Essay written by Amanda

I was looking through our documents and found this short story by Amanda.
 She wrote it for a class this last year when she was 11 years old.  I really like her descriptive words in this story.  I think I will encourage her to continue the story cause I want to know what happens next!

Ally's Rock
By Amanda Logan

Ally picked up the rock. It was a greenish blue rock with foamy looking markings.

She had been looking for bugs when the rock caught her eye.

It was smooth and cool in her hands. She wondered how a rock could be so beautiful.

Suddenly she heard a noise. A little scared she but the rock in her backpack and ran home.

There at home she reached into her backpack to retrieve the stone. She pulled back, whatever she had just touched was not the rock. She looked at her hand it was blue from cold. It's summer she thought but there is something in there that's really cold.

She got on her gloves and reached in she closed her eyes and pulled out the thing.

She opened her eyes. There staring at her with eyes the color of ice was a dragon.

She gasped. It was a white dragon with icy blue eyes. It had three blueish white horns on it's head and clear claws. It's wings were white and leathery and it's scales sparkled like snow with the sun shining on it.

“What am I going to do”, she thought. This is the best day of my life. But dragons are myths! If someone sees it then they'll take it away from me!

“Will you please stop calling me it? I'm a girl you know and just name me already.” Ally froze. The voice had come from the dragon. It was a nice clear voice that reminded Ally of frost on the grass.

“Did you just talk”, Ally asked. “Yes”, said the dragon. “And just like you I also don't know what to do. I have been in my egg for so long always trying to get out and I finally did.” “But I must keep you a secret I must. I just met you but I like you”, said Ally. “Good “, said the dragon grinning. “Because your stuck with me for life since  you found me.”

“Well”, said Ally. “I guess I better give you a name.”

She thought and thought. “I know”, she said. “Aria. It just seems to fit.” “Hmmmm Aria I like it said the dragon.” “Well then Aria it is”, said Ally.

And that is how the adventures of Ally and Aria began.

summer so far!

We have had a relaxing  yet busy summer so far :-) 
This is the first summer in a long time that we don't have any major plans due to low finances and it has been nice to be home and not have my summer eaten up by trips.  We do have one camping/family reunion trip with my family in the Uintas at the end of the month and then bing, bing bing the kids have Scout camp, Brighton camp and Girls camp so July will be more busy.
I enjoy my kids being home in the summer I know some people don't, but I really enjoy having them around me :-)  Natalie has been enjoying her first Youth Conference the last 3 days and she also has been doing a lot of baby sitting and hanging out with friends.  I can't believe my little girl is going to be a Freshman in High School and am scared for her and excited for her at the same time.
Amanda just turned 12 at the begining of the month and she has entered the world of Young Womens :-)  she is loving it and has grown up so much emotionally this year.  a year ago I did not think she could handle leaving primary, but magically over the year she has changed into a young women! She is so excited for her first Girls Camp!
Joseph's summer so far has been doing his chores as fast as he can so he can play with friends everyday.  Dani has been busy, busy, busy!  She loves going out side with me to help feed the chickens, care for the garden and play in the sunshine :-)  she had her first experience running through the sprinklers the other day it was so darling watching her trying to act as big as Amanda and Joseph!    I have a video of it. As soon as I figure out how to down load it on here I will add it to this post.
Mike has been working really hard to try and meet our families needs.  He works full time at Wells Fargo and then comes home and works on other side jobs.  He currently is starting a new business saleing Prop. and Casualty insurance part time that he hopes to eventually  replace with his full time job.  What he likes about it is he can still help people with investments, but he can add the insurance side to it also which will provide more stable income then the financial industry can provide right now.  Being a financial advisor it is either feast or famine depending on the economy.  I hope it works out so he does not have to work such long hours all the time. 
Well I try not write such long posts, but I can't seem to help it!  I hope the rest of you are having a great summer so far :-)

More Chicks!

So saturday while I was in Salt Lake my dad surprised the kids and brought by two more chicks  these ones are bantam hens.  When full grown they will be about half the size of a normal chicken and they lay smaller eggs.  They are about the size of a robin right now and so they could easily hop right out of my chicken run fence and before people knew it Abbey ( Our retriever) grabbed one in her mouth.  Natalie screamed at her made her drop it and  she put it in the coop. By the time I got home it was still sitting in the coop tramatized.  I was not sure it would snap out of it and make it through the night, but it did!  Yesterday it was happily pecking around with the other chick/chickens.   I was a little frustrated at first when I heard my Dad got me two more chicks for me.  I thought it would be too many, but now I am very happy about it.  These little hens are more like pets!  Because they could fit through the fence I had to wire on a smaller chicken wire around the fence and while I was doing that the  little bantam chick who was NOT tramatized by Abbey followed me everywhere I stood. At one point I was sitting cross legged  tieing wire onto the bottom of the fence and It walked up to me and into my lap and fell asleep.  Then later while Natalie was holding it it jumped up on her shoulder and perched there.  They don't seem to be afraid of people at all and they don't cower when you reach out to pick them up.  So I think they will be a lot of fun.  So that makes 7 chicks/chickens now 2 Road island reds, One white leghorn (I would have had 2, but Abbey killed the other one), 2 Araucanas (My dad brought by these chicks about 2 weeks ago. They are more shy and flighty and will lay pastel eggs) and the 2 Bantams.  I think that is plenty! I hope we are not up to our ears in eggs when they start laying.  We might have to start an eggs saleing business!
Natalie has been teasing me and saying  between the garden and the hens lately I am turning into a farmer lady :-)  I had to smile at that because am so winging it right now! (excuse the pun)

The latest!

So it has been a busy and a little bit of a stressful week! 
I started my 2nd round of HCG after an eight week break. My body stayed at a good stable weight during the break even with an occasional splurge.  I was pretty good about what I ate most of the time though.   I am on my 6th day of injections and the special diet. So far I have lost about 6 1/2 lbs.  It is a sacrafice to get injections and eat so strictly, but it is worth it seeilng the scale numbers go down :-)
Sadly my dog Abbey killed one of my young chickens on Tuesday :-(  I was so mad at that dog! But Have to remember she is a bird dog and bred to retrieve birds.  I secured our new pen better and I doubt there will be anymore problems as long as we keep a better eye on the chickens.  I am excited though because the remaining three started roosting the last few days :-)  Anyone who knows anything about chickens knows what I am talking about :-)  It is so cute seeing them up on the dowl looking so sleepy and comfortable perched up there. 
The other exciting thing this week is I planted my kiddie pool gardens and my asparagus roots that I planted a few weeks ago are starting grow asparagus spears!  I love asparagus and can't wait to have some fresh spears to eat :-)
The bad news this week was our family van would not start Wednesday even after jumping it so we thought that we were in huge trouble because we have to have that car and our bank account had no money to fix it, but the good news was we found out that it was just a bad battery so the cost was minimal compared to what we imagined it would be.  So we felt blessed.
Amanda had her first baby sitting job on Friday and did a great job!  She was soooo excited about it and was very prepared with lots of little activities for the kids she baby sat.
Natalie had her first "Boy/Girl" Birthday party.  I can't believe how grown up she is now!
Joseph and Mike had a blast at the Fathers and Sons campout.  Joseph looks forward to that every year :-)

Saturday I made my own compost bin out of a 55 gallon water drum I already had.  I am excited to see if it will work!  I put fruit and veggie scraps that I was already collecting, chicken doo doo, and Mike cut the grass yesterday so we put some grass clippings in there too. I got the idea for a compost bin from our Relief Society gardening class  on Tues.  It was a great class that I learned a lot from!
So those are this weeks  highlights.  I know I am missing a bunch of stuff, but oh well I don't want to turn this into a novel so adios!

Chicken coop

We moved our big chicks outside.  They pretty much look like smallish chickens now.  We borrowed a chicken hutch from my Dad and because of the dog and cats we needed to make a chicken run too.  We used an old Dog run that was left by the previous owners of our house.  We still need to put a top on, but for now they don't want to leave the hutch anyway so that will need to be added on a different weekend.  Mike and I were pretty proud of ourselves and how it turned out :-)  I forgot to mention that My Dad brought me two more chicks the other day so that makes 6 hens now.  They are small and fluffy so I still have them in the garage with the heat lamp until they get their feathers in.  I hope this new adventure is a positive one. 

There are two red hens in there too, but they blen in with the red wood :-)

week April 19th - 25th

Well the big deal for this week was Mike and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary which was on Wednesday the 21st.  We did not actually celebrate Wednesday because we had too much going on.
Amanda had a soccer game that night in Salt Lake in the pouring rain!  Poor girl!  This is the first year that she has played competition soccer and the hardest part is the travel and how it rules your life for awhile.  She was asked to join another u12 team in addition to her current team and after pondering it we decided it would be way too much!  So she will just stay with her current team.

The rest of the week was full of Amadas Soccer practices, games, Josephs scouts and gymnastics, Natalies young womens and flute choir. And then Saturday the 24th we went into Salt Lake again for another soccer game for Amanda.  It was such a beautiful day!  Her team did a great job although they did not win.  We stayed in Salt Lake and Mike and the kids went to the dollar movie while Danielle and I went shopping :-)  She makes going to movies impossible!  after that we dropped the kids off at Grandma Logans while Mike and I  finally went out for our anniversary.  Due to the fact that we are so poor right now this would not have been possible if Mike had not recieved a generous gift card for the Cheese Cake Factory from one of his clients at work.  It was so yummy!  I have never eaten there before and I could not believe how good the food was and the cheesecake was to die for!  Thanks lady for giving us  a nice anniversary dinner who ever you are!   And I am glad that I am not on the strict phase of my diet right now so that could eat it! :-)

My liitle seedlings are growing beautifully! 

I had to thin them out this week and it made me sad :-(   They were all growing so good it was really hard to choose which ones pull.  I also prepared my kiddie pool gardens this week so they will be ready to put my seedlings in a week or two.  I did actually plant carrot and pea seeds in one of the kiddie pools already because you can plant them early.  

Our chicks are also growing and filling out nicely with their cute feathers. 

They are starting to look more like chickens :-)  Soon they will be ready to go outside!

As always there are many more things I am leaving out that happened this week, but these are the high points. 

weekly update #2

This has been a busy week for me!  Mike had Tuesday off because he had to work on Saturday so we ran a couple of errands and Then he worked on his other job the rest of the day.  While at Wal- Mart we picked up a mini green house that cost about $5.00 and it had enough room for 50 plants.  I already had seeds so I planted them that day and they started popping up on Saturday.  And this is what they looked like yesterday. (Sunday)

I had 3 kiddie pool gardens last year.  I am going to add one more this year.  I am so excited!  There is just something so rewarding about growing your own garden and doing these kiddie pool gardens is the only way I can handle staying sane doing it=a garden.

The kids seemed to have a good week at school. Natalies band teacher started a flute choir this week and they are hoping to eventually do some performances  in the community.

Amanda is involed  in competition soccer.  She has practice 2 times a week and 2 games a week.  She had a game in Bountiful Friday night and was supposed to have one in Layton Saturday, but it was canceled.  So we went to the library instead and stocked the kids up on new books and then we also went to Cal Ranch to get some soil for my gardens and then we ended up doing something crazy!  We saw all the chicks and we ended up picking up 4 of them!

  I have been interested in having laying hens for a couple of years now and decided to try it out this year.  I hope I know what I am doing!  I am doing it partly because of our grasshopper problem we have had the last couple of years. and I am excited to have my own fresh eggs!

I had to give my first lesson in R.S. Yesterday.  It was a little stressful because we were having Ward conference and the Stake R.S. pres. was  there.  All I can say is I made it through it and hopfully the Spirit guided me on what we needed to focus on because there were several  concepts we did not cover that I had prepared.  At least I was over prepared!  We did end up going overtime too which I hope I improve on next time around.

We also were able to enjoy a fun Family Birthday party for my nephew Matthew at my sister kari's house in Bountiful.  We also finally got to meet Cami (Russ' new girlfriend).  I hope it works out!  I really like her!

There is so much more I could say about the week but these are the high lights.