Really, really bad week!

First off I'd like to say Happy Easter to you all.
This has to be the worst week we have had in a long time. My grandson Josh's great horse,Ace,colicked and had to be rushed to OSU in Stillwater, Rachel couldn't get him there fast enough and he ruptured a gut and had to be put down. The vets there told her surgery wasn't even an option. Of course, it was hard on everyone. Josh wasn't with her and didn't even get to say goodbye and there was no way to get Ace's body back so we could bury him at home. Really tough.
This afternoon, Rachel called and told us Josh was at the emergency room, broken wrist. Riding an ATV fell off tried to catch himself and snapped it. Hopefully it will get set properly and heal with no issues. His baseball season is over, you all know that baseball is REALLY important to him. He can't go fishing, or turkey hunting either. I don't know yet how much physical therapy he'll have to do. Rachel broke her wrist in just about the same place, and she had to do a lot to not lose range of motion. Of course, he's a lot younger....
Anyway this has not been a good week for us. Remember Josh in your prayers, he has a lot on his plate right now, and has lost the one thing that might have helped keep his mind off losing Ace.

Brings back good memories

Watching kdwhorses little cowgirl show that goat sure brought back memories for me.
My daughter showed sheep when she was in FFA. Some years ago, she has a 12 year old son now. I still remember what fun we had going to the shows. She had a best buddy that went with us and since most of the shows were during the week, her dad couldn't go so it was just us girls. I must have hauled those two over most of Southern Oklahoma. Rachel, my daughter, enjoyed showing and was very successful--3 county Grand Champion Market Lambs and Grand Champion Market Lamb at the Arkansas-Oklahoma State Fair. Her son Josh tried it when he was very small, about 6-7, won his light weight class, but says it would interfere with baseball since they both happen in the spring! His team starts playing April the 9th and we'll be busy from then until the last part of June. Hopefully they will still be playing in July--Regional playoffs. The playoffs are in Durant this year, which is home for us. Including a couple of pictures of my kids and their lambs. Kris tell Savannah we all said GREAT JOB!

Baseball Season is ON!

Baseball is here, Josh had a scrimmage game last Sat. his team won two games and lost another by one point. So it looks like they are ready for season play. We'll be going to a lot of games again this year. He'll be pitching, playing 2nd and 3rd base. We've GOT to get some comfortable chairs, we were at the ball field from
10am til 7pm. Thank goodness for the Home Base, our old RV we could at least go in an get a sandwich and get out of the wind every once in a while.
I don't really have any news just wanted to say hello and let Kris know that I've enjoyed seeing Savannah's pics on her blog. It's turned winter here, I thought we were in for a early summer for a while. Maybe we will have a spring after all. My gelding Mickey doesn't know if he should shed or not, and we had to split more wood after I had gotten the pile all down to a manageable size. Rachel said one of her horses, cut her eye on the feed bucket, so they were at the vets office til late last night, mare will be ok and they are replacing all buckets with rubber tubs! I miss having all my horses, I'm down to one now, but there are advantages, less vet time is one of those. With all the foals in the pastures, I'm getting the fever, just like every spring. I just keep telling myself, they only stay small for a few months!

Working on Wapi

It finally rained and this is where I've been! In the woods, dragging and burning brush. Thank goodness for Tonys dozer, it makes this much easier. In spite of being really under the weather, we got out and tried to get as much of the brush piles burned up as possible. We've been under a burn ban up here for months now and felf like we had to take advantage of the ban being lifted at least for a few days.
It is really h ard work but the place looks so nice after we're done. We only have about 35 more acres to clear. Tony is leaving the rest about 80, for hidy holes for the deer and turkey. this will make roughly 200 acres that we have cleared. I don't know what he'll come up with for our next project. Maybe fishing? I know baseball is just around the corner, Josh will be playing for a select team this year and we are all looking forward to the season starting. The weather is warming up so the snakes will be getting out, soon as I see the first one I'm GONE TO THE HOUSE! I don't do snakes.
Hope you all are well and having fun. Talk to you later.

Spring,Summer, Winter?

I know that the weather is supposed to be changeable here in Oklahoma, but come on now! We been from spring (66) right through summer(82)and right back to winter (22), all in the matter of a week! Is it any wonder that everybody has a cold or worse. We have been taking advantage of the nice weather to continue clearing our place. You can't imagine how much brush and how many cedars grow up in 20-25 years of neglect. We have had a burn ban on here int he county for months now,(please let it rain) so no brush burning and the piles are getting larger. So if it does ever rain again and you look out and it seems that southern Oklahoma is on fire, it's just Coyote Run burning the brush piles. Thank goodness Tony has a bulldozer with a brush rake, that makes all this so much easier. I can't imagine what it was like for the first folks out here to try and settle this land. It's worth the hard work, the place is looking really nice, and there will be lots more room for food plots.
Baseball update, Josh has been invited to play on two select teams this spring, he just has to decide which one now. He is as passionate about baseball as Rachel is about horses, so I think we'll be going to a lot of games at least through high school. He is taking some lessons on hitting and pitching, and you can see the improvement all ready. He really works hard at the drills and exercises his coaches give him. I over heard Rachel telling on of his coaches, she wished he was into the horses, that she could keep him mounted and teach him about roping and barrel racing and all that, but baseball was his first love. Mind you, he isn't ready to give up Ace, and he is planing on making some play days and jackpots this summer. So horses aren't totally out of his blood.
Our new lab puppy, Gunner, is coming along great. Tony took him down to the pond with the old Lab, Buddy, to let him watch Buddy retrieve some ducks kinda clue him in. Gunner got so excited that T decided to let him get one that was right at the edge of the water. He got that one and delivered it right to hand, so T thought he see if Gunner would get n the water and threw the duck out about 10 yards, off Gunner went with out a hesitation, retrieved that one and then did it again just to be sure he didn't mind the COLD water. By next year he'll be more than ready to take over from Grandpa.
Believe it or not, as I sit here and type, I hear the sound of rain/sleet on the roof! So maybe we'll get a little bit of what we need. I hope it's more liquid than solid though. I hate ICE. You all stay warm and be safe.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Let's all pray that 2009 will be a better year all the way round. I have much to be thankful for. In spite of all the bad things that happened in the country this year, storms, financial crashes and all the other stuff , we are still blessed to live in this country

Update from Oklahoma

Hello, everyone, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! Things have been busy around here. Nothing much exciting, just routine things that keep the ranch going. We've been feeding the deer and turkey and luckily we haven't had to haul water for the dogs or horses but a couple of times. I LOVE those little deicers that fit in the water tubs for my boys. I'm getting one of those heated buckets for our dogs, Tony has figured a way to keep them from dragging it out and chewing it. Gunner is growing, last trip to the vet for puppy shots he weighed in at 35 lb. He is 1/2 as tall as Buddy and he is not yet 6 months old. I think we have a big boy on our hands. Tony has started his training and it is going well. He looks like a natural and has very good instincts. Buddy is enjoying duck season, that just started. Even if he is an old dog he still loves going after those ducks. This will probably be his last full season, Gunner should be ready to take over most of the load next year, Buddy can go on the easy days. I have a horse of Rachels' up here fitting him. She says I can do that better than anyone she knows. I think she just knows that I can get anything fat! Tony decided that we need to be able to grind our deer meat and make sausage so in addition to processing the steaks and other cuts, we now do the ground meat and have been experimenting with sausage recipes. Submit any you all might have.

In November we gave my Mom an 80th birthday party . That was fun and she really enjoyed seeing all her old friends and all the cousins that came by to say Happy Birthday. She has a digital picture frame and I scanned in a lot of really old pictures of family and that really made a hit.

Right after Thanksgiving Rachel and I started getting ready for our trip to Vegas. I had decided last year that I wanted to go the their 50th Anniversary party, so I booked rooms and got tickets.

Guys I have to tell you we had a blast in Vegas! As a matter of fact the whole trip was great. It had been a long time since my daughter, Rachel, and I had gone off just the two of us. We left Wednesday after she got off work and drove to Amarillo and stayed the night, then we went to the Quarter Horse Museum. We had planned to get to Flagstaff by evening and drive in to Vegas Friday morning. We saw a billboard for Mesalands Dinosaur Museum and decided to make a stop there. I had never seen bones that big before, we both wished for Josh, my grandson, he would have gone nuts over some of that stuff. After the dinos we took a quick drive by the Petrified Forest, unfortunately, they were closed for the day and we didn’t get to take a look there. We made it to Flagstaff with no problems and spent the night there, got up early and started on to Vegas. Of course we had to stop and take a look at Boulder Dam, another place we were wishing for Josh! Then it was on to Vegas. We liked to have never found the right way into the hotel, thank goodness Rachel has a great sense of direction. The construction there has the streets a little messed up. That was the only time we had bad traffic! We were staying at the New York New York and it is a little hard to miss. After finding the entrance and leaving the car in good hands, we got checked in a were off to our rooms. We grabbed a bite to eat at Gonzales y Gonzales and then went off to check out the sights. The strip was amazing and we spent the rest of the night walking in the hotels/casinos just looking at everything. We went by the Bellagio and watched the fountain show twice, once was a Christmas song and the other was a classical one. That was beautiful, the lights and the water dancing was great. We went through Caesars Place and found all kinds of stuff that we couldn’t afford, but it was fun looking. I found the most beautiful full length fur coat, it was $10,500 on sale for $ 5,000. Never say I don’t have good taste! Rachel found a tobacco, full quill ostrich jacket that was only $8500.00. I won’t even tell you about the Australian opals that we looked at. I could have had a pair of earrings for “just $700.00″. Needless to say we didn’t bring any of that lovely stuff back to Oklahoma with us. Too Bad. After the exhausting evening of looking–we went back to the hotel and hit the casino, high rollers that we are, we each had a 10 spot to stuff down the slots. Oh yeah, Rachel had a friend that sent an extra 20 along so Rachel could play for her. We won a little, but wound up like everyone else and left a little of our money in Vegas! Then it was off to the room, it was only after we had gotten into our sweats and settled down that we realized that we were thirsty and a soft drink sounded good. Now I’m going to let you all know how country I really am, I have never stayed at a hotel that didn’t have a drink vending machine some where on your floor. They don’t in Vegas, so we thought we’d get room service since we didn’t want to dress again and go down to the casino floor. Well let me tell you, Dr. Peppers are 3 bucks, so is a bottle of water, if that wasn’t bad enough, they wanted $4.50 to bring it up. We drank the tap water! We watched the 9th round of the NFR on the TV, and went to bed. We were still on Oklahoma time so we were up early enough to watch the sun rise over the mountains, and get an early start on the day. We ate breakfast at the American Cafe there in the NYNY and then we hit the Cowboy Christmas at the convention center and spent most of the morning drooling over the western clothes, art, furnishing, tack and anything else you might imagine. We had an adventure with the taxi driver on the way to the center, he tried to over charge us, which didn’t go over well with Rachel, especially when he ask for a tip! She told him that his tip was on the meter at the beginning of the ride and that was all he was getting from us. That’s my girl, you gotta love her. She made a point to tell the next driver all about it as soon as we got in the cab. He tried to get rid of us ASAP–it was probably the fastest cab ride made that afternoon! After we got back from the convention center we went to Mandalay Bay, where there was more Cowboy shopping. We ran into some friends from home, and Rachel bought a saddle. She has been looking for a year for one that she liked. Will you believe that the people she bought it from were just about an hour from her house down in Texas, in a town that she goes to pretty often. Had to go all the way to Vegas to find something that was just down the road. I will tell you that we got quite a few strange looks as she was carrying that saddle through the casino. The security guard even stopped and questioned us, quite politely. Everyone wanted to know where her horse was and was she part of the rodeo. We made it back to NYNY and fell down for a while, then we had to get ready for the rodeo. We decided to eat before we caught the shuttle over to Thomas and Mack. So we went to the MGM Grand and ate an early dinner at the Rain forest Cafe. It was neat. They have a lion exhibit right near the cafe, with real lioness I might add. We caught the shuttle and got to T&M right on time. We got to see the laser/fireworks and some C&W dude sing and they had a neat thing about the NFR history and bam off the rodeo went. Every event but barrel racing had the championship still on the line, so it was fun watching to see who would finally win. We knew some of the contestants from when Rachel used to youth rodeo, it was so neat to see kids that you knew when they were starting out doing their thing at the NFR. We ran into a lot of folks from Oklahoma, so it was a good thing that we didn’t do anything that we wanted to stay in Vegas, I think it would have followed us home! The sights were amazing and the rodeo was great, everyone was really nice, friendly and helpful. The only bad thing of the whole trip was that we had to worry about our rodeo tickets. Seems like I ordered them from a “scalper” site and even though they guaranteed delivery within 48 hours of your event, they didn’t get the tickets to us until 2:30 the day of the rodeo. So if you ever what to go to the NFR, be sure you get your tickets from pro rodeo.com or UNLV. We found out that those two are are the only “legit” places to get tickets. You pay a lot less too. But, it’s like I told Rachel, I was happy to get the tickets and we got to see the rodeo and it was worth every penny I over paid.
There were lots of cowboy hats and boots on the streets and most of the cowboys were cute. Being as I am an old married woman and Rachel is in a “committed” relationship, we just admired those cute Wrangler butts! Let me tell you if you are single and interested you could get into a lot of trouble out there.
We got up early Sunday morning,(still on Oklahoma time) and checked out, filled up and got under way home. We were on the east side of Boulder Dam before we started seeing snow. Not much, mostly just on the roadside. The roads were bad in a couple of places and we were glad that we decided to take the SUV it has 4 WD. We saw several bad wrecks, semi’s mostly, but we were there well after the fact. Poor Rachel did most of the driving, and we were both ragged out by the time we hit Texas. We did find the Cowboy game on the radio and listen in, that game helped keep us awake. We drove straight through, stopping for gas when we had to. We made it to Rachel’s at about 3AM Monday and I made it home about 35 minutes later. Tony was waiting up for me. I think he missed me, he even washed the dishes!
It was a great trip and I’d love to go again, just to see the hotels that we didn’t have time to get to!

When we got back, I found out that all of Tony's family was coming up here for our Christmas get together. Since I slept most of Monday that left 4 days to clean and cook. Being gone 5 days and having 1 husband and 4 dogs in the house needless to say there was cleaning to be done. Tony smoked all the meat so my cooking was limited to dressing and deviled eggs, which are a favorite of the Block kids. Everyone brought something to add and we had way too much food. We had a great time and I don't think anyone minded a few dusty corners!

If you are travelling, be safe and keep warm.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.