I have not updated the blog for a year and a half. I am a total slacker, but we will just pretend that I was really busy. We are looking forward to the holiday season. My kids are so excited for Thanksgiving in 4 days. Kale keeps telling people that she is going to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. When she is asked if she is going to stuff it, she says, "No, but I am going to rip it's feathers out!" This coming from the child who replies, "We shot her," when asked how she took care of a cow that swallowed a wire. Leave it up to her!
Rather than explain everything we have done all year, I will just post a few pictures to show the fun we had, and how much the kids changed from earlier in the year until now.
Lana on Fox

Kale on Fox

McKendrick loved his swimming lessons this year!

Kale turned 4 on July 12th! Her cake was a little saggy on one side, but it tasted good.

We have this issue with starlings at our house. Justin (who didn't know I was taking pictures of him) plays the big hunter with his (actually, the girls') pink Daisy BB gun and goes out so stealthily (NOT!) to kill the birds that keep pooping on my car.

Kale is my animal lover. She is going to be the one who brings random animals home all the time! This is Kale with Bo, my husband's dog, who turned 16 this year. For some reason, she doesn't suffer from arthritis, and she still just keeps kicking.

McKendrick played clean-up around the yard all summer, picking up all the branches and garbage that would blow around (the wind never stops here!).

Lana learned to ride her bike this summer

One of the games from our family camp

Justin and McKendrick fishing at the camp

Kale fishing

McKendrick turned 2 on May 6th

These 2 pictures are of our property we bought this year. It is in Pleasant View, CO. We bought 110 acres with center pivot for irrigation. The pivot is ancient, so, hopefully, it will hold up until we can purchase a new one. It is the beginning of the growing season, and our 1st year alfalfa looks pretty puny. Good thing it produced a profitable crop this year once the water and sunshine got on there! We look forward to moving down there and letting Justin run his own operation.

We branded earlier this spring. It was so fun to take the smaller calves and let the kids rope them and drag them in the first day. It was a big project, but my kids look forward to it every year. King, the horse Justin is on, arrived at our place one week before the branding. He had never seen a cow before, and he actually performed very well.