Montana Girls

Last weekend, Josh took the big girls on a hike to Brown's Lake and Agnes Lake. Apparently it was quite a steep scramble up the trail between the two, but they did great. When they got home, Josh was exhausted, but you'd never know the girls had done a steep 5-mile trek. Ah, to have the energy of childhood again.....

Pictures by a pristine lake to prove that we're officially "moved in" in Montana:o)

The girls thought this was great because it had all four seasons in one spot: sandy summer beach, spring temperatures, fall colored leaves....and snow.

Fall Girls

Fall in Dillon

A few shots of little girls since our move to Dillon, MT about a month ago.

Hadley and Talby didn't remember real winter, so they have been  really excited about winter wear. We had our first real snow a few weeks ago. Guildy and Hadley enjoyed it immensely. Talby found it interesting, but certainly nothing she wanted to touch for any length of time. Maybe next time she will like it more. 

Aside from one storm, the weather has been beautiful. The girls made a kite one day last week.

The beauty of homemade kites is that they require a great deal of running to make them "fly," resulting in well-exercised girls. 

Wedding dress and ruby slippers sprinting up and down the side walk. Pretty much the epitome of Age 5:o)

Pretty girl:o)

 

Wild 2-year-old!

An Eclectic Collection....

And now for some random photos from our random lives:o)

A 17-week belly pic

Our house and garden.....

What's a guy with  a desperate hatred of mini vans to do when faced with too many kids to fit in a regular luxury sedan? Buy a bigger luxury sedan, of course. This one seats 9 comfortably. 

This is Josh's new 1981 Cadillac limo with 68,000 original miles. 

Now I normally have a rule against posting food pictures, but I had to make an exception for my wildly successful lacto-fermented dill pickles. The girls and I polished off the first jar the day they were done fermenting. The dill and cucumbers came from the garden, and the whey came from yogurt from my milk cow. Wish everything could  be this tasty and home grown!

And some 2-year-old cuteness. She likes to pretend that the cucumbers and zucchinis are babies.  So she's often seen packing one around these days.

A little yogurt 'stache;o)

Simul-nap with cousin Milli at the beach in South Carolina a few weeks ago.

Horse Camp

Guildy got to go to horseback riding camp again this year. And once again, it was a big hit!

Getting frozen yogurt on horseback.

Not sure what's going on here...

The always-popular Putah Creek.

Chicken Fun

We ordered about 75 chicks this spring, 40 to butcher and the rest for layers. Up until now, they had been living in a stock tank in the shop, but they had outgrown that habitat. So yesterday, we moved them to their new coop and and fenced run. I thought I had their run wired up like Fort Knox, but right in broad daylight something got in an ripped the heads off four of them. Careful crime scene investigation revealed no critter tracks or signs of forced entry, so we decided it was either a weasel or similar small vermin or a bird of prey. We have a large populations of obnoxious ravens living here and they are very interested in the chickens, thus making them suspects. Of course the only logical solution to a bird-of-prey predation problem is to bust out the....... 

.....Two Foot Tall Ceramic Owl!!! 

Where, you might ask, does on acquire such a specimen to guard one's chickens? Well, a friend found it in a house she moved into and gave it to my sister-in-law (who has a thing for cutsie owl decor) as a gag gift last Christmas. Josh and Zech conferred briefly this morning and decided it was time to call the owl up for chicken duty. Josh pounded in a post and got it all secured before work this morning. And nothing says love like taking time away from work to install a massive owl decoy:o)

And here is Guildy with one of her Americauna pullets, which, under the watchful eye of the guard owl, will grow up to lay blue or green eggs. 

Family Fun

Josh will never be able to grow a proper mustache, but we can at least get an idea of what he might look like if it were a genetic possibility for him. 

For Guildy's birthday outing, we went to the race track in Berkeley. We sat right above the pit where they saddle the horses and load up the jockeys, and in between horse races they had wiener dog races, which were awesome. The girls loved it and had a great time!  

If you look closely, you can see that one of Hadley's bottom teeth is missing.  Her first natural tooth loss!!!

Field Trip!!

Yesterday, Linda (Josh's mom) and the girls and I journeyed down to San Francisco to see the Terracotta Warrior exhibit at the Museum of Asian Art. It was pretty much amazing. Of course the low light pictures taken with my wussy little camera don't do it justice, but you can get an idea.

We studied the Qin dynasty and the terracotta warriors last year in history, so when we heard there was an exhibit in SF, Guildy was pretty excited about it. Talby appears to be less interested. 

Grandma Linda and the girlies with a replica of one of the chariots buried with the  10,000 soldiers. We also learned that in the emperor's burial complex was a pit full of terracotta acrobats/entertainers and another that was sort of like a park with a waterway and terracotta water birds. We got to see several of the geese and a swan, all life sized. They have never  opened the emperor's actual burial mound, which is more like a mountain, because a historian recorded that inside it is set up like a miniature world, with rivers made out of mercury. Thus, nobody wants to mess with it!

 

Variations in uniform, hairstyles, and poses indicated rank and duties. You can see how their hands are molded to hold wooded weapons, which have rotted away.

The detail is absolutely incredible....

And some horses too....

And to finish off the day, we got our pictures taken with the Queen.....at the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Warf. The girls loved it!!!

Poems by Guildy

Guildy churns out some sort of written creation pretty much daily. Here are a few I have been saving...

God made the world

God made the world

this is true. He also made 

the seasons just for you!

By G.A. Browning

 Amazing God

by Guildy

Oh God above I lift my voice

and in your glory I rejoice for it

is you so brilliant and so bright

no mortal can see you. for you

are God amazing God.

 The Lord is Greater than I

by G.A. Browning

The Lord is greater than I!

He can lift the mountains. He

created us. He is amazing! God,

spirit, son. His throne is up in the 

Hevens! Amazing God help me be good. 

I lift my hands and sing to you my God.

The Loin and the Lamb (That's 7-yr-old spelling for "Lion":o)

The Loin is my holy Father God.

The Lamb is Jesuse Christ.

Jesuse died for me.

He is my shepherd. He is good to me.

He is my saveyour. Glory

Glory Glory to the Lord.

 The Phone is ringing

by Guildy Browning

Just a little ringey dingey can

cause a lot of excitment! It can make

you jump, sing and laugh. Because 

you'll never know who it'll be.

And last but not least we have a writing sample from Hadley, who has mastered several key words in the English language. And commas and periods. She just loves to punctuate.

Bess The Milk Cow and Various Other Critters

And here we have Bessie, the big bony Holstein that I get to use for my very own. She is an old commercial dairy cow that the ranch bought through the sales ring a few years ago to use as a nurse cow for bum calves. She was super sick with a uterine infection, and although she got over it and raised a pack of calves that year, she didn't get bred again. She had been turned out to run with yearling heifers and forgotten about. Then in March, Josh came home one evening and said she'd popped out a calf! So we got her in and started milking her. She was a little wild after her milking hiatus, but she gentled down nicely and has become very sweet. In addition to feeding her own calf and us, she has two bum calves....that's a lot of milk every day! 

Me, Bess, and bum #2, dubbed Skinny Baby

Bess was not fond of Skinny Baby when he first showed up and kicked the snot out of him when he tried to suck, so he had to be fed with a bottle for awhile. She has decided he's okay now, so we can skip this very cute but inconvenient feeding step.

Doris is our neighbor's 3-legged kelpie/collie pup who is the official supervisor of all barnyard activities. 

We pony-sat Peanut-the-bomb-proof-pony for a friend while she was on vacation for 2 weeks, and the girls had  tons of fun with her.

Guildy got up almost every morning that Peanut was here and rode her around while I milked the cow.

Silly girl!

Sweet Neighbors

 We are blessed to live next to a great Mexican family that has 3 girls a little older than ours. Our girls play with them every spare moment and it's fun to hear the chattering mix of Spanglish coming from the yard.

Gabi, Estafani, Hadley, and Natalie

 

Natalie, Guildy, Estafani, and Hadley tea partyin' on our porch.

The Aldens Visit!

Our good friends John and Penny Alden visited us a couple weeks ago as they road tripped from WA to OK. They were missionaries in Honduras all the years we were there, and it was so nice to get caught up.

Sunday picnicking at Guenoc Ranch.

Hadley, Talby, Penny, and Guildy enjoying a breezy afternoon by one of the lakes at Guenoc.

Potting up a few marigolds....

....and reading books to kiddos.