Can my husband attract the girlies, or what? On Saturday morning around 8:15 a.m., October 26th, I received a phone call from my husband, telling me to look out the dining room window. Ha, ha, ha…there he was (circled in red), out standing in the field surrounded by cows….lots of cows, and more were still coming over to where he was standing.
Shortly after that, around 9:00 a.m., we had a cattle drive go up the road in front of our home. I guess it was just one of those cattle days.
“SOCKED IN” – I took my photos at 8:20 a.m., this morning. I could see everything directly around our home but that was about it. The thought came to my mind….we’re socked in this morning. Then I got to thinking about socked in and why did they call it that. It didn’t make too much sense to me so I got on the internet to find out. According to the internet, the term was first recorded in 1944……… starting back in the early days of aviation when one would look at the windsock to determine the flying conditions. If you couldn’t see across the field to check the windsock, then you had no business taking off. So, there you have it – SOCKED IN!
My daughter has always loved Halloween, literally. She actually wanted to have her wedding reception in the Fall so she could have a Halloween themed reception. Her wedding was in April, so a Halloween reception was out of the question. After four years, I’m going to be a GRANDMA so I thought….Ok, no Halloween reception but how about a HALLOWEEN BABY SHOWER! Whooo-o-o-o-oT! I decided to make the invitations and address labels so it would be totally Halloween. And, since my daughter is a beautiful red-head, I thought I would put a little boy, with red hair, holding a pumpkin, on both the invitations and address labels. Fun! All the graphics I used were free, with the exception of the little boy holding the pumpkin. When I found him on the internet I knew I just had to have him so I went to the graphics place and bought the graphic. With the red hair, it fit our family perfectly.
Since I had paid for this graphic, I decided I was going to use him everywhere I could. I thought of a million things I could put him on to make as favors for the guests and after finally narrowing it down, I decided to make bath salts and put them in a 4oz. jar topped with that cute, little red-headed, boy. I tied pieces of fall colored material around the lid for a finishing touch.
I also had a very difficult time decided what refreshments to make. You have to understand……I’m in my first-time grandma, mode! It finally came down to: mini cheesecakes, Reese's Pieces, candy corn, pumpkin chip cookies, orange topped chocolate cupcakes, great pumpkin dessert, caramel popcorn with candy corns mixed in and a pumpkin eggnog drink.
And for the gifts, I can’t even begin to tell you how generous everyone was. The photo speaks for itself. Besides the gifts, my family from Utah sent up a card with enough money to purchase some nice things for the baby.
I’m telling you, we were wall-to-wall bodies in our home. The shower was very well attended. Small town people are fabulous!
Amber’s husband, Corey, wanted to attend the baby shower and I informed him that daddy’s did not come to baby showers and he said, “it’s my baby too” – Ahh. So after the games and while Amber was opening her gifts, we had Corey come and join the shower. He was such a good daddy-to-be…..he sat on the floor by Amber and sorted and folded all the tissue paper. I know….another Ahhh!
We had a little visitor visit our small town on Thursday, October 17th. I had been in Idaho Falls with some friends when one of my friends received an e-mail showing a picture of the little visitor. Her son works at Amy Lou’s Steakhouse and was able to get these photos of a cute bear cub in the tree by Amy Lou’s. Amy Lou’s is only one block from main street. Just look at the cute face this little one has. It’s not often you happen to see a bear, in a tree, in our little town.
My husband was born to raise cattle. He loves working outdoors and being around cattle. My husband works for an electric company and does a bit of farming on the side. A part of that is raising hay and pasturing out his land for cattle. Last week, on Columbus Day, our neighbors put their cattle on our land for pasture. My husband enjoys this………..he enjoys having cattle on the land.
The only bad part is, we do not have any water in the small ditch so water needs to be pumped into two troughs several times a day to keep all the cattle watered. Our neighbor waters them all day and my husband goes out every evening when he gets home from work and waters them one last time for the evening. Even watering the cattle gives him joy.
This little bunny is so tame. You can almost walk right up to him and he doesn’t even hop away. Isn’t he just the cutest little bunny, ever! Well, I say that now. He wasn’t so cute when he was helping us harvest the garden.
Well, our gardening season has come to a close. What once looked like this:
Now looks like this:
The only produce left to harvest are a few carrots:
We planted a few strawberry plants this year but we only got a handful of berries, if that…………and that was the ones we could get before the birds had their little feast. The plants are still green and even have a few blossoms on them but no berries. If you can see from all the quack grass and a few weeds, there are actually strawberry plants in the following picture, covered with frost. It was only 23 degrees outside this morning.
After the first part of the summer, our garden froze to the ground and we (I say that lightly…I should actually say “MY HUSBAND…he is one of the most hard working men I know) had to start all over again so I guess we didn’t do too bad considering…! And lastly, following are a few pictures of the hubby harvesting peas and potatoes.
Now, what’s wrong with these two, big bull moose and what are they thinking? This morning, right before it gets light enough to take pictures and far enough off to not get a good picture……there they stand, far away in our field. Why couldn’t they get up close to the house like the female moose did in my last post. You can tell it’s early in the morning because the first moose in the picture is kneeling down saying his morning prayers – Ha!
As we looked out the window today, there was a female moose right next to the fence that borders our yard. She was also very close to the highway and didn’t seem too bothered by the traffic. There were a couple of cars that stopped very close to her and she didn’t run off, she only moved a little further back. It amazed me how calm she was at being so close to the highway and also our home. It was fun watching her……what a brave moose.
I’ve been making a pumpkin chip cookie recipe where you just add a 15oz. can of pumpkin to a spice cake mix along with some chocolate chips and bake. This was my favorite pumpkin cookie recipe until a few days ago when I wanted to make them for an event I was going to the following morning, only to find out I didn’t have a cake mix. The store was closed so in desperation, I hopped on the internet to find just the right cookie recipe. I found one that sounded really good, mixed it up, baked them, then took them with me in the morning. They tasted pretty good but I found them missing something so I took the recipe, tweaked it a bit and came up with the following recipe. We, my husband and I actually like this recipe just as good, if not better than the cake mix cookies. Too good of a recipe not to share.
