So, this is the second morning in a row that we have woken up to this:

And this is what our regular trio of geese thinks of it:

They were not too happy about their ponds being covered in a thick sludge of snow and ice and their feilds of green grass nowhere in sight!  There raucous complaints were so loud they had the cats hiding in the shadows!  Poor Fat Gary!

My Spare Son

I have written about my boy Austin many times.  You just didn't know it.  Up until now I have always called him one of my "spare sons"; well, he really is much more than that to me.  Austin is one of my oldest son Thomas' best friends and has been for as long as I can remember.  Before his Mother passed away last year she was not too involved in his life (maybe an okay thing) and although his Dad has done a great job in raising him, he is a rough and tumble old school biker type (and also a dear friend of ours).  Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm married to one myself!  So, needless to say, I find myself working very hard to fill in the "maternal love" gaps with him.

On this blog I am very careful about protecting the identity of those around me, especially of those I love dearly, like Austin.  But, this last weekend my boy came home with two, yes two gold medals!!!  And I have been wanting to shout about it from the rooftops!  I mean this kid can run.  The gold medals were in two relay races so he helped bring home eight gold medals to Platte Canyon High School.  This also means that we are going to Regionals this coming weekend and probably headed to State the following weekend.

At the ripe old age of seventeen (just turned on Monday) he came through the door holding his medals and I attacked the poor kid!  The tiny smile of pride I saw pass across his face before I hugged him tighter than the kid had been hugged in years was something I will never forget.  Don't worry, the crimson color faded almost as fast as it had arrived!

When Thomas asked for his permission for me to blog about him, his response was "Cool".  He knows how much he means to me, because I make that clear to him each and every time he comes here, which is often, blessedly.  I also know that when he chose to spend Mother's Day with me, that was my gift.  He had asked Thomas earlier in the week, so I knew it was going to be a weird day for him.  He had said that I acted like I was his Mom, so yeah cool, he could probably spend the day with us.  Yeah, that is pretty cool.  My son the gold medalist, I like it!

A Mother's Day of Recycling

I have found that sometimes the best way of dealing with the crap that life throws your way is to get grounded.  And I mean that literally.  Get reconnected with  the earth in some way or another.  So, when my family asked me what I wanted to do for Mother's Day, the answer was an easy one.  I wanted to get down and dirty and do some physical labor around this ranch and start the healing process.  For those GSO readers, please check out the last couple of posts at my regular home, and you'll see why I need some healin' time.

I must say that I am really proud of our accomplishments.  We only had two trash cans and all of this will go to the recycling yards.  Another great thing about it was the wood that we took off of stuff like the futon was used for a family bonfire and marshmallows...YUM!!!!

The funny part was that we had been having a long debate about the bicycles.  Tom said they had to be torn down, no plastic or rubber.  I thought they would recycle them the way they were.  Well, I had Thomas and my spare sons working on them for about five minutes before I heard grumbles that they should have gotten me a gift instead.  I tried not to bust out laughing before I let them go.  Anyway, after a bit of research, I, of course am right, they will be accepted rubber, plastic and all!

So, I will add about six or seven overly jumped and drug and abused bicycles to these piles, and completely fill my truck!!!  I will take them to Western Metals Recycling and have a very clean ranch to show for a great Mother's Day.  Fantastic.

Ode to Joe

Lord, I don't even know how to start a post like this.  "Just the facts Ma'am".  Somehow I get the impression Joe would appreciate this Dragnet reference.  Last week Joe Holbrook had a straightforward muscle tear repair surgery on his hip.  On Thursday evening when his wife came home from work she found him dead from a blood clot.  

My keyboard has been silent since I got the news, well that's not entirely true, when I couldn't sleep I went to his Facebook page.  Joe was not only my cousin, but I was blessed to call him a friend; and I doubt there was one person who had ever met Joe who didn't feel the same way.

I am proud to say for those of you that are regular readers of this blog, you are friends of Joes as well.  I always felt quite honored that such a manly truck driver/Marine followed and commented and really seemed to enjoy my blog.  Joe didn't read because he had to out of family obligation, Joe read because he damn well chose to and liked my writing and the things that Tom and I do, I could really respect that.

When we were back in Iowa for Thanksgiving, Joe took it upon himself to make sure my men were entertained so that I could spend time with my Great Aunt Jaris.  The priceless memories that my boys and Tom have of that time now are even more important, but they are ones that they had spoken of often.  He had taken the entire day to take the men shooting and to teach them about the local wildlife and show them the area.  I specifically remember coming around the corner after a long day in town with "the girls", feeling a little guilty, and there was Joe and Tom just happily chatting away sitting on the tailgate of the truck.  I had had nothing to worry about, Joe of course had everything covered.  My men were happy and entertained, and of course well fed.

Another thing that always impressed me about Joe was that he wrote his and Cheryl's Christmas letter.  And it was a good one too, I really looked forward to it every year.  He always took the time to thank the folks that came in from out of town to visit his Mom (Aunt Jaris) or Cheryl's Mom.  He also always kept us all up on his latest wood working projects.  The tear jerker for me, is that this year his project was a spectacular rocker/cradle for his beautiful niece that was named after him, Bailey Joe.  We all have been teasing about the baby being named after my town while I named my puppy after their state!  Obviously this is just a coincidence, well the baby name is anyway.

So, I thought I would share a few of his comments with all of you here, spread a little of Joe's love, so to speak.  I know that he did a lot of that on his own.  Thank you Joe for being such a wonderful friend and cousin, and thanks for the memories.  I love and miss you with all of my heart.

I want to comment on this young lady who is my cousin so as a follower I first disqualify myself from any prizes. I follow the blog because wether you agree all the time with her views I will say she is always sincere in her beliefs and very real with what she has to say to you. I have learned a lot about her beautiful mountains. The pictures she posts are breathtaking so I hope Santa brings her that new camera. Thanks for joining her blog I know you will enjoy it. Cousin Joe

This is in response to My Black Hoody and the comfort it brings me:

It rains now and then so it does get washed kiddo. I guess my thing is most of time it is various t shirts ,but with USMC on it some where. See you in November 

 This is in response to my post about epilepsy:

 Who knows why we have certain challenges in life. Some people fail from them some become stronger. Some like you share that strength with others Good job kiddo. If I look at you funny it is not your illness but your sense of humor and I look at you funny because you just put a smile on my face. :)

Being a big girl sucks

You know, sometimes being a big girl and making big girl decisions really sucks eggs.  You know my rule, stay positive on the blog, but you people might not think I was a real person if I didn't talk about the rough times in life on the farm as well and it seems like the shit pile has gotten rather large this week.  Yup, I usually keep it G rated too, but there's no other way to put it either.

The worst news of all was that Lucy Rabbit passed away while we were gone.  I had called multiple times to check on her and it sounded as if she was almost doing a tad bit better.  Our wonderful neighbor was taking as good of care of her as I had been and was even giving her cuddle time, but Sunday morning when he came she was gone.  When we arrived home that afternoon he had a tree sapling all ready to be planted wherever we chose to bury her; he knew how close she was to our hearts!!!!

So, this left us with a very hard decision to make, what to do with poor, broken-hearted Rusty.  Rabbits do not do well living alone and are meant to live in pairs or family units.  He was grieving terribly and would not even come out of his cage.  My family dynamics have changed drastically since we got into the rabbit business, and my children no longer pay much attention to them.  As a matter of fact, I have found it quite interesting that the kids have consoled me over this whole rabbit situation.  I knew the neighbor that gave me my original rabbit, also named Lucy, over a decade ago, had a single rabbit and had little kids that are learning to "homestead".  One e-mail later and I learned that they would be ecstatic to take Rusty; it was a perfect solution for two lonely rabbits and one young family, just not the crying old lady at the bottom of the hill!

Yesterday we lost our first hen.  I have no idea why.  She was just lying on the ground dead as a doornail, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Now, I know we have been blessed, living where we do and letting them free range that we haven't lost any up until now, but it was still kind of upsetting.  No signs of predator attack or anything, and another odd thing is that her eyes were closed, kind of morbid, but weird.  I mean what the hell? Oops I did it again, I think I have some anger pent up!

So, this is how the week has gone, I have some sort of the flu, and I do mean BAD!  Cold symptoms with puking at night (I know TMI, but just so you know how miserable I am...), the school district late Friday afternoon-right before we were leaving town ordered 100 breakfast burritos for Wednesday, and Tom's truck has broken down twice this week.  Yes, I know that is one heck of a run on sentence, but that is just the way my life seems to be these days.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, one of my favorite things about the crazy mix of animals that I have on this ranch is the inter-species relationships that develop over the years.  Today when Rusty left Rosie the dog seemed very concerned and almost jumped in the van with him, but since she has been known to jump on the bus with my daughter, I didn't think too much about it.  But when we came inside and she stood in the spot where the rabbit cage has been since last summer and continuously barked for over fifteen minutes until I finally made her go outside it was almost more than I could handle.  I looked back over the pics of the rabbits and sure enough, Rosie is in every single one of them!

 

Spring Travel in Colorado

Well, we made it home safely, thanks to our Captain Tom!  

Traveling in May in Colorado can be a bit risky and our weekend adventure was no exception.  We, in regular Jeute fashion, chose one of Colorado's highest mountain passes (Monarch Pass) to cross both Saturday and Sunday on our way to and from the Black Canyon area.  Because the road conditions were so bad and I could not speak, I tried to keep myself busy snapping a few pictures for you all because I could not wait to share the story!  Needless to say, we were the only RV on the road.

We even went over the Continental Divide!

Check out this cool old mine, this was on the way down, so I could breathe again by now!

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

 Blue Mesa Reservoir

Wow! What a beautiful weekend this has been!  Although it got off to a weird start with leaving the sick bunny and being rather unprepared as far as groceries go, my family and I hopped into our new motorhome and headed out with no specific destination in mind on Friday night.  We didn't get too far and had a rather chilly night, but we were together and having a wonderful time!  Ordered pizza for dinner that was delivered, which to us is a huge novelty and had a nice breakfast out before stopping at the grocery store for supplies, and then of course propane.  And then, we saw this:

And we are really having a great time in the new RV, even the dogs!  Gigi has chosen a rather odd place to ride though, on the table!

You can tell she thinks she's in trouble!