Walking

Dallie is walking - but only when Jason is around. She won't walk to me or when the boys are around (I can't blame her, they seem to knock her over as soon as she stands up). She's getting to be her Daddy's girl. He's been pregging heifers this week and when she finally saw him last night (she hadn't seen him since Sunday) she was so excited. She was jabbering on and on, trying to tell Dad everything that had been happening.

Homecoming Week

It was Homecoming Week at Garden County Schools and even the elementary kids got to participate. They had pajama day, hat day, etc. Today was Spirit day. They were supposed to wear purple but Dallie is the only one in our house who owns something purple (funny that Kache is going to a school whose colors and mascot are the same as my high school). Today they all got out of school early for the Homecoming Parade. I love small towns. All the businesses shut down and the whole town was out for the parade (I was surprised there were this many people in our little town). The kindergartners got to ride a Thomas train.

Kache is in the orange car.

Ryder loved it, of course. Who doesn't love a parade? Jason even came. The crew had just finished weaning Mitch's herd and Jason called to say he was coming with us.

The elementary kids even got a t-shirt (so at least next year he'll have some purple to wear). He's walking around the house now saying, "Go, Eagles, go!"

Show and Share

Tomorrow is Show and Share in the kindergarten class and the kids are supposed to bring something that starts with the letter D (last week was the letter C and Jason sent Kache in with a calving chain that probably hadn't been cleaned since the last time it was used). Kache and I were talking about what started with the letter D and I said Dallie starts with the letter D, do you want to take her for Show and Share? He said, "No, she won't fit in my backpack."

Weekend Trip

We went to Denver over the weekend. We really don't like big cities. We try to avoid them as much as possible.

But we needed a new car (one that gets better gas mileage than the suburban) and Denver had the one we were looking for.

I was looking forward to washing the suburban, cleaning it out and putting it in the garage for a while and just driving the car to school, but it has been raining for three days and that means 4-wheel drive around here.

This is actually cleaner than it was yesterday, but the rain during the night washed some of the mud off.

A family is here visiting from the Canada ranch and I am their host for dinner tonight so I had better get to cooking.

Hunting Season

I had to take a picture of Dallie's piggy tails because I don't think they will happen again for a while. I'm not much of a hair dresser (obviously, look at my own hair) and this took way too much effort and patience. The boys got a good laugh though. Ryder kept commenting on how funny Dallie looked.

These next pictures worries me a little. Uncle Doug gave this bow to Kache and we finally got arrows for it, but it makes me more nervous than than the boys having a gun. I guess it is probably just because I didn't grow up around bows.

Rex (the dog) found a porcupine last night so Jason and the boys went hunting it and the huge skunk that has been living around the garden shed. Kache was determined to shoot it with his bow. They didn't have any luck, unfortunately. We must be coming to the end of our snake season (hopefully) because we have killed three this week. Jason got two with his rope - I'm not exactly sure how though.

Weaning Day

We weaned our calves today. We put the calves in a pasture that shares a fence line with the pasture that the cows are in so the babies can still find their mamas across the fence. Then after a few days when the calves have gotten used to being without their mothers we move the cows off. It's less stressful for the calves. It's always nice to have a big day like this done. I only fed 9 guys, but the meal prep still takes two days of work prior to the actual weaning day. I did manage to make it out to the chute to take a few pictures, but there's really not anything exciting or cool to see when we wean. Now we just get to listen to the cattle bawl for a couple days until we move the mamas off.


On the way home after picking Kache up from school we found this on the road. We had to run it over 4 times before we knew for sure it was dead. This picture doesn't show its rattles very well, but it probably had 10 or 12.

Camp Out

The boys had a camp out the other night in the yard. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows in our make-shift fire pit.

After that the boys took their books and went to bed in their sleeping bags in the tent. Jason said Ryder only woke up once and thankfully they didn't have any skunk visitors.

End of Summer Pictures

I found some random pictures of our last activities of the summer.