2013!

It's a new year,and the Walton family is doing well. This month has already flown by and I can not believe my baby will be turning one this year. Avalie is cruising around and getting into everything and never sits still! She loves to make animal sounds, especially a goat sound which always makes everyone laugh. We recently found out she was allergic to Penicillin when she broke out in hives one morning after taking her antibiotic for and ear infection, but she is fine now, luckily.Layton is loving his new job as an account executive at Chesbro Music Company. It has been a good change of pace for the whole family, and I just feel very blessed to have such a wonderful husband who provides.

8 months (Dec)

I took these pictures just for a fun photoshoot :)

Daddy and Avie love hats!

Eating Pizza with the family

9 months old (Jan)

Piggy tail

 Christmas and new years were wonderful and it we are looking forward to our 2 year anniversary in a month!
                                                    Love,
                                            The Waltons

I love my family

This last week has been so great. We are getting into a good routine because, for those of you who don't know, Layton was offered a wonderful full time job sot this was his first week at Chesbro's Music Company as part of the sales team selling to Arizona, California, Nevada. No more late evenings, inconvenient hours, and missed Christmas parties! It also means we are officially saving up for a house :) And it has been nice to have the same schedule every day and actually eat dinner together. We are so blessed. I have such a wonderful family and I feel like the richest woman in the world because I have so much family and friends who love and support me.
Also, Avalie is 8 months old now! She is getting so big! She is cruising everywhere! I'm pretty sure she will be walking in a month or two. And yesterday her sock fell off and she actually tried to put it back on her foot! Smart girl!
 Last night Layton was playing with Avalie when he got home and I couldn't help but catch the priceless moment on camera so here are some pictures :)

Putting up the Christmas tree

We love Christmas!

Her Grandma Guymon made her the cute hat!

My favorite people in the whole world :)

Love,
     Ashley

Kansas City

    Life is just awesome! Layton & I had the opportunity to go to Kansas City, Missouri a couple of weeks ago to see a Chiefs vs Raiders football game (I surprised him for his birthday) and we got to see a lot of cool things! including some church historical sites and the temple and the Community of Christ temple(which was really fascinating, also they have a museum inside that has all kinds of original things of joseph smith and emma's including a real picture of emma as an elderly person! anyway...). It is always a testimony builder to go to church sites, especially the temple. Layton and I noticed that the Community of Christ church has the original door to liberty jail and the LDS church has the original key. We looked at it a little symbolically: Even though they have the whole door(the book of mormon, bible, etc.) they have no way to open it, rendering it completely useless without the key(the preisthood). There are so many good people out there that simply just don't have the whole entire truth. I am so excited about the new ages for missionaries! Being in the Primary Presidency has really made me realize what a great generation of young people we are raising!

at the WWI museum in KC

     My life for the past couple of months summed up: wonderful. I have an amazing husband who works hard and a beautiful now 7 month old baby who sleeps 12 straight hours at night and could not be a more happy. She grows so much everyday, I just can't believe how much a little person can change in 1 little year. She is pretty much crawling and before i know it she will be running! I also am still coaching ballroom at Bonneville High School and am loving it! I can't wait for the holidays!

                                                                                                -Ashley

Avalie's Halloween Costume :)

She learned to pull herself up

                                                      

Super Easy Strawberry Freezer Jam

If you ever find a great deal on strawberries, BUY THEM! I got 8 lbs of strawberries for $9. You might ask yourself, "what on earth would I do with that many strawberries? Wouldn't they go bad before they get a chance to be eaten?" Well I made exactly three batches of strawberry freezer jam with it!(compliments to my mother-in-law's amazing recipe) and it was super easy. I didn't have time to make it when I first got them but I didn't want to pass up an amazing deal so I washed them and blended them all up and put them in the freezer for when I was ready. A couple days later I just defrosted them and mixed in all the ingredients and bada-bing-bada-boom I was done. Easy as pie...or at least delicious jam:) So here is the recipe:

-5 cups of strawberries mashed or blended (blending I found was a lot easier and there are not as many chunks)

-2 cups of sugar

-3 T of Clear Jel

-1/2 cup of corn syrup

I really liked using the Clear Jel instead of Pectin, which is what most jam recipes use. It thickened the jam without me having to heat it up and I used a LOT less sugar then most pectin recipes require. All I did was mix it all together. Then I just put them in some Tupperware and put it in the freezer.

Over all I think I spent about $4 per batch which made me about 3 Tupperwares of Jam. An medium jar of jam from the store cost about $3.30. So I got about quite a bit for a little price which is always nice.

Old McWalton had a farm...

So, a lot of people don't know this about us, but we have become backyard farmers within a matter of months. We moved from our apartment in Rexburg, ID to rent a home, and I guess we felt like we had so much freedom that we went kind of wild with this. It started with two baby chicks from Cal Ranch, in a cardboard box, and turned into a full on urban homestead. We currently have all of the following animals: 27 Chickens (some are roosters), 2 ducks, 2 goats (both of which are going to have babies this month), and 5 rabbits. 

Honestly, I absolutely love all of our animals! I love when I go to feed the chickens in the morning and they all follow and swarm around me. And I love those cute goats. The other day we got 2 new bunnies just to have as pets. They are the cutest little things! The other rabbits don't have names and are just big and scratch when you try to hold them. They are just meat rabbits anyway.
Our neighbor was so nice and let us borrow her incubator to hatch out all of our chickens. It was really  quite the experience to watch all those little chicks come into the world. Now its fun to watch them run around the yard chasing grasshoppers. Layton built them a nice chicken coop with some old pallets and a saws-all. After he did the same with the Rabbit hutch, I figured it was about time to get him a circular saw. So he built the goat house a lot faster.
We are getting ready to kill a bunch of the chickens now that they are getting big enough to kind of tell which ones are chickens that will give us eggs and which ones will annoy the neighbors with their crowing. I plan on having lots of chicken on the menu for a while :)

Feed time!

Me with Big Mama

Luna

The chicken coop

Goat shelter

Our flock

Our pet bunnies: Chester and Dotty

                                                                                                           Love,
                                                                                                                The Waltons

3 months old already!

Last week my little girl turned 3 months old! They weren't kidding when they said it goes by quickly! Anyway, So I have been taking a picture of her on her month birthdays with this bear blanket (yes, it is a very fuzzy, soft blanket. Not a towel. Trust me) so that we can have something to compare her to. She is still soooo tiny! but she was 10 1/2 lbs yesterday so she is growing! slowly but surely, she is just in the 8th percentile for her weight so she is a petite little thing. She eats good and has started to copy me when i buzz my lips or stick out my tongue. It's quite cute, I must say.

   So here are the three months:

                                                                       Month 1

 

Month 2

Month 3

Such a Character... :)

Love,

The Waltons