Birthday Tag

A very dear friend of mine is having her birthday tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this). She is having a little blog birthday party and today's thing was a tag. So, I thought that I would participate as the questions looked rather fun. :-)

When is your birthday?

My birthday is July 21st. I'm a 'summer girl' through and through. ;-) 

Favorite Flavor of cake:

Ooh, definitely vanilla... or carrot cake if the cream cheese frosting is just right (thankfully there is a restaurant  nearby that serves an AMAZING carrot cake!!

Cake or Cupcakes?

I like both, actually, though cupcakes are kind of fun and cute. :-)

Small, intimate gatherings, or a big birthday bash?

I could probably do either. Although my idea of a 'birthday bash' might really differ from other's ideas! 

Birthday Tradition you have:

We have a tradition for everyone to say something (or several things) that they like/love/appreciate about the birthday person. It's really nice because sometimes you forget to tell those you love "I love you", and sometimes it's easy to forget that you are appreciated. So, I really like and enjoy this tradition. Plus, it's been fun seeing everyone's things over the years. When Caleb was little his were always things like, "She cooks good food," or "she plays with me"... ;-) Now it's super touching when he tells you "you're going to make an awesome mom someday!" (he told that to my sis and I think everyone teared up. Who wouldn't??)

Sprinkles?

Yup! 

Do you have a "birthday twin"?

I actually have a couple of birthday twins. My Great-Aunt, a friend on blogger, and Don Knotts!! (Yeah, that's pretty cool!!!)

Do you like surprise parties?

Although I've never been the object of a surprise party, I do think they are fun! I always have a hard time keeping it a secret, though!! hehe! Things tend to slip, especially when I'm around other folks who are going...

Share a Baby picture (if you'd like)

Ok, I don't have a baby picture... but I was really cute. ;-) just kidding. =D

Go ahead and go check out Samantha's post and participate!! It's a lot of fun. =D

My New Writing Blog

I know that I've posted links for my Wordpress writing blog, but, due to a few 'tricky' things with publishing a book, I've decided to get a different site. I know it sounds confusing, but it's mostly so that it matches up with my business email so I don't confuse folks too much. :-) Hopefully that paragraph didn't confuse my readers...

I will more than likely not use my wordpress blog any more... I might go and post just for sentimental reasons, but I'm trying to transfer it over to my new site. I am using Blogger again just because I really liked that HTML format MUCH better than Wordpress. Easier to navigate and whatnot. So, if you'd like any updates on my book publishing, want to read tidbits of my stories, then you can go and check it out here: www.bookwriter451.blogspot.com.  Really original name, 'write'?? =P

It's still under a bit of construction, but I'll be adding new pages and posts as often as I can. I'm hoping to have some good book giveaways, some author interviews, fun writing tips and ideas, and much more! So, please be sure to check it out and follow if you'd like to. Your support is always greatly appreciated!

Also, once my books are published and out on the market, I will post links to the purchasing sites.

Thanks so much, and I hope to see you over there sometime soon!

P.S. If you like my new blog design, and the blog design over at my new site, you should go check out This Blog Design Site!! Dani has lots of neat, fun, and chic designs! (and no, she didn't ask me to put this up... I just really like her designs and want to show some support and thanks for her work.)

Awkward and Awesome!

Howdy friends!! It has been quite a while since I've been on here. Feels like I left for a long vacation and have finally come home.

Well, to give you a very brief update, life has been very hectic around here as of late. I'm trying to finish up my book for publication, taking care of premie calves, reorganizing the porch/house, trying to get some sense of order in my daily schedule, teaching fiddle, etc, etc. Yes, life keeps going on and on sometimes. However, I have been enjoying it, in a sense, because I like to stay busy.

(not our calf.. just a pic on google... )

So that's my life in a nutshell at the moment. I'm hoping to get some more posts up soon... But, before I do that, I finally came up with enough awkward and awesome moments to do a post! This will be my official first one... =D

Awesome:

~Waking up at 5:45 this morning and stepping outside. I love that crisp, early morning air!
~Getting to spend an entire day with friends (who are more like family!! In fact, we pretty much call each other cousins)
~Having a cat sleep up on your shoulder at night. He keeps me warm!
~Waking up to snow on the ground. It didn't last long, but it sure looked pretty outside the window!
~Painting and redoing our porch. It is painted a light sage green, with a darker green accent. With the lovely furniture, it looks like something out of a BHG magazine!
~My amazing family!
~All the support I have received for my book writing. The deadline is drawing closer!! Eeps!
~Upcoming coffee dates with friends
~Hobby Lobby. Three cheers for standing up against the Government on the whole contraceptives!! Go give 'em your support, guys!
~A nice, hot cup of English Breakfast tea in the morning. I've weaned myself off of coffee and sugar. I figured it wasn't the best thing to have first thing in the morning.
~Actually getting my first A&A post up! This is pretty cool and fun!
~Calving season! I love all the new babies. What a picture of God's miracles!
~My new computer!!!
~An upcoming baby shower for a friend. Her singleness/courtship/marriage story is really neat!!! I wish she had a blog so she could share... perhaps I'll interview her someday!
~An upcoming wedding for another friend who also has a great story about the whole thing!!
~A surprise that involves things like this:

Awkward:

~Moments with a group of friends after someone's said something funny... we all laugh, then fall silent. Then, me being the goof that I am, I start laughing about it all over again and everyone just looks at me... yeah. Story of my life.
~Coming into the house after trying to teach a baby calf to nurse and your sister telling you you have cockle-burrs in your hair. Um, not really sure how they got there.
~Quickly heading out the store and, after wondering why people are staring at you, you're sibling tells you that you have a smudge of soot on your forehead... Great.
~While training the calf, the cow begins going to the bathroom. You quickly whip the calf away and try to shield it from the splatter... then you realize that the calf could really care less.
~Standing in the alley way in the corrals sorting cows on a windy day. A really big gust comes and gets a bit of dirt in your eyes. While I'm standing there trying to get it out, not really knowing whats going on around me, all the cows run past.... oops.
~Going up to a guy you haven't seen in years (he's older by several years, by the way). You're surprised to see him at this certain place... in your shock you stammer out a hello and 'you're looking good'. *Smacks Head*. He looks at you for a moment, then quickly says something and takes his leave.
~Getting asked to babysit for Valentines day, but only if you're available and don't have other plans... Um... yeah.
~Being asked by a relative if you have any boyfriends yet or if there are any on the horizon. Trying to convey to her that you are saving that for one guy (and no, he won't be a boyfriend and you won't be doing dating) and not super interesting in dating lots of guys...
~The same relative wishing I would go to college and 'have some fun' (with a slight nudge in the side...) Super awkward. I think I've given up trying to explain to certain people that I really don't do that. They don't seem to understand, exactly...

This one was more of an Awkward/Funny.... Trying to teach your new violin student a song. When she arrives for lessons, her mother informs you that she doesn't seem to be getting this one note right. So, you begin working on it. Sure enough, the note sounds off... It's a C#, so you work on getting the fingers right, do scales, different techniques to get that finger in the right place. Lesson over. While the student is putting away the violin, the mother asks if I would play the song really quick so she can hear how it's SUPPOSED to sound like... as you play, you suddenly realize that it's a C natural... not a C#... thankfully everyone laughed about it.. :-)


Alright! Let me know if you liked this post and if you'd like to see more in the future!! It was rather fun coming up with all of these... and I will say that some of them happened a while back, but oh well. :-) Perhaps I'll have ones that happened more recently.. in fact, you can almost count on it happening. ;-) haha!

Everyone have a blessed Weekend!!! I'm hoping to get some things posted on my writing blog to let everyone get an update on my book status...

Mom's Birthday!!!

It is my mom's birthday today!! I hacked her blog (heheh!), so go on over and comment if you would like. :-) 

Unfortunately, her day didn't go quite as well as we wanted, but oh well. We've had leaking pipes, frozen pipes, etc that have kept us busy the last couple of days. Finally finished thawing out one pipe. I think the cows are happy to finally have water again! It was bitterly cold, though!!! I'll probably do a post about it because what we did to fix it was pretty funny... :-) 

Anyway, despite having to work on that, I think Mom has enjoyed her birthday so far. Dad is on his way home with Rudy's BBQ (the BEST BBQ around!) for supper. It's a rare treat (usually on birthdays or Mother's day- yeah, that place is EMPTY on Mother's day!), so we're looking forward to it. :-) 

Maybe I can actually snap a few pictures.... :-) 

Water, water, and more water!!!

It seems that lately we just can't seem to keep the water in the right place on the ranch- which is in the water pipes and water tanks! Not flooding all over the place. If you didn't guess, we are dealing with lots of leaking pipes again. It pretty much goes like this: fix one, find another that's broken, then find that the one you just fixed broke again, then you find a new one, etc, etc....

Dad and Josh were up super early yesterday morning trying to work on one. When they came in for lunch, they were still have issues with it. So, I ended up heading out with Josh to finish fixing it while Dad and Caleb continued to take down our large arena. Josh got down in the hole first to glue one pipe into another, then I ended up having to get down into the hole to fix the other side (I didn't really know what I was doing, but Josh stood by telling me what to do, so that helped. ;-) By the way, I was only getting down there because Josh was rather tired from working all morning and I wanted to give him a break. He protested a lot because he didn't want his sister getting down there for no reason if he could do it himself. Such a gentleman!!). Anyway, I was standing in 7 inches of water... or at least it felt that deep! I know it came past my ankles. Thankfully my boots and pants got all the damage. Oh, and we were just a little muddy... wish I'd had the camera to take pictures! We must have looked pretty funny... :-)

We're 'disassembling' the arena because we are going to use the fencing to build a set of corrals in one of the pastures. Unfortunately, fencing costs a LOT of money. So, when you're not using the arena and a couple other pens anyway, why not just take them down and reuse them. Now, that's what I call being 'green'. ;-)

Dad had Monday off (due to the holiday), and is taking today off as well. So, we had a nice 4-day weekend to work on stuff around the ranch. Things are always piling up that need to be done. *sigh*. I guess that's part of the fun, though. I think I'd really hate it if we didn't have anything to do! ;-) Unfortunately, we were planning on taking down the arena/building the corrals this weekend, not spend it fixing pipelines. Goes to show that we don't know the ways of the Lord and can't plan our day exactly as we would like! :-)

Anyway, I wanted to drop a little update on what we've been doing. Also, I've got some great posts coming up that I can't wait to share with you all. The new puppy is doing well, still hasn't got a name... he doesn't seem to mind too much, though. ;-)

Some exciting things coming up, so stay 'posted' (haha) so hear about those soon!! :-) 

If You Want to Know Me a Little Better...

...then you might scroll through these pictures here. They pretty much describe me. Courtesy of my sister's Pinterest! ;-)

 (If anyone has seen me get into a 'giggle fit'- as my family calls it, then you can definitely believe this one...)

These were just cute/funny.... 

 

 (His face!!! He's all over Pinterest with different captions. My favorite: You mean to tell me your name is not mother?)

Hope that gave you a few chuckles! Have a blessed weekend!!!

Newest Member to the Ranch

Just wanted to share a few pictures of the newest member to the ranch! He is an adorable little German Shepherd cross pup. We think the other mix might be Husky, but not sure.

He is just the cutest little thing. Bandit doesn't quite know what to think of him yet, but Licorice (the cat) has already established the fact that he does NOT like this new monster thing. ;-)

 

Haven't come up with a name yet, but the ones floating around are Marshall and Smoky... though those might not make it to the 'final' name choosing. His little tail curls up, kind of like a pug. I'll try to get a better picture of him sometime, but for right now he's too busy exploring and playing to keep still (thus the slightly blurry pictures). :-)

Just Your Typical Day on the Ranch ~#3

I'm back for another 'Day on the Ranch' post! This was a really funny day because, in all honesty, I was really hoping that something 'interesting' would happen... ha, um not a good idea!

The day started out just fine- except for a  funky stomach-ache that I had. The boys and Dad took the tractor and started cleaning all the grease off of it. Our tractor has basically been 'pouring grease' from some leak, but it's so dirty on the outside (grease and dirt mix really well to make an awful mess) that they couldn't get to the engine very easily. So, while they were busy power-spraying all of that nasty stuff off, Becca and I took the feed truck and headed out to pasture. Our mission, which we chose to accept, was to get all the cows brought down to the house corrals in order to sort a few of them off. We needed to get the bulls out, and some other cows, which had jumped fence, back into their rightful pastures.

The cows came easily (they do so love the yummy goodness that comes from the feed truck!), and we soon had them all in the corrals. Unfortunately, two cows that we needed jumped the 'low spot' in the fence, and went right back out to pasture. This was dealt with fairly easily because one cow was tame enough to just go back in. The other, which wasn't our cow but one that had gotten into our pasture, was extremely skittish and timid. As soon as we starting walking towards it, that cow high-tailed it out to pasture as far away from us as possible.

Josh came out to help us sort the cows, and we got that done fairly quickly. We pushed the bulls to a different pasture, and then loaded the other cows that needed sorting into a trailer to haul them up to pasture. They are cows of some folks who are leasing land from us, and they got into the wrong pasture.  

(To those who might have read this earlier, somehow the internet didn't save the rest of my post. So, here it is, and sorry about that!)

After sorting, Becca and Josh hauled the cows mentioned above back to the pasture they were supposed to be in, while Caleb and I worked on getting that skittish cow in. After multiple tries with no luck, I remembered that always works, or at least calms you down: Prayer. So, I began praying that the cow would go in. Sure enough, there it went. I forget that God helps us even with the smallest things. So, lesson learned! =D

Caleb and I then hauled our cows back up to their pasture. Poor things, they had walked a lot that day! On our way back, we met Josh and Becca, also coming back from their trip. They told us that we had a leak in a pipeline that needed to be fixed. So, we went home and started gathering thing to fix it. Some young men that we church with, Mitch and Wes, ended up coming by.  While Becca ran into town to pick up a few things for Dad, we went up to the tank. Mitch came with us, and Wes stayed to help Dad.

Once we got up there, we found where the pipeline was and started digging. We also found out that frozen mud is VERY cold and VERY hard to dig through. So, while Mitch chipped away at it with the ax, Josh shoveled, and I scooped water out. Kneeling in the freezing mud was no picnic, neither was dipping your hands in icy cold water. However, the task was finished and we began to fix the pipe... Oops, forgot the saw. So, Mitch and Caleb headed home to get it while Josh and I finished 'cleaning' off the pipe from all the mud.

Mitch came back and said he had a very distressed passenger in the truck. I looked over, and there was the cat, sitting calmly as you please, looking out at the new world around him. I guess he had jumped up on the back and got caught up there when Mitch came back up. In any case, he didn't seem too distressed, and rode very calmly all the way home later on. And, he still hangs out around the vehicles, so obviously he wasn't too traumatized by his experience. ;-)

After we got the pipe cut with the saw, we went to get the spare piece and realized we were missing the rubber seal (or whatever it was... once the guys start talking technical stuff, I pretty much feel like Captain America talking to Iron Man or Bruce Banner). So, we had to go home again, only this time we all went. It was way too cold to stay out there! Once we got there, I stayed home and cleaned up while the guys went back out to finish fixing the pipe.

Later that evening, the rest of the crew cleaned up and Becca, Josh, and I headed into town to meet with a friend to go and see 'The Hobbit'. It was a very neat movie and I really enjoyed it. Although, I found out that I can be very expressive during the movie... ;-) Lots gasps and sighs of relief, I guess.

Today while checking tanks and feeding, we found out that the pipe was broken again, and something else wrong with an air valve further up. So, tomorrow's work is cut out for us, I suppose! ;-) However, it makes for fun days with lots of adventures.

2012: A Year in Review

Hello! I thought it would be fun to put a few of my favorite things about last year down on 'paper', per se. It's kind of fun to look back and see what you've accomplished (also not fun to see what you DIDN'T accomplish...)

2012:

I turned 19. Kind of a big deal, and kind not....

Officially Graduated and Celebrated (hopefully I'll post pictures of it sometime this year... :-) 

 

I co-hosted a fun fashion show with a dear friend

I finally began the process of getting my books published (after much prodding from the Lord!, I finally took action... ;-)

I have made many mistakes and learned from them.

I have read 12 books... hehe, yes, that's a lot for me. 

Our family had a vacation after 6 years. It was such a wonderful time to get away from the ranch, the stress, and everything else and just relax and enjoy family time!!! 

I got to call and talk on the phone with a friend who lives really far away

I accomplished a few things off of my huge bucket list.. yeah, I'm not a big one for actually finishing things.. or perhaps I just overload myself. Hmm... 

I reached over 100 followers on my blog- you guys are awesome!! 

I worked at the State Fair as an Assistant Superintendent in the Creative Arts building

I took on a house cleaning job to help make money for my book publishing

Participated in two drama plays (I got the play the villain in the last one!!) You can go check out a video over here

I started teaching fiddle to three wonderful students

Called my first dance (that was fun, but also boring because I didn't get to dance!)

Started working on the Secret Project

Did Some posting on my Writing Blog

 

Made a scrap quilt top with some dear friends (we all have quilts-lap size- made out of scrap fabric from our own stashes)

Learned more in my walk with the Lord, though I had many failings

What I'm planning to do/what will happen in 2013:

Buy a laptop

Finish the Secret Project and reveal it to all of y'all

Do another Bible reading challenge

Memorize Scripture more

Get my books published and sell them at the New Mexico Home school Convention

Possibly go up to the Colorado Convention and sell my books there as well

Continue to grow in my walk with the Lord and learn to trust Him for absolutely everything

Hopefully visit some long distance friends

Finish the quilt top I made last year (still have to quilt and bind it)

Do some hair tutorials or post a Vlog

Possibly host another Fashion Show

Participate in Drama 

Do a Writing Series on my Writing Blog

Maybe Make Another long list of things I'd like to do! ;-) And then hopefully get them all done... 

Read at least 18 books- hey, that is a lot for me... hehe! :-)   

Maybe do some photo shoots...  

What are some things that you are looking forward to in 2013?? What are some things that you're glad you did/accomplished in 2012?