Tree House (Well Sort of)

One beautiful fall day the kids disappeared from the house and I didn't see them for several hours, except to come in and grab their lunch bags and water bottles. Later I ventured out and they had to show me their handiwork.

Son exploring the stick pile that is always in existence with so many trees and some much wind around this place. He was starting out on an "adventure".


There are several, very old, very large maple trees on our farmstead. We have one just outside of our house and another one that sits about 200 yards to the east. The kids crawled up in the second one, which is easy to step into and proceeded to put boards in strategic locations for shelving to hold their snacks and water.



They also fashioned a swing with baling twine they found and another board. They probably played out there for 3 hours before it was time to eat and then again at least another 2 after the meal. They had a blast and I was happy to see them being creative and not vegging out in front of the television. We have about 10 more days of nice fall weather before potentially colder temps move into stay, so I am hoping they will have more time to pursue these types of activities.

Notice that the dog got in on the action too!

Who Can Resist This Face?????

Evidently not my husband....

He and my oldest daughter saw the pup on a Wednesday afternoon while moving bales home, but figured it was one of the neighbor's dogs. The next morning my husband drove by there to check our cattle and it had started to rain overnight. Cold, 45 degrees, continuous soaking rain....
and the pup was exactly where it had been the day before.

Hubby brought it home and we moved one of the border collies from the kennel to the garage and put her in there. Then we proceeded to call all the neighbors to see if their dog was missing. No luck there. Most likely she was dropped off in the country because someone could no longer take care of her or afford to keep her. She wasn't injured or sick but extremely hungry.

On Friday I thought hubby was going to take it to the Humane Society as he was going to the city where it is located and he called me to see if I had found anyone that could take it. When I told him no, he said I can't take her. I assumed he meant that the Humane Society was full and taking no more animals. He didn't respond.....

I asked, "You fell for her, didn't you?" YEP!! Couldn't do it.

She has turned out to be quite a nice dog and now that she is not starving, she has a really nice personality and even takes herself for a "walk" by picking up the end of her leash and carries it around in her mouth.

She appears to be a 9-12 month old pup of beagle cross possibly. Need to do some online searching to figure that out. Right now, DH still hasn't given her a name, so until such time that he does pick a name for her, she will be referred to as "dog to be named later" or DTBNL.

Any name suggestions are appreciated and I will pass them along to hubby (if I like them....LOL!)

Edited to add: I think she might be a Jackabee (cross between a Jack Russell Terrier and a Beagle). If anyone can help us figure out her breed, that would be great!

Dangers of HPV Vaccines

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/25/prominent-scientist-warns-of-hpv-vaccine-dangers.aspx

No matter what side of the Gardasil debate you are on, at least read this article. It may be disguised as an anti-fertility or infertility vaccine.

The information listed supports the notion that the chances of developing cervical cancer are relatively minimal compared to the risks from getting this vaccine.

Please read this information and make a better-informed decision for your daughters.

King's Pointe Waterpark

Sorry, I can't get the writing to move up above the photos and I am too tired to move them all, so you can scroll down to see what we were doing, okay?

We were given 5 free passes to King's Pointe Waterpark last spring. They expired the 31st of August and we were so busy this summer that they nearly went unused. Then a friend and her grandchildren, whom we had tried to go to the waterpark with earlier this summer, got in touch with me and we went a few days before the end of the summer. Another friend, who is a neighbor of hers came with her kids as well.

We had lots of fun. Here are just a few photos of our fun. It went too quickly. Perhaps in dead of winter, we will have to go to the indoor waterpark.

Wyoming on Horseback!!

After a delicious breakfast skillet of sausage, potatoes and scrambled eggs with Green Chili Mix, we are ready to head out to move cattle into higher pastures. We were short a few horses for all of us, so a couple of our kids doubled up with a couple of us or with Ranchwife's kids. A few minutes after this photo was taken, Middle Cowgirl's horse scared up a rattlesnake about 6 feet in front of me. DIDN'T LIKE THAT MUCH! Hate Rattlesnakes! It was scared and went into a hole. Thank goodness!
After we moved through the meadows, we pushed some of the pairs of cattle up over a saddle into a higher pasture. I was thankful for surefooted ranch horses to handle the things that I am not experienced at (on horseback).

A view of one of the higher parts of the ranch.
Oldest daughter with Littlelest Cowgirl
Son and Youngest Daughter

Once again after riding for 3 hours or so, the kids decided to cool off by making their diversion again and splashing up a storm.

Once the work was done, we started a campfire and the kids enjoyed hot dogs.

The adults enjoyed adults beverages and a couple of grassfed steaks (cooked to perfection by the Rancher, aided by a flashlight to test for doneness). We finished off the evening with campfire smores for all. That was a great way to end our all-to-quickly-over visit to our dear friends in Wyoming.

Hope you enjoyed our quick pictorial essay of the trip to Wyoming. I can't wait to get the photos into a scrapbook so I can enjoy them again.

More Wyoming Photos

The kids built an irrigation diversion tarp near the bridge you saw in my previous post (the bridge with all the kids on it) and flooded a rather large area to play in. They ran through it, rode bikes through it, played on a makeshift teeter-totter in it and splashed a lot! Great cheap fun. They did this at least 3 times while we were there.




Son enjoying the border collie. This is his idea of a great day!!

Younger daughter with biggest cowgirl, exploring the hayloft of the horsebarn!

Our family on the overlook near the canyon.

Ranchwife's family at the overlook!

The one part of the trip that we could have done with out. But we overcame our fear and distaste for rattlesnakes co-existing with us and took a horseback ride into the mountains the next day to help Rancher and Ranchwife move some cattle to other pastures.

Wyoming Trip

So that Ranchwife won't disown me, as I promised her that I would post these to my blog, without further adue (sp?), I am finally posting some photos from early August and our trip to visit them at their 7,000 acre ranch in Wyoming.



Shot going through the Sandhills of Nebraska, nearing the Pine Ridge.



We made it to Wyoming. After taking this picture we turned around and shot one of the Nebraska sign, so we didn't have to stop on the way back.

The guys starting the morning, visiting over a cup of Joe on the deck.

All of the munchkins (well almost all of them). There were our three, Ranchwife's three and four of the our friend's six. They range in age from 3-11 here. The under 1 year old and the other 11 year old weren't present for the picture. That's a lot of kids, but they sure had fun. My son enjoyed having more boys around and our friend's only girl sure enjoyed having more girls around.

Rancher and my hubby brought in two cows that had recently calved and so our kids got in on a little branding (something that we don't have to do where we live). We had to laugh as we asked our oldest daughter "Are you ready?" She responded, "Yes!" and we asked asked again, "Are you ready?" and she said yes. Then Ranchwife started branding and the calf started moving......She wasn't quite ready for that...... but it gave all of us grownups a good laugh anyway.

Look for more photos in upcoming posts.

Wedding Photos

My handsome cousin married his beautiful bride this past July and computer problems and a busy life got in the way of me posting a few photos. I cut cake and the girls were waitresses. It is amazing how fast my kids are growing up. Just had to get a photo of all of us dressed up for the wedding.



My youngest sister and her daughter. She was about 3 weeks shy of turning 2 years old at the date of this picture. She didn't really make it up the aisle, but she was sure cute. She was cutting a rug at the dance, but I haven't figured out how to upload videos to my blog yet. It is probably easy but I haven't taken the time to figure it out.

Wanted to add that I never did get a good picture of the bride and groom, otherwise I would have posted one.

Color Combo Generator

http://www.scraptitude.com/colorcombo/

This is a neat site that I ran across. You can input either Stampin' Up! colors or Close To My Heart colors and it will generate color combinations for you to use. Since I have a ton of leftover Stampin' Up cardstock and have recently been purchasing CTMH kits and coordinating cardstock, this has been great for coming up with color combinations to use on pages.

At the last retreat I went to, I completed 32 pages, many of them double page spread and lots of them using the books put out by CTMH (Cherish and Imagine). They also have out another one called Reflections. While the books are pricey, I was able to get them at Michaels with a 40 percent off coupon, making them less than $20 each.

Hope you enjoy this neat website.