More branding pictures

...and it's a boy!

Naturally since I was pretty sure that I wanted a girl....I thought it would be fun to have two little girls. I also figured with only 1 kid bedroom right now in our house, we could get along with out a major remodel longer with another girl, but no such luck. Oh well, it's going to be fun regardless and interesting as usual! This ultrasound wasn't nearly as much fun as Carter's. The tech was grouchy and pushed really hard with the wand so it REALLY hurt. She also wasn't very good about explaining what she was doing or trying to get pictures where we could just look at the baby. However, I got to find out what I wanted to know. It's very healthy and it's a boy. The picture below shows him with his hand in front of his face.

The doctor who came in after to let me know that everything looked fine, said he weighed about a pound right now. (Hmmm, so how come I've managed to gain 17? ...right on schedule for my 40 pounds gain by September. Sigh) Robert came in with Carter who fell asleep during the exam, so she was a very good little girl! My mom and Gramma Betty also came. Gramma Betty had never seen an ultrasound before and was very excited to come so I was sorry that the tech wasn't better for her. Robert took Carter home after the appointment while I quick ran some errands. I was almost surprised that Robert hadn't already starting cutting off the top of the house by the time I got home from the appointment to start on the remodel to add another bedroom. He's pretty sure he wants to add another story to the house for two kid bedrooms and a bathroom...I'm trying not to faint when I think of the mess! He did have a whole page of names written down already that he liked. I think he might be just a little excited. Below is a picture of Number 2's foot digging into momma--looking for a good kicking spot I'm sure.

Anyway, just wanted to get this posted. I do have the picture that proves it's a boy but I figured everyone out there reading this probably already knows what a little boy looks like and it's not terribly clear in the picture. I also have a bunch of back posts just waiting to be finished from branding, my new garden and oh yes, more damn bunnies!

Branding: Part II

Carter finally got her ride after all the cattle were penned. She was so excited! She had to wear her hat just like her dad, and was upset that I couldn't find her sunglasses--that I think got left at my moms. Regardless, the horse ride made up for it all.

Carter and Sterling guarding the pop and mostly staying out of the way. Carter wasn't real crazy about all the noise and the smell of branding smoke, but for the most part she was content to watch all the commotion, especially once I got her up wind. It didn't hurt to have Sterling around for entertainment either. Sterling was mostly excited about getting his chance to rope. We left before he had his opportunity, but he was sure to tell us first thing at dinner after the branding that he had caught two calves. Not bad for a first grader!

I just really liked this picture of my brother and my dad. My brother is expecting a little boy in July and I just can't wait to meet him.

Robert helping hold down a calf for branding and below, him and Picky hauling in a calf he roped. It was such a perfect day--not too hot, not too cold, just right. Carter and I only stayed for about half of the branding then headed home. I have lots more pictures and I'm hoping to get them posted somewhere online with a link.

The trip out of the pasture was a bit hairy. We borrowed my brother's truck to get back to my car. The road winded up and around some pretty steep hills and his driver side door wouldn't shut! I was trying to drive a manual transmission truck, hold on to the door and drive. I was just very glad to get back to my car. (We were however grateful that Clint did lend us the truck so we could leave early!) Carter was completely worn out. She fell asleep in the car before we got home and took a nice nap. Mom promptly followed suit! Later we went down to my mom's house to eat dinner with the branding crew. I really didn't want to go, but if I didn't we would be eating macaroni salad for the next month since I got a little carried away when I made it. Plus my mom had made pie and there was fresh watermelon--Carter's favorite right now. She had a big time playing with Sterling and Chance until the two boys got a bit carried away and flipped her over her little trike pushing her down the hill. However, no blood and she was mostly mad at being "bucked" off her trike.

Garden!

I've been really excited to get my garden started this year. I enjoyed the little garden we had last year and have been anxiously waiting to get started again. It was actually pretty relaxing to me to go out and work in the garden for a little bit each night. It didn't really seem like much work as long as I kept up with it. Robert rented a really nice rototiller last weekend, so I promptly got 7 rows planted. I'm actually a bit late for the carrots, peas, lettuce, and beets, but not bad. The rest of the stuff needs another week or so since it's been a pretty cool spring. It snowed a couple days--just a little, but enough. I put a tarp over some of the ground to help warm it up some for the corn and beans and will move it over to the squash patch next. (Yep, probably getting a little carried away since I'll be extremely pregnant when most of this stuff is ready to can--if not already hatched.)

The rows looked so nice once I got them all planted. Naturally the dog (and a cat or two) have already dug up part of my beets. Grrrr! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Robert will get around to my fence pretty quick. He's been super busy trying to get his corrals finished, so I can't really complain. Last year I had the seeds ordered in March and started quite a few in peat pots in the house, but I didn't have very good results. I may try that again in the future, but for now, I'm really just concentrating on getting the easy stuff to grow. I think I may buy a couple starter tomatoes and peppers, but other wise, I think I have more seeds than I have garden. We'll just have to see. The first year Robert planted pumpkins in our tiny garden in Colorado, he got a bit carried away. I think he planed 10 or 12 pumpkins where we probably had room for 2 or 3. Our neighbors on all three sides had pumpkins coming under and over their fences. (He had also started 12 zucchini plants but I managed to convince him !thankfully! that 2 would more than feed us and the whole neighborhood. )

The wild plums have started blooming. Nothing says spring to me more than the wild plums. It's one of my very favorite flowering trees. They are very much an optimist...one of the first flowers in the spring, which also means that a late frost will hit them pretty hard and you don't get them to fruit every year. (Which is OK too since I haven't figured out my wild plum jam recipe just yet...I invariably add way too much pectin and you have to chop it out of the jar with a knife) They also smell so sweet. I just love driving down past our one neighbor's coulee, which is chock full of wild plums, with my windows down and my car just fills up with that smell. I had to stop and pick a few from one of my dad's pasture as I was driving past.

Branding: Bringing in the Cows

On Tuesday, my dad branded a bunch of calves. I didn't realize they were just going to get started around 1, so I showed up with Carter and my Aunty Linda a tad early. They had just started to gather the pasture. When we showed up to the spot where everyone was leaving the horse trailers, Carter took one look at all the horses saddled up and wanted to know which one was hers to ride. She was one disappointed little girl to learn that she had to ride in the truck down to the corrals where they were actually branding.





We drove down to where the corral was set up and actually didn't have to wait very long before we started seeing riders and cows heading up the hill. Carter rode on the water tank in the absence of a pony. While we were watching the cows come up, Carter decided she needed a pop that was in the cooler. Aunty Linda was sitting on the cooler and told Carter she needed to say the magic word first before Aunty would move. Carter looked at her for a minute then said, "You need some money?".


You can see Robert on Picky below...I really wish I could have been riding too. Carter wasn't the only one who felt like she was missing out. Early spring is one of my favorite times to ride, next to riding in the Fall after the first big frost when all the dang bugs die. Oh well. My time is coming! Patience...


Here at the very end, everyone gathers up tight to get all the cows and calves into the corral. Generally a few calves try to run back, sure their mom is somewhere over the next hill and not in the bunch somewhere. Today however, everything went really smooth and no calves escaped. There was a good crowd of cowboys...most of it family. In fact I think only 3 of the cowboys riding were not relatives of one sort or another.

What's better than one bunny?

So the answer to that question would be 2 bunnies! Robert and Carter took Purple Carrots into town to exchange her for two male rabbits. (Two male rabbits that can go outside without becoming 800 bunnies!) Hopefully the guy we got the bunnies from sexed them correctly! The guy who had all the bunnies really did want the female we had back since she was a registered breeding doe (exactly what I really didn't want...) but had sold her since he didn't have any other rabbits ready to go at the time and Carter was really wanting to bring one home. Very nice of him really. These two are quite a bit smaller than our last bunny and a fair amount friendlier. I'm hoping to only have them in the house for a week or so before we can fix up a nice OUTSIDE house. I'm pretty tired of cleaning up sawdust and bunny poop all over the house.

Carter thoughts these bunnies were just the right size to go for a ride in her wagon. Not sure how the bunnies felt about it though!

Corinne's Baby Shower Part II

It was a truly lovely day outside on Saturday so it was a challenge to keep the kids inside for any of the baby shower. Who wants to sit quietly inside when you could be outside running and hollering? The place where the party was hosted has a great lawn for the kids to run around on and a really nice hill to roll down. Rolling down the hill was especially fun.

Carter and Riley Jo had to show Cade just how it was done. Once they were all finished rolling, they went around picking all the purple mustard flowers they could find for everyone. Carter thought they were especially pretty, her favorite color right now! Cade really wanted to stay outside and howled loudly in protest every time we tried to take him back into the party. Then I took him outside to see if he would play with some of my Aunt Susan's kids and then he decided maybe he would go back in with me since he didn't know them yet and look fairly horrified when I tried to leave him alone with them. They are very nice kids, don't get me wrong, he just hadn't played with them before.

Corinne's Baby Shower

Yesterday was my sister-in-law Corinne's baby shower. Carter (finally!!) let me fix her hair up really cute. She mostly wanted me to put all 50 hair clips that her dad had gotten for her on Friday in her hair, but I managed to make do with 8 and hide the rest. She looked so cute and surprise! she actually kept the clips in until we went home. I was figuring maybe 30 minutes and she'd rip them all.

My sister managed to get both her little kids all dressed up super cute as well so naturally we all took 700 pictures. Cade with his Wranglers and cowboy hat was especially cute.

If you can imagine, Carter and Riley's favorite part of the whole party was helping Aunty Corinne open all her presents...well next to eating up all the jelly beans. Mostly they preferred she just leave the unwrapping to them! Her challenge was staying ahead of the flying paper so she could actually get the card and see who the present was from!

Cade liked all the bows and watching the girls rip up wrapping paper.

Tug of War

Carter really likes her dad. While he was gone in Colorado last week, she was constantly asking me where he was, and that we should go look for him. On Sunday when I told her he was coming home that day, she wanted to sit on the couch on watch the road so she'd see him come down the hill first--even though he was still hours away from actually doing just that. Since he got home, she's been glued to his side every chance she gets. I have some mixed feeling since for the first two years of her life, she only wanted mom, and now, well, dad is her favorite. She even told me so! However, I was a bit of a daddy's girl myself (still am!) so I can't complain too much and I think it will help, too when Number 2 shows up and I'm a bit more tied up. Today it snowed about 6 inches so Robert was able to stay home and play with her as he didn't have too much lined up. She was so excited when she got up this morning and saw he was still home. She bounced around wanting money (oh do they learn quick!) for "heedos" (her word for Skittles). "Me need money, poppa! Need money for heedos!" Then of course she wanted to go to town to get heedos. (She knows better than to ask me for candy...but dad, well he's a sucker for that know of stuff)

These pictures were taken just before the snow arrived. We've been working on halter breaking our baby calf since you can't exactly chase her anywhere (something my darling husband did not consider when he decided it would be fun to raise her...). Sprinkles has not taken to the idea in any way shape or form. I thought these pictures were so funny with Carter wanting to tag along on her toy horse and naturally she wanted to be pulled just like Sprinkles. Robert was less than impressed trying to lead both of them without getting into a wreck...a big feat for him.

I'm not sure the noise from Carter's toy horse helped much either since Sprinkles could hear it and would shy or jump away. And me, well, I was too busy taking pictures to help! That and laughing...

Barn Kitties

Despite of all our best efforts, we still have quite a few barn cats. I brought two with us when we moved--one Pete who had actually been a house cat down in Colorado until he decided he like my plants better for cat boxes, and Pumpkin the grey and white kitty in the middle of the top picture. Pumpkin got abandoned by his mom with his other litter mates when he was barely 2 or 3 weeks old. So he decided he wasn't going to sit around and starve, he was going to get rescued! About 10 o'clock one night, I could hear a cat outside meowing for all it was worth, when I opened the door to take a look, this little bedraggled skin and bones kitten came scrabbling in looking for some grub. Most wild baby kitties take some time to tame down, but not Pumpkin, he was all about being friends with the hand that fed him. Out of all his other litter mates, I think we were able to save 2 more and the rest had died already.

The rest of the cats were either here when we got here (along with about 40 others that we slowly thinned out) or have showed up since. I managed to get these pictures with 4 of the wild cats along with Pumpkin. I really like the little white cat. She won't let you pet her, but likes to watch what you are up to and I see her around quite a bit. The others I mostly only see at dinner time. There are at least 2 more wild cats that I see pretty regular plus Pete, so we have more than plenty. There are also a few toms that seems to come and go and I don't see them very often, but when they are around, they aren't apposed to jumping in the dinner line as well. As long as I don't see a mouse around here, I'll keep feeding them I guess. It's funny to go in the barn and see all these eyes peering down at you. There is also one crazy brave pigeon who also lives with all the cats up in the rafters of the barn. I'm always surprised when he shows up again.

Carter thought she would climb up the ladder into the barn loft to check out the cats herself this week. I had been outside working when I suddenly realized I couldn't see or hear her anymore. She doesn't wander off very often so I was pretty surprised. I went looking around and finally found her at the top of the ladder, crying because she couldn't figure out how to get down. Thank Heavens she hadn't tried! Luckily all she got was a good scare and a good lecture on not climbing up there again unless mommy (or daddy) is with her. I think she believes me this time!