Ruby Slippers and Georgia Peaches

Knock, Knock….loud bang and another knock. I throw panties at one naked kid for her to put on, grab up the other that’s still in her pjs and a soggy diaper and run to answer the door. Living in a community of less than 100 people, knocks on the door don’t happen very often. Luckily for us, I answer the door and see our livestock manager and a cowboy. They tell me that in about 30 minutes there will be a helicopter landing right in front of our house. As one kid is yelling through the window because she can’t get her panties on, the other kid doesn’t want to be put down, I’m trying to figure out if the helicopter is for someone, a rescue helicopter of some sort.

It wasn’t. It’s a spray helicopter. A while back I wrote about crop dusters while we were living in Kansas. I LOVE to watch them.

A helicopter sprayer is no different. We LOVED it.

Of course we had to practice being helicopters after watching.

Needless to say, mornings are a little hectic, confusing and obviously a great learning time.

I’m glad I answered the knock at the door.

‘Member this?

Yeah…well, we’ve got our own Hamburglar.

Gotcha.

Hamburglar.

Y’all, we had a pretty mild January, February and March. Then around the middle of April we started getting a little rain. Then, the whole month of May we’ve gotten a good bit. We are really, really enjoying our spring. We’ve had a great time watching our butterflies, ants and planting some flowers. Our days have been in the 40’s, 50’s and mild 60’s. We are about to have some serious 80 degree weather, but we are looking forward to that.

The girls have had a great time on our nature walks looking for signs of spring, playing in the cold rains and enjoying our outside toys.

(excuse their attire, they are ranch girls who pick out their own clothes most of the time. It works.)

We are SO grateful for spring!

In January of 2015, Ruby started gymnastic lessons. She went every Monday until the last of April. She was excited for each session and worked really hard. By the end, she could do the beginnings of a cartwheel, great log rolls, some fancy footwork on the balance beam and other gross motor skills.

Present

She had a final performance that she was super excited for Matt to attend. He got there and she could barely contain her excitement through her rotations on the floor and balance beam. However, she did REALLY well. She never complained, practiced and had great manners during practices.

Since February, she’s been eyeing a wild rag at a store. She earned the wild rag and a bouquet of flowers from Matt.

She is a gymnast.

We did a unit on butterflies and we also did one about ants. We got a nifty little ant hill in our curriculum, sent off for ants, FINALLY got them in the mail, and they set to work.

We started off with 23 ants. 2 had died during shipment and we lost about two ants on average every three-five days. The last three made it about four weeks.

Our reminder when we see ants and other insects is “I am a wise child, so I work hard.”

It’s amazing what the ant can accomplish and how God made it all work together.

The girls got to see the ants ALWAYS working, planning and tunneling.

I’ve had this theme song stuck in my head since 1986. It comes out every now and then. Since Ruby was old enough to talk and we would take nature walks in the spring, this song would be belted out when we would see a butterfly. Since she’s older, she’s getting really good at the verses.

In our homeschool curriculum, we were sent a butterfly habitat and we ordered some caterpillars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_lady

The girls had a fabulous time watching the process and letting them go. It was a great learning experience.

The world of pretend is opening up for Clara. She just turned two, don’t ‘cha know.

Playing hide and seek is one of her favorites to “play” with Matt. He’s still her most favorite person.

She can put her boots and some clothes on all by herself.

“Ready? Gooooooo!” is yelled and you better be ready or you’re going to get jumped on, crawled over, smacked or ran over.

She can give a mean stink eye to just about anyone but here mama and papa. We see people every single day, we are around the same people at church on every Sunday, we play with a set of twins every week, and we interact with the same ranch people every single day. Does she talk to them, interact with anyone, speak to anyone? Nope.

When she gets hurt or has a booboo, she doesn’t dwell on it too long. Sometimes we don’t know where her booboos come from because she hasn’t made any noise when getting them. She does still cry a good bit when her little feelings are hurt or she doesn’t get her way.

Clara does not mind dirt, mud, or water. Sometimes she’s a walking pig pen. She’s more of a risk taker at this age than the older kid. She will stick her hand or body into any hole she finds, but is deathly scared of dogs and flies.

She’s a great sleeper. She can sleep from 11-12 hours at night and takes a 2 ½ hour nap during the day. She plays hard and sleeps hard. She’s somehow convinced Matt to lay down with her almost every night until it’s Ruby’s turn to sleep. She curls up like a little puppy.

Sweets, we have sweets in common. She would eat them or drink sweet drinks any time they are around.

She has a running joke with a person on the ranch that her name is “cupcakes”. It’s her only little joke that she will participate in with “strangers”.

She is a very sweet little girl who loves to do things by herself. She is very independent and learns on her own timeline. She was 15 months old before she showed any interest in walking and taking her first steps. By last count, she was well over 70 individual spoken words and over 20 two word phrases, but only uses them around Mama and Papa. She calls every color “pink” and every bug she sees is a “fly” and is avoided.

She has great manners and utters “thank-ye”, “bless you” and “please” when appropriate. Sometimes she has great interest in potty training, and sometimes she could care less.

Her favorite play things usually shift with whatever Ruby’s favorite play things are. Currently, she’s interested in play horses, scooters and building things.

She never watches TV, videos or movies. You can hardly read a book to her. But going for a walk, following animal tracks, watching Matt work with equipment, listening for birds, owls, doves and turkeys and exploring her surroundings? She’s all about that.

She’s worlds of fun. We are so thankful, grateful and appreciative that we get to spend our days watching her grow and learn. God has great things planned for this independent girl. We can’t wait to see many more birthdays and share cupcakes along the way.

Well, remember when I said in Winter Fishing that we did have any luck? Well, we still haven’t. BUT we recently had some visitors on the ranch that did a little fishing.

They brought me back 3 cleaned and gutted brown trout.

To quote one of the guys that grew up in San Francisco, California and now lives in a metropolis in Virginia, “You aren’t grossed out and a little freaked out that I just handed you some fish with their eyes looking at you?”

To quote me, the girl raised on a northeast Georgia farm and who now lives in the wilds of Wyoming, “Look around you, where are you at? No, I’m not grossed out, I just have to figure out how I’m gonna fix ’em. Thanks for cleaning them though”.

Luckily and I daresay divinely, we were having a hobo dinner cookout that evening and I decided that I would cook them like I was fixing everything else.

Here’s what I did:

Trout Hobo Dinners

3 fresh cleaned and gutted brown trout

One whole yellow onion

Lemon juice

Lime juice

Real salted butter cut in tablespoons

Sea salt

Black pepper

Grilling mix: garlic powder, sweet chili pepper powder, ground oregano, rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, cayenne pepper, bay, marjoram, coriander, cumin, ground mustard, paprika)

Cooking spray

Heavy aluminum foil

Directions: measure out aluminum foil to double length of fish. Run fresh fish under cold water and make sure you have the main blood vessel thoroughly cleaned out. Spray aluminum foil and place each fish on its own piece. Sprinkle spice mix, pepper and salt liberally over and inside of fish. Place sliced onions under, inside and on top of fish. Sprinkle fish liberally with lemon juice and lime juice. Place cut up butter pieces inside and on top of fish. Wrap. Place wrapped fish into cooler coals of a fire. Cook in coals for 15 to 20 minutes making sure coals are warm.

Delicious!

Sometimes life on the ranch is just plan cool, neat and a GREAT learning experience for all ages.

Recently, we got to try out an ultra sound machine on some pregnant mamas.

(see the spine? Going diagonal down the screen)

Usually ranches use vets to pregnancy check by palpating (reaching in and feeling around). If the cow is super early, sometimes the pregnancy is missed and the cow is called “open” when they are really pregnant. The ranch loses some money when that happens.

Currently, the ultrasound machines cannot be used for profit in the state of Wyoming. You cannot pay someone to come out and ultrasound your pregnant mamas. However, it is legal for a ranch to own a machine and do the scanning in house.

With an ultra sound machine, you get a really, really accurate account of if your cows are pregnant or not.

On this day, they caught 16 pregnant cows that were previously called “open”. Cha-ching!

Wooster, the old pro, has done and experienced many ultrasounds, so it was old news to him. But by the end, I could figure out approximately how many days pregnant the mama was.

(who says he can’t multitask? Pushing back a cow and holding onto our youngest.)

(Open…nothing in there)

It was a good day on the ranch ultra-sounding.

“Cu-buzz” (because)…Why not?