Sad News

We have sad news at our house today. Kache's horse Prince died. Prince was 24 years old. Jason has had him since Jason was 13. We assume he died of old age. He was a good cattle horse and a good horse for Kache. We'll miss him.

February 23

Happy birthday to my friend Amber. She and I were inseparable in high school. Hope you have a good one.



It was also this day in 1990 that my family moved to Washington. Mom, did you realize you've lived there for 19 years? This is Mijken, Kollin and I with Erica and Tricia (I think) by the van.

Food Storage Room

We finally painted our food storage room. Of course when I say "we" I mean Jason. I only last as long as Dallie does and it's usually less work if the boys don't help. My food storage and the groceries I got for calving season meals were all in the breakfast nook in boxes and bags (I didn't take a picture because I am too embarrassed for people to see what a mess it was). It's nice to see the floor in the nook again. Kache even commented on how clean it is now.

Here are some before and after pictures.

I love food storage. I still have to get the ranch groceries put away (in this picture they are in a heaping pile behind me), but at least they are downstairs and out of the way for now.

Dallie

Dallie at 7 months in her cute brown jacket.

More Random

* I love my house. I need to take pictures of it, but I still have boxes left to be unpacked. I think the office is my favorite room in the house.

* Dallie is 7 months old today. She is sleeping through the night (again) and in her own room. She is sitting on her own. She is eating veggies now. She says "dadada". She is a wiggle worm - she is more active than the boys were.

* The school Kache will go to in the fall is 45 minutes away. I'm really not looking forward to it. It is our choice to be this far away from school, church, and civilization, and I do enjoy being this far out, but the whole school situation may change my mind.

I have to drive Kache a half hour south to meet the school van which then takes him 15 minutes farther to the school. Then after school he has to wait a half hour for the van to get to his school from the junior high. So the way it sounds he will leave home at 7-ish and not get home until 5-ish. The whole situation makes me sick. It's difficult enough sending my baby to school, but for him to be gone for 10 hours is really making me loose sleep. I want to homeschool Kache (even if it's just for kindergarten), but Jason says no.

Kache can't wait to go to school, and I don't blame him. I remember my first day of school. I loved it. I couldn't wait for the teacher to get done going over the rules because I was so ready to learn. But after we moved to Basin City when I was in the second grade everything changed. I was always homesick. I was scared to ride the bus. I just didn't like school. I still liked learning, but I guess I didn't like being away from home. Even in high school I was like that. (As a matter of fact, I'm still like that. If I didn't ever have to leave my house, I probably wouldn't.) Of course I don't tell Kache any of this; I tell him school is great and he'll have lots of fun, which will be true for him.

Random

It's rough being a cow sometimes. I saw at least four cows with porcupine needles in their noses while we were out moving and caking cows yesterday.

The boys have discovered riding down our hill on their bikes (and other toys).

I was worried about them riding off the retaining wall behind the snake house, but Ryder found out yesterday that the bush will break his fall. The poor kid had scratches all over his face and stickers in his hands.

What We've Been Up To

I started my vet student meal shopping this week. My neighbor Jean came with me to help. I'm glad she did because it took us five shopping carts and three hours to get the shopping done that we needed.

Jason's still busy. Between all the ranch meetings he's had this week and feeding and caking, we haven't seen him much.

The kids have a good time with the geo trax. Dallie especially loves to watch. I can only imagine the destruction she'll do to it when she starts crawling.

Sandhills Savior

Sandhills Savior

by Baxter Black

In the sandhills of Nebraska stands a monument of wills

Where man has staked his claim to them blowin', rollin' hills

Where the buffalo once scattered in the bunch grass, belly deep,

A whiteface calf, contented, sucks his mama, half asleep.

But you cannot know the beauty or appreciate the past

Unless you know the reason cows could stay and man could last.

For humankind is greedy and the babies need to eat

So to the rancher-farmer fell the task of growin' meat.

The fertile black dirt farmland runnin' up and down the Platte

Got covered up with people, their driveways and their cat

And them that lived in cities saw no use for sandhills land

So cattlemen and cowboys come up north to try their hand.

They treated her with reverence and learned what Indians knew

That it cannot take abusin' 'cause she's fragile through and through

And they learned a crucial factor to keep them cows alive

Takes more than snow and sunlight, it takes water to survive.

So they dug their dainty windmills and pumped life outta the ground

It allowed the cows to flourish so the people stayed around

Then little townships prospered and, you can see by now,

They've built a whole existence upon the humble cow.

From Thedford to Hyannis, from Valentine to Rose

Across that sandy country where the prairie grass still grows

You'll see those man-made daisies, silhouettes against the sky

Their steel petals gleaming on their stalks eighteen feet high.

On Nebraska highway twenty or state road eighty-three

There's a million creakin' windmills standin' proud for you to see.

They represent a people and the land they're livin' in

The lifeblood of the sandhills spinnin' freely in the wind.

I had checked out this Baxter Black book from the library a few years ago, and thought his poems and stories were pretty funny. But now after experiencing ranch life first hand, his poems and stories take on a whole new meaning.

Busy

We've been busy this week. Jason can't seem to get ahead on this unit. Probably half of the windmills here are broken or the tanks are leaking. His bulls haven't been doing very well, so he has had to feed them a couple times this week. He's had some early calves that he finally got tagged this afternoon. He had to pull his first calf, but it was a stillborn. He has to build a vet room in his calving barn and help get the intern house and bunk house ready for our seasonal help.

This week I've been working on my menu for feeding vet students. Every calving season we have veterinary students from Colorado State University come help calve the ranches' heifer herds. So whoever has those herds (this year the ranch has three heifer herds) has to provide meals for the vet students. The vet students come in mid-March and are here for four weeks. So like I've said before, I'm not much of a cook and I'm kind of nervous about having to prepare something for every meal (I can't just feed them cold cereal when I don't feel like cooking like I sometimes do with my family). Not to mention I have to do all the shopping for that month of cooking - that's the part I'm really not looking forward to.

So this is what we have been doing this week. We're tired and hope to get some rest, but that probably won't come until June.

Happy Birthday Kache

Today was Kache's 5th birthday. He had a good one. Along with a Geo Trax plane and tracks, waffles, strawberries and cool whip for breakfast, we had our first two calves for his birthday (we are still 2 months from their due date; we aren't sure if two calves on the same day is a fluke thing, or if a bull got in with them last spring). I'm really not sure which gift was his favorite (he was really excited to see the new calves - he wanted to bring them home for bottle calves).

Jason trying to figure out how to put the tracks together. The plane is definitely more tricky than the train.

Kache is a good kid. He's a good helper and he tries to be obedient. This morning he asked me why I was reading my scriptures. I told him that Joseph Smith said "the Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book on earth, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book". Kache said he wanted to be closer to God and he went and got his Book of Mormon and started looking through it.

The Answer

Before:


After:

I know it was way past time for a haircut,

but I didn't want it this short (I'm still crying).

No one recognized him at church. All of the mothers in our branch were so mad that we would cut his hair. It was really funny how many comments were made about him. He looks more like Kache now and a lot older. Sometimes he looks like Bode (his cousin) and sometimes he looks like Kollin (my brother).

Trivia Question

Who is this kid?