Jim and Diane

Guilt-Free Rest

2012-02-19T17:24:00.001-06:00

This was one of those weekends when we were able to relax and not feel one bit of guilt. Jim wanted to spray weed killer and fertilizer in the haygrazer field but when we got to the farm Friday night we could tell it had been raining so it was going to be too soft for that. We walked out to see the kids and give them something to eat. It was muddy but not too bad.

It started to rain overnight and rained most of the day Saturday so we sat around catching up on shows we'd recorded just relaxing. Usually when we do that we're feeling like we should be outside doing this or that but when it's raining there's nothing else you can do so like I said… no guilt! We took a 2 hour nap then slopped down to feed the cows again. They were a little wet but not bad so apparently they'd stayed inside because they're so smart. :o)

Once it stopped raining we went out to see if the baby rabbits had survived which would mean their mom came back and was taking care of them. I put on my gloves and lifted the nest covering and there they were! They'd grown a lot and are so cute. I didn't want to keep them uncovered for more than a few seconds so I snapped a quick picture.

Bonnie remembered from last weekend that the rabbits were out there so we had to cover them up each time we let her out so she wouldn't dig at their nest.

I had a busy but great week at work. I'm loving my new job and it will be even better once I get all the software licensing stuff figured out. My boss has been great about having the guys take over my previous duties and making them realize they're going to have to learn how to do some of the things I've always done in the past. Hopefully they'll hire my replacement soon.

Best Buy called me on Thursday to say they couldn't fix my camera so they were going to replace it. yea! On Friday I picked up a brand new camera (same model that I had) at no cost to me.

I've spent the afternoon getting our tax stuff together… what a pain. Now I'm going to do my ironing so I don't have to go to work this week in my pajamas though that would be my preference.

Happy birthday tomorrow to Allen Alsabrook who will turn the big 6! My brother-in-law Milton will have a birthday on Thursday which is also Cindy and Greg's anniversary (Jim's sister and her husband.) Hope everyone has a special day.

Have a great week!

Time for Change

2012-02-12T12:53:00.001-06:00

After over 20 years of providing hardware technical support I'm changing jobs and I'm really, really excited.

Just before the winter break our software support specialist resigned so instead of replacing that paraprofessional job the district took the opportunity to create a new professional position that merges those responsibilities with several more including the email administration. It's been in the works since early January and had to go through several HR and school board approval steps but it's finally a done deal and I've been given the opportunity to fill the new position effective tomorrow. It's actually not as big of a change in duties as it sounds because it's pretty much everything I've been doing for a long time plus more but minus the field support for hardware. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is the opportunity to learn new things like some advanced FileMaker development and possibly even iOS app development. I have a lot of settling in to do first and most importantly need to get up speed on our software licenses and purchases. I haven't had an office job since 1983 so it's going to be a little weird but I'm ready. :o) I'm especially ready to do one job instead of two like I've been doing for about a year now. I was hoping our director would put out an email about this before now but he hasn't yet so this will be the first time some of my work friends will be finding out and I hope they're happy for me. Nothing will really change except for me not being on campuses for repairs.

Our weekend at the farm was lazy… pretty much like last weekend except it was COLD and windy which made it hard to be outside. It was beautiful though so you didn't realize how bad it really was until you stepped out the door. The only "work" we did was to clean up after the cows and put out a new bale of hay for them. I don't know what the temps were when we woke up but at lunchtime it had only warmed up to 36 with a windchill of 12.

My camera is still in the shop waiting on a part that are apparently coming by donkey because it's going to be another 10-14 days. Don't they realize I have cows to photograph?

On Saturday Bonnie was digging at something in the pen. She's not a digger so I went to check and she had uncovered a nest of tiny, tiny baby rabbits. She uncovered them but didn't actually get deep enough to disturb them so I put all the nesting material back on top with gloves on so it wouldn't smell like human. Hopefully the mom will come back. The rest of the weekend we put a big tub over the area with a brick on top every time we let Bonnie out so she wouldn't mess with them anymore. We get rabbits in the pen a lot because I guess they realize it's a protected area from the big predators since the gate is always closed.

We're home now and catching up on email then we're going to my work so I can move my office. Jim's going to help me. My office phone number won't change so if you have that in your contacts it will still be good.

Have a great week!

Living Room Project

2012-02-04T22:29:00.000-06:00

There won't be an update from the farm this weekend because we went down Friday night, fed the cows, spent quality time on Saturday brushing them, let them graze the rye, ran some errands, relaxed, then headed back home at about 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. Our friend Molly is coming to watch the Superbowl with us tomorrow and we've been working on the living room every night so I haven't had time to go to the grocery or anything.

My camera is in the shop getting cleaned and repaired so I don't have any pictures though if I did they'd look like last weekend's pictures because it was pretty much a carbon copy. In the last several weeks I've noticed that my pictures are fine in the center but the outer edges curve up or down which is odd but that's what warranty is for I'm letting the Geek Squad take care of it. I miss my camera.

The rest of this blog post will be boring to anyone but our parents, sorry...

We mostly finished the living room this week…finally! We've been dragging our feet for months. When we got home last Sunday we sanded for a couple of hours. What a huge MESS! Even though we had the doorways covered in plastic there was drywall dust all over the house. We went out Sunday night and got all the paint and stuff we needed. Monday night... more sanding after dinner with Matt (Lynlie had a school thing.)

On Tuesday night Jim textured the ceilings in the living room and entryway along with the ceiling and walls in the little room. I was really dreading this part because it was an unknown factor. We already had a good air compressor and we bought a $20 texture hopper thing that sprays the mud. He practiced in the backyard on a piece of drywall until he had the sprayer adjusted to his liking then started in the little room where mistakes would be less noticeable. It actually went a lot faster than we expected and was way less of a mess than I thought it would be. It looked good but until it's painted you can't really tell.

On Wednesday night Jim painted the ceilings while I put two coats of enamel on all the trim and door frames. That's the only room in the house that still had oak trim instead of white and it was dark so it ended up taking 3 coats of enamel to cover it but it was worth the work because it made a huge difference. While I finished the second coat Jim did the cut-in of the wall color up at the ceiling line because it's vaulted and I have to stand on the top step of the big ladder to reach.

On Thursday Jim was in Austin all day so I took a vacation day and painted all the walls from 8:30-4:00. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate painting? The cut-in just makes me crazy and takes forever because you have to be so careful. There's a lot in that room around the baseboards and 4 door frames. Anyway once I got done it took another hour to clean up the mess then I cleaned the drywall dust off of all the furniture and stuff as I brought it back in the room. By the time Jim got home at 8:30 I had the living room all put back together. When he called on his way home I led him to believe I didn't finish because I wanted it to be a surprise. It wasn't a complete lie since I still need him to help me put the mirror back up over the fireplace. I mopped the floors, cleaned, and saw parts of our house that we haven't seen since the beginning of October because furniture and boxes were stored everywhere.

On Friday I picked up new light fixtures at Lowes for the entryway and for the little room. I installed the one in the entryway when I got home from work and put up the other one when we got home from the farm a bit ago. I think I was an electrician in a past life and I credit my dad for my love of fixing and installing things.

We're not totally finished because we're going to have the fireplace faced in stone and put some cabinetry or something in the little room. The ceilings and texturing look amazing. I'm so impressed and proud of the work Jim did. There's no way you can tell there was ever a skylight in the ceiling and the walls in the little room are perfect. Scraping the popcorn texture was a big mess and a lot of work but we're really happy with the results and all of the supplies including two light fixtures were less than $200! I can't even imagine what it would have cost to have it done.

Below are some progress shots though it's impossible to capture texture photos. Some of the picts were taken with my phone so they're not great.

The little room after tearing out the wet bar and cabinet.

The gross popcorn ceiling… it's in every room and we want it gone!

After the wallpaper was removed.

Sealing off the plumbing before we close it up in the wall.

Preparing to patch in drywall over the skylight opening.

Jimbo hard at work.

No more popcorn texture!

Getting ready to spray texture.

Done! The walls are tan, not orange like they look in the picture. Love the color.

You can't tell where the skylight was. Jim blended the drywall perfectly.

The next project will be to update the bathrooms one at a time: remove and replace all the tile, replace the plumbing fixtures (raise the shower heads for Jimbo), new countertops and toilets, strip the wallpaper and ceiling texture, retexture and paint etc. We can do all this ourselves and while it's a lot of work (especially the tiling) it's the part I'm looking forward to the most and can't wait to get started.

Once all the other rooms are done (ceiling retexture) we'll tear out the carpet and put down wood floors. That will be our biggest expense but all of these projects together are still way more affordable than buying a new house. We like our home and our neighbors so we're staying. :o)

Happy birthday on Tuesday to my cinnamon chip buddy, Russell who will be 6 (is that possible??) and also to the precious twins next door, Luke and Chloe who will be a year old. Now the fun really begins with two toddlers. :o) Happy birthday Thursday my favorite father-in-law Jim. Hope everyone enjoys their special day.

Have a great week!

(PS: I don't know what Blogger has done to its interface but I don't like the new updates and I can't get the spacing right between pictures. Sorry 'bout that.)

Sleepy Cows

2012-01-29T11:03:00.001-06:00

The one thing I like about winter is that it's a slower season at the farm. Even though we seldom get real winter-like weather, there's less that needs to be done outside other than tending to the herd. Jim usually piddles with one project or another but nothing that has a deadline so we get to just relax more if we want to. This was another one of those weekends.

We got to the farm at about 8:30 Friday night, unloaded then fed the cows. We'd gotten 1-1/2" of rain earlier in the week so that was good. The ground was mostly dried so we left the gates open for them to graze around the house. About 30 minutes after we came in they were staring in the windows and enjoying the rye grass.

On Saturday morning we needed to go to Stamford so we had breakfast at our favorite place there then went by the feed store to check on the owner, Jim. The last time we were there Kevin told us he was in the hospital with a lung issue so we wanted to see how he was doing. Jim was there and it turns out he had pneumonia (though they initially told him he had lung cancer!) but is fine now. The gunsmith is just across the road from the feed store and that's what we were really going for because my shotgun was ready to be picked up. They cut about 2" off the stock to make it shorter for me and put on a shock absorbing pad. It's perfect now!

We just goofed off the rest of the morning and even took a nap after lunch. It was a little warmer in the afternoon so Jim went to the other pasture to put the new tire on the grain drill. I was watching a movie when he came in and said all the cows were down in the front yard. Shocking. I love taking pictures of sleepy cows.

When Ranger is up walking around he likes to act like he's the boss of things but when he's laying down I can do anything I want with him. I laid with him for a long time petting and kissing him and even gave him a leg massage. He's rotten.

A while back Eddie had told us he wanted to make a granite headstone for Clyde's grave. When we got to the farm Friday night we found that he'd left it on the porch this week when he came to feed the cows. What a special thing to do for us. The stone is about 6" or so thick so while Jim was getting a bale of hay for the cows Saturday I put in in place. While I dug the hole I cried (of course) and thought about what a really great dog Clyde was. I still can't look at his pictures for very long. I miss my boy.

After muffins this morning Jim fed the cows again while I did some cleaning up then we ran a couple of errands and headed home. I thought I'd take advantage of the drive home to write and upload this because we plan on spending the afternoon and evening working on the living room. We've been putting off finishing it because it's just not fun but it's never going to get done if we don't just suck it up and get moving.

Happy birthday tomorrow to our Uncle Bill, on Thursday to our wonderful Eddie, and on Saturday beautiful Abbie will turn 15 which means she can take driver's ed. Look out world! :o)

Have a great week!

Jim's New Car

2012-01-27T10:21:00.002-06:00

At the beginning of December we ordered a 2012 Camry Hyrbrid for Jim. Since the truck is now at 254,000 miles we decided to let it just be a "back and forth to the farm" vehicle and get Jim something more economical to drive especially since he goes to Houston and Austin a lot. It took a long time and a lot of research for him to decide on the Camry and I wasn't sure he'd fit because of his height but it's really roomy inside and he has plenty of leg room. He wanted the XLE model but without the moon roof which is usually standard with that model so we had to special order it. With the moon roof you lose and inch of headroom. That may not sound like much but it actually makes a big difference for him. It has gray leather interior, heated seats, a backup camera, and the Entune system so he can download all his phone contacts and call them hands-free, check weather, sports, stocks, email, etc on the panel as well as a navigation... basically all the bells and whistles that he's never had before and he deserves it.

The car came in last week and it's just beautiful. Jim hasn't had a car since about college so this is quite a change for him and he's really enjoying it. He's already getting mileage in the upper 40's. Woo hoo! It looks black in the pictures but it's "Cosmic Gray" which is a dark gray/blue. Now if we can just keep him from rear-ending another car while looking at all the lights and stuff on the dashboard.... :o)

Not Much To Tell

2012-01-22T13:45:00.001-06:00

We had a pretty low-key weekend at the farm so there's not much to tell. When I got home from work on Friday Jim was already there and had the truck packed up to go so we got to the farm at about 7:30. As we were walking down to feed the cows we could hear water running and sure enough, they'd apparently knocked the faucet on their fresh water tank with a horn and it loosened a bit. Water was spewing but not bad and it didn't look like it had been going for too long so that's good. Jim tightened it back up and all was fine.

Saturday morning was pretty but only 27 degrees. Quite a change from 80 Thursday and Friday. When I opened the door this is what I saw.

We went to Munday (about 20 miles) to get a new tire for Steve's grain drill then ran a couple of errands. When we got home it was apparently nap time in the front yard. Gabby's horns are really growing.

Ranger had been laying down too but as we pulled up the dog fom across the road came over to say hi which made Ranger jump up and run to the fence. He's our guard cow.

It turned warmer in the afternoon and we walked out to feed the herd and move some of the hay around so they could reach it better. While Jim was working on something in his shop I brushed all the cows, sang to them and took pictures. Lacey was standing in some trees and I was trying to get a good shot of her but she wouldn't look at me. I kept calling her and making noises but she completely ignored me. So I moved around to the other side and she looked the other way. ha! It became a game and she refused to look at the camera.

Maddie hasn't missed many meals.

We just goofed around the rest of the evening and I went to bed early. It's the only way I can catch up on sleep because my body just refuses sleep late. We had some stuff we needed to do at home so we did one last feeding early Sunday morning, packed up and headed home at about 9:45.

Misc....

Jim's car is supposed to be ready for pick up tomorrow and we're really excited. We had to order it to get what he wanted so we've been waiting about 7 weeks. I'll take pictures when we get it home tomorrow if it's still daylight. :o)

Happy birthday to our cutie pie niece Emily who became a teenager yesterday. I can't believe it's been 13 years since we sat around the hospital waiting for her to be born.

Also, happy birthday tomorrow to my friend Kurstin and on Friday to my favorite mother-in-law, Sharon. Hope all of you have terrific birthdays!

That's it for now. Have a great week!

Quick Trip

2012-01-15T22:56:00.000-06:00

Jim went to Las Vegas with Mike and Justin on Tuesday for the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest show of it's kind in the country. It was spread out in several buildings and he said there's no way you could see it all in 3 or 4 days. He wasn't going to get home until Saturday afternoon so I took Bonnie and went to the farm by myself Friday afternoon to take care of the herd.

When I got to Haskell I walked down to feed and pet the cows. They had eaten down one of their bales of hay so I moved what was left to the other rack and decided I had enough daylight to go ahead and get them another bale from the south pasture. It took a couple of minutes to get the tractor started because it was cold but I got it going and headed down the road. When I'm on the tractor I usually sing the Green Acres theme song and if Jim's not at the farm I take video and email it to him. It's tradition. Once I got a bale of hay loaded on the back I sang my song while driving back and took video with my phone. I'm sure he was wishing he was in Haskell instead of Vegas. ha!

The Haskell County Jr. Stock Show was on Thursday and Friday. Kids in the 4H or FFA programs raise and show lambs, steers, pigs, or rabbits. The kids learn so much about animals and agriculture in these programs and they're all so proud of their animals. The Alsabrook kids (except 5 year old Allen) showed their pigs for the first time. I missed the show but the auction was on Saturday so I wanted to go to that. When the animals are auctioned off the kids don't actually have to give them up…they get the money. It's a way for them to raise funds for their education or whatever.

Most of the animals had already been taken home before the auction but the steers were still there. This one is some European breed and won one of the top prizes. He's beautiful and his owner is showing him in the Fort Worth Stock Show next week. That's Haylee petting him. It was hard to get a good picture because I didn't want to use a flash and scare him.

This little boy had won awards for several animals. I think this was when they auctioned his lamb. I had been talking to him before the show while we were standing around a fire outside warming our hands. He's 10, very polite, and was telling me about his animals. I asked if he lived in Haskell and he said no, he lived in the country. That made me laugh.

I had to take a picture of this little girl. She was so cute and smiley with her sweet little rabbit.

Here's Allen and Rebecca. By this time Allen had eaten 3 or 4 brownies and was wired! Becca is just as precious as she looks.

Austin won 2nd place for his pig!

Beautiful Abbi took 8th place for her pig.

My sweet little buddy, Haylee. Her pig placed lower but I'm not sure where. She was excited just to be there.

This is the girl who showed the beautiful steer. They usually clip the hair right before the show but they didn't do his because they wanted to wait for the Fort Worth show. I wonder if Ranger will let me bathe and blow dry him. I'm guessing not!

Wesley, Michelle and the kids came over to see the cows and visit for a while in the afternoon. Abbi and Austin were telling me how some of their friends had wanted to be in the program and show animals but their families couldn't afford it. I'm going to see if there's a way for us to sponsor some kids because it's a great program.

Jim called to say he was finally home but he didn't sound good. On Wednesday he came down with the cold that I'd had last weekend so he'd been treating it but was still really congested when he got on the plane. The change in pressure must have been pretty miserable. Poor guy. I had left him plenty of meds, oranges, and a box of Puffs Plus at home and told him I'd be home around lunchtime on Sunday.

Saturday afternoon Bonnie had a bout of unpleasant stomach problems…I won't elaborate. At about 6 I realized she needed to be home where she could go in and out the doggy door whenever she wanted to so I made a last minute decision to just head home. There was very little daylight left so I ran down to feed the cows one more time, threw everything in the car and headed out. I don't like to drive at night because I don't see well in the dark. That coupled with the risk of deer jumping out made for a stressful trip but my car has awesome headlights and I made it home safely. It was good to see Jim since he'd been gone all week.

We've been laying around all day today just relaxing and watching football. We're off tomorrow for Martin Luther King Day so I'm hoping to sleep in.

Have a great week!

That Time Of Year

2012-01-08T18:28:00.001-06:00

I'm almost never sick but once a year I always get a really bad cold (not that there's a really good cold.) This is that time of year. I've been feeling it coming for the last several days but I've been so busy I've just ignored it. By Friday night I couldn't ignore it anymore and took some meds on the way to the farm.

Saturday morning was beautiful but cold with a north wind. I heard a lot of squawking going on outside and went out with my camera. There was wave after wave of sandhill cranes flying over. I think they're beautiful in flight.

Jim told me to stay inside and he'd take care of the cows but I was still not too bad by that point so I helped because I wanted to see them. At mid morning they were up near the house and down for their nap so I went out and loved on all of them. It's a tough life…

By Saturday afternoon and evening I was feeling pretty bad and today has been absolutely miserable. Jim has a business trip this week and can't afford to get sick so he's been taking Cold-Eeze since yesterday. I hope that stuff works. Anyway, all I can do is let it run its course and stay close to the vaporizer. I'll be staying home tomorrow (sorry Amy!)

Happy birthday tomorrow to our friend Jim Gray, on Friday to my friend Helen in Germany, and next Saturday to my co-worker Paul. I hope all of you have terrific birthdays!

Have a great week!

Winter Break

2011-12-31T17:00:00.000-06:00

Jim and I had a really great winter break. After the past few months at work we really needed it. There was no stress, no pressures, no travel hassles, and no crowds. I had a few things to do at home on Monday and Tuesday then I went to Haskell on Wednesday before Christmas. On Thursday I went shopping in Abilene with Patsy then we met up with Jim's mom at his grandmother's nursing home in the afternoon for their party. This is Ma, Patsy, and Jim's mom Sharon.

Jim came down Thursday night then Friday morning we went to Stamford for breakfast to take some chocolates to our favorite waitress there. Afterward we stopped at the feed store to deliver treats there too then to the gunsmith to drop off the shotgun that I got back in September. I thought it was a little too long for me but apparently it's a lot too long. He's going to cut off about 3-4". The guy said I have an 11-1/2" pull distance (from trigger to shoulder.) That made me laugh.

The gunsmith is in the same building as the Stamford Mercantile which has a lot of nice handmade things. We found a tall stool made from an old plow seat and I thought Jim needed it for the shop. It's tall enough for Jim and has horseshoes for a footrest.

On Saturday we went out to deliver some little gifts to friends and neighbors. Our first stop was the Alsabrooks. I just love Wesley's kids. We visited for a while then joined them for lunch at La Familia (the mexican place.) They're so much fun. In the afternoon we went to Jim and Sharon's to watch the Cowboy game and had Stouffer's lasagna for dinner. I don't know why anyone would actually make lasagna from scratch when there's Stouffer's in the frozen food section of the grocery. It's SO good.

Christmas day was really low-key. I made pumpkin spice muffins for breakfast and deviled eggs to take for lunch. Jim and I weren't going to exchange gifts because we've got his new car on order but we agreed to something small. I got him these awesome coffee mugs that were hand painted by Mike Lavalee at Killer Paint. We saw him on TV a few years ago doing his amazing True Fire paint technique on cars and have followed his work ever since. He has incredible talent with an air brush. He was doing the mugs for Christmas and I asked him to do a couple with our cattle brand. They turned out so cool!

We spent the day at Jim and Sharon's eating and watching football and basketball then this week we just did stuff. Two of the days I stayed in my pj's until noon watching movies on TV. I never do that unless I'm sick (which is almost never) or we're iced in (which is almost never.) Jim worked on his welding trailer that's not finished but is turning out great. The bottles of welding gases will be mounted on the rack at the front and he's also going to mount a toolbox for the cables and stuff.

I played with the cows a lot and we took Wesley and Michelle out to dinner one night which was fun. I didn't take too many pictures and the ones I did were mostly of cows of course. These are my favorites.Check out how long the hair is in our boy's ears. He's like an old man…cracks me up.

They all enjoyed the rye grass by the house.

Chunky Monkey

Chunky Monkey Jr.

Our beautiful Lilly has developed a diva attitude lately. She better get over it.

Ranger had an itch on the top of his head. He's very bendy.

I love this picture of Gabby. It's not her best angle but she has such a sweet look. Love her!

Jackie's horns are getting so long and she's so sweet.

Wesley brought over 4 bales of hay that we've been meaning to pick up from Steve. They were loaded on their end and they're 1,500 lbs so you can't just push them off. Jim tipped them with the hay spike and flipped them off the trailer.

We unloaded feed and now it looks like we're opening our own feed store.

We tended to the cows one more time on Saturday morning, patted them all on the rump and said our goodbyes. We wanted to have a day at home before going back to work on Monday. It was a terrific break with weather ranging from drizzling rain then cold the first week, snow on Christmas eve, and temps last week in the 60's and even low 70's. I can't tell you how many times we both said, "I wish we could just stay here" but there are bills to pay and mouths to feed so it's back to work we go.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Holiday House

2011-12-21T07:03:00.003-06:00

Jim and I went out looking at Christmas lights last night and found this house not far from where Matt and Lynlie live. The yard was covered with cotton-type stuff with lights underneath so that it looked like snow and they had a lot of moving and lit things to look at but it was tastefully done. I love over-the-top decorating.

Let There Be Rest

2011-12-18T13:26:00.008-06:00

Winter break is finally here! Woo hoo! I survived last week, the week I've been dreading and preparing for for nearly 2 months. My team and I moved out and reassigned over 400 computers then the install of 400+ new Macs to replace them was Wednesday and Thursday night. All the organization paid off and everything went really well. (Arlene… I couldn't have done this without you. Thank you for all you do!) I was exhausted but the week ended with a sigh of relief. Now I can catch up on my sleep!

We got to Haskell at about 9:30 Friday and walked down to feed the cows. I love having them back home where we can just walk to them and have lights!

We slept late on Saturday (8:00 is late) then bummed around until 9 when we decided we couldn't put off working on the mud hole any longer. It wasn't going to fix itself. It had rained a bit more last week so it didn't get a chance to dry up but it wasn't muddy either, just soft and still clumpy. We reseated the meter box and managed to get the hole filled in but it's not totally smooth. We'll smooth it out better once it dries. We put the bench over the box so the herd wouldn't step on it.

I loved on the cows for a while and left the gates open so they could come out and graze around the house where there's some rye grass but they were napping by the hay and not interested in getting up. About an hour or two later they realized they could get out and ate and ate on the rye.

Everyone took a turn on the sad looking scratching tree.

There was play head-butting.

The calves explored.

And just general cow happiness.

Jim worked most of the afternoon on the second military trailer that will be for the welder/generator all the tanks and the air compressor. He has a plan in his head and has been wanting to do this for 2 years so maybe it will finally get done next week. He cut some pipes and got them welded into place.

We have 4 feed barrels in the shed and always have to remember which one we're working out of and has the scoop. I had put some magnets up on the wall above the current barrel but the cows kept knocking them off so I got the idea to paint one of the lock rings and did that Saturday afternoon. I don't know why I didn't think of this 4 years ago!

We had dinner in Stamford then went over to see Jim's grandmother at the nursing home. Deanna had told us that Ma was having trouble with the remote to her TV because the buttons are small and she would accidentally press the video source button then couldn't watch television until someone came that could figure out what she had done and change it back. I found this awesome big button remote on Amazon that's perfect for the elderly. The buttons are even back-lit so we got it for her for Christmas and set it up for her this weekend.

We were woken up at 1am Sunday morning to banging around outside the house. Gabby was trying to get in the trash can and Maddie was playing with the broom on the porch. Apparently cows have no concept of acceptable playtime hours. I got up and shooed them off but it only lasted a couple of hours and I had to do it again. Brats.

When I put Bonnie out Ranger was close by and came over to check her out. It's the first time he's seen her. Bonnie looks a little panicked. ha!

Just before we left I took some pictures of our happy herd.

Misc tech tip of the day… Never post anything on Twitter that you wouldn't put on a billboard. It's not private, it doesn't take a genius to decipher generalities, and anyone in the world can read it. Getting mad because someone reads your tweets doesn't make you the victim; it makes you the fool.

Happy birthday yesterday to my artist friend Brandy and today to our cousin Keith's partner, Marvin. Hope you both had a terrific day!

I can't believe Christmas is a week from today. It's been such a hectic fall with work that time has just slipped away from me. Jim and I hope all of you have a blessed and happy Christmas!

When The Cows Come Home

2011-12-11T11:52:00.007-06:00

What a crazy, busy, and cold weekend..mostly Saturday!

It snowed in Haskell on Monday and got into the low 20's several nights. Our neighbor across the road sent us this photo of our place.

When we got to the farm Friday night Jim saw water next to the power pole near the gate which is where the meter is. The water line had apparently frozen and cracked but it wasn’t bad enough to have to shut off the water so we just planned to fix it on Saturday.

We couldn’t find the buggy/gate key set so after searching for quite a while we finally just used the spare to go down and feed the cows. When it's cold they need full tummies to stay warm. Eddie had come twice during the week to feed them…he's awesome. When we got back to the house Jim finally found the keys in the pocket of his rain suit which I had washed this week but hung it up to dry otherwise I would have heard them.

On Saturday we needed to get grain for the cows so since we were in Stamford we stopped for breakfast. You know it's fall in Texas when you pull in to a restaurant and park next to this:

Stamford's football team had won their game Friday night so they're moving on to the state finals next weekend. Way to go Bulldogs! While we were having breakfast the lady at the restaurant was putting up signs. There are signs and streamers all over town and many of the businesses have painted their windows. When the teams leave for their games people line up on the streets and the team buses are escorted out of town by the police and fire department with lights and sirens. I love small town spirit!

Kevin and Jim were both at the feed store so we visited for a while since we haven’t seen Kevin in a couple of months. When we got back we unloaded the grain then we hitched up the cattle trailer to bring the cows home for winter. There's nothing for them to graze since the wheat didn't come up but there's nothing in the other pasture either and we like having them by the house in the winter. We have a little rye that's come up in the yard and they can graze that on the weekends. While Jim did a couple of things I went down to give them a little feed just to get them in the corral so I could trap them in. If they see the trailer they won’t go in so we have to trick them. Jim pulled in and they got all crazy. We don’t have an alleyway in that corral so we just have to get them to walk in the trailer which is no small feat. We eventually got Gabby and Maddie in then Jim drove them to the north pasture and let them out. I stayed with the others to keep them from busting down the corral because they were NOT happy that Jim drove away especially Lacey since her baby was in that trailer. He came back and we got Jackie and Lacey in the second load. I knew Lilly and Ranger would be okay in the corral since it was mother and baby so I went with Jim. I had to keep the other cows away from the gate as he drove in and while we tried to get back out. It was pretty easy to get Lilly and Ranger in the trailer then we finally had them all back together in the north pasture. Here's Gabby and Lacey "helping" Jim with the trailer door.

Our little herd is really tight. When they're separated then you get them all back together they act like they haven’t seen each other in a month when it's really been about 10 minutes.

We went back to the south pasture with the trailer to load up all the cow accessories... troughs, feed barrels, buckets, rakes, lick tubs, brushes, the wheelbarrow, etc. Once we got everything put away Jim went back with the tractor to get the hay bin so we can keep 2 bales at a time out for them through the winter then we won’t have to worry about running out during the week. While he went for a bale of hay I refilled the all the feed barrels and filled up the water trough. The cows were all exploring and playing on the high sides of the tank. It wasn’t like that when we moved them last summer and they thought it was fun. They like the trees too, especially Ranger. He was only a couple weeks old when we moved them to the south pasture and there are no trees down there. He was going from tree to tree rubbing up against them like a bear.

I went for the second bale of hay while Jim started working on the water break. I had already turned the meter off and scooped out almost all of the water inside the box. It was the biggest muddy mess ever and it’s thick mud that you get stuck in. He figured out where the problem was and I went to the hardware store for PVC parts while he dug the box out as well as down the line a bit which was a nasty mess.

The mud was like quicksand and it was cold and getting colder. As I was pulling out mud with a hoe I hit on something and we realized it was a big tree root. Apparently the pipe didn't break from freezing. It broke from the root's slow growth which pushed up on meter and water line causing it to finally crack. We'd gotten to the root of the problem. Ha! Get it? "Root" of the problem? I crack myself up. Anyway, Jim chopped out the root and we worked for about 2 more hours in the mud and cold until we had it repaired and could turn the water back on. Neither of us could feel our hands or feet and we didn’t cover the line back up so we could check it tomorrow just to be sure it’s fixed.

When we came in I made chili for frito pies for dinner. While the chili was simmering we took showers then I put our muddy clothes in the washer. Saturday night was the annual Haskell Christmas parade and as much as I always love that there was no way I was going to spend any more time outside in the cold. We were absolutely exhausted and were in bed by 8:00 without feeling one bit guilty.

I woke up at 4:15 Sunday morning to the sound of rain. We hadn't planned on that! All of our tools were still out by the mud hole. It was still raining at 6:00 when I got up to put Bonnie out. While she was outside Wags came over from across the street for a bone. He makes me laugh. I gave him a bone and off he went perfectly happy.

We lazied around until about 9:00 then put on our rain suits and went outside. Jim put a wooden pallet over the mud hole since there's now nothing we can do about it this weekend. Fortunately it's not supposed to freeze this week. When we walked down to see the cows we found them laying down in their shed out of the rain… so smart!

We had enough empty lick tubs for each of them to use for feed so they didn't have to eat in the rain.

We'd done all we could and the cows were taken care of so we packed up and now we're headed home. This is going to be a stressful and exhausting week coming up. Jim's company is installing over 400 iMacs for us Wednesday and Thursday nights after school. Before that can happen my team and I (5 of us) have to move out the 400+ computers that are being replaced and send them to other campuses. We'll be doing that during the day of Wednesday and Thursday but I'm also going to be on site those nights during the install. I'm not sure how I'm going to work that out and still get a few hours of sleep but I'll figure out something. My boss is trading me time off for working those nights but I don't have time to take off. ha! I'll have to take it after the holidays. There's a ton of prep work that goes into a deployment like this which I'll work on Monday but I have a plan and I'm sure it will be fine. It always is. :o)

Have a great week!

Rained In

2011-12-04T13:49:00.001-06:00

The forecast for this weekend at the farm was rain and they were right. Now, I know everyone's been praying for rain because we're in such a severe drought but I'm thinking we should have been more specific with our request… something like "rain and 70 degrees." What we got was rain, wind, and lower 30's. That's pretty miserable for man and beast.

About 3/4 of our trip to Haskell Friday night was in dense fog... kind of scary. It was dark and raining when we got there so we didn't try to go down to the pasture.

I woke up at about 4:45 Saturday and couldn’t get back to sleep so when Bonnie got up at about 5:30 to go outside I just stayed up. It was cold, pouring rain, and the wind was blowing hard. My poor cows. :o( After breakfast we put on our rain suits and boots to go feed the herd. We slopped back to the shed, put some alfalfa in the tub and took the buggy down to the pasture. It was pretty iffy and I was afraid we'd get stuck. We couldn’t go out the front way since the waterway was full of water so we went to the back west gate through the north pasture which was muddy & slippery.

The cow's shed was wet inside where the water had run in underneath but it wasn’t too bad. They were all staying inside out of the cold wind. We dragged all their feed troughs from the corral to the inside so they wouldn't have to eat in the rain then we did some cleaning up.

While we were doing all that the rain stopped (temporarily) and it was actually not bad outside. The wind had blown a bunch of the hay out onto the ground so we scooped it up and put it back in the bin.

We went to Munday to pick up a part Jim had ordered then came home where we stayed the rest of the day and night. It rained off and on but in the afternoon the sun came out for just a little while. I worked on our Christmas card which I usually have done by now, we took a nap, and just goofed off all day. I had veggie soup in the crock pot which made the house smell good and we had that for dinner. That was our exciting day!

Sunday morning was even colder than yesterday and Monday is supposed to be colder still before it starts to warm up a little. Yuck. The cows are thicker than asian yaks so I don't think the temps are bothering them but they don't like the rain and mud when it's like this. Me either. After muffins for breakfast we put on our rain suits again because it was sleeting and tended to the cows again. We gave them extra food and alfalfa. Everything is clean and I put a little more hay on the ground in the barn to help with the mud. They have it better than most cows so I'm not going to worry about them (much.)

Misc.

Get well wishes to my dad who spent a couple of days in the hospital last week. I think he just wanted to get out of the house. :o)

Today is Jim's and my 12th anniversary! Yea us! We're on our way home now and plan on going to Logan's tonight. It's our usual place for special occasions because they have great ribeyes.

We just passed through Graham, TX and Jim pulled over so we could get this picture… The truck turned over a quarter million miles and still running like a champ!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Beautiful Maple

2011-11-27T17:11:00.000-06:00

I was afraid while we were gone this past week that we'd miss the leaves changing on our maple tree. Once it turns they only last a few days before the wind blows them off. When we got home today we were surprised to see how beautiful it was.

I love this tree. It has grown quickly and perfectly straight with a smooth light-colored bark. I don't think Texas is the ideal climate for it because it's supposed to turn in October but Jim waters it faithfully in the summer and it's done great.

Thanksgiving Week

2011-11-27T12:48:00.000-06:00

I was off this past week and it was SO nice to have some down time. Work has been stressful the last few weeks and the upcoming weeks until the winter break will be even more so because we're deploying over 400 new computers. There's a lot of work and coordination that goes into that. Anyway, I got several things done on Monday and Tuesday then we headed to Haskell Tuesday evening because Jim was off the rest of the week too. Yea!

On the way to the farm I called Eddie to tell him he didn't have to feed the cows this week and while we were talking he said he wanted to make a granite grave marker for Clyde. How sweet is that? It made me cry. I miss our boy every day. After unpacking everything we went over to Jim and Sharon's farm to visit but didn't stay long. I hadn't been able to sleep Monday night so I was dragging.

Wednesday was a weird day because it felt like Saturday. We went to Stamford for breakfast and to go to Walmart where I got a few Christmas decorations. On the way back we stopped at the courthouse and renewed our cattle brand registration…$16 later we were good for another 3 years.

We've been needing to replace a 20' long sheet of roofing tin on the cattle barn because Tim had apparently run out of sheets and used a piece that was too narrow. No matter how many screws Jim put in it the thing still made this horrible, loud vibrating noise every time the wind blew just right. He had stopped at the metal place in Lubbock when he was there last week and brought home a new 4 x 20 sheet. You have to be careful working with that stuff because the wind catches it and the edges are sharp. It could easily cut you up pretty bad. But Wednesday was a beautiful calm day so we decided to get that taken care of.

Caution -- Wide Load!

We took care of some other things and I played with the cows a lot. Betty from across the road came over and brought us a cake and some 7-layer dip. So nice!

Thanksgiving was a lazy day! We had lunch with Jim's parents and his 95 year old grandmother. I made deviled eggs and green bean casserole. The guys grilled steaks and Sharon made baked potatoes, cole slaw, and rolls. We also had Betty's cake, a pumpkin pie, and brownies. We ate then laid around like beached whales for a bit then Sharon and I took Ma back to the nursing home. When we came back my Jim was laid out on the floor with a pillow and blanket, her Jim was stretched out in the recliner, and Bonnie was sound asleep on the couch.

By 6:30 we were home in our jammies, still miserable from eating too much, and watched Secretariat. I had recorded it a while back but never watched it. Great movie!

Friday morning I put some garland and red balls on the front gates then hung a couple strands of icicle lights across the front of the carport. Nobody ever told me what a pain in the rear it was to hang icicle lights because they get tangled but I like them a lot. Later in the afternoon I decided to decorate the longhorn metal art on the backside of the south cattle barn and put a hat on it. It made me laugh and it faces the road so I hope people passing by enjoy it too.

Sometime overnight Friday the winds shifted out of the north, were blowing really hard, and it was cold! I woke up around 4 am to some banging noise and I realized it was the stack of tin siding that Jim had cut and was laying by the storage shed. The wind was blowing it around and it was hitting the tractor. We went out in the dark in our pj's and no gloves to round it up. That's a recipe for disaster but we were ok. We put some bricks on them to hold the stack down and went back to bed. About 30 minutes later the wind blew that too so we went back out and put some even heavier paving stones on them. Later in the morning we ended up moving the metal into the shed because they just kept catching the wind. According to the weather station on the west edge of town the winds were sustained at 35 mph with gusts up to 50. That's crazy. Jim had wanted to do some welding Saturday but that was out of the question. Just standing up outside required effort.

We had lunch at Dairy Queen with Jim's parents and aunt and uncle before Jim and Sharon headed back home. Afterward we stopped at the hardware store where I found a dusk-to-dawn timer on sale for only $10! Jim mounted it on the pole for me so our Christmas lights will come on for a few hours every night. That's the only decorating that's going to happen because our living room at home is still a work in progress so we won't be putting up the tree or any other decorations this year. I'm okay with that.

After a short nap we went down to refill the cows' feed barrels and give them some alfalfa. They were all standing around in the shed out of the wind like smart cows.

Ranger was all riled up, probably because of the wind and cold, and being a little head-butting brat. He was just playing but we can't let him get into that habit because it won't be as fun once he's over 1,000 pounds. ha! I had to pop him on the nose a couple of times. He let Jim brush him for a minute before running off to eat.

We just relaxed the rest of the afternoon/evening. It was too windy to do anything else. Sunday morning had the same winds but was even colder. Jim drove down to feed the herd one more time while I did a little cleaning in the house and got things ready to go home. We left at about 10:45 so we could have a little time at home before going back to work tomorrow.

We had a nice, no-stress week and I feel recharged for the upcoming computer deployment and work that will have to be done leading up to it.

Happy birthday on Thursday to our cute little red-headed niece Kaylee. I can't believe it's been 8 years since we stood around in the hospital waiting for her to be born. Thursday is also Austin Alsabrook's birthday. He'll be 13… a teenager! The girls better watch out because he's already a smooth talker.

Congratulations to Angie and her family on the addition of Tank to their family on Friday. This cute little face has no idea that she really lucked out. Angie's kids are going to love the stuffing out of her. :o)

Hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving!

This and That

2011-11-20T15:06:00.000-06:00

Jim went down to the farm Wednesday evening because he had to be in Lubbock on Thursday then he just stayed. I left work a little early on Friday so Bonnie and I could get there before dark and not have to worry as much about deer jumping out in the road.

Jimbo had gotten a lot done on Friday including finishing his fuel trailer and picking up 20 bales of alfalfa from our usual guy in Munday. He also called the place where we got our failed wheat seed. They told him they'd had a batch of seed that didn't germinate and once he read the lot number from the receipt they said that was the one. There's nothing they can do about our loss of grazing for this winter but they're replacing the seed which is great because that was over $500. We'll pick it up in the next week or two and store it until next fall.

Here's Jim's fuel trailer. He did a great job and it cost a fraction of what it would have been to buy one already made especially since Steve gave him the tank. It's hard to believe that's the same nasty looking tank. The orange strap is temporary.

After breakfast Saturday we went down to feed the cows and Jim took the tractor so he could put out another bale of hay. He had picked up another feed trough on his way back from Lubbock so now everyone has their own and the calves don't have to eat out of the baby tub.

Maddie loves to eat as you can tell by her nose and lips.

We did this and that then after lunch I went to the craft show in town with Betty, my neighbor across the road. We ended up talking at her house for quite a while then Jim and I went over to the Alsabrooks for an hour or so just to hang out. I made chili for frito pies for dinner and we just relaxed the rest of the evening. The whole day was pretty laid back which was nice.

Saturday was really windy but warm and beautiful. When we woke up Sunday morning it was a whole different story. It was still windy but they'd shifted out of the north and it was cold! After breakfast we went down to feed the cows and they were all laying around at the back fence. They're so thick and furry they don't care that it's cold. After they ate I brushed everyone really good and moved some of the hay that had blown off the bale into the shed for them to bed down on. We did this and that then packed up and headed home. I'll be back sometime on Tuesday so I didn't mind leaving a little early to get a few things done at home. We're going to go look at some cars tonight for Jimbo while there are no sales people there to bug us. :o)

I hope all my work friends have a terrific and relaxing week off. We've all earned it!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Progress

2011-11-13T20:01:00.000-06:00

Jim and I have projects going on all over the place… projects at work, projects at home, and projects at the farm. It's sometimes overwhelming but little by little they're each making a little progress which is better than no progress at all. The iPad project at work is coming along. 1,300 iPads are set up and inventoried and now I'm going back through to upgrade all of them because Apple released a major operating system update since I started. Thanks Apple. But it's going okay and I'm working on it as much as I can while also helping coordinate a computer deployment in December.

We're at a stage of the living room project that I can't really help with. Jim finished capping off all the plumbing in the little weird wet bar room, covered it with drywall and has been patching seams and uneven places with "mud" and sanding. Same with the ceiling. I've had quite a bit of work to do in the evening this past week so I do that on the couch and keep him company. Since we're gone on weekends, the evenings are the only time we can work on the house. We're almost to the point where we're ready to seal off the room with plastic, do a final sanding then spray texture. I can help with that and then I can paint. Anyway, it's slow going but we're getting there.

Jim had to be at a meeting in Houston on Friday which is a 5 hour drive. He didn't get home until 7:00 and driving another 3 hours to the farm didn't really top his list so we waited until Saturday morning to drive out there. We got on the road at 6:30 a.m. so we were there by about 9:45. When we went down to feed the cows we could see a coyote way at the back drinking out of our tank. I zoomed as much as I could and took a few pictures. Only 1 turned out well enough to see him and when I cleared it up a little I could see that he has an injury to his back left leg. Poor little guy. Looks like he may have tangled with a dog or a feral hog.

While Jim worked on his fuel trailer project I spent a lot of time with the cows. After cleaning up and brushing everyone really good they all laid down around the hay. I sat by Ranger and sang to them for nearly an hour. Ranger laid his head in my lap for the longest time while I stroked his face then he laid over on his side with his eyes closed while I scratched his stomach. He's really rotten.

Jim made great progress on his fuel trailer Saturday. He had started welding this frame last weekend to hold the tank. While I was with the cows he had finished it, mounted it on the trailer, and painted it to match. Looks great!

Last weekend he cleaned out the inside of the fuel tank that Steve had given him. It had been buried for several years and was in pretty rough shape. Saturday he sanded it, cleaned up the pipe threading in the openings, flipped it over and painted the bottom half so it could dry overnight.

I spent some more time with the cows in the afternoon and took this picture of Ranger. I was trying to catch him with hay on his head. He was roughing up the bale with his little horns like the big ones do. So cute.

After dinner we stopped by Patsy and Bill's to visit a bit and pick up the popcorn balls that aunt Jeanette made for us. Best popcorn balls EVER. Thanks Jeanette!!

On Sunday morning we hitched up the trailer and headed to Anson to pick up 20 square bales of alfalfa. This was all prearranged with the people who had it for sale. They knew we were coming and when. We drove 30 miles but nobody was there. Jim called their cell and they were at breakfast… said they'd be back in an hour. Seriously? Thanks for nothing. We left. On the way home we called the guy we usually get alfalfa from though we were pretty sure he was done for the season. Turns out he'll have some this week so we arranged to get it next weekend. Yea! Alfalfa isn't the cow's main food source but it's really high protein and helps sustain them when there's nothing to graze like during this drought and in the winter. Now we'll have enough to get us until spring.

On the way to the farm Saturday we started smelling a foul rotten egg smell from the truck. It was still doing it on Sunday morning so I looked it up online while we drove to Anson. Everything said that was sulfuric acid from the battery and it could explode. Great. The truck has two batteries and one was replaced the last time it was serviced a few weeks ago. Jim got out and felt the other one and said it was pretty hot. On the way back to Haskell we stopped at Walmart and bought another battery. cha-ching! More money spent on the truck. It may be time to seriously consider retiring it to be a farm truck where it will reliably last another several years.

When we got home I did some rearranging in the feed storage to make room for more bales. Nice and clean!

Jim talked to Steve to see why he thought our wheat hasn't come up. We planted it at a good time and have had a couple of little rains on it. We see other wheat crops up and growing. Ours hasn't popped up at all. Steve said it could either be bad seed or (since it's been super windy) it could have popped up then the wind dried it out and it died. Jim went out in the field and tried to dig up some of the seed to see if it germinated or was just too deep. He couldn't find any at all so we're guessing Steve was right about it sprouting then dying and/or blowing away. Ugh! That's a few hundred dollars we'll never see again. It's too late to replant in time for grazing which is what we wanted it for. There's been some grass come up in that field especially around all the fence line so we turned off the hotline and opened the gates so the cows can graze over there. When they saw me putting zip ties on the gates to hold them back they came over to see what I was doing. Then they saw they could walk on through and the rest is history. They took off to explore and eat. Ranger took off running like he was getting away with something.

While I was with the cows Jim was working on his fuel tank again. He had it sitting on the trailer and had painted to top half. It looks terrific and I'm really proud of him. We went to Northern Tool one evening last week and got the cap for the fill opening and an electric pump to fill the tractors. He'll mount those next weekend.

This is what the tank looked like when we got it.

We didn't end up leaving Haskell until almost 3:00 which didn't get us home until 6:00. Now that it gets dark earlier it seems like it's really late. Jim and I walked up to Fuddruckers for dinner which is about 1/2 mile from our house. It's a perfect night for it.

Happy birthday today to our aunt Deanna! Hope you've had a terrific day Deener!

Congratulations to my friend Lisa and her husband Lyle on their latest adoption, Abigail (Abbie) who will be a new little buddy to their other bulldog, Bugs. How precious is this face!

That's it for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Uneventful Weekend

2011-11-06T15:50:00.001-06:00

Let me just begin by saying that uneventful weekends are just fine with me. :o)

There's truly nothing interesting to tell about this weekend and I didn't take any pictures. We slept in on Saturday, went to Stamford for cattle feed, then I tended to the cows and played with them while Jim worked on his fuel tank project. We had dinner at a new Mexican restaurant in town. It was good. Then we came home and watched The Social Network which we've been meaning to sit and watch for ages. It was interesting but I can't believe it won an Academy Award for best editing. There were several places that the background music was so loud that you could barely hear the dialog. And that's it! That was Saturday.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. Jim worked a little more on the fuel tank and I spent quality time with the cows. Everyone got a long brushing and I worked with Maddie for a while. She'll take as many cubes as I'll shove in her mouth but she's timid about being handled much so we're working on that. She's getting better though. We packed up and left at about 11:00 because Jim wanted to work on the house.

Earlier in the week…

Monday night was Halloween. We sat in the driveway visiting with our neighbors and giving out candy. We had a lot of trick or treaters. These are a few of my favorites. Our friends the Williams' came by with their girls and a friend. They live a few blocks down the road.

These are the twins from next door. It was a little later and I think they were over Halloween by then. ha!

This is Princess Elizabeth and her Smurf cousins.

This was a little Minnie Mouse and her brother Buzz Lightyear.

And here was my favorite of the night… how absolutely adorable is this little chicken?

On Thursday night Jim worked on cutting the water lines in the wet bar room and capping them off so we can close it all up in the wall. As he'd heat the pipe to solder on the cap the water kept rising and keeping it from sealing. We had all the faucets open to relieve the pressure and soaked as much as we could from the pipe but it kept happening. Eventually (2+ hours later) he got the hot water line sealed up. As I type this he's working on the cold water line. ack!

That's it for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Proud Mom

2011-10-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

Mike Moncrief was the mayor of Fort Worth from 2003 until June of 2011. He sent Matt this letter regarding a recent fire his station responded to. I'm so proud of my boy. :o) (Click to enlarge)

This was his coat after that call. Moms don't need to see stuff like this. Scary!

Fall Has Arrived!

2011-10-30T20:16:00.006-05:00

We're finally seeing some Fall weather… or at least what Texas calls Fall. That usually means 75 or 80 one day, 60 the next, then 80 again. You never know what to wear but I love this time of year and I'm so happy to see the 100's behind us.

We stopped at Tractor Supply on the way out of town to get a ton of cattle cubes because they were less expensive than the feed store right now but prices are supposed to drop in the next few weeks so we'll see. We prefer to do business with the feed store when we can but that's $120 difference in price.

Friday was game 7 of the World Series so we listened to it on the radio on the way to the farm until we lost signal. We have Sirius satellite but they carry the NFL games, not the MLB so we had to find it on a regular broadcast station. Once we got out of range we checked the score every few minutes on the phone but our Rangers were behind. We got to the farm in time to see the last couple of innings. The Rangers lost the game and it was disappointing but it was a really great series and they're still my all-time favorite!

After breakfast Saturday morning Jim and I unloaded the 40 bags of cubes then took the buggy down to see the cows. Everyone looked great and they were in a good mood. I had been a little worried about Jackie since we took her calf away last weekend but she was fine. We cleaned up, fed them, then I gave them all a good brushing. While I was brushing Jackie I heard some banging in the shed so I went in to find this…

Jim had forgotten to put the lid back on the feed barrel and Lacey was helping herself. On a related note, apparently one day this week one of them managed to get the lock ring off the barrel as well as the lid because when Eddie came on Wednesday they were all standing around eating. He said they were very polite and taking turns putting their head in. ha! I suspect Lacey was the ringleader for that too. She's pretty clever with her horns.

I spent some time with the cows and took a bunch of pictures. These are a few of my favorites… Ranger is so cute and flashy and fun to be with. He turned 5 months old last Thursday and we're really happy that he's staying with us.

Maddie is 7 months old now and still trying to nurse but I saw Lacey kicking her away so that's good. We don't really have a way to separate them to wean her so Lacey's doing it herself.

Sweet Gabby.

Later in the afternoon Jim was working on welding together a mount for the fuel trailer he's building so I went down to play with the cows and of course took some more pictures. I just can't resist this face.

Is there anything better than having a stick to scratch your head on?

Jackie and Lilly. They're both starting to get their winter coats. They feel thicker when I brush them.

I took some video of Ranger messing with the buggy because he's so cute. Lacey and Jackie took time out of their busy eating schedule to come in for a closeup. For some reason I can't get the videos to embed at full width so here's the link.

CLICK HERE

In the evening we went to the annual Fall Festival in the town square. There were about 7 or 8 big bounce houses for the kids. I thought this one was really cute for the littler ones.

That's Laura painting faces on the far side of the table. She does this every year.

They always have free hotdogs, drinks, and cotton candy. Free! Can you believe that?

There was a hayride and a band for entertainment.

We got there early before the crowds but there was a lot of people when we left. Everyone was having a good time.

I forgot my camera when I went down to tend to the cows this morning. After I fed and brushed everyone I started to work on the hay bale. It was packed really, really tight against the sides of the holder so I was using a pitchfork to loosen it up so the cows could get to it. When I pulled it out I noticed that some of it was damp and molding. The more I pulled the more I saw with mold spores. About that time Jim drove up (he had been working on his fuel trailer) and we eventually decided to pull all of it out and put in a fresh bale. He used the tractor to push all the old hay into the shed and I spread it all out as ground cover to insulate them. Some of it was still good but they'll eat that. If they're laying near good hay they'll eat while they're laying there. It's a tough life. I took this pictures with my phone. Pretty cushy!

When Jim started moving the hay Lacey threw herself onto the pile and thrashed around. I didn't grab my phone fast enough but I caught her throwing hay up on to her back a couple of times.

CLICK HERE

We had lunch at Dairy Queen before packing up and heading home in the early afternoon. The cows were all passed out asleep in the sun in the middle of the pasture when we left. So cute.

Misc.

We finished scraping the texture off the whole living room ceiling this week… huge, huge mess. Jim framed up the opening from the skylight, put up a panel of drywall, and applied the first layer of "mud" fill around the edges. He'll use that same stuff for a second layer and to fill all the messed up places on the wall in the wetbar room then we'll sand. Even by just removing the texture I have white dust on everything in the house so I can only imagine what I have in store by sanding. It's traveling through the air ducts. We're going to put up plastic over all the doorways etc to minimize the mess but I have a feeling it's a pointless effort. It will be worth it in the end. It will be worth it in the end. It will be worth it in the end. (trying to convince myself)

Angie next door sent me some pictures that she took of Elizabeth and the twins. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this one but it's my favorite and I just love it. Angie has a terrific eye for composition in her photos.

Today (Sunday) is Bonnie's 12th birthday and would have been Clyde's too. We still miss our boy so much. Today is also my friend Arlene's birthday, then Thursday is my dad's birthday as well as my friend Janie's little boy, Elliot who will be 2. My dad will be older than 2. :o) Happy birthday dad!

Guess that's it for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Caroline Mooooves To A New Home

2011-10-23T19:20:00.000-05:00

Finally another weekend! We live for Fridays. :o) We had no plans other than to tend to the cows which was nice for a change. With all the highway construction around us the traffic is terrible and it takes us about 40 minutes to get the first 15 miles but once we get past I-35 it's usually pretty smooth sailing. We didn't get to the farm until about 9:45 but took the buggy down in the dark (as usual) to do a head count and feed the herd.

After breakfast burritos on Saturday we went to Anson to pick up Gabby. We are NOT happy with that place right now. Before I even took her last week I called to see if they had time to A.I. her and Gene said yes. Then he called me on Thursday to say she hadn't cycled yet (of course not… it had only been 4 days!) and that he was going to Las Vegas on Saturday. He asked if we wanted to pick her up or board her for another week. I asked if his other A.I. technician was going to be there and he said no. I was furious. Even if we left her and she cycled there would be nobody there to A.I. her and then we'd be starting all over again at $10 a day. Apparently the bull riding championships are in Vegas this weekend and they have several bulls in the competition which means this didn't come as a surprise. If he had told me when I called that they'd all be gone in a week I never would have taken her until they were back. UGH! He said, "You can just bring her back in a week or two." Uh, NO! He's a really nice guy and did a great job last time but we had to pay for a wasted week. If he had said, "I should have told you we'd be gone so no charge for this" we'd probably try again but now I'm done. Done! We're going to just wait until next summer then lease a bull and breed all of them at the same time. That will give us a year to see what this crazy drought is going to do.

When we got home with Gabby all the cows were out in the middle of the pasture. They didn’t come running like we thought they would but once Gabby saw them she took off like her tail was on fire then they all realized who it was and there was a big mid-pasture head-butting reunion. So cute.

We cleaned up the shed, fed them again then took the trailer home. As we were pulling out of the gate a truck came up beside us and stopped. It was our neighbor across the road. He and his wife moved in a couple of months ago and we've been meaning to go over and introduce ourselves but they always looked busy. They were thinking the same about us. Keith and Betty are really nice and I think we're going to be fast friends and have fun with them over there. Keith has two huge beautiful cattle hauling trucks parked on their land which is what he does for a living. We talked in the middle of the road for quite a while. They have two 2,000 lb longhorn steers that they keep in another town and are trying to sell so we gave them Tim's phone number at Krooked River.

By this time it was nearly lunch so we ate at home then Jim went back to the pasture to do a few things while I gave the house a really good cleaning. I even cleaned the floors on my hands and knees instead of mopping. It smelled and looked great afterward. While the floors dried we took a nap then went to Dairy Queen for our weekly Blizzard.

I took the buggy across the road, picked up Betty and we went down to the pasture to see the cows. She took them some veggies. She’s been feeding them veggies over the fence when walking their dog, a big friendly chocolate lab named Quigley. We talked a lot and she showed me their house. We've never been inside and the bedrooms are huge. They have a lot of plans for it so that will be fun to watch.

We spent the evening watching the Rangers get whipped in the 3rd game of the World Series but I have faith in my Rangers!

I'd made arrangements with Michelle, the woman who's adopting Caroline, to deliver her on Sunday on our way home. After a late breakfast we hitched up the trailer and got everything ready to go then took the buggy down to spend some time with the herd. We cleaned up, brushed everyone then finally fed them so we could get them in the corral. Gabby absolutely panics when the gate is closed on the corral and tries to go over the side so we let her stay out and fed her in a tub.

We closed the rest in the corral and I stayed with them while Jim took the buggy back, got Bonnie, and came came back with the trailer. I took pictures while I waited because… well, just because. I never need a reason to take pictures of them especially when they're sticking out their tongue…makes me laugh. I'm easily amused.

Our little chunky monkey Madeleine hasn't missed a meal.

Caroline was playing with Jackie's tail. We're going to miss her and the next week or so is going to be hard on Jackie.

It took much longer to get Caroline in the trailer than we anticipated and was much more of an ordeal but we finally had her in there, secured and ready to go to her new home where her new family is anxiously waiting for her. She looked so tiny in there by herself.

As we drove away the herd was watching from the fence and Jackie was calling for her calf. So sad.

Caroline did really good on the 3-1/2 hour ride and was actually really calm. She's going to live in Muenster, a really cute little town north of Gainsville where they have Germanfest every year. Michelle and her husband have two young kiddos and are building a beautiful home on their land where their herd will be all around them. I didn't even cry when I left because I feel really good about where Caroline is going to be. She'll be well taken care of, have lots of cow and horse friends, and be loved by her new family.

Random stuff:

We had hoped the fuel filter we put in the truck a couple weeks ago would take care of the accelerator problem we've had for months but it didn't. It was a different problem… some kind of $800 sensor. We had to take it in again this week to fix that as well as a battery issue. While it was there they found a weird problem with our air filter that was fixed just by replacing it with a different kind. Jim says the truck now has way more power and runs like it's brand new. For $1,200 I would expect nothing less.

Our lawn guy (best lawn guy ever!) came on Wednesday to mow. I had texted him the week before and made arrangements for him to take out the row of bushes along our garage wall. The bed of dirt along there is too narrow to support the bushes that were planted and they were struggling to survive as well as hogging the sidewalk. Jim and I had talked about taking them out but just hadn't done it so I made an executive decision to let Jordan do it. He did a great job and I stopped by Lowes on the way home from work to get mums and mulch. By the time Jim got home I had it all finished. It still needs a border but didn't know what I wanted so I'll do that later. It's SO much better and more open than it was with bushes and a cheap home improvement project.

And speaking of home improvement, I finished stripping the wallpaper in our little wet bar room this week. It's pretty ugly during transition. I need Jim to cut out the drywall around the plumbing, cut off the pipes and cap them off, then patch the drywall in that area. We have a bit of filling to do then I'll sand down the walls and ceiling in preparation for texture.

On Thursday after work I decided to start on the ceiling. Oh. My. Gosh… what a monumental mess! We had bought a scraper thing with a bracket for a bag to catch all the texture but that didn't work at all for me. It may be the angle. I had put down a drop cloth and wet the ceiling with a sprayer. The texture came off easily enough but it went everywhere and because it was wet it stuck. I spent more time cleaning up the mess than I did removing texture and I didn't even do very much. This isn't going to be fun but Jim was unfazed by my experience and is ready to give it a try. This is the area around where the skylight used to be. Nice huh? I need to get it all scraped away so Jim can mount the new piece of drywall. If you ever want to remove the popcorn texture from your ceilings let me give you a bit of advice. Hire it out but don't tell your husband because he'll say, "We can do that. No problem!"

While 8 feet up on the ladder I got a good look at the top of the ceiling fan. Gross! It runs 24/7 most of the year so as long as it's moving you don't see all the crud it's collecting. I gave it a good cleaning.

My sister and brother-in-law are celebrating an anniversary this week. I think they've been married 32 years but I could be off by a year or two (or three.) Happy anniversary Cindy & Milton!

Guess that's it for now. We're going to settle in tonight to watch game 4 of the World Series. GO RANGERS!!

Three Day Weekend

2011-10-16T14:40:00.001-05:00

We had a 9am appointment with the vet in Haskell on Friday so we went to the farm Thursday night. Jim came home from work early and we went about 20 miles out of our way to stop at Justin Seed and pick up a pallet (1 ton) of wheat seed. Since we finally got a little rain we're hoping we can get some wheat to pop up for the winter.

We got to Haskell at about 7:45 and it was almost dark but since we had to pull the cattle trailer early in the morning we transferred all the wheat seed to the back of Dork. (This picture was taken the next morning.)

While we were moving seed a truck pulled in blocking our gate and someone was walking up. It was Jake from the golf course. He saw someone messing around at our place and we're not usually there on Thursday night so he came to check it out. How cool is that? He blocked the gate so whoever it was couldn't get out. We talked for a while then finished moving wheat and hitched up the cattle trailer so we'd be ready in the morning.

Friday was a bad day to be a calf at our place. It was the time I've been dreading… branding them all and getting Ranger steered. Just getting them loaded in the trailer was an ordeal and the moms were really upset. There was a lot of mooing from everyone involved and it was really sad. We kept the adults penned in the corral until Jim got outside the gates with the trailer. Once I let them out they all ran as fast as they could to the gate. I just climbed over rather than risk someone getting out by opening the gate. We were just hoping nobody would jump the fence when we drove away. It was crazy!

We got to the vet's office, pulled around back and unloaded our babies. They didn't know what was about to happen. Caroline headed down the alley first not realizing that big interesting thing at the end was going to close up and squeeze her in securely once she got in there.

Her interest in the chute was short lived and this is the look that says, "I'm never going to forgive you for this."

Dr. Gober gave her 2 or 3 shots and in this picture he's tattooing the inside of her ear. Heifer calves are required to have a particular vaccination and be tagged to show it. They usually get an ID tag in their ear (I don't like ear tags) but as long as they're branded with a unique number we can have the tattoo instead. Once the excess ink washes off you can't really even see it. It's 3 little dots.

Caroline got branded, was not happy with the whole ordeal, but did fine.

Next it was little Madeleine's turn. You can see the ink inside her right ear. That's not blood.

Last in was precious little Ranger. He had a particularly bad day. He didn't have to get the shot with the tattoo but worse… it was time to make him a steer but thank goodness they didn't cut him. Dr. Gober used a banding method. I couldn't watch so I went inside. Jim couldn't watch either. He was milling around looking at anything else. ha! After Ranger's trauma of what was done to his boy parts then he had to be branded too. My poor, poor baby. Just look at this sweet face.

When we got back home the cows were out in the middle of the pasture. As soon as they saw the trailer they started running because they knew we had their babies so I jumped out of the truck and got the gates open for Jim to get in before they got to us. Once again there was lots of mooing and carrying on. Cow drama. As long as we had the trailer hitched up and in the pasture I called Gene Baker at Homestead Genetics. He's the guy that AI'd (artificially inseminated) Lacey and Jackie. I've had it on my to-do list for weeks to call and see if he could AI Gabby for us. We're not going to breed the older girls this year because they're predicting we could be in this drought for another year but we want Gabby to have her first calf before she's 3. Gene said to bring her on so we loaded her in the trailer (I wish it had been as easy as it sounds) and I drove her to Anson while Jim took the tractor to pick up a big grain drill Steve's letting him use.

I don't have any pictures of Gabby at Homestead because I was by myself. I'm not talented enough to take pictures and unload a cow at the same time. Hopefully she'll only have to be there a week or two. I miss her already.

When I got back from Anson Jim was trying to get the grain drill through our 20' gate opening. It was too wide so he was going at an angle and it looked like he was stuck. I pulled over to help and he was adjusting the gate supports because he needed about 1/8 of an inch more. It was tight and required a little creative driving but he got it through.

After lunch Jim started planting wheat in the south field. While he did that I started working on the hotline again. Since he's planting we decided we needed to keep the cows out of there again. The little rebars between the t-posts isn't doing the job. They just walk on through, mangling the wire and popping off the insulators which instantly shorts it out.

I went to the hardware store for 42 more t-posts to replace the rebar then pounded in 23 of them with a little sledge hammer thing before my arms gave out. The posts are 6' long, I'm 5' tall so I stood on the back of the golf cart to pound them into the ground. Whatever works! I kept getting off task by playing with the cows. Here's Maddie with her new brand. She's #2.

Ranger was taking comfort with his mama.

Pretty little Caroline with her new brand. Dr. Gober does such a great job branding and they'll heal nicely. Gabby's still looks great.

The calves didn't seem mad at me and I loved on Ranger a lot but you could tell he was having some pain and just wasn't his perky little self. That's to be expected for a few days. The girls seemed just fine. They were all hanging out by the tank, their new favorite place since it has water again.

Lacey stood at the top of the dam looking like queen of the herd.

Farmer Jim.

I needed to run to the hardware store again but when I turned the truck around in the field I drove right into a small area that apparently had held some water from last weekend and was soft. Got stuck and had to have Jim help me get it out. Doh!

We worked until late, had dinner at Bud's in Knox City, then came home to crash the rest of the night. We were tired and sore and it had been a long day.

On Saturday morning Jim pounded in the rest of the t-posts for me so I could be working on the hot line while he planted wheat and rye in the pasture on the north side and around the house. We saw a duck on our tank! He stayed all day and it's so great to see the wildlife come back again. Now we need our turtles and toads to find their way home.

Jim and I worked outside all day long and when he finished planting he came down to help me finish the fence. It was a lot of work especially getting the rebar out of the ground which I'll be feeling in my hands and back for the next several days. We added a third line of wire so hopefully that will do the trick. We finished up at 6, had dinner, went by the Alsabrooks to say hi and see their new greenhouse, then home for much-needed showers and to watch the Ranger game. It was a exciting game and they won by 10 runs. Our Rangers are going to the World Series for the second year in a row. Woo hoo!!

We slept in Sunday morning and were both moving pretty slow. I made muffins for breakfast and we eventually got out and took feed down to the cows. The hotline was still zapping (which I realized when I accidentally touched it while taking down the gate) and Jim walked it to be sure all the lines and insulators were still on. We fed and brushed the cows, played with the calves, and cleaned up. Ranger was moving like he was pretty uncomfortable. Poor little guy. He'll probably lay around a lot this week.

We packed up and now we're on our way home. We brought some tools from the farm that we'll need for our home renovation projects which we got started on this past week. We're beginning with the little wet bar room off of our living room since it's a really small room. It will be a good place to test how the popcorn ceiling scraping will go as well as texturing the ceiling and walls. I ripped out the cabinetry and plumbing (Jim will have to cut off and cap off the pipes going into the walls then drywall over them), scraped the ceiling which went really fast but made a huge mess, and have most of the wallpaper off. The wallpaper is the most time consuming but I finally have a technique that works thanks to my coworkers suggesting vinegar water. It works way better than the useless wallpaper remover stuff I bought. That was $13 I'll never see again. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. It's going to be slow since we only have evenings to work on this stuff and we still have a life too. :o)

Hope everyone had a terrific weekend since it was so beautiful outside. Have a great week!

Beagle Art

2011-10-09T15:47:00.001-05:00

I read the Pioneer Woman blog daily. She makes me laugh and I love her photos and stories. She and her family have two basset hounds, Charlie and Walter. Walter is a recent addition but last year an artist and blog follower named Rachael Rossman painted Charlie for Ree (Pioneer Woman) and she posted it on her blog. I instantly fell in love with Rachael's technique. I've always loved watercolors which is what she uses but she does it on a medium called Yupo, a waterproof paper. The result is something completely unique.

In February Rachael started taking commissions for paintings that would be included in her 2012 calendar so I signed up to have Bonnie and Clyde painted as a surprise for Jim. I knew it would be later in the year before she started working on the calendar paintings but that was okay. Then in April we suddenly lost Clyde and our hearts were completely broken. I almost cancelled the painting because it hurt too much to even think about but that wouldn't have been fair to Rachael who was counting on each of the supporters and I'm so glad I didn't. Time truly does heal and while I miss our boy daily and still tear up when I think much about it he was a huge part of our life and will always have our hearts.

I received Rachael's painting on Thursday just in time for Jim's birthday. She painted it from my favorite picture of them and I couldn't be more pleased. It captures Bonnie and Clyde perfectly, even the little flip on the front of Clyde's ear, and it's the way I want to always remember them together. I framed it and have it on the mantel over the fireplace. I just love it.

This is a link to more of Rachael's paintings.

http://www.rachaelrossman.com/gallery/

This is a YouTube video showing how she does her interesting technique. I've watched it a dozen times.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RachaelRossman#p/a/u/0/77pGvthylLw

Thanks Rachael!

FINALLY!!

2011-10-09T13:40:00.001-05:00

I didn't take many pictures this weekend because guess what… IT FINALLY RAINED!!! Woo hoo! We knew we had a good chance but that usually means the clouds will part around Haskell like Moses at the Red Sea and we won't get anything but we finally got lucky this time.

We didn't get to the farm until nearly 10 Friday night but since we had such high chances of rain for Saturday we took the buggy down in the dark and fed the cows in case it started early.

I got up a little early on Saturday and let Jim sleep but then when I was looking at the radar I saw that the rain was really close and it was a big cell so once it started it would probably last most of the day. We needed to fill the feed barrels because they were empty and once the ground was wet we wouldn't be able to get the truck in there or to the feed container so I threw on some clothes, put my hair up with a clippy, told Jim what I was doing then ran out the door. I took the truck back to the container and tossed in 450 lbs of grain and 300 lbs of cubes then drove down to the cows. I fed them, cleaned up, and filled the feed barrels while the clouds kept getting closer and closer. It's been almost a year since we've seen clouds like that down there. Jim came down about half way through my chores and helped me finish up.

We ran out to do a couple of errands and it started raining at about 10:15. It rained the rest of the day and into the night with a few short breaks now and then. At about 1:00 I put on my rain gear with my camera underneath and went down to see how the herd was doing. It was pouring! This is the first time the calves have seen more than a really light, brief rain and they weren't particularly happy about it. Everyone was staying in the shed most of the time but water was starting to run in under the sides which didn't make me happy.

I trudged through the mud to go see if the tank was catching water and it was. The rain was running off the field to the west of us, through the waterway in our cultivated field, and right in to the tank like it's designed to do. Sweet!

Both of our tanks have been bone dry for about 2 or 3 months. The one behind our house had caught a little too but the waterway had a high spot so it wasn't flowing like it should. Jim went out later and broke the high spot enough for the water to continue on in to the tank. We'll have to dig that part out better later once it's dry again.

We laid around most of the day catching up on shows we'd recorded and even took a nap. Rainy days are the best napping days. After dinner at the Mexican place we went down to feed the cows (it was still raining) so they'd have full bellies to get through the wet night. A bunch more water had seeped into the shed on the west end. The corral was a mud pit so we dragged their troughs into the shed so they wouldn't have to eat in the rain. Pathetic, I know.

It was still raining when we went to bed but had stopped sometime in the night. When we got up this morning Jim checked the rain gauge and we'd gotten 4" total in about 14 hours. It was cloudy and just a little bit sprinkley but doesn't look like we'll get any more for now. This was a good soaking rain and now the ground will be moist next weekend so Jim can hopefully get some wheat planted.

We went down to feed the herd one more time and I was disappointed to see the ground inside the whole shed was wet. We're going to have to do something to keep the water from coming in under the west side wall. But the cows had dried and were really soft. The rain had washed off months of dust and dirt and left them clean and fluffy. I was brushing Lilly when Ranger walked up and rubbed his head on me so I'd scratch him. He stood there while I brushed him all over especially his tummy and neck. Finally I moved on to Jackie. Next thing I know there's a little head rubbing me again. This could be a problem when that's a big head but I'll worry about that later. I love that I can lift his chin and kiss his nose.

We walked down to see the tank and before we even got close we could see that it was full! This one is about 9 to 10 feet deep in the middle. Now that it's not so hot this water should last another year even if we stay in a drought.

The tank behind our house wasn't full this morning but it's pretty close. It's bigger than the other one since Jim dug it out this summer so it will hold a lot more water.

We packed up and headed home around lunchtime. All the rain that we got in Haskell is now in the Metroplex area so since our roof is new we wanted to get home to be sure it's not leaking. We're still on the road while I'm writing and uploading this blog. If we get home and the house is flooded, I'll let you know later. :o)

This week's good news is that we found a new home our little Caroline! She's been listed online for a few weeks and I got an email from a lady in Muenster (north of Denton) who said she wanted her. She has a job and kids and since it's a 7 hour round trip from Haskell to her place we're going to deliver Caroline to her on our way home one Sunday. We talked for a bit Thursday night and she's very nice. They've had to sell most of their cattle because of the drought but have kept their black and white longhorn and one other cow named Daisy that's a family member. She said their longhorn has only produced black and white calves and she wanted a red and white longhorn to complete their pasture. She promised that Caroline would be a spoiled pasture ornament the rest of her life. That's my kind of longhorn mom! She also has a nephew in the 4H program who wants to show her. After I got off the phone with her I had no doubt that Caroline would have a very happy life with them. We're going to schedule a Friday off work when we can take all three calves in to the vet to get branded and shots then we'll take Caroline to them the following week. :o) I'm so happy for our pretty little girl.

Happy birthday tomorrow to my BFF Mary Jo and also to my friend Tonya, then on Tuesday to our aunt Patsy! Friday is Matt and Lynlie's 5th anniversary. Can't believe it's been 5 years…love you both!

We just passed a pasture with horses. One of them is upside down thrashing around scratching it's back… so cute!

Guess that's it for now. We're SO thankful for the rain this weekend!! Hope everyone has a great week!

Change of Heart

2011-10-05T19:36:00.000-05:00

I didn't want to say anything until it I knew for sure but now it's official… we're keeping our boy. Jim's been trying to get ahold of Tim for a couple of weeks now to see if we could buy Ranger back from him. They finally talked today and Tim said yes! Yea!! I just can't let him go and Jim's really attached to him too. I know my friends will be rolling their eyes but I can live with that. Tim's been too busy to come and get Ranger and there are tons of longhorns out there for sale right now so he can easily get another bull when he's ready.

I know what you're all thinking… we've been through this before with CJ. But we didn't have him from birth and CJ never had the temperament that Ranger has. Yes, I know he's not going to be small forever and will quickly grow over 1,000 pounds but if he keeps his disposition then that will be fine. It's time to get the calves branded so we'll get Ranger steered at the same time. If in a few years he becomes hard to handle he can always go live with Steve's cows or at Krooked River. In the meantime I'm going to spoil him rotten.

While Jim was on the phone with Tim he asked how CJ was doing. Tim said he's doing great, is staying approachable and is pretty spoiled so that makes me happy. We made the right choice for him. :o)

Fast Weekend

2011-10-02T17:21:00.000-05:00

Another busy week at work. We took delivery of 1,300 iPads that I'll be setting up over the next few weeks which is a repetitive task but I love those things so I don't mind. Once they're done and in the hands of the kids is when the real fun begins.

We got to Haskell at about 9:45 and stopped by the south farm to get our truck. The repair place finished it on Tuesday… it was the fuel pump just like Jim thought. Parts and labor ended up being $655. ack! Since they're closed on Saturday Jim paid for it over the phone then Steve picked it up for us and locked it up in Jim's parents' barn.

I didn't take hardly any pictures this weekend, sorry.

Bonnie let us sleep until almost 6:00 Saturday morning! That’s almost unheard of for her. You can usually set your clock by her 5am wakeup. I made breakfast then left at 7:15 to go to the annual Warpath 5K Run. Wesley's girlfriend Michelle was meeting me up there and we walked together. We don't run. Ever. But we weren't the only ones so all the runners were at the front of the starting line including the cross country track teams for the Haskell, Stamford, and Rule high schools. The year I did this 5K with 7 year old Haylee we came in next to last in front of a woman pushing a stroller who had started late. This year there were several walkers including another woman with a stroller and an older gentleman with his dog. Michelle and I were happy that we'd at least be in front of the stroller and dog. We were wrong. The stroller lady and the dog left us in their dust. HA! It was really fun just talking while we walked and we didn’t care that everyone was way ahead of us. We weren't last though… we finished with two sets of walkers behind us so yea for us!

After the walk Michelle and I went to Stripes for a big Diet Coke and a snack then I took her to Steve and Laura’s because we thought Wes was there. He wasn’t so we talked to Laura for a bit then decided to go look at Wesley’s house that’s being remodeled (and where he was.) It’s looking amazing. I’m really impressed with what they're doing. Michelle stayed there with him and I took Laura home and we made plans to go to a new steak place for dinner later.

By this time it was about 10:45. I found Jim in our already-plowed field pulling around a huge plow that Steve said we can keep at our place to use and if he ever needs it he’ll just come and get it. Jim’s in plow heaven. We had lunch at Dairy Queen so we could get a Blizzard then went by Chad Gibson’s (a cattle breeder there in town) to get some cattle cubes. The feed store got a shipment this week but they came from a different supplier and were really expensive! The drought is making all cattle feed more expensive. They're going to let us know if they get some in from the regular supplier and we got 15 bags from Chad in the meantime. It’s nice to know we have options and we like Chad's setup.

When we got back I went down to see the cows because I'd been gone all morning. Jim stayed home because he expected me to come back in just a few minutes but when I didn’t come back after about 45 minutes he came down check on me. Ranger was laying down in the hay so I was sitting next to him talking, stroking his sweet little face and giving him lots of kisses. He kept falling asleep perfectly content. Jim just shook his head then sat down with us. Ranger stretched out his head for Jim to scratch on him too. That is one rotten cow. Eventually we got up to leave and I saw Maddie laying down so I sat and petted on her for a few minutes too. She’s not as comfortable with it as Ranger is but she’s getting there. She’ll walk up to me for a cube without any hesitation. She’s going to be a big eater, we can already tell that.

I never did get a nap before time to shower and pick up the Alsabrooks. We went to a steakhouse about 20 miles away at an outfitters lodge. It was really, really good and we were stuffed when we left. It was a beautiful evening so we sat on Steve and Laura’s porch talking for quite a while. It’s so nice to have cooler temps at night again.

Bonnie slept until 6 again this morning! Hope that’s an ongoing pattern. We had breakfast then went down to feed, brush, and spend time with the cows one more time. I sat down by the hay bale to wait for Ranger. Once he saw me he came over and stood in front of me while I scratched his tummy then when he couldn’t stay awake anymore he just laid down. I put my arm around him and loved on him for quite a while. Love this cow.

Eventually we had to go but it was hard to leave. We dropped off Jim’s dad’s truck on the way out of town then headed home. I don't know where the weekend went but it was fast!

While we were gone this weekend we finally got our roof replaced. It was good timing because we didn’t have to be there to listen to the banging. Larry sent us pictures on Saturday of them working. He said there were 11 guys on our roof.

There were two layers of shingles so I’m sure that wasn’t fun to remove. They also removed the skylight, added decking wood in the opening then put all new tar paper on the whole roof.

We decided to go with a ridge vent along the top instead of those whirly vent things.

It looks really good! They reroofed the shop in the backyard too. I’m glad to have that all finished. We borrowed Jim’s dad’s rolling magnet thing to run along the yard to pick up any roofing nails that ended up in the grass. This is what Jim collected… glad I didn't step on any of that!

Before we left we put down an old sheet on the livingroom floor to catch any crud that fell inside when they removed the skylight. It's a good thing we did. Among other things, several big chunks of the ceiling texture fell.

Now we have this lovely ceiling adornment which will finally motivate us to start the home renovations we've been planning for over a year. We'll scrape off all the ceiling texture, cover the opening with drywall then retexture and paint. By then we'll be on a roll and will continue with the loooong list of things we want to do in each room including completely renovating both bathrooms.

When we got home we watched the final quarter of the Cowboy game. The blew a nice lead and lost the game. At least they have a nice $2B stadium to do it in.

Misc. Stuff…

The 125th State Fair of Texas opened on Friday! We have tickets and plan to go this year. I need a funnel cake. yum!

A huge thank you to Jim's parents for letting us use their farm truck so we didn't have to rent a car while our truck was in the shop all week.

Happy birthday today to my friend Angie’s adorable little Cody who turned 5 today. How can you keep from smiling when you see a face like this?

Our friend Casey will be celebrating her birthday on Saturday (happy BD girl!) and the best birthday of all... Jimbo! His big day is Friday. :o)

Hope everyone has a great week!

Just Me And The Cows

2011-09-24T22:35:00.002-05:00

I didn't sleep well last night. I was thinking about the truck and our options and I'm sure the giant Diet Coke didn't help either. I finally fell asleep at about 3:30 or so and the phone rang at 6 this morning. Thanks a lot Da. ha! Jim's dad called and offered to come and pick me up so Jimbo didn't have to drive down but I really didn't want anyone else to be inconvenienced over this. He said I could use the farm truck and bring it home if I wanted which was a better idea because Jim could drive it this week instead of having to rent a car.

Steve came and took me over to the south farm to get Da's truck. It's a huge dually diesel Dodge with a 6 speed manual transmission. It's like driving a parade float because it's so wide and so high. I literally have to grab the steering wheel and pull myself up to get in. It's been a long time since I've driven a standard transmission which isn't a big deal but I can barely reach the pedals and I can't see over the toolbox in the back.

I took this picture of the sun starting to rise while waiting for Steve. There was just a sliver of moon in the sky. Dusk and dawn are so beautiful out here.

I talked to Jim and told him to just get some rest and I'd be home Sunday early afternoon. There was no need for him to drive down. The feed store was out of cubes so I went to Richardson's to get enough bags to tie us over until they get another shipment. They were $3 a bag higher than the feed store. ugh! I loaded the cubes in the buggy to take to the cows.

I fed them, did a lot of cleaning up then loved on all of them for quite a while. Ranger laid down so I sat with him for about 45 minutes stroking his face, scratching him all over and giving him kisses. He just lays there with his head in my lap and lets me do whatever I want…very trusting.

The cows had messed up the hotline again just like every week. I think it's become a game. I drove the fence line fixing all the places where the wire was off the insulators then tightened the line back up. I finally got it popping again though I know I'll be doing it all over again next weekend. There's really no reason to bother with this other than we don't really want them to be in the habit of thinking they can go over there. Too late for that I'm afraid.

These are the troublemakers watching me repair their mischief.

I had a Heath Bar Blizzard with lunch. It's a work of art.

I had another visit with the cows then went inside with the intention of taking a nap however Ben Hur was playing on TV. I can't believe I've never seen that movie. All I've ever seen is the chariot race scene. The campiness of Charlton Heston movies makes me laugh. My friend Lisa and I still text each other "Ten Commandments" quotes every year at Easter. Anyway, Ben Hur was pretty good but I've decided if you've seen one Charlton Heston movie you've seen them all… kind of like Sylvester Stallone.

I took some alfalfa down to the herd and gave everyone a good brushing. I had brushed Gabby then moved on to Ranger but apparently Gabby didn't think she was done. She snuck up behind me, hooked her horn on the bottom of my shirt and tossed her head. She nearly took my shirt off before I could get untangled from her horn. It's just a good thing nobody was driving by or they'd have gotten a peep show.

I cleaned up and had dinner with Patsy and Bill then we visited for a while which was fun. Now I'm back home looking at the pictures I took today. I'm going to get up in the morning, feed and kiss the cows one more time then head home to my Jimbo so unless I have another unexpected adventure this will probably it for this week.

I'm a little nervous about driving the giant truck home but I'm sure it will be fine. Patsy brought me the booster seat that I had given them for their grandson Hunter to use when practicing driving in their truck. I had forgotten about it but it's the one I used to use when I was flying so I could reach the rudders. I'll give it a try tomorrow and see if it helps. I'm always up for a challenge. :o)

Hope everyone has a great week!

This Wasn't The Plan!

2011-09-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

Steve says the definition of a plan is "the way it was supposed to be." Well, that was certainly the case tonight.

Jimbo came home sick yesterday with some kind of crud that's going around. Poor guy… he's hardly ever sick. He has flu-like symptoms but it only lasts a couple of days. I went to Walgreens before work this morning to get him some meds and he stayed home. This afternoon he still wasn't feeling up to par so I decided to go to the farm by myself because we're out of cubes and the cows need tending.

I left with the truck as soon as I got home which would get me to Haskell with about an hour and a half of daylight left. That was the plan… the way it was supposed to be.

I had an uneventful drive all the way to Throckmorton which is 30 miles east of Haskell. At 6:30 just as I passed through the only stoplight in town the truck died… while I was driving! I've never had that happen to me and I lost the power steering but I was able to get it off the road and onto the shoulder. I was about a block from a convenience store so I walked back to see if there was a tow truck in town. Of course not. I called Steve to see if there was one in Haskell and he said there was but he didn't know if we could get ahold of them. He called back a few minutes later and said the tow was on its way to get me. Yea! A few minutes later he called again and said he was coming for me. I told him that wasn't necessary and I could ride with the tow truck since he had assured me the driver wasn't a serial killer but he wouldn't take no for an answer. About 25 minutes later they both showed up.

Here's our poor truck being loaded.

Steve put all my stuff in his truck and we followed the tow truck back to Haskell. After unloading our truck at a repair shop in town and saying goodbye to $200 he dropped me off at the farm. What a great friend!

Jimbo's coming in the morning and we'll leave the truck here this week. Nothing's open on Saturday but Steve has the keys and he'll take them by the repair shop on Monday for us. Jim thinks the problem is the fuel pump because it's been acting strange for a few weeks but we thought it was the accelerator. The last time the fuel pump went out it behaved and died just like this. It has 243,000 miles on it so it's probably time for another one and we can't complain. Whatever it costs will still be cheaper than a new truck. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

So now I'm in for the night…just me, the TV, and a bowl of ice cream. I'll take the buggy down to feed and spend time the cows in the morning while I wait for Jim and Bonnie to get here. I'm never worried about being here alone at night but just in case…

Rain Everywhere... Except Haskell!

2011-09-18T21:15:00.001-05:00

Another weekend has come and gone and they're never long enough. We got to the farm at 8:30 and it was already dark because the days are getting shorter. There was heavy rain all the way from Lake Worth to the west side of Springtown but it was all moving east and there had been no measurable rain in Haskell. :o( At least it seems like there's a change in the pattern and maybe we'll get some rain out of it but there's nothing to get excited about in the 10 day forecast.

Saturday morning I went to the feed store in Stamford while Jim went to the south land to fix his tractor that was blowing hydraulic fluid everywhere last weekend. When I got to the feed store there was a sign on the door saying they'd be closed on Saturday so I turned around and went back home… wasted trip but it was a really nice morning and I enjoyed driving with the windows down. Jim was working on the tractor when I got back and fortunately the problem was just a cracked rubber hose. He had another one and was replacing it. He had also fed the cows so they were all eating and happy. I had started doing some clean-up when Steve came by and took Jim to see a plow he's going to let us borrow. While they were gone I finished cleaning up and sat down to love on Ranger. He was quite content and would rest his head in my lap while I scratched him and kissed his sweet little face. I'm taking full advantage of however much time we have left with him. We haven't heard from Tim so don't know what his plans are but we're happy to keep our little boy as long as possible. I sat back down with him again later and Jim took this not-so-flattering picture but Ranger is so adorable.

Close to lunchtime we hitched up the trailer and went to get some replacement corral panels from the Larneds. We stood around talking to Sammy and his son Casey for a while… they're fun to visit with. Casey told us about a new steakhouse out near Rochester so we're planning to check it out soon. We lunched at Dairy Queen (yes, had another Heath bar Blizzard) then unloaded the corral panels. I started setting them up while Jim refilled the fluids in the tractor. Now the corral is all back to normal!

We used the hay fork on the tractor and a tow chain to pull the t-posts out of the rock-hard ground over where the bales used to be then used those posts to stabilize the panels around the hay. There's no way for the cows to get to it now unless they're super destructive and they're just not.

At about 3:00 we were cooling down in the house when it started to rain! It wasn't a hard rain and it only lasted about 10 minutes but we'll take it. What we need is a long soaking rain. Then at about 4:15 we got another brief downpour (very brief!) and I was about to take a shower when there was a loud boom, the lights flashed, then the house went dead. I opened all the blinds to let the daylight in and Jim got in the buggy to go see if the golf course had lost power too. I saw him at the end of the road talking to our insurance agent who was leaving the golf course and he said a transformer had blown. We called the power company and was told there were outages all over Haskell county and crews were on the way.

We have a little LED lamp that Jim's mom gave us not long ago. I think she only paid around $10 for it but it puts out a lot of light and when you have no power, that's priceless. Our bathroom has no windows. We showered by LED light then went to Anson for dinner which is about 30 miles away and hoped the electricity would be restored by the time we came home. In the meantime it was staying cool enough in the house for Bonnie and it was still daylight. We saw several rainbows on the way home from dinner.

When we got back I looked around for some candles and only found two. I seldom burn candles at the farm because I have Scentsy warmers but we also have some other LED emergency lights for storm season though you don't really want to leave them on all night so candles are better. Note to self… bring some candles from home. We hopped in the golf cart and rode down to the golf course just for something to do. The sun was getting low and the storms were pretty big in the east which made for some really pretty skies.

While we were there a guy named Jake, along with his daughter Ambry came out to talk to us. He's the caretaker at the golf course and said he'd been meaning to come down and introduce himself. Since his house is uphill and overlooks our place he said he keeps an eye on it for us which we appreciate. As we talked Wesley pulled up with his kids and his girlfriend Michelle so we all talked for a bit. Wesley said he was told the power was expected to be back on around 9:00 or so. The winds shifted as the sun was going down and it was pretty cool outside so we opened up the windows in the house and it was really pleasant but once the sun was down it was dark. Because of the cloud cover there was no moon and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face outside except when it would lightning. There were storms all around us but we still weren't getting rain.

Fortunately our iPads were charged up so Jim and I read for awhile then just went to bed since the power still wasn't back on. We had the main breaker to the house shut off in case it came back on with surges which is really hard on the appliances. At about 11:30 Jim woke me up and said the electricity was back on. We have a dusk-to-dawn light on the power pole outside of our bedroom window and it had come on so we got up and turned the main back on. Everything seemed to be okay so we went back to bed.

After breakfast on Sunday we went out hunting for a while. We got a late start so we didn't see many birds but Jim got three. I have a new Weatherby semi-automatic shotgun that I was shooting for the first time and need some practice getting it sighted in quickly. I liked it a lot though. It's a good size for me, lightweight, and doesn't kick much at all. As we were leaving we saw a bunch of bones so of course I have to investigate. They were cow bones and the skull was still there so I took it with me. I know my friends will think that's gross but I think it's really interesting. I'll find something to boil it in with some Clorox.

We drove down to tend to the cows one more time and do a few chores, had lunch, then packed up and headed home in time to watch the last half of the Cowboy game. Correction, Jim watched the last half of the Cowboy game. I haven't been a fan since Aikman played and even that was secondary to when Roger Staubach led the team… but that's going back a ways.

I forgot to tell you last week that I got a call from the city of Haskell about the 43,000 gallons of water we used when the cows broke the line. They said that once a year they will forgive the water bill when there's an incident like this. How awesome is that? That's a really big savings for us so we'll probably donate it back to the volunteer fire department.

I also completely neglected to congratulate my friend at work, Arlene on the birth of her latest grandbaby. Miss Emma was born on 9/11 giving Arlene's family a happy event to celebrate on that date every year. So sweet!

Twelve years ago today Jim and I got engaged and interestingly enough, we were in Haskell… signs of what was to come. I love it out there. :o)

Hope everyone has a great week!

Unplanned Projects

2011-09-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

We didn't get to the farm until 10:00 Friday night and when we unpacked I realized that I didn’t have the power adapter for my laptop. I knew the battery wouldn't last the whole weekend enough for me to edit photos and write the blog so it had to wait until we got home which is why this is pretty late.

We had a handful of things we wanted to get done this weekend but it turned into quite a bit more. On the way to breakfast Saturday morning we saw that Maddie and Ranger were on the other side of the hotline again so we stopped, wrangled them back over and went ahead and fed everyone. After breakfast we went over to the south farm where the clay shoot was last weekend. Steve had used 15 bales of hay as part of the setup and we bought them from him because we need hay and he didn't want to haul it back. Win-win. He had loaded it all onto two of his cotton trailers for us so we went to pick it up. We hitched up the first one, strapped down the bales and went home at 20mph because it was the squirreliest trailer ever! It weaved back and forth while we drove and the bales were already hanging off the sides so it was a little unnerving but we got them to our place without incident. One of Steve's bulls had worked over the front bale but it held together and we put it out for our cows later in the day.

I had already taken the tractor down to the south land and Jim used it to unload the hay while I cleaned up after the cows. Once that was done I pulled the remaining hay out of the holder. It was all the dark stuff from the bottom of the bale that they don’t like so I moved it all into the shed to make it fluffy then Jim brought them a new bale. By this time it was after 1:00 so we went to Dairy Queen for lunch and I had my first mini-Blizzard. I don't usually like stuff in my ice cream but it was pretty good. We went back to the south farm and got the second trailer full of hay. Jim unloaded it while I moved the rest of the dark hay into the shed.

Before I could get all the hay moved the cows had all laid down in it because it was thick. It looked like they were nesting.

The calves almost always lay together.

And speaking of nesting, the baby doves have really grown this week and actually look like birds.

I sat down with the cows and laid up against Gabby for at least an hour while petting her and singing to all of them. They think I'm a great singer. ha! I could have stayed longer because Gabby fell asleep but I had things to do.

I love this next picture. There are those that work and those that supervise (with their eyes closed.)

We called it a day and relaxed in the A/C for a little bit then headed out to go dove hunting at the north farm. It was a really nice evening and we saw some birds but neither of us shot well. I got one and Jim got two. This is Jim watching for birds while texting.

At about 7:30 from where I was sitting the sun was behind me and the full moon was in front of me. The waterhole had high grasses and a lot of dragonflies all over. I thought it made a nice picture. The dragonflies look like little birds.

We left just before the sun set so we’d have enough light to see if the cows were in. There were some deer in the field just before ours. They were way far out and there wasn't much light but I took several pictures. This is the only one that turned out and it only caught three of the five.

When we passed the pasture Lilly and Gabby were over the fence and in the hay. As we were chasing them out the calves came over. They were all just walking through the hotline which is useless right now. Lilly and Gabby had been running their horns along the new hay just because they can. Brats They also had the hotline wire all tangled up and broken. We put the main hotline back up the best we could but it’s not hot. There was nothing we can do about it in the dark but we were both in a crummy mood after that because it’s SO frustrating. We ate a really late dinner and mulled over ways to keep the cows on their own side and out of the hay. I finally came up with surrounding the hay with the corral panels and just replacing them with some we like better. We've never really been thrilled with the cheap panels we got for the south pasture but they'll be perfect for protecting the hay.

We got up at early Sunday because we had a lot to do and it was supposed to get hot. Jim headed to the pasture with the tractor while I loaded the truck with grain and cubes to fill the barrels. When I got to the south pasture Lilly and Gabby were leisurely grazing on some weeds again over by the hay bales. Lilly had bale netting wrapped all around her head and she looked like Pocahontas. She wasn’t too happy about me trying to get it off but I won that battle.

We had decided to put the bales in the far northwest corner so we could use 2 sides of the barb as fencing but Jim needed to move the plow out of the way. He worked on hitching it up and had one problem after another so it took nearly 45 minutes just to get it moved. During that time Steve stopped by to visit for a bit and we lamented over how it’s never, ever going to rain again. Once Jim moved the plow we realized there were a few issues with that location so we decided instead to line them up down the front fence near the gate so they’re easily accessible. Too bad we didn’t think of this before Jim unloaded 15 bales yesterday. Now he had to move them all again so while he was doing all that I refilled the feed barrels, cleaned up after the cows, took down all the corral panels, wound up all the wire that the cows had broken around the hay bales, and watered the grounding rods for the hotline so we could get it zapping again.

We took a break for lunch then started back up again. As Jim was moving the next to last bale the tractor blew a hydraulic hose under the hood. It was spewing fluid everywhere including all over him. He parked it until next week and we went back for the other tractor. We used it to move the corral panels over to the new row of hay bales and set them up.

They worked perfectly and fortunately we had enough. We zig-zaged the panels for stability so even if the cows push against them (which I don’t think they will) they can’t knock them over. Next weekend we’ll pull up the t-posts from where the bales used to be and secure the row of panels with them. We should have done this a year ago. It would have saved us a lot of headache.

It was getting late but we had to get the hotline zapping again even if it’s not as strong as it would be if the ground had moisture. We drove down the line fixing all the places the cows had messed up (again!) lowered the lines, and got them really tight. When we turned the fence back on it was zapping like a champ. Who knows how long it will stay that way but we’ll see. Their horns don't conduct electricity so if they hook it with their horns first and move the line enough to knock off an insulator it will short out the fence and then it's a free for all again.

We put all the tools away, packed up and headed out later than usual. We were filthy, dusty, gritty, and gross but no time to shower before leaving. We stopped by Jim’s parents’ farm to pick up a trailer for his dad, dropped it off at their house on the way home and didn’t get home until about 6:30. Since we were starving we ordered a pizza from Dominoes. Have you ordered from Dominoes online lately? They've really improved their website and ordering process and you can track it to see who’s making your pizza, what stage it’s at, when it leaves, and who’s delivering it. Love it! Now we're watching the Cowboys blow their game against the Jets while I work on writing this.

I hope everyone paused today to remember the 2,976 people who lost their lives 10 years ago on this date. I can still remember sitting with my co-workers in the training lab at work watching in disbelief (like the rest of the country) as the towers burned. Seeing them collapse on themselves and knowing how many people were probably still inside is still the most horrifying and surreal thing I've ever seen. Jim's cousin Steve was at work in the Pentagon when it was hit that day and we're so blessed to still have him with us.

Make it a great week.

Labor Day Weekend

2011-09-05T20:25:00.001-05:00

Another manic, busy week at work but I think I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Thursday afternoon Jim had brought home another military trailer to mount his welder and stuff on so when he got home Friday he hitched up and we headed to the farm for a much-needed 3 day weekend. Unfortunately it took 4 hours to get there. We had to go slower with the trailer and we stopped several times because the wiring connections kept making the dashboard flash a “lamp out” error and ding like crazy. Jim kept resetting it and it would hold a while then do it again. Then we were about 8 miles east of Throckmorton we hit a deer. ugh! It was dusk and three of them darted out in the road. As soon as Jim saw them he hit the brakes as much as he could without jack-knifing the trailer and did everything he could to avoid hitting them but caught the third one. We saw it roll and my heart just sank. We got pulled over pretty quick and Jim went back looking for it while I checked the front of the truck because I couldn't bear to see the deer. The truck was okay except for some fur on the bumper and Jim never found the deer so it obviously got up and ran off. Since he had slowed down quite a bit before hitting it we’re hoping he wasn’t hurt too badly and just glanced off the bumper. Still, it’s an awful, awful feeling. :o( We’ve driven that trip to Haskell several hundred times and have seen a lot of deer over the years but this is our first hit and hopefully our last. Jim is really good at spotting them at night but you just can't predict what they'll do.

We got to the farm at about 9:15 and took the buggy down to see the cows. It was completely dark but we used the buggy lights to feed them and do a head count.

It occurred to me as I unpacked that I didn’t remember seeing the shells we bought. Neither of us had put them in the truck. We had 1,250 shotgun shells sitting in our garage 180 miles away. Fat lot of good that does us on opening weekend of dove season! We had enough at the farm to do the clay shoot but not to hunt. Also, I had bought a hotspot from TMobile this week and they said there was 3G in Haskell. They lied. I never got anything past Graham and there’s no signal at all at the farm. I’m taking it back this week. So the weekend was off to a pretty lame start but that meant it could only get better.

Saturday was the Haskell Clay Shoot benefiting the crime stoppers group. We've been looking forward to this since last year. It was a really nice morning and felt like the weather was finally taking a turn for the better…still no rain but the temps were more tolerable. We loaded our buggy on the trailer, had breakfast burritos then headed out. The shoot was being held in one of Jim's parents' fields like last year. We got registered and turned in our raffle tickets. I had hopes of winning a really cool hand-painted shotgun in the raffle but it didn't happen.

They had golf carts you could rent but we brought our own. :o)

My little buddy Allen (love him!) and Jeff Alsabrook's daughter Samantha (Sammy.)

Jim's folks were there and said Cindy and Greg were going to be coming later in the afternoon so Jim called to see if they’d go by our house to pick up the shells that we’d forgotten and they did. So awesome and it saved the weekend! Thanks Cindy and Greggy!!

The first round of shooting got started at about 10:30 and Jim and I were in a group with Bobby Harren and his son Casey as well as Melton Griggers and Tom Wright. We had a GREAT time. I only shot a 33 but that was way better than I thought I’d do. Some of the stations were really hard but there was one where I beat Jim’s score. He ended up shooting a 57. Show off! :o)

There were 10 shooting stations and you shot 10 clays at each station for a total of 100. The clays would come out two in a row so you had to shoot fast. This was at the first station. Hunting tip: If you tie your earplugs to your ponytail they won't get lost.

Jimbo

Jim's dad was our clay thrower and I think our score-keeper's name was Macey.

Melton, Bobby, and Jimbo. Jim's dad grew up with Bobby. He's a seriously funny guy (and a dentist.)

Tom Cruise was in our shooting group. Ok, maybe it was Bobby's son Casey but when he'd smile with his shades on he looked like Tom Cruise.

My first clay shoot score card!

We got done at nearly 1:00 and they fed us barbecue sandwiches as part of our entry fee. This is some of the Alsabrook clan. Jeff is on the left and his wife Nikki. Next to her is Marissa, Pat's girlfriend that we all adore, and that's Pat on the right.

We left the shoot at about 2:30 and stopped to feed and brush the cows. When we finally got back home we just laid around for a little bit enjoying the air conditioning. Later the Alsabrooks had invited us over for buffalo burgers and, as is tradition, the guys started playing Washers. There was a lot of smack talking going on and it didn't look like they were going to finish playing any time soon. Marissa and I wanted to go dove hunting so we just decided to go without them. Once the teenage boys realized we were going they wanted to go too so we took Mason, Austin, and Tristan with us. We went down to the north farm and there weren't many birds flying but we had fun trying.

Later in the evening we went over to Jim and Sharon's to visit with them them a while. Cindy, Greg and the kids were there as well as Patsy, Bill, and Melton Griggers. We hung out for about half an hour, loaded up our shells then came home for a much needed shower. We were exhausted but had such a great day. I had a blast at the shoot.

Sunday morning was cooler and seriously windy!! Steve had said they were letting all the volunteers shoot as much as they want on Sunday morning at 7am so we got up early and headed over there. The winds were 20-25mph with gusts at 35. We were the first ones on site and saw that the concession stand tent had broken loose of the poles on the south end and the whole end of the structure was bouncing in the wind. That was quite a bit of steel moving unpredictably. I hung on the cross pieces trying to keep them down while Jim retied the ropes really tight. It was kind of scary.

Steve showed up a little bit later and we weren’t going to shoot because the winds were so high but he talked us into it. He was setting the clays off into the wind and they were blowing back right toward us so we’d try to shoot them then had to dance out of the way before getting hit by one. Steve thought it was hilarious and was throwing them out faster than we could shoot just to watch us dodge the incoming targets. Sadist.

We hung out all day helping with whatever needed to be done but mostly just visiting with everyone. We had just a great time talking to people we knew and meeting some we didn’t. Later in the afternoon anyone that wanted to could just go out and shoot for fun.

Pat's son, Mason

Jeff's son, Tristan. He shot really well and won two shotguns! I caught this picture with the shell ejecting from his gun.

There was a group of about 6 girls from the 4H club that had never shot before but wanted to try it so Steve asked if we’d take them out. They used my gun because it’s cut down to be girl size and Jim instructed them on how to use it and where to aim. Two of the girls even hit a clay! I think they had a great time and Jim was really good with his instructing. They were all sweet girls.

Our niece Kaylee and Wesley's daughter (my other little buddy) Haylee wanted to try it so Jim helped them too. So cute!

After most everyone had left a bunch of us stayed behind to take down all the tents. One of them was really big and took about 15 of us to get it down and folded up especially in the high winds. It was like watching the circus leave town. ha!

While we did that the kids played on the hay bales.

When we finally went home we were so filthy and gritty from being in the wind all day. I can’t remember the last time a shower felt that good. We were heading out to get some dinner when I got a text from Abbi saying they were expecting us to come out for dinner so we went over there and hung out with the Alsabrooks. Jeff’s daughter Samantha had a really big splinter deep in the bottom of her heel and wouldn’t let her mom mess with it but she let Laura try. She worked on it a bit and couldn’t get it out so I took over while Jim held a flashlight on it for better light. That sweet little girl sat there for another half an hour letting me dig in her foot until we got it out. She never even flinched. I kept asking if she wanted to stop and she said no, she wanted it out. So brave.

We all sat around visiting until about 9:00 then we left because we were beat. I bet nobody over there stayed up much later either. It was a long day but tons of fun.

We slept late Monday then went over to see Jim and Sharon for a bit before they left. We found Da and Kaylee down by the tank looking at frogs.

When we got home Jim had a few things to do including clean our shotguns. While he did his “chores” I went down to tend to the cows. I fed them and did some cleaning up. I could barely see some little fuzzy birds up high in the nest in the shed so I climbed up on the buggy to get a picture. There are two in there and they look really scrawny when they’re young. I couldn't get a good angle but didn't want to mess around up there too long because I'm sure mom was somewhere close watching. I'll take more pictures next weekend and see how they've grown.

I loved on each of the cows then worked with Maddie a while. She’s taming down really well. As I knelt on the ground she walked right up and took a bunch of cubes from me. While she was chewing them she let me scratch her head, ears, and pet her cheeks which is really trusting. We did that for quite a while until she wanted to go play with the others but it was really good and I was very proud of her.

We never heard from Tim this weekend so Ranger is still with us (yea!) He had laid down in the shade behind the shed so I sat down in front of him and petted him for a long time while talking to him. Love that boy. I don’t have any pictures of Maddie or Ranger getting loved on since Jim was back at the house but I got a good picture of our chunky monkey.

When we got up this morning it was 60 degrees! What a relief!!! It stayed nice all day and when we left at 1:30 it was 72. Sweet! It’s supposed to be low to mid 80’s all week. The cows will be thrilled.

Misc.

Here's Jim's twin trailers.

We went by Eddie's yesterday to drop something off and he'd left a bag with our name on it and it was this longhorn bell. I love it! Jim mounted it on the front post of the overhang for me. :o)

Happy birthday this Friday to our favorite daughter-in-law, Lynlie. We love you girl!

Have a great week!

Unexpected 3-Day Weekend

2011-08-28T19:42:00.000-05:00

It was another insanely busy week at work. To make it even more interesting, Steven Grand called us Tuesday night and said water was shooting up out of the ground in our pasture where the meter is. Apparently the cows broken the water line so Jim called Eddie and he went out to turn off the water for us. The problem is, that's the only source of water for the cows so for the next two days Eddie hauled water to our herd twice a day. Now that's a good friend. We took off work on Friday and went down to Haskell Thursday night so we could get it taken care of. I borrowed the broadband card from the office and worked all the way there. Not exactly a relaxing trip but I got a lot done and it makes the time pass.

On Friday morning Jim had to be on a conference call and I did a little more work online but then we got down to business. We took alfalfa to the cows and I cleaned up while Jim dug up and repaired the broken water connection. Ranger was hanging out with him and we asked who was responsible for the trouble but he wasn’t giving up a name.

It looks like we’ve probably used over 40,000 gallons of water between this incident and when they broke the hose a couple of weeks ago. We went to the water department at lunch to ask about it but the regular woman wasn’t there. The one we talked to was really nice and helpful and said they sometimes make allowances for stuff like this and she’d ask. She also figured the worst case scenario and it’s probably about $300 which is better than I expected.

After lunch Steve called and said they were trying out a new sprayer if we wanted to come and see. They were "test driving" a beautiful new Case sprayer with a 100’ boom spread. Awesome. We visited with Steve and Wesley for a few minutes then let them get back to it.

Jim drove the Bobcat down to the south pasture and moved Poo Mountain over to the other field and spread it out to fertilize. While he did that I drove the big tractor down and put out a bale of hay for the cows. It went much easier this time and I had no trouble getting the bale off the ground now that I know the secret. Jackie and Lilly didn't waste any time digging in.

Maddie and Ranger decided to wait until after the rush before checking out the new hay.

I took the tractor back then drove the buggy down with some 5’ posts and drove them into the ground around the water boxes then strung 2 strands of fence wire around all 4 posts. I also tied on several long flags of caution tape (because that’s all we had) so the cows would see it and pay attention. Hopefully that will keep them from stepping in that area and breaking the line again.

On Saturday morning we hitched up the trailer and loaded the Bobcat to return it to Jim and Sharon’s. We're sure going to miss it.

We took our shotguns with us to practice some shooting. The clay shoot is next weekend and I haven’t shot since the 4th of July weekend. It was not pretty! I wasn’t hitting anything but eventually I figured out what I was doing wrong, corrected, and started hitting more clays. Even if I don’t hit many next weekend it’s still going to be fun and I’m excited.

It was really hot even at 10 in the morning so by the time we finished we were pretty drained. The high heat and humidity just sucks the life out of you.

While Jim worked on his tractor for a little bit I drove the buggy down to feed the cows. They were all laying around in the shade and were a little lethargic all weekend because of the oppressive heat. I don’t know why it seemed worse than normal but it really did. We had some lunch then just relaxed inside for a while.

Steve and Laura were grilling steaks and invited us over for dinner. We visited with them for quite a while which was fun. We really enjoy their company.

I had breakfast a little early on Sunday because we wanted to get a few things done before it got unbearably hot. Jim power washed the buggy and one of the tractors. We're going to take the buggy to the clay shoot next weekend which will be perfect because it has a gun rack in it and we can pack a cooler with drinks for the back. While he did that I went down to feed the cows one more time. The herd was all the way at the back and not really interested in coming up but eventually they did.

I took several pictures of Ranger since Tim will probably be coming to get him next weekend. There's going to be crying.

We did a few things around the house then packed up and left at about 10:30 because we had some things we wanted to do at home. When we left Haskell it was already 93 degrees on the way to a high of 109. Ugh. My poor babies.

When we exited the highway and were almost home we saw that they'd torn down the office building on the corner. The highway is being widened and we knew several businesses were being relocated but this building has had a leasing sign on it so we thought it was staying. Guess not! It was there when we left on Thursday and now it's rubble.

This was a motel at the next intersection. Now it's rubble too. They've been coming down so fast… it's a little surreal.

Next weekend is opening weekend of dove season. We haven't seen many dove because of the drought so we'll just have to see how it goes but we went to Academy Sports to get our licenses. They had shotgun shells on sale… a really good sale so we stocked up. We may have gone a bit overboard but they don't go bad and it was an exceptional deal. Jim's and my shotguns take a different size shell so we got some for both. 50 boxes. That's 1,250 shell. ha!

Random stuff:

It looks like the guy behind us had a fire this week but we're not sure. This large area is dead but it's not really black like a fire. He has another section like that too so we don't really know what he's done back there. I don't think it was like that last week.

Happy birthday (today!) to my friend Janie and on Thursday to my sister Cindy who I'd like to remind that she's OLDER than me. :o)

Have a great week!!

More of the Same

2011-08-21T20:42:00.000-05:00

It's been a crazy busy week at work for both of us... the last week before school starts. For Jim that means schools want him to drop everything and install what they decided to order at the very last minute. For me that means teachers are back, computers are being turned on, and we're finding things that chose to stop working over the summer. I also had dozens of calls from people that forgot their passwords over the summer. That makes me laugh but it's not a big deal. Anyway, we were both more than ready for the weekend!!

On Friday afternoon I was told we got a public records request which is part of my job since I administrate the email system. Normally I would do that at work but this was requested by an entity that shouldn't be asked to wait until Monday so my boss loaned me his Verizon mobile hotspot device. It's awesome! I was able to get internet on my laptop while driving to the farm and get part of it done. I have to have one of these things! I checked and it's way cheaper per month than what we can get internet for at the farm. Our neighbor lets us use her wireless but we have to go outside to the picnic table to be able to get it. I was able to sit on the couch later that night, finish the search and get it uploaded by about midnight. I'll be visiting Verizon on Monday!

We got to the farm at about 7:45 so we had enough daylight to go down and feed the cows and clean up a bit. Ranger was absolutely crazy! After he ate he ran around and around as fast as he could kicking up his back legs and acting like a little bull. It was adorable. I was down on the ground trying to get Maddie to take a cube from me and Ranger flew around the hay bale then came running up behind me, slammed on the brakes kicking up dust and snorted in my ear. He's hilarious and growing like a weed… all the calves are.

On Saturday we had breakfast then went to the feed store in Stamford. We haven't been there in a long time because we've been buying a pallet at a time so it was good to see Jim (feed store Jim.) We visited with him for a while after he loaded our trailer. When we got back Jim started doing some work with the bobcat while I unloaded the feed… all 2,500 pounds of it! Ugh! I was exhausted and had shaky arms.

I took several bags of grain and cubes down to the south pasture to fill the barrels. When I got there all the cows were laying around in the shade except for Ranger who was out in the sun by the hay. They were all watching him for some reason. Maybe they thought he was crazy.

When I got back I found Jimbo working on the power washer and not saying nice things about it. ha! We've had trouble getting it started since day one (about 4 years ago) and he was really frustrated. We're going to take it home and drop it off at a repair place to see what they can do with it or trade it in. He said he'll never buy that brand again but I think we may have just gotten a lemon.

Jim's been on the hunt for a trailer for a long time. Not just any trailer… the right trailer for the job. A while back Steve gave him a 300 gallon fuel tank that he hasn't used in ages. It needs a little work and a pump then he wants to mount it on a trailer. To buy a fuel trailer already made is pretty expensive and we need a way to fill up the tractors without driving them into town or doing it 5 gallons at a time with little totes. Anyway, Jim found a guy online this week who sells military equipment including trailers. He went out to see them on Thursday and came home one. It's big, super heavy duty and built to carry a big generators. It even has a hydraulic jack stand. The tires have to be new because they still have the little nubby things on them. The price was way too good to pass up. We couldn't even get the tires for what he paid for the whole trailer so it was a great deal and he's probably going to get a second one to mount the welder and all the tanks on. He's a pretty happy guy now.

These are the leaf springs underneath. You can tell it's built to handle a lot of weight.

And this is the fuel tank that will be cleaned up, painted, then mounted on the trailer.

We took a well-deserved nap then took Steve's cotton trailer back that we'd borrowed when we brought all the tractor parts home. When we passed Jim's parents' north farm we saw these pipes in one of their fields. Jim asked Steve about it and he said some gas lines are being replaced.

We did a few other things then Jim grilled out for dinner. I bought this George Foreman electric grill a few weeks ago so we could cook outside when there's a burn ban like now and we can't have an open flame. It was only $75 and has a big dome lid. It can lift off the stand to be used indoors too if you want. Love it!

After dinner we went down to visit with the cows until it got dark. Everyone got brushed and petted while the calves played.

Jackie

Lacey

Spoiled, spoiled Gabby. When Jim has the brush she doesn't want to wait her turn. She follows him around and will even shove him until he does this.

Wednesday will be our beautiful Lilly's 5th birthday.

Bonnie got us up at 5am to eat and go outside… just like clockwork. I couldn't go back to sleep because I was thinking about some things I needed to do for work so I got up and let Jim sleep until 8:30 while I worked on a spreadsheet for our iMac redeployment. When he got up I made breakfast then we went down to feed the cows one more time and say goodbye. We put out alfalfa and grain for them and a lot of cubes to snack on all week. They were laying down all the way at the back fence and never did get up so they obviously weren't hungry.

School starts tomorrow and I had several work orders that I just haven't been able to get to because I've been so busy. I wanted to try to get those things fixed for my users if possible so we headed home earlier than usual. Once we got home I threw a load of laundry in the washer then went to my campuses. Jim went with me because he had a projector he needed to look at in one of my libraries. Turns out he only needed to connect a cable to the wall but it was nice to have him for company.

I've been working on stuff on the couch since we got home. I told myself I wasn't going to work like this at home but hopefully things will settle down in a few weeks… just in time for the bond money to be appropriated and order a few hundred more computers we'll need to install. ha!

Happy anniversary this week to my parents who will be married 55 years on Thursday and happy birthday to our nephew Bradley who will be celebrating his 17th birthday next Saturday. He'll also be starting his senior year of high school tomorrow…doesn't seem possible.

To my teacher friends, I hope you guys have a smooth start to this new school year. :o)

Have a great week!

Bad Blogger

2011-08-14T16:26:00.002-05:00

I'm a bad blogger. I didn't take a single picture on Saturday.

I woke up in the middle of the night Friday and heard thunder. I didn't think much about it because we'd only been given a 20% chance of rain and it always goes around us. At about 3:45am it started raining!! I woke Jim up to tell him. The wind was blowing pretty hard out of the east and it sounded like it was raining pretty hard. Neither of us got up to see. It rained for nearly an hour and when it was all said and done we had 1-1/4". It's not much but better than nothing and it kept the temps down below 100 for the day which was nice. We haven't been below 100 in a couple months and last week was around 108 every day. We've now had only 2" of rain in the last 10 months… still not good.

Steve met us at the burrito place for breakfast and we talked a while then stopped to feed the cows on the way home. They had messed up the hot line again this week but at least there's nothing in the field that can hurt them now. We were surprised that they didn't eat on the bales of hay because the hot line around those was dead too. It's all connected. The herd was pretty active and ready to eat. The calves were running around and happy because it was cooler. They've never seen rain before so I'd love to know if they went out in it or stayed in the shed.

We did this and that, had lunch, then went to the grocery to get something to grill for dinner. While we were there, Steve called to invite us to dinner with him and Laura at a place in Anson. It was actually a little place we'd passed several times on the way to Abilene and wanted to try so we were pretty excited for that. Anson is about 35 miles away.

We took some alfalfa to the cows and on the way back I got the notion to pick up the trash on the side of the road. There was a lot of it because, as I've said before, everyone feels free to just toss it out their window. That wasn't in Jim's afternoon plans and it was really humid but I was fine with doing it myself. It was my obsession, not his. However he wasn't going to let me do it myself so he was out there with me. I walked in the bar ditch tossing out all the cans and bottles etc to the side of the road from our house all the way to the gate of the other pasture which is about 1/4 mile. Jim did it on the other side of the road then we drove along in the buggy and picked it all up. We ended up with 4 large trash bags full. That's ridiculous. I can't believe people don't have any more pride than that.

After resting and cooling off we cleaned up and went to dinner with Steve and Laura. We had a great time visiting and the food was really good! When we got back home we had just a little daylight left so we went to visit the cows again. We brushed everyone and sprayed them for flies which had come out because of the rains. I scratched Ranger a lot and even eventually scratched on Maddie's horns. She's a little more timid but she's really warming up.

Saturday was Gabby's 2nd birthday. She's still my little girl.

We slept in a little on Sunday morning which was pretty nice. I made breakfast then we drove up to Jim's parents' land in Weinert to see the work Wesley's been doing on that tank up there. There appears to be a problem with the wheel loader. Looks like it's been a rough week of digging. ha!

When we got back we loaded up some cubes and headed down to see the cows one more time. We fed them quite a bit then brushed everyone and spent extra time with Ranger. We only have a couple more weekends with him. :o( Tim is picking him up Labor Day weekend and we're really going to miss that boy but I keep trying to remind myself that it's part of this life. Jim talked to Tim on the way home and they already have a pen built for Ranger where he'll be safe until he's big enough to be let out but he'll still get to spend time with the other cows and will be handled daily so he'll be tame.

Tim also said that CJ has adjusted well to his new life and that he and the other large steer take turns being the boss. Even when CJ isn't the boss, I'm sure he thinks he is.

We did a few things around the house, packed up and headed home. The teachers come back on duty this week so it should be an interesting week. (Wasn't that a diplomatic way of putting it?)

Other Stuff:

Matt and Lynlie came over for dinner last Monday and Lynlie brought me a back-to-school present. How cute are these iPhone fridge magnets?

She also gave me this adorable little pig. When you pull his head off he's a flash drive for the computer. Love them both!! What a good daughter-in-law. :o)

On Thursday I learned that we had lost my aunt Ramona. She was hospitalized earlier in the week with failing kidneys and they were doing something called bridge dialysis but she suddenly stopped breathing Thursday morning. They apparently had her on a ventilator but she died later in the day. Ramona was my dad's only sibling and though his side of the family was never warm and fuzzy, I always liked her a lot. She and her husband Fred lived in Ohio in the summer months and have a place in Florida around the corner from my parents where they spent the summer months. I know my folks are really going to miss her.

Guess that's it for now. Hope everyone had a great week!

Change of Plans

2011-08-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

Jim and I were talking on the way to the farm and decided since it was going to be so hot (well over 100) and we didn't have any projects that we absolutely had to get done that we would spend time with the cows this weekend and just relax, watch a couple of movies, and take a nap or two (or three.) Well, all that changed as soon as we got into town.

As we were going down our road there was just a tiny bit of daylight left… enough to take a head count as we passed the south pasture. We could see the adults but didn't see any of the calves so as soon as we got to the house, Jim went to the back to get the buggy while I changed shoes and grabbed the spotlight. We drove down to the pasture and saw the calves but as we were going through the gate into the hay field we also saw evidence that the cows had been in there. That really scared me because they could die of prussic acid. Then we saw that the hotline gate was completely mangled and wasn't shocking at all. Jim called Eddie and he said that when he was there Wednesday they were in their pasture but when he went by on Thursday just to check the calves were all in the hay field and he shooed them back over. The evidence we saw indicated the big girls had been in there too. However they were all fine and prussic acid kills within a couple of hours so we dodged a bullet there.

I guess there was complete mayhem going on because when we got in the shed we also found that they had broken the end off the hose and apparently the water free flowed for a day, maybe more, before Eddie found it and swapped hoses. What a bunch of troublemakers! The drought is really getting to them and they were low on hay. We fed them, put the hotline gate back up the best we could and hoped for the best until the next morning. It was completely dark by this time and we were only seeing by the buggy headlights.

We discussed the situation and decided it was probably best to just plow under the hay grazer but Jim wanted to talk to Steve to see what he thought. Even if it starts to rain (which it's not expected to do) we think it's too far gone to come up enough to get a cutting. As long as it's in the ground there's the danger of prussic acid if the cows eat it. Also as long as it stays this dry, the hot line isn't getting enough ground to shock enough to keep them in their pasture if they get the mind to go across. All these things point to the need to just plow it and take the loss. We were already resigned to having to buy hay for the winter at the ridiculous prices they're able to get right now so nothing has changed there. Hopefully next year will be normal again. If we get any rain before October we'll probably try to put some wheat down for the winter. We'll see. It stinks being so dependent on the weather. I don't know how farmers do it and keep their sanity.

When we went for breakfast Saturday morning we saw this cat. We see it almost every time we go to this place and I keep meaning to take his picture. He has no ears but he looks well fed and taken care of. I think he lives right behind the restaurant. I call him Kitty No Ears.

On our way home we found this giant toad in the middle of the road in front of our house. I got a bucket and went back with the buggy. He must have been trying to get to the water in Steven's tank but he never would have made it. He didn't even react when I put him in the bucket so he's been without water for a while. I drove him down to the golf course and let him out in their tank where I took the turtle last week. He hopped on in so I'm sure he's fine now. Poor guy.

Jim drove the big tractor into town to fill it up then went to Steve's. He was going to plow with our little one but Steve offered one of his big ones to get the job done better and faster. While he was gone I took some alfalfa down to the cows, did a lot of cleaning up, then repaired the hose, hooked the sprinkler back up, and drove the length of the hotline. There were 5 places where the cows had knocked the wire off the insulation so it was shorting out the fence. I put it all back together, replaced the handle on the gate piece then turned the solar charger back on. It powered right up! Yea! We thought we were going to have to replace the battery. While I was doing all this the herd had finished their alfalfa and were resting in the shade.

Gabby Green Lips

By this time Jim still wasn't back and I couldn't imagine what was taking them so long so I went back for the truck and went to the Alsabrooks. They're only about 3 miles away. Apparently the plow they were going to use wouldn't connect right to our tractor so Steve and Jim had hitched up a different one. There's no shortage of implements over there! A dust cover was missing from one of the wheel hubs so I went to the hardware store to get another one but they were out. You can't use it without the cover or you'll ruin the wheel bearings so Steve "engineered" a temporary solution with a peach can, hose clamp, and duct tape to seal it. That cracked me up.

This is what a dust cover looks like.

And this is Steve's temporary-in-a-pinch solution. Very resourceful!

While Jim plowed I fired up the other big tractor and decided I'd try to get a bale of hay for the cows by myself so he wouldn't have to stop what he was doing. I've never loaded hay with this tractor before using the hydraulic hay fork but it's just a couple of levers so how hard can it be right? I stopped at the storage shed to put some air in the tires then drove it down to the south pasture, and backed the fork into the bale. I was able to tilt the bale up but couldn't get it to lift up off the ground. They weigh 1500 pounds. Jim came over and told me the trick. You have to nudge the lever up and down a bit to let the hydraulics build up pressure then the bale raised right on up! It was a pretty high so it's a little scary but not bad. I took the netting off the bale before going in with the cows so I didn't have to fight them while doing it but they were trying to eat the hay while I was trying to load it in the holder. They were appreciative. :o)

Took the tractor home then went back with the buggy to spend some quality time with the herd. Everyone got brushed and sung to. Ranger has gotten so good that I can just walk up to him with the brush and he stands there while I give him the spa treatment. I got this picture of Gabby scratching her horns on the buggy horns. It made me laugh.

This is our little dove that's nesting up in the beams.

Here's Jimbo happy as a clam.

The Alsabrooks had invited us to dinner with Wesley and his girlfriend Michelle as well as two of the kids. The other two are with their cousins for a couple of weeks. We went to Abilene to a Japanese hibachi grill where they cook the food in front of you. It was SO much fun and really great food. I took these pictures with my phone so they're a bit grainy.

Steve, Laura, and Jim.

Wesley, Michelle, and Halee. My picture of Allen was all blurry.

The food came in courses. The first course was a Japanese soup, then a salad, then fried rice which the chef made at our table. He made this little volcano with onion rings, poured some stuff down inside the middle then it flamed out the top.

Next he made a mix of zucchini, onions, and mushrooms.

Then finally our main course. Most of us had chicken of one flavor or another, some had shrimp or steak or lobster tail. It was all really good.

There was a lot of flaming.

This was our chef. Laura said a lot of them get their experience here and move on to work in similar restaurants in Dallas where they can make the big bucks. This guy was talkative and fun while he worked.

We had a terrific time and really appreciated being invited along.

I didn't take any pictures on Sunday because we were working and I just didn't think about it. On the way to breakfast as we passed the pasture we saw all three calves in the hay field. Seriously??? They were all the way at the back where Jim hadn't plowed yet so I ran back there to get them out though who knows how long they'd already been there eating. Jim opened the gate but that wasn't necessary… they ran right between the two hot lines like they weren't even there. I touched the lines and they felt dead. Even though the controller showed it was zapping at full strength you could hold the wire and not get any shock at all. The ground is just so dry that the electricity isn't getting a good enough ground. (That's a confusing sentence.)

After breakfast Jim went down to finish plowing up the hay field. I loaded the truck with grain and cubes, refilled the feed barrels, then started working on the hot line again. I moved the hose and let the water run for about half an hour to just soak ground where the copper grounding rods are. While that was soaking I tried to tighten the wires, broke the wire, spliced the wire, then tightened it again. That was fun. (Not really) By the time I got done the lines were zapping again. We moved the sprinkler so that when it goes on at night it will hit the grounding rods and hopefully keep that area moist enough to keep the lines live. We'll see. Now that the calves are used to getting out I'm sure they'll keep trying.

By about noon Jim was finished plowing. I meant to take a picture but forgot. Just imagine 17 acres of dirt and that's pretty much what it looks like. He took the plow back to Steve's then took the tractor home. We had some lunch, fed the cows one more time, packed up and headed home. It was a hot weekend with a lot of work but it had to be done. It is what it is. Maybe next week we'll get our relaxed weekend.

Happy birthday tomorrow to my friend Richard who I've known for 35 years! That's crazy. Tomorrow is also our beautiful Lacey's 3rd birthday! Mary Jo sent me Lacey's picture when she was 1 week old and I knew I had to have her. She's been a beautiful addition to our herd and she's spoiled rotten. :o)

French Fry Free Zone

2011-08-03T19:17:00.002-05:00

It's been three weeks today since I last had french fries.

Let me just say, I LOOOOVE FRENCH FRIES!!! However they have absolutely no nutritional value, are packed with heart-clogging saturated fats, and add 400-500 empty calories to a meal. So I'm resolved to cutting french fries from my life. I'm not demented enough to think I'll never have them but I can make them the exception rather than the rule. The reason this is hard is because I'm often a drive-thru eater at lunch since I'm usually between schools doing computer repairs. McDonald's is the easiest thing for me to eat while I drive but no more! Wendy's offers sliced apples as a side and they're really good. I hear McD's has them too but haven't tried theirs. Today Machele and I went to Chick Fil-A and I got a sandwich with a fruit cup side. They have a great fruit cup and it really does look like the picture!

In the spirit of full disclosure, we split a brownie for dessert. ha!

Anyway, I'm trying to cut back of fried foods overall but it's baby steps. I'm pretty proud of myself for resisting french fries for three weeks now and Jim is paying closer attention to the choices he makes too.

And just so you know... Freddy's doesn't count. I'll splurge on french fry calories at Freddy's. I'm pretty sure they're hand-cut by greek gods. I love them.

Weekend Update

2011-07-31T18:44:00.002-05:00

Friday afternoon couldn't have come fast enough. I had an exhausting week at work. We're getting down to the wire now, my campuses aren't finished because of various problems, and I still have several hundred iPads to set up and load with apps. As much as I like to think I can do it all, I just can't. I worked at one of the schools for almost 4 hours on Friday (my day off) to get as much done as possible before admitting defeat. ha!

Anyway... Jim got home a little early so we got to Haskell with a bit daylight left. As we were driving past the pasture and doing a head count we noticed that Maddie was over by the hot line fence away from everyone else then I realized she was on the other side. She was in the haygrazer field and there's no water over there. We stopped and could tell she was almost panicked because she couldn't get back but after a few minutes we had her back where she belonged. She must not have been over there long because she didn't go straight to the water but we still don't know how she got out. The hot line is still hot so all we can figure is that they were playing around and she just got pushed through which would have zapped her pretty good if the timing was right. I'm just glad we came when we did or we wouldn't have known until Saturday morning and she would have been without water for a lot longer.

Dusk was really pretty Friday night.

Jim's parents are back from Colorado we spent Saturday morning with them. We went over to the north farm to see the progress on digging out the tank. Steve was moving his cows out to another pasture so while he was gone with his first load I went in the corral to visit with the rest. I took pictures of them getting loaded for their ride to south end of town.

When we got back Jim's dad asked if I wanted to feed the 5 Angus bulls they have there by their place and he reminded me they're not tame and trusting like our cows. Not to be deterred I took a bucket of cubes and just knelt down, held one out, and let them come to me. They wanted the cubes but are used to them being scattered out on the ground. They all came close but only one was willing to inch forward and eventually take it. Once he did that he was okay with doing it again and again. There was one other that came close enough to sniff and lick the cube but not quite close enough for me to get it in his mouth. Everyone was waiting on me so I ended up just scattering the cubes but I want to go back when I have time to just sit and wait them out. They're fairly young so it's a good time to work with them.

Jim's mom brought me some Snickers fudge from the place in Creede that has the best fudge on the planet (in my opinion.) Is it on my list of healthy foods? No. Am I going to eat every bit of it? Absolutely.

We worked all afternoon down in the south pasture. While Jim was doing a few things with the Bobcat I went to the hardware store and got 8 railroad ties. I should have taken the trailer because they were really too heavy for the back of the truck but I wasn't going far so I made it ok. Jim used the Bobcat to unload and push them against the north and west sides of the shed. We realized last year that rain runs into the shed on those two sides which ends up making it just as wet as if they were outside. Jim dug out dirt from the dried tank and piled it against the railroad ties to form a berm so that should take care of that problem. Of course that's assuming it ever rains again.

While Jim did all that I did a lot of cleaning up. I know it's crazy for me to be out there cleaning up a cow pasture but I like how it looks and it's a more pleasant place to be. I fed the cows, brushed them all, and even got to give Ranger kisses. He was laying down letting me brush his face and head then I petted and scratched him a lot. He's such a good boy. We're going to miss him so much.

Saturday was hot… over 100 with high humidity so we were pretty exhausted and filthy by the end of the afternoon. We were supposed to go to a family birthday celebration in Cisco which is 90 minutes away but we just didn't feel like driving that far and getting home late. We cleaned up, had dinner and visited with the Alsabrooks (always enjoyable!) then went back down to check on the cows before it got dark. We weren't going to feed them again but they talked us into a little more. The calves were so cute all eating out of the same trough.

We brushed the cows again and Gabby was being a pest. She didn't want us to stop brushing her to do someone else so as I'd move she'd be right behind me insisting she was next. Eventually I had to pop her on the head and tell her to move on. I love my Gabby.

Jim played with Ranger.

I got this shot of Lacey at the hay bale while the camera was pointed toward the sunset. I wish I had gotten it while I was taking the photography class because one of our assignments was a silhouette shot and I never could get a good one.

On Sunday morning we had a few things we wanted to finish in the south pasture. Jim used the Bobcat to dig out the tank a little more. The picture doesn't capture depth unless someone is down there but it's a good size and will fill up fast it we'd get a little rain because it runs out of the other pasture.

While he did that I picked up rocks. That pasture has a lot of rocks and some are pretty big. Jim wants to use them for erosion control at one section against the west fence. I drove the buggy around picking them up and had to unload often because of the weight. I only worked for about 90 minutes because of the heat but this was my haul. I'd only covered about 1/4 of the pasture. I put my water bottle there for scale. It wasn't all that fun but good exercise: bend, squat, pick up something heavy, repeat. There's no rush on this project so when I work on it next time I'm going to take the tractor so I don't have to dump as often.

I had fed the cows when we first got there so they were down for their after-breakfast nap watching me pick up rocks.

Remember the longhorn metal art with our brand that Jim's parents had made for him for his birthday last year? We like it so much that they had another one made a little bigger for our shed on the other side of the road. It's Jim's early birthday present and he hung it up on the side facing the road. It looks great! We love it.

We had lunch at Dairy Queen then packed up for home. The sky was really blue and the clouds were all puffy like a postcard. I took several pictures out the truck window.

This is the forecast for the next 10 days in Haskell with zero chance of rain. Ugh!

It's going to be another busy week at work and probably stressful but the only way to get through it is to just trudge on. :o) Happy birthday to little Audrey Barker who turned 3 yesterday. I remember the day she was born and it sure doesn't seem like 3 years ago. One of her presents will be coming in a few months… a new brother or sister! Congratulations to Brett and Casey! We're very happy for you.

That's it for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Eat This, Not That

2011-07-24T16:05:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I saw a guy on one of the morning shows that wrote a book called Eat This, Not That. I've seen him before but it's been a while. He shows popular foods and what they're equivalent to then offers a similar but healthier alternative. For example (I'm going from memory) a plate of french fries are the caloric equivalent of 12 donuts or something like that. ack! A better choice would be a few tortilla chips and salsa. It was really eye opening so I picked up the book at Walmart this week. It's actually a series of books. He has one that's a restaurant survival guide, one for the supermarket, and there's even one for kids aimed at showing them how to make better choices in an effort to combat our epidemic of childhood obesity. I read the book to Jim on the way to and from the farm because we've both been saying for a while that we really need to change our eating habits. The thing I like about the book is that it's not a diet and the guy doesn't suggest you stop eating at your favorite restaurants. He just educates you on what to look for, what to avoid, and how to choose something similar but with much lower numbers thus saving you hundreds of calories per meal that add up to pounds on your waist.

On Saturday morning we hitched up the trailer and made another trip to Abilene for the Bobcat. Hopefully it's fixed for good this time. This is what happens to a spare tire in the Texas sun. It's a bummer because it was a good tire with a lot of tread.

We weren't surprised to see Ranger under the hay when we came back home.

After unloading the Bobcat we went down to feed the cows and do some cleaning up. Everyone looked good but they were ready to eat. There's just not enough to graze but there must be more at the back than we realize because they're not eating the hay as fast as we thought they would. Is it ever going to rain again??

After lunch we drove over to check progress on the tank at the north farm. Wesley's gotten a lot done this week though it doesn't look like it in pictures. He's got a lot out at the back where it looks black. That part is thick black muck.

The view from the bottom.

What a waste of a perfectly good Moon Pie.

Yuck

While Jim worked on his tractor for a bit I loaded the truck with grain and cubes to refill the feed barrels at the south pasture.

A couple of years ago my parents sent us a set of horns they found at a church garage sale. We've never really found the right place for them but then we had an idea. We turned our golf cart into a Texas cow buggy. I love it! It makes me laugh every time I look at it. ha!

Every 4th of July at the Alsabrooks we play Washers. Jim and I both really enjoy it and kept saying we were going to make our own set but never have. So finally a few weeks ago we bought some wood, a piece of outdoor carpet and some carpet glue at Lowes. One day after work I put it all together. I cut the wood, drilled the 4" holes, painted the underside, then covered the boards and back in carpet with the glue and a staple gun. Yay me! We brought them down to the farm and Jim screwed the back to the board while I painted the washers. They turned out great!

Saturday evening after dinner we went out and played a few games. Jim beat me of course but I'm working on my technique. :o) Washers is a lot of fun and I bet we'll be playing a lot. We'll be ready for the next 4th of July!

Before dusk we drove the cow buggy down to play with the herd for a while. They all got brushed and the calves were playing.

I sat down on the ground with a bunch of cubes to see if Ranger would take some from me but to my surprise, it was Madeline that carefully came over and finally took one. I was so happy! Once she realized that's what I had and that I wasn't going to grab her she took several more. At one point I slowly reached up and scratched her head and she liked that too but just for a minute. I'm so proud of her. That's the first big step in trust and we'll just keep working with her.

We took our time getting around Sunday morning then at one point Jim came in and said that Tank's little brother had come to visit. I grabbed my camera and went outside. This little guy was by the house probably in search of water.

I put him in a bucket with a little water then got dressed and drove him to the golf course in our buggy. They have a big tank that still has water and I let him out. When I tipped the bucket over he shot out and into the water before I could change my mind. :o)

We rode down to feed the cows one more time and also took them a bunch of alfalfa. Jim disconnected the sprinkler so he could water something and Caroline walked over to it. I didn't get a picture in time but she picked it up and just stood there with the sprinkler in her mouth. It was a funny site.

This is a calf huddle… strategizing their next play.

Ranger went over and laid down under the hay bale as usual so I thought I'd try to brush him before his flight instincts kicked in. I had to creep up a little at a time but he let me brush his head for a while and especially his ears. He loves to have his ears scratched. What a good boy.

On a different note, I read in the paper that A&E is filming a documentary in Haskell about our feral hog problem. It's supposed to air sometime in August. We had an unusual helicopter fly over this morning that we'd never seen before so I'm wondering if that's part of it.

The 2nd annual Clear Fork Crime Stoppers benefit clay shoot is scheduled for Sept. 3 and 4 which is Labor Day weekend and also opening weekend for dove season. The shoots are at 10:00 and 2:00 so hunters can still bag their limit in the morning then participate in the shoot in the afternoon. We're hoping that brings in more participants this year though last year was still a great turnout. If you know anyone interested in coming out this way please send them to clearfork.crimestoppersweb.com for more information. We'll be using the Modified Lewis Class rules so you don't have to be the top shot to win a gun. I volunteered last year but I plan on shooting in at least one round this year. It's a lot of fun.

Congratulations to Jim and Mary Jo Gray at Rocking G Ranch. Their heifer Phancy finally had her first calf on Friday. It's a handsome little boy who is still nameless though I call him Phabio.

Guess that's it for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Haskell Misc.

2011-07-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

I didn't take many pictures this weekend but I will say it's still hot… really hot and really dry. I never would have believed we'd go 9 months without rain but we have and there's none in the forseeable future. Everything is toasted. Pray for rain.

Jim got home early Friday so we were able to get to the farm just before 7:00 which was nice. We rode the buggy down to see the cows and took some alfalfa for them. They always love that and end up with green noses. We did some cleaning and up and turned on the sprinkler for them though it would have gone on at 9:00 anyway. The area where it's been all week was green but they had eaten down the grass as fast as it would grow. That's ok. We moved the sprinkler to another spot for this week.

On Saturday morning we hitched up the trailer and went to Abilene to pick up Jim's dad's Bobcat. It had been repaired then taken to the tire store to have the tires filled solid with foam so they'll never go flat. As the guy was driving it over to us it died which is the same problem we'd had it in the shop for. He said it did that while they were doing the tires too. ugh!! The Bobcat place is closed on Saturday so we left it with the tire shop and drove the hour back to Haskell… wasted trip! Jim called the answering service for the Bobcat repair place and when they called back they got an earful.

While we were in Abilene Jim realized he didn't have his iPhone. He'd left it at the burrito place where we had breakfast. I called and they had it under the counter so we stopped by there on the way home to pick it up. He's lucky it was in Haskell and not at home in the city where we'd never see it again.

After lunch and a nap we went over to Jim's parents' north farm. The big tank is dried up, in fact all the tanks are dried up. They've also silted in over the years making them much shallower than they used to be so as long as we have to live with a drought, it's the perfect time to clean them out and get ready for the rains that are bound to come sometime… hopefully SOON! Anyway, Steve and Da rented this bad boy to clean them out with. This thing will move dirt!

This is the big tank at the north farm. It used to be much, much deeper and goes off to the right a ways too but I couldn't get it all in the picture.

Just to give you some perspective of size, that's Jim there on the left.

Wesley has a lot of digging ahead of him but he's really good with big equipment.

Saturday evening we went down to spend some time with the cows. When we were there Friday night we saw a rabbit across the pasture at the hose and figured it was drinking. I feel bad for the wildlife because most of the tanks are dry and they're having a hard time finding water. He was there again Saturday night and another one was coming to join him but got scared when he saw us. This one didn't mind. We walked down to check out the hose joint and sure enough it was dripping just a tiny bit, enough to make a little puddle in a hoof indentation in the ground. We loosened the joint so it would drip more and keep the puddle filled for the rabbits.

We turned on the sprinkler and just watched the cows until nearly dark. The calves like the sprinkler. You can't really tell in this picture but they're all standing in the path of the water when it oscillates that way. Maddie likes to stand out at the edge so it only gets her a little wet but Ranger will put his head right in it. Caroline's doing it now too.

When they finished with the sprinkler there was horseplay… a lot of horseplay. In the evening when it's cooler they're really happy and ready to play. Ranger was running and bucking and pushing anyone that would play with him.

We've decided Caroline thinks she's a dog. She was out in the pasture pushing something around then rolling around on it so Jim went out to see what she was doing. She was rolling in a dried meadow muffin. Nice. Later we saw a couple of jack rabbits at the same time as Caroline spotted them. She took off running and chased the rabbits all the way to the fence. It was pretty funny but happened too fast to get a picture.

I got this really great shot of Lacey.

Lacey is really beautiful but quite a chunky monkey. Maddie's body is shaped just like her so I looked up a picture of Lacey's mom, Camilla. I'd forgotten how very pretty she is. Her pictures don't do her justice but she's got the same shape so I guess it's hereditary. This is Camilla with baby Lacey.

Saturday had a beautiful sunset.

Since the cows aren't using the shed in the north pasture right now, there's a rabbit family that's been using it more. Some of them also live under the feed container that's next to the shed. Our big tank is almost dried up and is down to a slimy gross puddle so I put out a shallow pan that they could reach and we've been keeping it filled with water. When we drove the buggy back there to put away on Sunday we saw one of the rabbits by the water pan. I just love the rabbits. They're so pretty.

Her buddy was between the feed container and the shed.

As we walked back up to the house Jim stopped to crank up the generator just to make sure it would start. He does that every week. It's loud and I saw something run out like lightning so I went to see what it was and found this tiny baby. A few minutes later he jetted back under the storage shed to safety.

We went to Dairy Queen for lunch then ran a couple of errands. On our way back we knew where we'd find the cows… under the overhang in the shade where they spend the day. Ranger's favorite place is under the hay bale. How many calves can you fit under a hay bale? Three. :o)

We packed up, headed home, and listened to the women's World Cup Finals on the way because the US is playing. I've never hidden my disdain for soccer… absolutely can't stand the game. But I can appreciate excellence in athletics and apparently this team is the best in many, many years so I wish them well. Unfortunately, they lost to Japan in overtime.

Welcome home to my friend Helen in Germany who is due home today from a couple of weeks at the North Sea where she, her husband, and their beautiful boxer Dora go every year. Helen always sends me a fun postcard (I have all of them) and this year was no exception. Thanks Helen and welcome home! Can't wait to see pictures. :o)

One of the high school multimedia teachers I support had back surgery this week which they had to stop early and will finish on Wednesday. I'm sure that's not the way she'd prefer to have spent her summer break. Thinking about you, Deansin. Get well soon!

That's about it. Hope everyone has a great week!!

Colored Pencil Art

2011-07-15T14:34:00.000-05:00

Do you remember me writing about Brandy Perez, the artist that drew the awesome longhorn art piece hanging at the farm house? This is a picture of it from her website.

Brandy and I have been corresponding for some time and we're Facebook friends. She also drew the slates of our herd. I really love them and love her work.

Brandy is a member of the Colored Pencil Society of America (CPSA) and their convention this year is at the Eismann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson. She and her husband Lupe live in Lufkin so we've never met face-to-face and since they were going to be in town we made plans to get together for dinner Thursday night. Jim and I met them (along with her sister, Rachel) at the Texas Land and Cattle steak house in Richardson. We really enjoyed meeting and spending time with them. Brandy knows more about longhorns and their bloodlines than I could ever hope to know.

Today I went back over to Richardson to see the colored pencil art on display at the Eismann Center. There were quite a few pieces and they were all amazing. Many had so much detail they looked like photographs. Colored pencil art is my favorite which is why Stephen Gammell is my favorite children's book illustrator. I have almost all of his books. Anyway, this is Brandy's entry in the show. I love the detail.

These pictures were taken with my phone and all the art had glass over them so they reflected and didn't photograph well but you'll get the idea.

Way high on the wall near the front entrance they have odd shaped glass pieces attached to the wall with lights shining through them which make rainbow patterns on the wall. I thought it was pretty and I'm sure when the sun shines through the wall of windows nearby it really makes a lot of color. The pictures don't do it justice.

This is the Eismann Center. I didn't know Richardson had a place like this and it was pretty impressive.

I enjoyed the show and meeting Brandy in person but let me just say if I had to drive on Central Expressway every day I'd move. It's a well-designed thoroughfare but it's anything but "express!"

Have a great weekend!

Sunscreen Anyone?

2011-07-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

There's nothing to say but THIS SUCKS!!!

End of the Week Update

2011-07-09T22:54:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday morning we hitched up the stock trailer, put some alfalfa in a big tub as a bribe then went to the north farm to get CJ. He was all the way at the back in another pasture so it took about 45 minutes to get him up to where we could load him. We drove out to the other side of Stamford to Krooked River Outfitters' south lodge which is 42,000 acres. The steers don't get to run all of that but they get over 400 acres. It's huge out there and seems like we drove forever just from the front gate to the cattle pens. We want to go back out sometime and just look around when we have more time.

CJ spent the day in the corral so he could get acclimated to his new surroundings. Check out the view!

These will be some of his new friends. The one on the left edge is really sweet. He and I had some bonding time.

Tim's plan was to let CJ out in the evening when it was cooler because there would probably be some fighting at first. That's just what they do even though it's scary sometimes to watch. It hurt my heart to leave him but I know he'll be fine and we can visit. The guests at the lodge will enjoy looking at him and he'll have lots of space to roam. He'll get to be a cow and hopefully live a long cow life.

We took some alfalfa down to the cows in the evening. Ranger really liked it, can you tell?

I thought this was a pretty picture of Caroline in the sunset.

We drove the buggy up through the golf course like we often do in the late evenings. On Tuesday night we had seen a couple of feral hogs on a tank that we could see from the back of the course. Jim estimates it's about 300 yards away and I couldn't get a decent picture because it was getting dark. Wednesday when we went back to check again I took my tripod and the pictures were better but still a blurry. There's just not enough light at that time but that's when they're active. We saw about 15-20. They're nasty creatures and do so much damage.

Thursday was lazy day. We visited the cows a couple of times, put out a new bale of hay for them, then I picked up the trash (mostly beer cans) that people feel free to just throw out of their car window as they go down the road. It's been on my to do list for a while. In the afternoon we gave the golf cart a good washing. It gets a layer of red dirt really fast out here just from the wind.

We took another drive in the evening to see if I could get a better picture of the hogs. We saw about 15 or more but the pictures weren’t much better. They’re just too far away. We went to see the cows before the sun went down and they were in the middle of the pasture so we rode out to brush them. While I was brushing Lilly Ranger came up and was rubbing against her so I reached out and brushed his head. He didn’t run off because I don’t think he realized what was happening at first but he liked it. Once he realized it was the brush that did that he would sniff and head-butt it then let me do it again. I brushed his head and neck and reached around to his body. It was awesome and I was so proud of him for being so brave at 6 weeks old! He let me brush him quite a bit before he ran off with his friends. Caroline is still too timid to let us near her but Maddie let me do her head a couple of strokes then she got scared. We’ll just take it slow with her. Gabby wouldn't let us pet her until she was 6 months old so I'm really happy with Ranger and Maddie's progress.

My freckly Gabby is still my sweet girl. I just love her.

On Friday we ran to Abilene to do a couple of things and picked up a sprinkler and water timer while we were there. We thought we'd try letting the water run for an hour or so in the evenings and see if the cows would use it to cool down. We can move it around each week so different areas get the benefit of the water. It didn't put out as much as the box advertised but it's okay. We had it come on at about 8:00 or so when it was getting dusk. The cows are more active at that time anyway because the sun isn't searing down on them. Maddie stood close by for a bit and let it sprinkle her head a little but Ranger played with it a lot. I swear that little guy is fearless. He went up and tried to bite the water and got his head all in it then he'd turn and run and kick his legs up on the air then repeat all over again.

We went down this morning to give the cows one more good feeding of grain and alfalfa before leaving for the week. This is what we found.

They absolutely love their new overhang and the expansion on the shed gives them plenty of room to spread out and stay cool in the heat of the day. We've watched them all week lay around in the shade during the day and do most of their grazing and playing in the evening or after it gets dark. It's a tough life. A large dove has already built a nest that you can see at the top.

Since we've been in Haskell all week we went ahead and came home this afternoon so we can have a day to recouperate before going back to work on Monday. It's a good thing we did because I got under the kitchen sink for something and realized water was dripping. The garbage disposer has rusted through at the connection so we'll have to replace it tomorrow. We topped that off with a notice in the mail from the IRS that we owed $169 from an error on our 2009 taxes. Unfortunately, it's more trouble to argue with them about it and dig through paperwork than to just pay it.

Birthday wishes this week go to Jim's grandmother who will turn 95 on Tuesday and is just as sassy as ever. She makes me laugh. Our friend Molly will turn 29 again on Friday and my niece Jenifer has a birthday on Saturday. Hope all of you have fun on your special day!

I'm not looking forward to going back to work Monday but only because I've enjoyed my afternoon naps. I know I'm fortunate to have a good job that I enjoy but daily naptime would make it even better! :o)

Hope everyone has a great week!