Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

What is it about Fridays? This past Friday I came home from the dreaded weekly shopping trip, (quite late actually because we had to go to Ellen's Play Day picnic, but more on that some other time perhaps), got the sleeping child down for her nap and was headed back out to get groceries when I spotted a lone heifer ambling up the ditch from Mother in law's place. *sigh* Great! Hubby and MIL are gone. He left the 4-wheeler up at MIL's place. So I hot-foot it out there. Heifer spots me and bawls once or twice. She knows the jig is up and comes toward me a bit. Then she gets skittish and trots back along the fence line. I think; good, I can herd her back down further on to our place. Ha. Wishful thinking. She turns around and heads back up the highway, this time forsaking the ditch and walking on the pavement. About this time the neighbor couple come by on their little motorscooter. He gets off and comes forward to help, but the heifer freaks out and goes gallopin...

Ellen was trying on some boots the other day. She needed a bit of help to get these on and it took her some dragging around to get them off by herself. But she was proud to pose for a few pictures while she was in them. I hope she never is able to actually fit these, hubby's size 12 shouldn't be wished upon any female. It rained last Sunday on Easter and according to a local saying I have never heard, if it rains on Easter it will therefore rain for the next 7 Sundays. Today is Sunday number 1 and sure enough it has rained most of the day. Yesterday hubby broke down and in self preservation bought a "Looney Toons" DVD so as to have a break from Barney, Pooh Bear and Blues Clues...etc. We watched a couple of them last night before bed. Today Ellen is asking to watch the "rabbit bug." I couldn't figure out what she wanted at first, but finally it dawned; "Bugs Bunny." Ha! As far as dairy news goes; Well, we have 2 heifers about to fresh...

Happy Easter everyone! Hope all is well on this Resurrection Day! Here is the latest picture of Ellen. Yesterday afternoon we went down to the creek. This is her newest adventure fun. She loves to go to the creek and throw rocks into it. "SPLASH!" she will say as she throws each rock in. Then she'll turn around to get a "nar" rock to throw. Of course I have to plunk in a few as well. There is something satisfying in the "gulp-splatter" of a rock going into water. It seems like every time I take her picture she looks so different; so much less like a baby and more like a little girl. They change so fast. We had a pretty good crowd in church this Easter morning. Last year we set a record at 110, I am not sure what the count was for today. I told hubby we are going to have to start getting there earlier to get a seat, we have been ousted from our regular pew to the one up behind the pastor. Hubby doesn't mind, but I don't like sittin...

On Wed night we had this Easter Cookie Swap Youth Service that I had planned at church. I learned a couple of things at least. One: Make sure there is a sign up sheet for different types of cookies to bring, otherwise you will end up with about 30 dozen chocolate cookies and only 2 or 3 other types. BOOOORRRRRING! At least I thought it was, I don't think the kids minded too much. Two: Make sure the adults know this is to be a YOUTH service. No adult input allowed. We have great musical talent in our church among the youth. A couple of them even write their own lyrics and music. So I'd asked them to lead the song service and to choose what type of Christian music they'd like to play and sing. To my annoyance someone told them to only do hymns. *sigh* That's old fogey music, but they did a great job of jazzing it up with elec guitars and drums...etc. Then after the game one of the young guys got up and read off a devotional. I was impressed at his initiative t...

Hubby and I have talked, in passing, about how huge our carbon print must be due to the fact that we don't have recycling here and our heating methods and such. So I have been doing some thinking on how to be more "Green." Currently the only real "Green" thing I do is hang out laundry, instead of use the dryer. So I have considered going "No 'Poo." "What is that?" you may ask. Well, it's getting out of the shampoo addiction. Which to a certain degree makes sense. How long has the human race survived without commercial shampoo? Here's a link on going No 'Poo . In essense it says that what commercial 'poos do is strip your hair of natural oils, then your scalp overcompensates by producing more oils, then you 'poo again the next day and your hair gets dried out and THEN you put the fake stuff back in with conditioners. And you continue repeating the process. And in the meantime you have polluted the groundwater ...

This coming Wednesday evening is going to be our Youth Service Cookie Swap at church, so yesterday I tried my hand at making these little guys. It's just a no-bake cookie recipe molded into nest shapes with mini jelly beans in them. You can make them in a mini muffin pan, but I think the ones I did free-form on the cookie sheet look better. I am also going to make a batch of the chocolate recipe, and they will probably look better, more nest-like maybe, to show off the jelly beans. But I had to find a recipe that doesn't include peanut butter, on account of one of the girls in the class has a deadly nut allergy, her mom packs around in inhaler for her just in case. She isn't as allergic to peanuts as she is to tree nuts, but I am not going to take the chance. One of the boys in the class offered to lead the teen devotional for this youth service. He will probably chicken out because this past Wed night he asked if there would be adults watching, I said, "Yes....

Here's a picture of the white cheese I made. Actually the recipe called it "Queso Blanco" which just means white cheese in Spanish. According to Moe, who sent me an email, my blogger email now works. So send away if you'd like. We hauled more heifers today; moved some from the bull pen over to Windyville. Ellen isn't too impressed with cattle hauling, so she stayed with her grandma. Ellen doesn't like it when we get out of the truck and leave her in there alone. She squalls and squalls. So we spare her the ordeal, and ourselves the worry and headache. Besides, I don't like going into the bull pen myself, let alone take her in there.