Well, here we go. I'm going to attempt to keep up a blog. We've had a crazy fun summer. We are currently over-running my parents house while Trav finishes up his last year of pharmacy rotations. We moved from good ole Laramie WY the end of June and are now in Otto WY (population 50). My parents are letting us stay with them for a year. 6 out of 9 of Trav's rotations are up here in the Big Horn Basin. So to see him more than a couple times a year - we moved up here to play and work on the farm with my parents and Sadie.
We've swam in the ditch & river, plastered ourselves with mud, weeded 2 sunflower/milkweed filled fields of beans, camped in the mountains, run a Dirty Dash, broken our backs picking canning beans and much more this summer already. Its been a fun-filled, busy summer with lots of mosquitos and an insane amount of crickets and grasshoppers. Yuck! The worst is when the crickets are 'singing' their lullabies in our windows at night. Mom found an awesome bug spray that cures that problem very nicely... if you can find the blasted things.
We've started school at Burlington Elementary (10 miles away from Otto). Toran is in 2nd grade, Mikayla 1st grade, and Leah at home with me. I'm keeping her with me as long as I can. The kids are really liking school. They already knew a lot of the kids at school before we moved here, so the transition was pretty smooth. Trav is finishing a rotation in Byron and then has one reflection week in Laramie WY, and then off to Walgreen's in Cody WY. It has been really nice having him home more often.
I am learning how to make my mother's delicious bread tho I'll never be able to make it like she does. I'm learning how to can beans & peaches, to freeze corn, and a myriad of other things. I'm still able to read a good book every now and then which is what I love to do. It sure is nice being back in the middle of nowhere... country suits us just fine. The kids are happy... we're happy and that's what its all about.
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| Muddin' in the Garden (Toran, Mikayla, Leah) |
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| Leah finding pretty rocks in the mountain |
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| Sly grin - Leah's gonna be a handful |
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| Trav, Leah, Toran, Mikayla, Danny Graham Just cut 3.5 cords of wood... only got one warning for cutting in the wrong spot! Oops! I'm gonna love sitting by the nice warm fire all winter. |
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| Fishing Willet Creek in Big Horn Mts. - only took us 1 1/2 hrs. to find the silly river. Didn't take the right turn, BUT we weren't lost according to the men! |
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| Oh you beautiful doll. She wanted to do it all by herself. Her pole didn't have a hook on it, just a bobber & she was pretty upset that she wasn't catching any fish. |
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| Swimming in the river - we didn't tell them that there were cows upstream enjoying the water too. DIRTY DASH - BILLINGS MT July 30, 2011 - my birthday party! |
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| BEFORE - The Dirty Dozen gang. Mom, me, Taubi, Ben, Courtney, Coulter, Paige & Sadie ran the 5K Dirty Dash first. We jumped over haybales, swam through canals, jumped tires, climbed over wooden walls, sloshed through a ton of muddy holes, slid through a massive slip&slide, floated in a huge lake of mud, and had the time of our lives. We weren't there to win the race - we were there to wrestle and to get dirty! |
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| The lake of Mud |
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| AFTER - There was no place free of mud. Back - Paige, Ben, Mom, Coulter, Courtney Front - Taubi, me, Sadie The worse was the gritty mud in the eyes and no clean place to wipe them. |
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| BEFORE - Now it was Trav, Mikayla, & Toran's turn For the little piggies race - the kids ran around the track, jumped hay bales, slide through the slip and slide, and then ended in the lake of mud. |
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| AFTER They had fun during the race, but then... the ice cold showers after! I had to drag Mikayla kicking and screaming into the showers and hold her down while I scrubbed. Luckily she wasn't the only one screaming bloody murder. The kids loved it. There's no better place to be than floating in a lake of mud! |
