A friend of ours lives on the Rio Grande in the most beautiful ranch. A bunch of little rivers and ponds dot the property so I took Wyatt "fishing" for the first time. I didn't put a hook on and he had a blast anyway. One of these days we'll try to catch something!
Wyatt brought me Cuckoo bird houses while down the craft aisle in Walmart one day. I'm not sure where the phrase cuckoo bird came from, but he was insistent we had to paint them for the birds. One was mailed to Nona in Michigan and the other is hanging on our tree outside. For the Cuckoo birds of course.
I personally like how he sticks his tongue out while concentrating. Evidently I do that also.
Our new little bundle of joy has arrived! Yeah! She was born sometime between 11pmlast night and probably 2 or 3 this morning. Rumba never shows any sign of foaking - doesn't wax, never sweats up or gets anxious...she gets soft around the tail weeks in adnavce and her bag stays full for weeks too - so it's impossible to tell exactly when she is truly getting close. Luckily she is a super easy foaler since we always miss is. She's perfect and I think is going to look like her daddy Grizz, a big, beautiful dun marked grulla. She's a half sister to Ringo, who continues to do well with his training!
We finally had a rainstorm tonight! Yeah! No Fireworks anyway because of the fire ban, but we did sparklers anyway. Super fun!
Ok - Our small house is not very condusive to dogs and the wieners have been sleeping in the stock trailer because they dig out of the big kennel with Mac and Roxie. Now they have their own penthouse. Nate does good work eh?
Wyatt loves animals. Sometime too much, but I'd rather he be over-lovable than not enough. He has taken to carrying around the two kittens we have kept around with him everywhere. They are wising up to him though and hide. But when he does get his hand on them they follow him everywhere!
It is the summer of babies here. My little broody Banty needed to hatch eggs and she's the best momma ever.
This is what the smoke from the fire looks like today. Everything still standing but poor visibility and air quality.
...I'm not lazy but life is going to fast right now. The end of the school year was a bear. The wind has been blowing like crazy since the start of May and so outdoor activities are a bit limited.
I also am working as the Rio Grande Country Tourism Assistant, was working a trade show for them at the end of May, teaching morning swim lessons this summer, am working on my Masters of Education and am taking on two new core classes next year since we had a teacher in my department move on.
We haven't done a whole lot this spring and summer. So I'll back track a little to keep things in order and try to stay more updated as we have some fun summer events planned.
AND...
A BIG AND...
Keep us all in your thoughts and prayers. The West Fork Complex Fire has moved into the San Luis Valley. I live far enough from the forest in the plains and so we are safe - I'm no longer firefighting due to family, kiddos, etc...but many of my friends and colleagues are affected by this. The town of South Fork, and possible Creede and parts of Del Norte are in danger of burning. Keep your fingers crossed that nobody is hurt, nothing is destroyed and this fire rages through depleting future mega fire problems due to the high incidence of beetle killed trees and poor forest mitigation. It's very frustrating to me because I worked on much of this part of the forest trying to mark out dead and dying trees to use as lumber, but tree-huggers got upset since we weren't letting nature take its course and so took it to court, and so therefore all this dead wood is just sitting there...waiting for a lightning strike. Which is what happened. Now people's homes and business might burn instead. It's hard to know that this timber could have been removed and used for production, instead of being burned up and causing these Maga-fires that we have been experiencing. In all my years of studying fire behavior and working on a fire crew I have never seen any fire move like these fires are doing. It is terrifying. This picture was taken two nights ago before it made a seven mile, 8,000 acre run last night.
I sent Ringo to be worked for a month and had him trimmed before he went. Well...that didn't go so well as he was trimmed way too short and was walking in his canon bone. So to keep him from going lame I had to have shoes and pads put on. He had never had shoes before so I was curious to see how he did. And as usual he played it off with flying colors despite being hot shod with banging metal, loud propane tank and having a nail driven into his hoof. He took it all in stride. That's my good boy!
We almost never have spring break fall during Easter, so this year we took advantage of it.
Since starting a second job as the Rio Grande County Tourism Board assistant in working on marketing and advertising - I haven't had two seconds to myself. It's been wild. I also am in charge of all the social networking, and since I do not facebook or twitter it's been a bit of a challenge to get people to view the sites. If anybody reading wants to check out what I have rolling and give suggestions, or like, or follow...please do!
www.facebook.com/riocountry
twitter: @riocountry
pinterest: www.pinterest.com/riograndeco
It's spring break - actually it's about over. It really was a mild winter, and it started warming up in February, so we've played outside as much as possible. Wyatt and I headed to Denver with some buddies to explore for a few days - this was the result:
Since I have crappy internet at home I do apologize for not staying more up to date...as usual. The next few posts will be catching you up with the events leading up to...and after Santa's Big Visit.
Once I was free from school, the first thing we did was make a gingerbread house!!!
This is what it should have looked like (yes, it was a modular. I just had to put it together):
