The last two Babies!!

So the last two cows in the herd FINALLY had their calves, one on the 7th(boy) and the last on the 12th(girl!!!). Personally, I think they are the two cutest ones out of the whole bunch because we can tell them apart from all the others. And of course it had to be the last two who had white on them. We have been waiting all year for calves that look like this and they made us wait, and wait, and wait.

This is Moony, with proud mama #24, (I didn't put a name because we all have a different name we call her). Born on a semi-cold Sunday, we were not really expecting him to come first, seeing as mom didn't look like she was ready. But she surprised us and and then we found out he had white on his face and then we didn't care if he surprised us, he was cute and has a very good mama, who watches her baby like a hawk.

I really like his nose and ears, and you can't see it in the pictures, but he has white on his belly and in between his front legs. He is a little smaller (about 70 lbs) than all the other bull calves were when they were born, but mama is a smaller cow so that was kinda expected.


And this is Daisy, she was the one we thought would come first seeing as mama looked like she would explode if you touched her, she waddled around for about a week before she gave birth and just looked dang uncomfortable. Daisy was born on Friday afternoon, we would have liked her to have been born earlier in the day seeing as it was chilly and supposed to get colder and VERY windy (25-35 mph winds), but what can you do? So, we had to put her and mama in the pen and make a wind block so she could get warm and survive the night. And mama was being kinda ornery and wouldn't stand still so we had to bottle feed her her first meal, but that got fixed, and thankfully, she nurses off mama now.

Another thing that we liked about her was that she is brown and white, not black and white. But we will have to see if that sticks around, we had some other calves who were a reddish black color that turned all black. We didn't get a picture of mama(#22), but she is a bigger cow and she had a big baby, 85-90 lbs. She is one of the biggest heifer calves that we had this year. And so we are looking forward to having more little ones in about two months, and starting off a new round of watching, waiting, guessing, hoping, and everything else we do in preparation for new calves.

Book Recommendation

As most of you know I am an avid book reader, and most of what I read is a bunch of crazy fiction. But I came across This book called "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. I would recommend this book to anyone. And if you want to watch the last lecture, here is the web address, http://www.thelastlecture.com/, the link is on the sidebar. And although the lecture is an hour long, I think it's worth it.
Here is the Summery or Synopsis or what ever you call it, I kinda borrowed it from the Barnes & Noble web page because they say it way better than I could have, and it would have taken me forever to type.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
—Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

4th of July

The 4th of July this year was a little different than in years past. For instance, we didn't have any hay to cut or rake, or any cherries to pick. So we kinda had a lazy holiday. We still went to the Ward Breakfast and had a fun time. Mom and Dad were enlisted to cook again and I think that they are going to be helping next year as well. Dad got to use his giant stove griddle and was pretty happy with the results. The only thing was that we had big breakfast at 9 with fruit, pancakes, sausage, eggs, bacon, and tootsie rolls. Then we had the family BBQ at 2, so needless to say some of us were not very hungry when lunch rolled around. It was a very nice day outside to have a BBQ

But we did get together over at Grandpa's for a BBQ, and the Hospital was nice enough to let Grandpa come out for the party. I think that he was very happy to be there with both families, Grandma Melba's side of the family was there as well, so they would go back and forth visiting both parties. We stayed for a couple of hours and then went back home for about an hour, then it was into town to watch the fireworks. Dad wanted to try out the camera's night settings, and so he took about 200 pic's of the fireworks, give or take a few. I'm only going to post a few because most of them were blurry. But the ones that did turn out were pretty cool looking.

The fireworks this year were on the side of the river in the Hydroplane pits because the company that rents its barge out for the fireworks weren't sure it was sea-worthy. We were wondering how the show was going to be, and it was longer than it usually was. Another nice thing was that since the pits are closer to the bridge, most of the people moved farther down river. When we got to our usual spot on the Pasco side, it seemed like there was no one there, because they were all packed in like sardines down river.

On another note Heather wanted me to post pic's of her new dog that she got a couple of days before the 4th. She looks like a Jack Russel/Schnauzer, and her name is Luci. She is the whiniest dog that we have ever had, she follows Heather around all the time and if Heather is out of her sight, she whines until she finds her. Or she follows me around, but she is still funny and she plays with Heather the way Sadie plays with dad. She also sleeps with Heather on the bed and since she usually goes to bed before I do, whenever I come in the room she wants to play and starts barking and whining, which tends to wake Heather up, and then she gets to calm her dog back down. Fun times.

Oregon Coast

In April, 4 of us went to the Oregon Coast, on the one weekend that it was 80 degrees. It was so nice to walk around Seaside in my sandals. We left on a Thursday afternoon and stayed the night at Jen's aunt's house outside of Portland, and on Friday went up to Fort Stevens to get a camping spot. The funny thing was we had to camp in the RV area because they had had some massive storm and a lot of trees had fallen down and most of the tent areas were inaccessible. So we got a really good spot right next to the bathrooms. Complete with raccoons.

We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and watched them package up lots of cheese and ate some really good ice cream.

On Saturday we went to the beach to look at this shipwreck during low tide. The thing was that although there were not that many people there, the few people that were there had dogs that they let off the leash, and were running around knocking people down and getting into fights with other dogs.

I don't know who these people are but we thought they were crazy. It may have been 80 degrees, but the ocean was still freezing. And they were out there jumping and swimming in it.

We also found about six whole sand dollar's. I didn't get any pictures of those.

Chris decided that he wanted to make Jen and I feel better about being "short", so he dug himself into the sand. He is normally as tall as Dave, who is like 6' 8". So Jen and I felt short all weekend. It was kinda weird.

Retreat

In March the singles branches of the Tri-Cities went on a overnight retreat to Camp Zarahemla. They still had about 3 feet of snow on the ground, and it was blasted cold. The girls stayed in the lodge and all the guys got to stay in the cabins. I think that the guys got the better deal because it was freezing in the lodge. Mostly everyone played boardgames, card games or sat around and talked. or they were outside playing in the snow. There were even some minor injuries from sledding down hills. One of the leaders/chaperone's got his truck stuck and had to leave it there and go back up later to get it. But the lake was the coolest thing to look at. It was so clear that you could see the mud bank on the other side of the lake, and it was not glacier blue water either.


This is what the old amphitheater (now the Valley of Nimrod) looked like. It was almost completely covered in snow. The snow was hard enough that you could walk on it.


We drove by the entrance sign and had to backup because the snow drifts were so tall. I was standing halfway up the drift when I took this picture.


This is Elisabeth and me standing at the entrance sign, about 6 ft off the ground.


This is a neat picture I took off the lake.


We stopped at Miner's in Yakima on the way home and this is the burger that I split with someone. That burger was big enough that we barely finished our small order of fries that came with it. But it was a good burger.

Farm Life

So we started to have Calves at the end of Feb. and currently have 19 babies. We have 11 bulls and 8 heifers.

But it gets really funny sometimes when we wake up in the morning and all the calves are sleeping next to each other, and all the mom's, but one, are off in another part of the pasture. Almost like they need some alone time. (And that is an old picture, but just imagine 19 calves in a big group and only one mom in sight. )

We have only had to bring one calf in the house, and that was because she was born late afternoon, and it was cold and windy, so she got hypothermia. So we had her in the house all night so she wouldn't freeze. ( this picture was taken around 1 a.m. we were all very tired, as you can see.)

The next morning outside with mom. This calf was kinda a pain, because we had to force feed her for 2 days before she started nursing on her own. She is also one of the few calves who has a name. She is so small that it is easy to tell which one she is. We call her Pixie.

We have also been planting new orchard. We planted more Sweetheart cherries and Kiku apples.

Can you believe we planted all those trees?!?!?
This is what the truck looked like with all the apple trees on it. And that is only the apples, we had already planted the cherries.

Ryan walking back after pulling pvc pipe in the cherries.

Heather and Dad gluing pvc together.

First Timer!

So I am finally creating a blog so people can see what is going on around here. And later I am going to add some pics of some of the babies that we have!