avery's debut in the moapa valley progress

avery was pictured in the moapa valley progress this week playing a violin solo at the OLSHACS openhouse. when i told him that he was in the paper, he said, "well i guess i'm famous." and then after a minute of thought, he said, "they should pay me." he is such an entrepreneur. he takes his violin very serious and has improved a lot since my last video of him, i need to post another one. if you get the moapa progress he is on page 4 or you can go to their website at http://www.mvprogress.com/2009/08/olshacs and take a look for yourself.

christmas picture

this is the latest picture i have of my family. everybody is doing great. i took the camera down to lamb practice the other day, but forgot to get it out of the truck. hopefully, i will get some pictures of the kids at their basketball games and anna at lamb practice before they both end.

nutrition books that have changed my whole life

if you haven't already read these books, i recommend them. the approach is a little radical, but is cracking your sternum to do a quadruple bypass surgery any less radical (a quote taken from one of them, but they have all kind of run together in my mind).

my beautiful sister-in-law

ok, i have always thought emily was just beautiful and now expecting her 3rd baby in just a few short weeks, she glows. i am excited for her. she is such a great mom and devoted wife. i found these pictures amongst some of my own and had to post them. anna took them and although blake was mad when i told him i let her be the photographer (she was 7 at the time), i explained to him that when a child takes the pictures, you get a totally new perspective. i think they are great.

fat pictures

these were taken 2 years ago at the fair and it wasn't too long after that, that i started exercising again. i have to say though, that this was kind of a stressful time in my life and i dealt with it the only way i knew how at the time, with food. ignorance is bliss, sometimes.



isn't kylie adorable. and yes, those are 2 chins.



seriously blake, could you have taken a worse picture? he thinks he's a photographer.




don't even tell me that there isn't some resemblance to my dad's little sister in this one. i definitely am pulsipher.

ok, i have been meaning to do this for a while, but have been extremely embarrased. but....after much deliberation (and 100 straight days of not missing a day of exercise), tada. now i need to take some afters.

"almost" tractor accident

i don't have a picture, but i actually have something exciting to write about. i was fertilizing the field today with the tractor and then i had to drive it over to my dads to do his fields. you would have had to see it to imagine the tractor being followed by this huge fertilizer spreader which had approximately 3500 pounds of fertilizer in it. on the way over to my dads, i took a short-cut which includes kind of large, downhill, rough slope. i didn't realize that i needed to go down it in first gear (i was in the highest gear that the tractor has) and i had the idea that i could just coast down it fairly easily. anyway, i totally lost control of the tractor and it was sliding uncontrollably toward the side of the mountain. the brakes weren't working because i had too heavy of a load on back and i just kept thinking that i would crash into the side of the hill and at least it would come to a stop. the wheels kind of got stuck sideways because the load was pushing it and the steering wheel wouldn't turn the opposite way. my life flashed before my eyes just before i plowed into the side of the hill and at the last minute i was able to correct the deathly slide. at the bottom of the hill, i had to stop and take a minute and breathe. i drove on to bonnie's house to calm down for a minute. the worst part about it (or the best) is that when i told blake about it, he put me on farm restriction and then he said, "and of course you weren't wearing you seatbelt (i had to explain to him that i wasn't aware that there even was a seatbelt, i later found it and strapped it down tight)." i then had to call my dad and explain to him that he slacked off in teaching me proper tractor handling and when the skills were needed, i absolutely did not possess them. i could tell from both his and blake's reaction that it was a really close call and that there was a very good possibility of rolling the tractor. blake said that he had to take a minute at work after i called him and think about the "could have beens." don't worry, he then went around work relating the story. i have to thank my many blessings that everything worked out in the end and my "almost" tractor accident didn't end poorly.