Jordan, Martha and Lydia

This year the Branding was held before the 4th of July (As the 4th of July was a wednesday night.) If you remember, Jordan and I attended last year ***POST LINK TO PREVIOUS POST***  and we really enjoyed ourselves, and because we live right next door (literally) we decided to get there in time to see the actual branding part.

BTW…if My mom is reading this: You might want to skip this post if you don’t want to see pictures of the poor little calves getting branded.

Anyways.

As we pulled up, we saw the first attraction of the day…Donkey rides!

We arrived at the cow pen and saw that they were allowing the little guys to rope the calves! It was great!

“I think we roped one!”

Dragging in the calf.

Tagging the ear.

Preparing for the Antibiotics.

Administering antibiotics.

Branding the first part of the brand.

The first brand.

Branding the second part of the brand.

Dragging in another calf.

Even the girls are involved!

Wrasslin’ the calf to the ground. (he fought.)

Amid the clouds of dust, he succumbed to the stubborness of the greenhorn cowboy who wouldn’t be bested by a lil ole calf!

Ride ’em cowboy! After the calf has been tagged, antibiotic-ed, and branded, they took a rope and put it around the calf’s middle, and let a little guy (or girl) get on for a little buckin’ bronco ride. It was fun to watch! The little guys loved it!

And he bites the dust!

Jordan had Lydia as I was taking pictures, and decided to let her ride the donkey.

I think she enjoyed herself! 🙂

The bull of the herd. They separated him out from the rest of the herd to make it easier to do what they needed to do. He looked very bored and disgusted at the whole process, and couldn’t be bothered. (Look at all of those flies all over his side!)

Creating a new ear tag for one of the cows.

The branding irons heating.

The girls helping out!

Oops! Got him by the hoof!

Another Greenhorn cowboy determined not to be thwarted by a calf! 😀

We ended up leaving the branding part early as I had food I needed to finish up. We missed the castrating of the calves (ha! not sorry!), and the rest of the immunizations of the bigger cows, but made it in time to bring the food. After wading across the very low river (won’t do that again!) we got to the picnic site and laid out our food. We enjoyed a nice afternoon of fellowship and food.

I wish I had emptied my camera pictures, as I would have loved to have gotten video of the mad scramble of kids when the pinatas broke open. All in all, it was a long, but very enjoyable day! I know better how to prepare for next year!

I was in the living room playing with Lydia when I looked out the window (for whatever reason, maybe to see if we were going to be getting rain any time that afternoon) and just about fainted when I saw THIS on my front door!

He climbed up the door and into the eaves.

I went to get a closer shot, and tried to be careful in case the big boy fell.

Which he did.

I jumped and screamed (naturally) and scared poor Lydia.

He laid there for several minutes, before disappearing. It did rain, and the afternoon passed. I couldn’t find him until I had opened the door and greeted Jordan when he came home from work. He had taken refuge on the back side of the sliding door. Jordan marveled at his size, and we left the thing alone.

Later, during dinner, Jordan said “Oh there he goes.” He had started walking away, heading south. We watched him for a few minutes, and then resumed our eating, only to search for him a few minutes later. He had kept traveling across the yard and was going further and further away. My only guess was that he had known it was going to rain and sought a dry refuge, and now was heading back to his home somewhere in the desert.

I am so very glad I didn’t find him IN my house!!!

Gotcha! Just a Jack rabbit. 😀

It was a hot and summery day in the desert, sales and I was headed to Costco, ask so I decided to pick up some half & half and some strawberries, find as Ice Cream sounded SOOOOOOOOOOOoo good! I had the bigger electric ice cream church, so after some coercing and cajoling, I received help from Hadassah in churning the ice cream…with the hand crank ice cream churn.

We had already mixed the base (half & half, eggs, sugar and vanilla), so we poured it into the churn, added ice and salt and started cranking!

Here is the base as we are churning.

The prepared strawberries waiting their turn.

The ice cream before we added the strawberries.

Pouring the strawberries in.

Around and around it goes!

Time for the freezer!

The finished product ready to be served!

I think most everyone enjoyed the ice cream. I sure did!

Here I have added manure, view bonemeal and Sodium Phosphate into the garden beds and have turned the soil.

I know it looks very dry, but I soaked the beds to get the nutrients to blend better.

Just a step closer to planting!

Can anyone (besides Wallaces and Petersons) guess what this is?

A closer look.

Pretty solid looking stuff.

AHA! More of a clue!

So I tried to get my  own planet-going-across-the-sun shot. Here’s the sun, but I think I was a little late for the planet. :p

I’ve been working on trying to help get the garden fence up and going. Here is a picture of my latest: Digging little holes for the posts and filling them with water to soften the ground to be able to pound the poles in.

Here is a line of a few of my holes. They are about 5 feet apart.

Later when the boys got home from work, I pleaded for a few minutes of work in the garden, doing the MANual labor part. (heh…I think there is a reason why it is called MANual labor.) Austin took to pounding the poles in…

…While Jordan dug out the ant poison and started spreading it around on the large ant piles around the house.

Lydia pulled out her little spade and was doing her part in the garden. (looks like she was attacked by a pen! lol)

Slowly but surely, the garden is coming together!

Lydia was so full of smiles and happiness and such that I Had to take all sorts of videos and photos (seeing as how I don’t do a photo every day of my firstborn.)

She had just woken up so her expressions were so cute.

Just a joy!

And a fun video!

Finally a free Saturday! Jordan decided to make a few measurements and such to get my garden going. Austin decided to take a brak and hung out with us so I put them both to work. lol Just kidding. Here Lydia is helping them figure out dimensions.

For those of you unfamilliar with such a tool, this is a post digger (I think lol).

This view is taken from the garden. The bedroom window is the master bedroom. That is the back of the house.

My tree trimmimg job.

Before and after raking  pictures.

Around on the west side of the house.

Lydia taking a break.

The back of the house.

btw…there are just 2 doors in the back. The door in the top picture (closest to the right) is the same door in the bottom picture (on the left hand side).

More tree trimming pictures. Demonstration 0picture of an untrimmed tree and of a trimmed tree.

Then later Jordan invited Steve and Esther Hyde over for dinner. They brought the two youngest, Adam and Lincoln. I had had a chocolate lasagna recipe that I was wanting to make, so I decided to go ahead and put it all together. It was supposedly a copy cat recipe of Olive Garden’s Chocolate Lasagna, but it didn’t taste ANYTHING like the real deal. I halved the cake recipe part, and here is what I ended up with.

Yeah, still a 4 layer cake! And the icing was WAY sweet! I need to find some better buttercream recipes to play with.

I do like the chocolate chips though. 😀

It was set to be a nice evening. We had pizza that the Hydes brought, and chocolate cake.

And…unexpected company.

Austin had noticed a mouse earlier in the day. The mouse came to visit at dinner. We were eating and talking about the mouse, when Steve looked over and casually remarked “oh, there he is.”

Commence shrieking and fainting and climbing up on chairs.

Okay, not really.

The mouse scooted under the refrigerator, and so the men all joined hunt.

Austin (leading the charge) started bringing out everything he could to get to the mouse.

Boxes, glue traps…

…Poles, etc. This must be a male dominated sport.

Most of us returned to dinner to finish. Meanwhile, Austin chased the mouse from the refrigerator to the stove, and managed to capture it after it headed back  to the refrigerator and out again. He trapped it in a box, and took it outside where he disposed of it with a good African tribal death…death by the metal pole pounding.

AAAAAAAAANNNNYways…

We all enjoyed the chocolate cake.

Poor Squeaky.

Not really.