Playing Inside

We are still playing inside trying to get away from the wind, dust, and snow! I hear it's supposed to be warm this weekend but I'm not holding my breath. So moving on from the cornmeal box I thought we would try corn starch. Silly Mommy!! Are you crazy? In my defense I did this right before bath time. Hannah did love playing in it. She took hand fulls and squeezed them. It made funny sounds and shot out all over. This only lasted for a short time. She was tired and jumped into my arms. I was then covered in corn starch! I think we may wait awhile before trying this again, as fun as it was.

We are FINSHED!

Calving that is. We had our last calf today. One of our purebred cows had a heifer a couple of hours ago. Unfortunately for the calf we aren't sure who her Daddy is. We have in narrowed down to two different bulls. Silly cow I wish she could tell us. I'm sure she remembers who the Daddy is. We are working on figuring it out, but in the meantime I hope the calf doesn't develop a complex or a poor self esteem.

So I guess I will sleep easier for the next 10 months without any calves to worry about entering this cold, cold world. Ha ha! For any of you that know how well we sleep around here sometimes, I guess I will sleep with one less thing on my mind but maybe not any better.

The grand total for the year was 7 bull calves and 5 heifer calves. It was an OK year considering we haven't had a winter this bad in quite awhile. We lost one pregnant cow (she tried to die on us before) and two calves. We beat ourselves up over it sometimes but as Ben said, "If you have livestock you're going to have dead-stock." So true. I guess it's just part of life. The joy comes from watching the calves run around and play. We even have one that has befriended the feed wagon. I regularly have to chase him away from it so we can get out of the gate. He's a persistent little guy. Enjoy all of the new life that comes with spring!

This Weekend

This weekend Ben, Hannah and I went to my parent's house to help my Dad build some fence. Grandma and Hannah played in the house which was good because it ended up snowing on us before it was all over. We came in for lunch and Hannah was playing around the table while we ate. Here are a couple of cute pictures that Grandma took of her.

She loves cabinets and drawers and will unload what ever she can out of them.

On a side note Hannah was looking through a book last night that we don't read much. She was going through and pointing out all of the ducks in the book. I had not previously pointed them out to her. Some of them probably were baby chicks but who's going to argue with an 11 month old at that point. Duck is the most clear animal name that she says. She can identify others but if you haven't been in on the translation you wouldn't know what she's talking about.

"Sand Box"

The spring winds have started around here. For those of you that aren't familiar with them, they can turn a perfectly nice day in one that's cold and incredibly dusty. Hannah and I have spent some time outside on the nice days but haven't gotten to go out much lately. I made her a makeshift sand box in the house. It's a container full of cornmeal that she can throw all over the kitchen. (Thanks for the idea Kari.) It's a great inside alternative to having sand all over the house and she's learning that it's not very tasty to eat!

Happy Easter

Dyeing Eggs

This morning Hannah and I dyed Easter eggs. I wasn't planning on doing it until my friend Brooke emailed me a recipe for which I had all of the ingredients. We put on old clothes and got to it. Hannah enjoyed herself. She threw eggs on the table. Luckily they were hard boiled! And played in the dye. When we got done we had very little dye on us and only two eggs were cracked (one from Hannah and one from Mommy).

Mommy's Helper is Getting Bigger

We are still feeding cows in this neck of the woods. The grass appears to have begun to green up in the last week but we are still a long way from turning them out to pasture. My little helper now hangs out in the pickup while I feed the cows. She is too adventurous right now to be trusted on the feed wagon when it is really full of hay.

She would like to be on the feed wagon however. Here are the tears of disappointment. We normally include the "Happy Hannah" pictures and I just wanted to assure you that like every baby she cries too!

Sorry about the really dirty windows. It's just the feed pickup so who cares?!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Here's a rainbow that was out this morning. Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Probably not, I think just the town of Newell.

Here's my first attempt at a fondant cake. Like I needed something else to do! Hey, a mind that continues to learn stays young. And I learned a lot. It didn't turn out too bad for having done it on a day when Hannah was a bit under the weather.

Screeching Halt

I came to a screeching hault today when I saw this in a field. I'm working on a grant for Ben's friend Luke and we were out taking pictures of some irrigation equipment. We were toodling down the road when I slammed on the brakes and said, "Luke did you see that?" No, he hadn't so I backed up and since I had camera I took some pictures. This poor cat was wandering around in a field with a tin can stuck on its head. I took the pictures and thought about letting the story stop here, but do not dismay animal lovers I saved the cat. It took some doin' though. I tried to gently as I could remove the can. In the end I had the cat by the scruff of the neck and wiggled and pulled, and wiggle and pulled until the can finally came off. The cat seemed to be in good shape and trotted off toward it's apparent home to hunt down another can with a tasty morsel in it. Sorry folks that's about as exciting as it gets around here today!

She Waited

I was in a quandary as to whether or not I should go on our trip to Sacramento. We had a couple of cows that were about ready to calve and I was sure that if I left they would calve and if I stayed home they wouldn't. We had our friends Bernie, Carrie, and Garret feed the cows for us while we were gone. I knew they were going to be checked once a day by them and the we had Ben's Dad check them in the morning. The weather was terrible for calving when we left on Sunday and thought for sure she would have it in the snow just as we left. Nobody did anything the whole time we were gone. This morning I got up and saw that she was in labor and she had a healthy calf just as the sun was coming up. Perfect timing!