Funny Jaylie and More Tales From Calving

A few days after klp's birthday, I was sorting laundry in my room and I heard Jaylie June making a horse sound. I expected to see her pointing to a picture of a horse or holding one of her toy horses.  Instead when I turned around, I saw that she had found a roll of wrapping paper and was riding it like a stick horse! Haha! I have no clue where she gets this stuff!!!  

KLP, klp, and Q left one afternoon to go check cows and jjp was NOT happy to be left out.  She was crying when they walked out the door then she ran to the dining room to look out the window and watch them leave. She was crying "DADEEEEEE DADEEEEE!!!" She loves her Daddy and does NOT like being left out. 

Kory's Aunt and Uncle and their 4 kids came to town one weekend and we went over to his Grandparents house to let the cousins play.  One of the girls brought a baby doll and Jaylie was IN HEAVEN.  Seriously. She never let go of that doll.  She carried it in the carrier...

rocked it....

and had serious face to face talks. I think watching her play with babies is about the sweetest thing in the world (as you can tell by the number of pictures I post of that sort of thing). 

Juney helped herself to klp's cereal.  Oh well.  

One day klp was at school, Q had gone to feed cows with Daddy, so it was just me and Jaylie.  We took a walk to meet Gram and have lunch. It was a nice sunny "girls day". 

Salad spinner is their favorite job in the kitchen. It is so very fascinating.  And Q's life long problem of keeping his pants up continues.  Even when he's laying down. 

J doesn't want to drive the car or be pushed in the car.  She wants to push it.  With no help.  Bossy.  

Little Miss Independent walking to throw rocks in the creek.  With her book.  

TALES FROM THE CALVING LOT

There is a set of cows on a place on the opposite side of town from the ranch. Kory is in charge of calving them and things have gone really well so far.  He had a little calf one night that was cold and having a hard time getting going.  So we had a slumber party.  Not really. The calf just slept in our basement. It wasn't much of a party.  I found some old scrap pieces of carpet in some random part of our basement and covered her up with dirty jeans.  

She got a couple of bottles and got nice and cozy.  The next morning I got up and Kory was already gone so I assumed he took the calf with him.  I was headed to Billings to pick my parents up from the airport and he called to check on the calf. Oops.  She was still in the basement.  I went to check on her and she was fine. But I did have to call our construction contractor. Our landlord is remodeling our basement so there were gonna be workers there all day while I was gone. My conversation with the contractor went something like this, "Hey Jim, its Jaymie. Just letting you know that you  might wanna tell your guys that there will be a calf in our unfinished basement room."....."A what?"....."A calf.  Like a baby cow."......."Oh.  A calf.  Okaaaaay."........

Kanyon has started waking up TOO EARLY.  Like WAAAAAAAY too early. I think his body gets confused and can't go back to sleep.  So sometimes this happens when we are reading books.  Its cute and all, but I'd much rather him actually sleep in his bed in the morning! UGH! Nothing to do with calving.  Sorry.  

Q playing in the chutes while dad was working with a cow/calf.

Juney checking things out through the binoculars.  They're too heavy for her to hold up. Silly girl.   

So the freak of the calving season so far is this cow with 2 partial legs growing out of his neck.  Yep.  I wish I could've seen Kory and Wes's face when they saw it.  Apparently they saw the mom have it and then were waiting on it to stand up. It took it a while so they walked over to check on it.  It was dark so they couldn't see anything til Kory shined his light on it to pick it up and they saw hooves everywhere! haha! I got a text from Kory that said, "I'm gonna be here a while I'm waiting on this cow to calve". I texted later to check in and he replied, "Yeah, she had it fine. But the circus is just about to start". I didn't know what that meant, but he filled me in when he got home. I guess we could see the calf to the circus! The calf is fine and doesn't seem bothered by it at all.  They have had the vet out to look and they're trying to figure out the best way to deal with it.  Until then it just looks really funny seeing this little guy run around with that giant mass on his neck.  

On the rare occasion that all things line up right with supper, bedtimes, therapy schedules, weather, and overall moods, we get to all go check with Kory.  This is one of the wonderful things about ranching. Even in Kory's busiest times we can hop in the pick up and ride along with him!  We joke about the amount of Carhartt going on when we are all together.  I posted this picture on instagram and said "Wardrobe provided by Carhartt" other possible captions were "Our favorite color is Carhartt" or "Carhartt anyone?" haha!  We are thankful that Kory lets us tag along and slow him down and "help" him.  

Kanyons Birthday Party

Here is Kanyon on the night of his birthday at his birthday supper.  Balloons make anything a party! 

He got to open his presents that night and he LOVED the puppet we gave him.  He gets such a kick out of puppets so it was fun watching him giggle at his new puppet.  

A couple of nights later our whole family got together for a joint birthday party.  Tye's birthday is the day before Kanyon's so they had their party together.  Kanyon loved having a party with Uncle Tye! Here are the birthday boys! (and a nosey sister) 

Sooooo this was my first cake to make without my mom.  And disaster struck.  When went to flip the cake on to the pan to decorate it, this happened: 

My motivation level was already pretty low on this cake. I mean I'm making a cake for a kid that doesn't even like cake.  Susan was making Tye a different dessert, sot his cake really was just so that there was a cake at the party.  I was determined NOT to make another trip to the grocery store to get another cake mix. So I was gonna make this work no matter what.  We decided on a "K" cake for Kanyon so I cut a K out the best I could with the earth quake craters. I used icing to prop up parts of the cake to get it back together and to stick some of the bigger cracks back together.  

It was nowhere near perfect, but it was gonna be good enough.  

My trusty helper Q was more than willing to lick the icing bowl.  

Here's the finished product.  My worst cake ever.  Thats what I get for trying to do this without my mom. I'm not sure if it was the altitude or if I did something wrong, but I stand by the fact that it wouldn't have happened if my mom was there! Ha!

About to sing Happy Birthday to Kanyon while Jaylie drools over the cake.

We ate hamburgers, cheetos, grapes, and of course KETCHUP and everyone was happy! We did a little puppet show for Kanyon and it was AWESOME. I only have videos of it though. He was DYING LAUGHING the whole time (I posted a video on instagram).  My puppet loving 7 year old had a great party!

March Madness

We've had a lot going on around here....some of which included a VISIT FROM MY PARENTS! So I'm a little behind on the blog.  I'll try to get caught up!  

March Madness is Madness around here for several reasons.....

The weather is kinda crazy.  Some days will be beautiful and sunny and almost warm and then others will be BLIZZARDS! sheesh! 

Here was a beautiful morning that I just couldn't capture in a picture. The sky was clear and bright blue but it was a cold morning so all the trees had snowy frost on the branches. It was beautiful! 

We take advantage of the sunny days and get outside! We've done lots of riding bikes on our warmish spring days! 

Our house in Longview was bad for bike riding so we didn't do much of it.  Our house here is right in the middle of town with lots of great sidewalks and parking lots to ride in and a creek with cool bridges to ride over.  Quinn didn't have a bike so he cruised in the cozy coupe...

klp LOVING his new AmTryke that his therapists sent when we left. It is so great to see him be independent and having so much fun outside.  He's quite the speed demon.  

Here's my lineup.  Its a motley crew.  

Lots of melting snow= lots of puddles.  The bikes always find their way into these puddles....and so did Q.  

jjp cruising on her dump truck. 

I knew we needed to get Q a bike, but when I saw him do this I knew we needed to get it sooner than later.  He couldn't get up the hill to the bridge so he just stood up, stuck his head out the top of the car and walked the car up the hill.  Fred Flintstone style.  He spent most of his time on the plasma car, but for some reason he still liked riding in the car.  

Here is Kanyon in the car and he can navigate this sucker like nothing you've ever seen.....all while driving backwards. I think its easier for his legs to move it backwards so he just drives all over the place turning and maneuvering wherever he wants to go. I think he'll be great at backing a trailer some day. 

Besides the crazy weather there is March Madness on the Ranch too! Calves calves and more calves! We spent a lot of nights out there so we could be with Kory and Tye while they were working (and feed them) and enjoy seeing the calves ourselves.  Gram was over one night too and she read the kids a story before bed.  Please take note and enjoy Jaylie June's belly hanging out of her PJ's! haha!

Just a cute little pair in the muddy muddy calving lot.  And I use the term "muddy" generously. It ain't all mud.  

This little calf was needing some extra TLC so he was in the shed staying warm. 

Me and Jaylie were in the shed while Kory and Tye were working. Somehow with all the MOOing and noise June fell asleep.  

Then she was awake.  And just for the record, this picture KILLS me.  Eyes. Hand on her ears. Carhartt.  PJ's.  all of it.  

I'll give you a little calving lesson here....Of course you always hope you don't have many calves die, but loss is inevitable.  At the same time, some cows will have twins.  Its not super common, but there will be several sets born each year.  Most of time a mother will only claim one of the twins or one of them will be weaker or something like that.  So, its rare for a cow to end up actually raising both of her twins.  Soooooo what they do is take the skin of a calf that died and lay it over one of the twins. Then they put that twin in with the Cow that lost her calf (whose skin is now draped over this twin).  Because the cow smells the skin of her calf, she will usually take that new calf with no problem. And because the calf is hungry it will usually take the cow.  It works well because a cow with good milk gets a calf to raise and an "extra" calf gets a mother all to herself! They call this grafting.  Here they were getting the calf ready (Kory was letting it suck his finger) to eat from his new mom. 

putting the skin over the calf

A little more eating practice! (you can see the skin is draped over it now)

They had the Cow in the chute so the calf could eat easily without her moving around too much.  This particular graft went off without a hitch.  Once the cow and calf have bonded the skin can come off and they are let out with the rest of the pairs.  SUCCESS!

A few little pictures of Jaylie June "helping" on the ranch. 

When we stay out at the ranch at Tye's house the kids get to watch channels that we don't have on our TV so they all enjoy Bubble Guppies and such.....while holding baby sister in your lap.  hee hee.  

I took this picture out at the ranch one evening as the moon was coming up.  It was such a pretty evening.  I'm sure on the opposite end of the sky a really pretty sunset was happening but the moon had me in awe that day.  

This is a picture of a sign posted on the door of an antique shop I've been wanting to go in to. It hasn't been opened since we've been here.  I was hoping it would open as Spring got closer.  I noticed a sign on the door one day so I stopped hoping to get info on when they would be open.  This is all I got.....

I think we disagree on what 1/2 way decent weather is because I've been to the store on a SUNNY warm Saturday and it was closed.....or maybe it wasn't one of the "most" saturdays. Sheesh!!!  

I've posted pics of the nice spring weather, but here is Montana March Madness...SNOW SNOW SNOW! We were out at the ranch for several days during all of this because the cold weather just ups the workload for the guys.  

Eating snowballs right out of the snowball maker. 

I forgot Jaylie's snowsuit that weekend so she wore klp's size 7 overalls. Haha. 

I took a few shots of the pairs that are out enjoying the hay and trying to find warm places to lay...

smart little calves found the shelter. 

Mamas eating babies laying on the food.  Those little calves are SO SO SO CUTE! 

One afternoon, divide and conquer was the name of the game so since Tye was gonna be driving the Rhino (kinda like a Mule) the boys opted to go with Tye.  The Rhino has a cab and a heater so its a nice place to be on a cold day! Here we were all piled in the tiny Rhino. 

Meanwhile Kory took Jaylie June with him to check some cows in the pick up.  

cute little calf

Here's Daddy and Jaylie June when they got back from their work.  She was hanging out the window "MOOOOOO"ing.  You'd think by now the excitement of seeing a cow would've worn off by now. I mean they are everywhere.  Everywhere.  But every time she sees cows she gets SOOOO excited and starts Mooing and smacking her lips as if to say "The cows are eating!" haha! Funny little June.  

Of course there is March Madness Basketball!!!! Wohooo! In between checking cows the guys got to watch games.  Thank goodness Tye has DVR so they didn't have to miss much.  

Jaylie June LOOOOOOOVES her Uncle Tye.  Big time.  Here they are sitting in the same position watching bball.  

She also LOOOOOOOVES her Daddy but I guess she was showing her love by shooting him with a gun while watched the game.  

We had fun watching the games and Quinn was totally in to all the games and stuff. He had a blast watching them! It was kinda funny to see him so in to the games.  I have a picture of him watching the games somewhere but its not on here.  This has been long enough!!!

Bike rides, busy calving season, spring snow storms, and basketball make for total MARCH MADNESS!!!