Across The Range

The past couple weeks been quite eventful here.

Dad sold his 900 LB steers and Graham sold one pen of his heifers the next day. Dad has been having cattle arrive since then as his buyer finds cattle at sales. Having the load out area at Graham's accessible to cattle liners saves a lot of work and time now! We used to have to trailer them down to his place from ours.

Our cousin and his family visited one evening. It was nice to see them again.

We ran out of water. :P Erin and I put the tank on the truck and then Erin looked at the clock to see what time it was. She remarked," 11:00 PM I should have known!" We've hauled water at that time more than once. Then we ran out of water again about a week later. :P In the evening but I think we finished hauling by 11:00 PM. :P

Spent time getting ready for our friends' visit-cooking, sewing, cake decorating, etc.

Saturday Dad, Graham, and Erin went to the gun show in town. I was madly running around catching up on a bit of everything here. The H. family arrived around 6 PM and it was so good to see them all again. Everyone was here so we had 23 people at our place which is a lot considering there is usually just four or five of us or 11 at the most when my brother and his family come. It was fun though since we don't have company very often. We had turkey dinner(Mom cooked a 37 LB turkey!) with all the trimmings so were surrounded with lots of good food and fellowship. :) Naomi and Ellie stayed in my room and we talked until 2 AM. I hadn't seen them in over two years so that was a good enough exuse to stay up late. 5:30 AM came too early though. LOL! They left around 7 because they had a long drive ahead of them.

Graham's small pen of heifers knocked down a few wind boards going into the alley, walked through the opening down to the end, opened the gate and mixed in with the pen of his other heifers. Can your calves do that?? Haha! :P There were about 300 but we only got around to separating about half of them before it was too dark. We finished separating the rest a couple days later.

Ah, life is never dull!

September 19th,

Finally the day to leave for my trip had arrived. I woke up a bit before six and Dad, Mom, and I were on our way in about an hour. My flight didn’t leave until around 1 PM but we wanted to have extra time for the border crossing, experiencing any mishaps (i.e. flat tire), etc. About an half hour after leaving we went through some rain and flurries. It felt more like the middle of December instead of the middle of September. Thankfully the roads were good and the trip to the Great Falls airport went smoothly. I had a couple hours before my flight left and did crossword puzzles to pass the time.

My flight to Salt Lake went by quick and then I only had an hour until my flight to Fayetteville. On that flight I sat beside one of the managers that worked for England Trucking. He was flying out to AR to talk to Butterball about hauling turkeys for Thanksgiving. The woman sitting in front of us happened to know this guy from when she worked at a packing plant that his trucks must have been hauling from. Anyways, she was a different cookie. She LOVED her job at the kill plant but ended up getting injured somehow and I think was a truck driver now. You meet all kinds…even on airplanes. Heh heh!

Tara arrived at the airport shortly after me and then Abigail, Susannah, Lydia, Beth, and Erin picked us up. It was so fun to finally meet them in person rather than just knowing them through a computer screen. :D We squeezed all seven of us into Abigail’s car and the luggage too! A few of us grabbed a bit at some taco place (can’t remember the name) and then we headed back to the hotel and talked for a while. The room was real spacious and it actually worked pretty good considering how many of us there were and all the stuff we brought. :D

September 20th,

A few of us went down for breakfast and I got my coffee. :D I guess you can start your day without it but I didn’t want to try. LOL! Actually I usually don’t drink coffee much when I travel because usually most places it seems to taste like dishwater. It wasn’t too bad there though. I still missed Tim Hortons. :D

We had devotions up in our room afterwards and then started making a shopping list for the groceries we’d be needing since we were planning on making some meals in the hotel room. Amidst much laughing, we all squeezed into Abigail’s car again and headed off to Walmart. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and then went to the church and met Josh, Pamela and a few others. We helped decorate at church which I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of. :D I love that type of work and the opportunity doesn’t come by very often. Plus, Josh and Pamela were super easy to please. Abigail spent the evening with Pamela and the two other bridesmaids while Erin, Beth, Tara, Susanna and I played Mad Gab, Imaginiff, and Outburst. The night was filled with much fun and laughter! Abigail arrived back later and we talked for a bit. We ended up getting to sleep around 2 AM…We had to make the most of our visiting time since the week would be over before we knew it…;)

To be continued…