Life on the farm

I went outside one day and Patches our cat, had managed to crawl underneath this

blanket. I thought it was so cute I had to take a picture.
John went to work in Las Vegas for 5 weeks and Josiah and I got to take care of things on the
homefront during the week. Some of the excitement during the calving season included two small heifers having their calves and needing to pull both of the calves. On the weekend that John went to Baltimore to transport a cake across the country, two of the heifers decided to calve. I had been to a meeting all day Saturday and when I got home and went to feed, I could tell the mom had been struggling for quite awhile and could see that the calf was not coming out! I went and asked our neighbor Jim, if he wanted to be a midwife. He thought I meant a person and wasn't too sure about helping. When he found out it was to assist a cow he came and helped. By the time he and Josiah got the calf out it was too late. It had been trying to be born for too long of a time. We got things cleaned up and two hours later I called him again for assistance with the other heifer. This one was OK.

This momma had twins. John was home for this event. Two heifers!

This little heifer was born during our windy spell two days ago. Within an hour the poor thing was chilled to the bone as they say. The mom had sort of licked it off and then walked off. John went and got it and didn't think it would live. He brought it into the house and we put a heat lamp on it and fed it. It's bedroom for the night was the bathroom...until 3:00 am and then it decided, I am out of here! John got up and took it to it's mother and mother and calf are doing fine.

This mom decided to have her calf next to the creek. When it tried to stand up it fell into the ditch. I happened to be watching her and ran out in the field and got in the ditch and got it up and moved it away from the water.

I like spring and enjoy seeing the new animals being born. Just bring on some warm weather.

The pretty part of snow

The sheepherders were stuck in the hills until the owners could find them AND get to them. This is Okelberry's moving their sheep from Garrison to Baker.
The snow makes everything look so vivid.

Our house with 30" of snow

A full moon just about ready to disappear for the day.

Our poor pine trees! I still have christmas lights in a pine tree and frozen cords under the snow. I thought they were very pretty though.

Christmas Family Time

We decided to do something with Bruce and Rhonda's family this year, so we went to Driggs ID and went snowmobiling. We all had a good time and it was fun hanging out with each other.

I got the biggest kick out of the guys playing snow football at the lodge during the Hanks family get together.

Sledding at the lodge. Other than taking a few pictures, I could be found by the heater :-)

My BABY is 16 on December 16!

It's hard for me to believe that my sweet little boy is going to be 16 tomorrow. Wow, 16 years since we went to the hospital? I decided that you are only 16 once so we planned to do something a little more special and take him out to eat...with friends. Since the Christmas banquet is on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and our family party is on Saturday, we decided to take him on Tuesday. I called up some of his friends mothers who said they would get their boys to the restaurant. I made a cheesecake and took it along. I should have taken it out to the car first and put it in the trunk. He is our chauffer now because he is accumulating hours for his license. He had the car running and was waiting for me to get in the car. The conversation went like this; "How come we're taking cheesecake to the Border?" Because someone might want some. "How come we are taking two cars?" Because Dad needs to go talk to someone in Baker after we are done eating. Even though he guessed something was up, I think he was a little surprised. A good time was had by all.

Christmas at our house

This corner has items that my boys have made over the years.

I like to decorate for Christmas. I really like the season of giving and good will towards all. We have lights up outside also and I noticed that Aaron and Ashley have some also. The Hansen's/Hanson's know how to light up Garrison. Merry Christmas to everyone

We had to waive the wave!

Beulah has wanted to hike to the wave by Kanab for sometime. It is a permit only hike with a lottery to boot! You can reserve 10 spots per day over the internet and then they allow 10 permits per day to be purchased over the counter if you are the lucky one. Beulah and Charice went to Kanab on Tuesday to put our names in the hat for Wednesday. Alas, we got one permit. Beulah didn't want to go by herself, so they put our names in the hat for another hike and we were able to all do the Buckskin gulch. This gulch is the longest gulch in the world (some say). It was very pretty! There was a couple of times like the part above where I started to freak out at the enclosed space, and had to give myself a pep talk that the walls weren't going to fall in on me and the sky was clear and we wouldn't have a flash flood. I'm glad I didn't opt for hiking on higher ground and not go through the narrows. We will definitely go here again. We are going to try to get permits for the wave again, though they say it is very hard to get them.
The batteries in my camera were dying and I had forgotten to replace them. Hence, I didn't get real good pictures and I used every ounce of juice the batteries had, before I had to quit taking pictures. But...Steve and Beulah made up for any pictures I didn't get to take. :-)

When I got home I looked at some internet sites of where we had been and everyone warned of rattlesnakes. Thankfully, we didn't see any. Thats all I would have needed...to be in the narrowest part and see a rattler. I think they could have buried me right there.

Trip to the Smokies

We met up with John, Joie, Mark, Maureen and Hailey in Charlotte North Carolina. We went on to the Smokies and met up with Cleon, Carla, Dominique, Alicia and Amanda. We are standing by the highest waterfall in North Carolina 230 feet.

Dominique and John were best buddies because Dominique LOVES his cowboy shirt and boots. As soon as he saw that John was wearing the same thing as him, he latched onto John and asked if they could be buddies. It was very cute.

This is the Billy Graham Library. This place is a wonderful tribute to Billy Graham and the ministry that he has had all over the world.

This picture is where our friends live. They built this house. They also have two beautiful cabins that they rent out to tourists. They sleep eight. I loved their cabins. Ginger decorates the cabins with fresh flowers in season, decorates them for the holidays and makes them very welcoming!

This is an old grist mill in the Smokey Mountains National Park. They still grind corn at certain times of the year. The grinder has been disconnected for the winter.

An old church in Cades Cove. Notice the two entrances...yep, one for the women and one for the men. They couldn't walk into church together. Cades Cove is a valley where people lived until the area became part of the national park service in the 1930's. When the area became a NP, they had to move.

This is in the living room of the house where Billy Graham grew up on their dairy farm. It was a very nice home.

Alicia took this picture of the buddies


On our way back to Charlotte, we got into a terrible rain storm. We were going 15 mph on the freeway and you couldn't see a thing. Tornado warnings were issued around the place where we were. The next morning when we went to the airport, our plane was delayed by at least three hours because of a bad storm in Minnesota. They told everyone who was passing through Minn. to try and find another way home. We ended up going to Atlanta where it started to rain when we arrived and our plane was once again delayed by one hour because of the rain. There was a break in the clouds and the crew was told to "get these people on the plane and out of here while you can." There was tornado warnings outside of Atlanta also. We were glad we were able to get to SLC the same day.