So....

So, it has been quite awhile since i have posted anything on here. And right now for those of you who didn't know, I find myself in North Carolina. I came with Liz, since she didn't want to come by herself (I don't blame her), so I tagged along. We have been here since 10/28. We flew out of Spokane WA, ended up getting delayed in Denver, so our 2 hour layover turned into a 5 hour layover. Then we had some pretty rough turbulence after we left Denver. It was interesting to say the least. But we survived, and have been enjoying the warmth here.

One exciting thing we did was we went shooting at the range here. I got to shoot a Glock 21, a Glock 22, and a Beretta. It was fun and I did a better job than i thought i was going to, and for those of you who don't believe me, I have proof. We also went and visited the Marine base here, Camp Lejeune, and it is huge. I didn't realize just how big till we got there and were driving around. But it was pretty cool to see all the Humvee's and all the other things that they get to drive around and use.

And that's about it, except that we will be going to a Marine Ball (which was the whole reason we came) and taking lots of pictures. I might post some on here, but most of them will probably be on Facebook.

Ok then, It's late here, and i should be in bed. I'm not exactly tired, but oh well. The whole time change thing really throws you off.

Update

Well, there has been a lot going on around here. The cows keep having babies and getting into trouble, we had one of the mom's impale her front leg on the loader the other day. So she went into the vet to get stitched up and we have to give her shots for a week. It has also been slightly rainy, we repainted the kitchen the other day because we were bored. Water has finally started up, and we are finding all the problems that we need to fix, mainly the pasture pump. The planter is having issues as usual, but they are not as big as last year. Just the usual stuff that happens in the spring, and whatnot.
But that is all that i know about since i have a job now. I keep pretty busy, but they have to find things for me to do, and mostly that is re-organizing the shelves, checking inventory,receipting papers, answering phones, and filling parts orders. That's all that they are letting me do for now so i don' t have information overload. I will eventually get to the billing and filling out stock orders and things like that, but not for a few months. At least i hope so, I'm having a hard enough time remembering all the acronyms and shortcuts. And that is about it for the updating, if anything new comes up, you will probably find out about it before i can put it on here!

Baby Calves!

Well, we are about half-way through this years calving already. Surprisingly we also have more calves that have white on them, or they are a different color. But that could change, and it probably will.

This is Bryson's bull calf for this year.

This is Daisy (standing) and Dipstick. Daisy is the one that we had in December, and Dipstick got his name because the last inch of his tail is white. We have another calf that has the last six inches of her tail is white.

And here is what the majority of the babies are going to look like probably. So far we have had more boys than girls again, but that is a good thing, and we added a few more heifers to the herd. There is another white one, two Pinzgauer's (one is red & white, and the other is black & white), a black with a white splash on her head, and a chocolaty colored mousse one.

In January we went up to the elk farm outside of Nachese to go watch the elk and the bighorns get fed.

This one practically walked right up to the fence. The feed trough was only ten to fifteen feet away from us. He must have broken his leg at some point because he walked very slow and had a very bad gait, that is also why his leg sticks out like it does. The rest of the sheep were hiding out on the hills and you could only see them with the camera's zoom lens, or the binoculars. But there must have been at least thirty bighorn sheep laying around.

So on the way up there I was thinking that there was only going to be around 50-100 elk. Well, needles to say I was way off. There must have been like 1,000 elk wandering around. And that doesn't include all the elk that were on the other side of the feeding station that was over the hill.

So in our wanderings around the walk ways, we kept counting the points on all the antlers that we could see and looking for the 7/8 point elk that was said to be up there.

We finally found him and also saw about 3 or 4 babies that had been born late and still had their spots.

There were also about 5 Bald Eagles that were flying around and landing on the rocks. We got a few pictures of them but they're not very good.

Adventures in Skiing

Well, we decided to go skiing on Wednesday because Heather was going to go with her YW/YM group, and the rest of us didn't want to be left out. So even though they eventually decided not to go (they couldn't get enough of the girls in on it, and they heard it was really icy), we decided that we were going to brave the supposed icy conditions of the mountain and enjoy a day of skiing. And I don't have pictures because we accidentally left the camera in the car.

So when we got there we found out that the mountain was sorta icy, and warm. We all had to leave a layer of clothing in the car because we are used to it snowing and being only 8 degrees. that seems to happen every time we go, with the exception of this time. But there was a reason for it being so warm. It seems that there is a gigantic air inversion hovering over our heads. We looked at White Pass last night and they were 51 degrees at the summit and only 31 at the base. That is what it was like on Bluewood as well.

So we started skiing and having as much fun as you can when you are skiing on ice and having to wait for people to make it to where you are waiting, just so you can ski another 100 ft and do the same thing again, to be fair it was an even mixture of waiting for Heather, Ryan, and Bryson, I'm OK at keeping up with mom, dad usually stayed at the back behind the stragglers. We all had our share of falling on the ice, because it would grab your ski's and shove them one way while you went the other. So we are all nursing sore muscles and slightly sore legs but we can't complain at all compared to Bryson.

He was learning to snowboard the hard way, take the lift up and go down the "easiest" green slope that Bluewood has. Well after he biffed it hard a couple of times, he really injured some of his abdominal muscles, and was hauled down the rest of the hill by ski patrol. (This was about 3:30 in the afternoon and we had been on the mountain since 11:30 that morning, and Bluewood closes at 4 so we practically skied the whole day). But he tore or pulled some muscles and was hurting pretty bad, so we packed up and went home. He laid around in dad's chair and slept for a while, and ended up sleeping in the recliner because his stomach hurt more when he laid out flat vs reclining. But he is feeling better now, he just has to watch what he does or he is going to strain those muscles all over again and will be really hurting.

So that was a first for all of us, really icy slopes and run ins with the ski patrol. It's always an adventure going skiing up there. anyone who says other wise, is not paying attention.