ditch that we had to push the car out of (although in my defense, Becky wanted that picture too!) To the left here is the shot, well worth a trip in the ditch if you ask me!

The kids collected lots of critters, and with the help of Will's kids, managed to collect 229 Newts, then Kirby, Jaes and Jared found 55 more, bringing the grand total to 284 Newts! We had Newt York City! We also found some toads and frogs too! At one point we had a total of 24 people staying there on the farm, and we had ourselves an old fashion barn dance!
The blueberries were in season, so we got to pick lots of them, although I think the boys put more in their mouths than in their bucket.

Jared had a great time digging through the old forest garbage pile and found lots of old glass jars, some back from 1964. And we can't forget the knot swing! The kids spent hours swinging on that thing. And I obviously filled our days with taking pictures, and visiting with everyone else. I even learned a new card game thanks to Jared's cousin Charity

On our way back to the airport, we must have hit some kind of time warp, cuz we managed to loose a whole two hours! Seriously! It supposedly only takes 2 1/2 to 3 hours from the farm to Newark, but it took us 5 1/2! Ok, we did stop a lot, hit some traffic and got lost, but still! We had no time to go to New York City. Then Jared left his wallet in his parents truck, and they had to bring it back to us, so we got to hang out a lot at the Newark airport! Anyways, I got me and the kids New York City tee-shirts, eventhough we didn't quite make it there, I figured the New Jersey airport was close enough!