I finally got a bridge! When B.J. and family were here, he can't sit still, so he decided he would do the bridge. He had consulted with Bill. Cowboy was going to do one, but it was going to be "serviceable" but probably not "fancy" as he would put it!
B.J. made the bridge the first day and painted it and then we all got to vote and decided that a handrail would be just the thing for ALL of us as the tread will be slick in the winter or when wet! After the handrail was installed, B.J. knew it needed a little something extra so added the rings for pots and the rings would discourage the kids from swinging through the railing. That is yet to be tested! Ha!
Isn't that just what was needed there? But, alas, the deer waited until the geraniums were much bigger and more beautiful and then they started on the blossoms. Then they ate the leaves and on down to the roots. I can't catch them, I don't shoot a gun, and I don't want to go to jail if I could shoot a gun as what would I do with the carcass? Besides, I think Cowboy thinks there might be bullet holes in places not needing airing.
Today we went to Miles City to do errands and I bought two little pots of maroon mums. I don't know whether to try them in the pots THERE or put them on my bench under the deck...
I have to show you how beautiful the strawberries WERE before the deer got to them too!!
Thanks, Jennifer, I loved it!!!
The strawberries were good!
I also have a couple of pictures of my iris. They grow in spite of the gumbo, bless them!
We went to the neighbors as they are raising colts and it is so fun to see them! Cowboy says to have them here is asking for trouble as the mortality rate is high--wire cuts, broken legs, you name it. It is a good thing he doesn't let me go to the horse sales without him and he is very careful about me bidding on those "cute" colts!
They are so fun to see. Those mamas are very protective!
I have been so frustrated by the deer and my pots. I was told they would not eat marigolds. They have eaten all the blossoms, twice, off of a round bed I have. They are biting the tomatoes off of the vine. I have a protection of sorts up now. They ate the leaves off of the pepper plant and then started on the peppers. I was able to pick about five. They ate the cantalope vine and fruit. I had two that were coming along nicely. If we didn't have fences around the trees, there would be no trees. I think the deer are getting thicker than ever before. Hunters, come!
Enough of that! Hope you enjoyed the pictures of bridges, flowers, and babies!
We are on our way to the barn to see the horses. Cowboy was branding at Roscoe so we were on our own.
What is it about shadows, green grass, holding hands, and people walking away?
Cute Masha with cutie Kelli!
Cari took our picture on the return...remember when you got to be swung...? Oh what fun!!
Grammy reading The Magic Boots to Baylee. I love books and want all the kids to love to read.
Baylee helping me blow out the candles on the ice cream cake Bonnie brought to celebrate Cowboy's birthday and mine. What is better than a child blowing out your candles??
This visit was our first "in person" meeting with Miss Kelli! What a happy baby! Those cheeks were made for mooches!
Quality time...
I usually take a bath picture of Baylee every year to hang in one of our bathrooms. She is at the "posing" age.
All our grandies have this phenomenon about checking to see "their" pictures. Baylee is looking at some taken of her. I would like to know what is going through her mind...
I had to put the roses in the blog as they were a birthday present from Bonnie and they were gorgeous!
PopPop and Kelli. What a smiling baby!
PopPop and the girls
Grammy had to get in the picture too!
More books! The little girls all like Fancy Nancy and Baylee brought her own book so Grammy could read it to her and Dad got in on the story one more time too.
Remember me telling you some of the girls wanting aprons for Cookie Day for 2010? Anyway, Baylee picked this fabric for her apron. She is ready to help Grammy cook.
We are twins, sort of! Baylee would ask me why my face was so curly after I had bathed before drying hair. She could not have possibly meant wrinkles, do you think? Yikes!!
B.J. was trying to get everyone together to get loaded for the trip to Billings to the plane. Kelli had to take a turn at the saddle and to wear PopPop's hat!
Baylee with PopPop's hat. Everything has to be even steven, you know... There were some with them together, but these were the two best ones.
It is so hard to say goodbye. It puts a lump in my throat just typing about them leaving. We had fun while they were here and the time flew by. Nevada is a long way...
Have you ever tried to take pictures and have two children look up and smile at the same time? Yeah, me too!!
I wanted to put more pictures on the blog but 20 is a lot and I did pare it down from the 100 that were taken. You are welcome!!! The girls have probably changed so much since these were taken!
Good bye Nevada! Come back to Montana again real soon!!
Hi! To a couple of my blog readers and Cari, I am finally posting after eight weeks. Good grief, Charlie Brown! Where has the summer gone???
I am going to post some pictures of what has been happening. I still have more "Nevada Cuties" to post and also when Kamy and Jentry were here. I am continually writing blogs in my head, but don't get to the computer. Excuses, excuses! I am reading, cooking, sewing, or mowing, maybe in that order!!! Oh, and I have started going to a Bible study in Jordan which is a good one!! Throw the fair in the mix and our church in Jordan had the food "booth" (great big room is more like it) so I helped out a little. Did a couple of turkeys and dressing and a couple of salads. I didn't have the chore work of waiting on people or standing all day. We got in on a little cleaning after the fair, but there were others that put in long days! Cowboy took his turn at cooking breakfast on Saturday morning, but he had to leave and I think 200 came to eat after he left. They were running to the store for more supplies.
We have corral builders here. Now we are down to one. He is doing such a good job so you are going to see beginning pictures and they are about done now, but I won't post that picture in this blog.
It already looks like corrals and is Cowboy excited. I know he can hardly wait to use them this fall. A little gravel to the loading chute and it will be "all weather" ready!!!
Phil does precise work. Bill helped weld one day and Phil kept an "eagle" eye on Bill so things were level.
New kitten on premise...Cowboy just happened to catch it at the Sandquist Place. When we took her to the vet for her first rabies shot we didn't know if it was a Miss Tiny or a Mr. Tiny--it was a Miss Tiny!
What is not to love with a face that cute?
She is growing...she would like to be an indoor cat, but remember, I am allergic to cats. Tiggy hates her and
when invited in Tiggy will look around and then go right out the other door to make sure THAT KITTEN isn't inside!
Now on the the Cross Country Piece Makers quilt retreat in Red Lodge, Montana at the Medicine Flower Lodge August 20-22. It took us five hours to get there with a stop for gas and then a stop for lunch. I often wonder why we put ourselves through all the lugging of machines, ironing boards, sewing projects, cutting mats, pillows for sleeping, etc. when we could sew more projects at home. Well, YOU know the answer! It is the fellowship of being with other quilters and sharing what we have learned over the last year and catching up on the family news if we only see some of them once a year. And of course I can replenish my supply of fat quarters with our bingo game. We made bingo cards out of 2 1/2 inch squares and they turned out cute. We gave them to Marge and she is going to put them together for a quilt for family services or wherever they deem necessary. I got 20 blocks completed of a 36 block quilt top and a Christmas table runner that I am going to finish for cookie day.
One of the planners came up with the idea of flowers on a black background, so anything went. I searched my magazines and came up with the one on the top right. I found the cutest buttons to be the centers. Then when I looked at the others...some people are so gifted. The top middle flower is three dimensional...Well, they are all pretty...
This is a share-a-square block for one of the new members. It was to be in purple and teals--a no brainer for me as I LOVE those colors and I just happened to have some in my stash! Mine is the bottom right. I love that pattern anyway. I like stars.
This is our signature block. Laura made the tepee for us. They gave us the blue material and the feather material. What you did with it was your own idea. Some put different embellishments on theirs. There were 22 of us attending. Oh, we did make a quick trip on Friday to Washoe to the fabric store. I think that may be the only business in the town. It was fun to look around.
Me with Nancy G. and Marge G. at the cook shack. The food was delicious! We were served brunch on Sat. and Sun. at 10 a.m. Supper was at 6 p.m. Fri. and Sat. nights. Nine of us stayed in a house a distance from the sewing house. The cook shack was between the two. After we got there they told us to be CAREFUL walking as there were MOOSE and BEAR that had been seen! Sure enough, Friday night a moose came nosing around our cabin. Saturday night, Laura left the outside lights on and no CRITTERS!
Rene E. and Nancy. Note the bear face in the post...
Laura F. and Leah B. seated on the porch of the house we slept in.
Laura and me standing by the fire pit...
Quilters one and all...
Last evening we went to the Jersey Lilly in the famous town of Ingomar, Montana. We, who are from Eastern Montana think so anyway! It was the largest sheep shearing plant in the world at one time. The sheepherders would trail their sheep in from all around. The railroad was there. It was a thriving town way back when. One would have to look up the history. Grandma brought me up the history to read, They Say It Happened That Way about Sumatra, Ingomar, and Vananda. I was afraid I would get some of my facts wrong so didn't delve into anything. When I was a young lady I thought it was a dried up town then, but the Jersey has always been there and Bill Seward ran it when I first crossed the threshhold... The bull and heifer pens are still there and we were told last night that a rattle snake or bull snake had been sited under the boardwalks, so Cari and I stomped our way back and forth! Ha! No snakes on our treks!!!
The reason we were at Ingomar was because we wanted to take Phil down and show him a little country (Phil is from Elko, Nevada and yes, B.J. is the one that got him up here. Call for the rest of the story...) and Cowboy and his cousin were hosting a rocky mountain oyster fry with all the calf fries from branding here and at Dave's. Everything else was potluck. I didn't taste the "oysters" but heard they were good. Don't tell Cowboy but some said they tasted like chicken. I tried them many years ago and I like chicken, but...
There were so many salad and desserts, it was amazing. Some of the "locals" from Roundup and Ingomar played music after supper so there was some dancing.
Three Amigos...Bill, Calvin, Joe
Cowboy photographs so well...
Cari captured us dancing. We do enjoy dancing but don't seem to get anywhere to dance and there just haven't been that many at home.
Still lots of blogs running around in my noggin' but this enough for now.
It has been a month since our babies have been here (even the grown ones!) and I was looking through pictures. I will have to blog a little at a time. The picture takers took lots. Cari told me I had to take lots of pictures to get just the right one, so between Cowboy and myself and anyone else picking up the camera, there are LOTS of pictures.
Here they come!!! Baylee is talking a mile a minute!
Baylee informed me and Great Granddad that it was a fun "alligator" ride. (Elevator) Baylee asked me, "Are you Montana?" I said, "I sure am!" I don't know who was gladder to be off the plane, the kids or the folks! They had a two-hour layover in Salt Lake City, Utah. The baby, Kelli was good other than takeoffs and landings.
We were so GLAD to greet them!! Three years is a long time since they were in Montana!
Our first "in the flesh" introduction to Kelli. What a happy baby. She was so good.
Kelli was HAPPY to be loose from the car seat! She just kicked and kicked! We had to wait around the airport for them to bring the car rental. You know the story... They booked a car when they got the tickets. When B.J. and Marsha got there to get the car, well, it wasn't quite ready. They did have a four-door pickup... I should have taken a picture of the luggage. That would not work in the box of a pickup if it rained! So, we waited for them to "detail" and wash the car. Very frustrating but what is one to do? They needed the car. The girls at the desk went in the back office. I would have also! Ha! After 45 min. to an hour, the car finally got there and off to Cari's to a B-B-Q. Tristin was going to come from Bozeman but her car leaked oil and she had just had the oil changed. So she took her car back and they told her she needed an air filter after an hour and a half and she had to work in the evening. I told her to stay put. It was a long drive for an hour of visiting.
Baylee "had to have" one of Auntie's purses to carry around! Too bad Cari had not kept the lime green purse, Sydney loved it when she was little. It would have been right up Baylee's alley!
Baylee posing for Grammy by the flowers. Remember the picture that I took of Cari's flowers right after she bought them? I love that fuzzy topped grass!
B.J. was the cook. He told me that this wasn't a good picture, but the story it tells without words... I took a picture of the two of them at the fair in Billings probably 10 or 11 years ago and they were hugging. It wasn't a particularly good picture of either, but I had it blown up because of the unspoken message it conveyed to this Mom...
More Baylee...
Bonnie brought cupcakes to celebrate birthdays--Cari belatedly and Granddad and mine. Baylee got to blow out candles. Is not that the fun part of cakes on birthdays???
I did my first blog of the Fourth of July parade. Where did the year go? I wanted this to be a silent Sunday with just pictures, but really! You are asking too much!! Women like to talk, write, babble... We always seem to have a comment about something. Even if it isn't verbalized, we have one.
The parade was small this year and the turn out even smaller. The 4th fell on a Sunday which took some of the people that wanted to attend church services. Monday is also a holiday, so people went fishing, boating, family events, camping, you name it.
I took money for the noon meal at the hall, we ran out of sloppy joes by the time Cowboy and I ate, so we ate a little salad and went elsewhere and had lunch. We came home and had a wonderful nap and then read papers. I am way behind on my paper reading and Cowboy read the Sunday paper.
Dave and Morris brought a team to town to carry veterans and Dave was outrider. Sorry about the junk in the background.
Cowboy looks good on Ace. Can you believe it was so chilly this morning that we needed jackets? We were glad for the cool weather. We remember a 4th when we went to Miles City with Tristin (we all had horses) and checked on cattle that we had on leased property. Whew it was a very, very hot day! Tristin said she remembered that her long-sleeved shirt had polyester in it...
Note the team in the back. The horses that you see were the only ones in the parade in Jordan. Sad!
Cowboy was trying to remember how many years he has carried the American flag... He feels it is such an honor and privilege. Patriotism runs deep at our house. We pray for our country...
