Happy Halloween 2009

"THE WILD INDIANS"

Jack & Jhett were little "wild" Indians for Halloween this year. Jhett was not quite sure about all this makeup business. He definitely despised getting in and out of the car however he LOVED the candy aspect. Jack liked the dressing up part. His favorite part of the evening was having his mom and dad dress up too. Daddy was Elvis and Mommy was a clown!

A fun night was had by all!

SYDNEY & PATRICK ENGAGEMENT

Our newest family news is our cousin, Sydney has recently gotten ENGAGED! We are so excited for her and Patrick! Sydney is marrying a terrific man, Patrick Collins. We are thrilled to welcome him into our clan. Syd & Patrick are getting married on May 1, 2010. Jack & Jhett are going to be ring bears in the wedding. Jack has already been asking what are his duties...We are looking forward to a huge Jannusch get together!

FALL 2009

Hard to believe that the holidays are just around the corner. I am going to make a giant effort to update my blog more often...

This fall has been super busy with horse shows and work. The All American Quarter Horse Congress was a huge success with the sale of one horse, great clients and potential clients. We enjoyed spending some time with great people and having some R & R for us.

Harvest season has been a little drawn out with all the rain however both the boys have been given the opportunity to ride in the combine, tractor and semis. Life does not get much better than that for them.

We are looking forward to a wonderful holiday season with our new addition of Baby Layne our neice. Layne Ranae Toohill arrived on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 8:17 pm. She is just beautiful and my sister, Ashlee is enjoying being a new momma. Jack & Jhett are looking forward to showing her the ropes around the farm!!

FINALLY...A NEW POST

Okay so I have definitely been slacking on posting on my blog! I am going to make an approach to keep an updated blog. The summer has just flown by. So many exciting things have happened since my last post. Joey's new venture of riding pleasure horses has greatly expanded. We recently rented an indoor arena with 15 horses stalls for the winter months. We have done some major cleaning and re-arranging but it is looking great. We have a little more work to do but plan moving horses in next week! We are super excited along with our clients. We have 4 families currently (5 horses in total--1 family has 2 daughters which equals 2 horses)! We are planning on accepting some outside horses just as boarders no additiional training at this point just because we are committed to our current clients and our full time jobs and of course our BOYS!!

Jack is super excited about starting back to school in 2 weeks. Preschool begins after Labor Day. He got a new John Deere book bag so things are awesome in his eyes. He has the same teachers as last year, Mrs. Baker & Mrs. Howard whom he loves. He will attend preschool on Tuesdays & Thursdays. Jack continues to be busy on the farm and is looking forward to a fun, filled harvest of riding in the semi and the combine.

Jhett is busy as usual. He can not sit still for one moment. He changes everyday. He is starting to say more words such as bite, bye, momma, dadda, baby, gabby, jack. Gabby is a young girl at the babysitters. Jhett has gone back to his babysitter, Leslie's this fall. He is only change is that he is going there all day Tuesday thru Friday. Jhett loves the horses and has zero fear of anything. Which is very scary for mom at times but I just close my eyes and let him do his thing!

My work continues to be very busy with catering large events. My employers dad has been very ill and intensive care in Indianapolis for the past 6 weeks. He is struggling with some lung, heart and breathing issues. We continue to pray for him and wish nothing but the best for the Shoup Family. We are preparing for a large catering event next week for Beck's Hybrids for Thursday, Friday and Saturday we will feed approximately 6,000 people over 3 days. September is filling up quickly with Purdue events and ending with a big event in Indianapolis called the Indy Breast Cancer Walk for 1000 people for a Saturday (breakfast, lunch & dinner) and Sunday (breakfast & lunch)! October is going to be a full month with Purdue Homecoming festivities along with a new event from Fastenal for 2000 people 2 days in a row then I am taking a vacation!! Our family is headed to the QH Congress to show some horses. We are super excited. Joey will be showing in the Senior Western Pleasure. The Clark girls will be showing in their respective age divisions in a variety of classes. We will be there for about 10 days! It will be a well deserved rest!

Well enough blogging for today! I am sure we will have new posts as soon as my new neice arrives...counting the days!

What a busy weekend...

Would be unusual if the Stillwell household did not have a busy weekend and indeed we did. Friday ended with our regular work jobs and the real work just began. We grabbed some supper and headed to barn for an evening of preparing for the Howard County 4-H fair. Brice, our 4-H in our barn had is horse show on Saturday morning so it was evening of riding, washing, banding her mane, packing the trailer and finalizing the last minute details. Saturday morning, Joey, Jack & Brice headed off to the horse show around 8 am with light rain in tow. Horse shows are terrible when it rains. Jhett and I cleaned the house and did laundry. Jhett was going to have a babysitter for the evening because I need to go and work. We (Shoups) had one of the busiest weekends of the year (4 weddings in one night)! Hillary, our beloved babysitter, arrived and she & Jhett darted off to work on the 4-H dog float for the parade. I left and went to work. I received a phone call from Joey, Jack & Brice that Brice had been awarded the honor of Grand Champion 4-H Western Horse at the Howard County Fair. What a great accomplishment and we are so proud and excited!! The evening ended when I arrived home after 4 successful events around 12:30 am (Sunday)! Today we are mowing grass, weeding, cleaning our house, working in the barn and doing our normal outside chores! I am sure I am making you all exhausted as I type our agenda...what until next weeks post! Ha Ha

2009~4th of July

We had a super busy 4th of July weekend. Joey & I packed up the boys on Saturday morning and headed to South Bend, Indiana for a fun filled day of team roping, rodeo, food and fireworks. The jackpot ropin was really nice it was back in a wooded area and very pleasant. The ropin was held at the Flyin M Ranch in Elkhart. They had a huge sand box and lots of toys so we did not even have to get our toys out which was nice. Jack warmed right up to some of the other kids and started playing farm, rodeo and chasing goats. Jhett wanted to join really bad but he is just not quite big enough to keep up with the bigger boys. We headed to South Bend about 20 mintues away for the St. Joe County Fair rodeo. We heard that the cattle were really slow and times had been super fast the night before. We walked around the beautiful fairgrounds and located the Duck Race. Jack was very intrigued with the Duck Race so we watched and he whispered in my ear I want to do that. So I immediately started waving my hands so we could get picked to race a duck well we got picked and we had a great duck the first race and he WON his race out of 4. We got to participate in the Championship round and Jack got to name his own duck and tell the crowd thru the microphone that he named his duck "COWBOY". Cowboy raced pretty good but came in 2nd. We returned to the trailer to cook some porkburgers and hotdos and too bad the rain set in about an hour before the rodeo started. It rained pretty much the entire duration of the rodeo but we had a good time anyway. We were headed back to our beds around 10:30 pm and pulled in our driveway around 1 am what a day!

Aunt Keke makes a visit...

Aunt Keke (aka Aunt Kelly) made a recent visit from Denver for a quick visit in Illinois for Grandma Shirley's 75th birthday! Aunt Keke got to watch Jack take swimming lessons at the park with Mimi Braid! They had a great time as usual. I think Jack enjoyed having the extra attention and no little brother being in the way. Aunt Keke, Mimi Braid and Mumsy made a trip to Indiana to return little Jackman to his mom and dad. I got the opportunity to visit with Aunt Kelly and Sydney during dinner and wished we would have had more time to spend with them.

Our Celebrity...

Jack had a big week this week. He bacame famous by being photographed in our local newspaper not only once but twice. He thinks he is pretty big business for having his picture in the paper. A few weeks ago our family provided the activity for Dude Ranch week at preschool we took horses, cattle, ropes, cowboys and cowgirls to school. Needless to say lots of pictures were taken and one of the school teachers, Mrs. Baker & Mrs. Rule submitted the photos to the newspaper and guess what...they appeared in the scrapbook section. We have a feeling that is not the only time Mr. Jack will be in the local paper between 4-H, rodeo, sports, etc. He is for sure a celebrity in our eyes

Let's make a try at blogging...

Well I decided I need to be a follower and start a blog page for my family and friends. No guarantees at how I will keep up with this task but the word is I am going to try.