Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

See ya next year! (unless something really interesting happens and I really feel like trying to post using our dial up connection... hmmm probably not!)

Murphy's Law

If ever John has had a case of the 'Mondays' it was yesterday. It's quite comical after the fact, but I'm sure he was cursing a lot as it was occurring. Hopefully I can remember all of the details....

First of all, let me point out that the yellow ranch truck has been out of commission since last week when it died on the way back from Mason one day and it hasn't gotten fixed yet. He usually would use this truck, which has four-wheel drive, but has been forced to use his white truck, which doesn't.

The afternoon started out with John going up to Linda's ranch to check on her cows. She has a high fenced area that is supposed to keep deer out, but some have gotten in and she asked John to get rid of them. So, when John saw a couple of them and they both just stood there, he decided they would make for some good sausage meat and shot them. He backed his truck up to them to load them up and managed to get it stuck in the grass/mud (it hasn't rained much for awhile so I'm sure that he wasn't expecting the ground to be THAT wet). Try as he might, he wasn't able to get it unstuck. He ended up having to walk the couple of miles back to the house to get the jeep. He wasn't able to pull it out with the jeep either and broke his come-along in the process. He drove back home and got the tractor, which of course, died in the middle of Salt Branch Loop and refused to even start up enough again to move it off the road. So he walked back to the house again. Fortunately it was close to the time that the bus comes and our neighbor comes to get Jayde off the bus at our house. He was able to help John get both vehicles back to the house. Unfortunately, by this time, both deer had been laying out in the sun too long, and are pretty useless now. Talk about an unproductive afternoon!!! Hopefully things go better for the rest of week.

Band Concert

Ashlyn was really nervous about playing in the holiday band concert this past Sunday. She was sure they'd sound awful and I bet it didn't help that we agreed, but jokingly! Anyway, for a band that has only been learning for 18 weeks, I think they sounded pretty good. They played three songs and they were all recognizable. Here is a video of them playing Jingle Bells. Ashlyn's in the middle with the Santa hat on. We were all very proud of her!

Pet Cemetery

We've lost yet another cat to the evil FM 783. That brings our total domesticated animal loss since moving to the ranch 2 1/2 years ago (that I can remember anyway) to:

Cats: 8 (given, some of them just disappeared, but they could've been run over)
Dogs: 1
Cows: 1
Calves: 3

Fortunately, our neighbor called us to let us know of a possible run over kitty near the spot where the kids get on the bus before they went to catch the bus. Thankfully, they didn't have to see it.

So, if anyone needs to get rid of some cats, just bring them to our house. We've never needed to get them fixed, they never live long enough to multiply.

Latest Happenings

The kids had a fun time this past weekend with lots of friends (not so fun for me, though!). Friday night, Ashlyn had a friend spend the night and then Saturday, we decided to invite one of Colten's friends over for the day as well. His friend and his older brother and sister are Ashlyn's friend's cousins, so I thought, what the heck? They might as well all come over. Having six kids in the house wasn't half bad, however. The boys mostly played Star Wars on the computer and occasionally bothered the girls. The girls are who I had the most trouble with. Ashlyn's friend kept getting bored, so after they would set up an elaborate game to play, they would abandon it for something "not as booooring". After a couple of times of this occurring and a fight or two that I had to settle between Ashlyn & her friend, I decided we should all take a walk through the dry creek in the pasture after they cleaned up all of their messes. That went pretty well except for all the stickers in the tall grass. At least it kept them occupied and not bored or making more messes! After we got back, they all went home and I got a break for awhile... only 2 kids, yay! I've decided that it's a major accomplishment that the majority of tween girls make it to adulthood without an abundance of emotional scarring. Some of them (including a few of Ashlyn's friends) completely abuse the use of the "I'm not [talking to you|your friend|happy with you|listening to you|letting you hang with us]" phrase causing others (Ashlyn) emotional trauma when they don't understand why. I wish I understood why, so I could explain it to Ashlyn. It's still a mystery to me. Actually, I do understand some of it (She hasn't matured as fast as some of her classmates and is mostly interested in playing Littlest Pet Shop which is completely fine with me), but I don't know what to do about it. Anyway, hopefully she can make it through all this craziness unscathed! But I digress. All in all, I think they still had a lot of fun even with the occasional issues. That evening, the kids had another treat and got to hang out at Jayde's house while John & I went out to eat to celebrate his birthday. Talk about a fun day for them!

Other news:
- Ashlyn had two teeth pulled last week which required the eating of lots of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream by everyone.
- Both kids were on the A honor roll last six weeks. I'm very proud of them!
- Ashlyn has a band concert this weekend. Should be interesting :)
- Colten is reading like a maniac lately and was even trying to read the missalette during church this past Sunday.
- John has the wall under the barn porch up and painted (with the help of two little painters) and is working on the doors.
- I am excited that we finally have had some fall colors around here. Took long enough!

Big Step for the Barn

As you can see from the photo, the barn now has a roof and a partial side (which was supposed to be red and will be yet). The rest is up to John to finish and he has been working feverishly in any spare moment between going to Christmas parties, dealing with broken down trucks and another calf hit on the road, and getting kids to appointments, among other things, to get things moving along.

Not too much else has been going on besides being busy getting ready for Christmas. We finally got our Christmas Tree up, now if I can only convince John to stop working on the barn long enough to help put lights up outside. Guess we'll see!

Food Show Frazzle

Unfortunately for Ashlyn, things didn't start out well for her at the food show Saturday. When we got there, a man in the kitchen was kicking all of the parents out saying that the kids had to assemble their dishes alone. This was a shock to us parents who were able to help them get it all together last year. None of us were prepared for that. So, I quickly gave her all the items she needed and brief instructions on heating up and assembling her dish and worriedly waited outside the kitchen. All of a sudden, there was a commotion in the kitchen and yes, it was Ashlyn. She had put one of the containers of food in the microwave, grabbed it out too quickly while it was still really hot and dropped it on the floor. I ran in and helped her clean up (I really didn't care that I wasn't supposed to be in there at that point) and we were able to save two of the bundles to still display (putting them in spots where we would know not to eat them) and I told her to put the other container in the microwave for not as long. Needless to say, we were both pretty frazzled from this incident and I was even more worried for her. She managed to get out of the kitchen with a nice display of food despite this and then I waited for her to get judged with the other moms. When she came out, she didn't look too happy and said she thought she didn't do too well. I tried to encourage her, but when she was the only one of the group from Mason who didn't make 2nd or 3rd place, she was pretty upset. I reminded her that she had gotten 2nd last year and promised that next year we'll be more prepared. That didn't help too much, but I think she got her mind off of it when we went to the Abilene Zoo as a reward for their hard work.
Here are some pics of the highlights of the zoo... the bridge to feed the giraffes from and the humongous zoo sign at the entrance (note the six small bodies inside the letters).