Another two weeks down.

In the process of trying to remember what happened since the last post, I asked Trevor to help me recall the happenings of the last two weeks.

Last monday, being the holiday monday we had planned for a nice little trail ride in the valley with some friends and their boys. Since it rained all week the week before as well as the night before, we decided the valley might be too slippery for young children to ride, so we decided to call off the ride. The day dawned grey and cold and windy, but we decided to still get together for lunch. We planned an impromptu weiner roast. Trevor and I left in the mid morning to go to the farm and get things ready, and as we started the fire, I thought, man this is going to be a cold lunch!! But within the hour, as we waited for our guests to arrive and made final arrangements, the sun came out, the grass dried up and it warmed up nicely! Nothing could change the fact that the cows had just grazed around the firepit area and left their "presents" behind, and nothing could convince the wind to stop blowing, but all in all we had a nice day! Trevor's parents, his sister, his brother and sister-in-law as well as Darren and Melinda and their two boys joined us for weiners, beans, chips, rice crispie cake and fudge. It was so nice, that we decided to saddle up our two horses and my father-in-law's horse and go for a ride with Melinda. We left the boys in the care of Darren and Alex, and saddled the horses. With Sneef (my border collie) in tow, we set off down the valley and had a beautiful ride, so nice in fact, that I sunburned my ears! We went across the river, which came up to about the horse's bellies and across to the far side of the family land. The current was decently strong in the river, but we all made it across safe the first time. On the return trip, we crossed in a different spot, where there was a fair amount of drift wood lodged just downstream in the river, we rode across and stopped to chat for a minute, when I realized that I hadn't seen Sneef come across the river. We looked and Melinda finally spotted her sucked against some debris by the current, paddling in vain to get free, she was getting tired, and looked scared, so I decided to ride back in to pull her out. On the way back down the river bank, my horse decided it would be a great time to roll, at first I thought he had just lost his footing, but when he tried the second time, I bailed off to avoid getting my foot caught and ran into the river to grab my dog. Thankfully Trevor grabbed my horse before he took off to far, because I was thinking only about my dog at that point! So thanks to a poor mannered horse, I have alot of tack that needs the mud cleaned off of it!! The experience obviously didn't cause Sneef too much mental anguish, because she went back and swam in the river later that day...she just LOVES water. It was a very nice day overall!

Back to work on Tuesday was somewhat stressful, since I was the only tech on duty in Morden, which meant I was quite busy all day!! I put the vet student to work helping with many duties and I was glad that he was there that day!

It rained pretty well all week with a total rainfall for May totalling about 8 inches! There is water in the ditches everywhere now, and the farmers who are spraying their fields are leaving deep ruts because the ground is so soft!

Last weekend I went to Morden/Winkler with Velma and Jamie to do a bit of shopping and have lunch together - Although I work in Morden a few days a week, the lunch hour never seems to be long enough to get things done that I need to get don in the area! We went to two second hand stores, giant tiger, the drug store and superstore...all great places to spend money :S I felt like I did fairly well and didn't buy anything too frivolous. I found a cute blue hat to add to my collection, and I purchased some piano books and crochet books at the second hand store - 6 books for 75 cents!! We had planned to eat lunch with Julie-who was working at the clinic that day, but she was too busy to get away for lunch, so we took her some take out. We enjoyed Thai chicken soup and chicken bagel melts at a great lunch place called Java Junction.

On Sunday afternoon it cleared up and we saddled up to move the cows to another pasture. Just when we started to get the cows moving, Alex took off after a stray calf and hit a wet spot with his horse just as he turned, the horse fell and landed on Alex's ankle. We took him up to the house with the truck and Velma carted him off to the hospital - thankfully, nothing was broken, just sprained! Trevor and I then went back to finish the job, and found the cows and calves had joined up and moved themselves into the nice green grass! Trevor and I rode through them and found that we still had 10 cows who hadn't calved, its getting somewhat frusterating, since we have only 17 calves out of 27 cows with only a few weeks left for them to calve. Trevor and I then took off for a beautiful ride through the valley, we followed the valley for a mile and a half, then took the road up out of the valley and followed it home, a total of about 5 miles of riding - it was beautiful, except for the bugs...gotta love manitoba "wildlife"!

Trevor was sick all this week with every symptom possible, stuffy head, coughing, runny nose, nausea, headache and fever. He missed 4.5 days of work and is still recovering. I didn't sleep very well most of the week, a combination of feeling slightly less then par myself and waking every time he woke to run to the bathroom or cough, and the last few nights he's slept on the couch to elevate his head...good thing too, since his snoring kept me awake for what seemed like the whole night on thursday night! I was busy at work, I worked here in PM all week since our only tech here was off on holidays, I spent a large part of my time on the phone setting up our on-farm vaccination clinic for dogs and cats which happens all this week. I must have talked to 50 or so answering machines and a good 50 or more real people as well!

Yesterday we had a bit of a girls day on the town. Jamie, Julie and I headed towards Carmen and picked up Melinda on the way. We went to a consignment store and another clothing store and had a great lunch at a local Bistro. We enjoyed the soup of the day- shrimp and halibut creole with a salad or sandwich - it was delicious food! It was a nice day of visiting and just enjoying our time together. I found a great jean skirt at the consignment store that I wore all day today....very rare for me to be comfortable enough in a skirt to actually wear it all day!

Today was our regular potluck lunch sunday, but with a few members sick and some away or working, we decided to make it a more casual affair with just three of us young couples getting together with my father in law and sister in law, we were pleasently surprised by a visit from Evan and Katie and Jakob, and it was a beautiful afternoon! Andrew and Jamie hosted a BBQ and we all brought the fixings :D Part of my contribution was a caramel apple pie that I made last night (Chatty, you inspired me). I froze a half dozen or more apple pie fillings last fall, so I made a lazy crust (press in the pan oil pastry) and plunked one of my fillings in, the filling was made for a small pie plate and I had the crust in a large one, so I cut up a fresh apple and filled in the space around the edges with that. I popped this in the oven for about 15 minutes while I made the caramel topping - a can of sweetened condensed milk with a cup of brown sugar added to it and cooked until thick, mmmmm my mouth watered as I smeared that over the pie, then I popped it back in the oven and made up a streusal topping for it with rolled outs, flour, brown sugar and butter. Definitely not a low calorie pie, but it was tasty! I meant to take a picture of it before it was devored but, my intentions are always better then my actions! I did break out my camera though, so here are a few pictures:

My two favorite little guys, Carson and Conner - they're getting so big though!

Here's little Jakob trying on Katie's glasses.

Katie and Jakob

Little Finny isn't staying very little!

Trevor's Baby - I had to put this on here, since its very much a part of our lives...In fact this part of lives is multiplying, he bought HD11 #6 this week...the saga continues - They've come from Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Manitoba...