Crazy Cool Christmas Card

I have a friend at the grange in Auburn, and I discovered his address, so I sent him a Christmas card as a surprise. This is what I got in return...This is a handmade Christmas card, pretty cool don't you think. I wish I had this kind of artistic talent. Inside the card it reads, Merry Christmas! Doesn't this remind you of George's talents?
I wonder why the blue bulb has an eye looking out at the world.. Perhaps it represents God watching over us all?

Kitchen Aid Mixer's Maiden Voyage

So I decided that this Christmas I would just do it! I would buy myself that gift that I have wanted for soooo long. It is a kitchen aid mixer, in a cool color! QVC had them on sale last week for a really good price, with a pretty good color selection. I thought that Cinnamon Gloss was so much nicer than fire engine red. You know that these mixers come in so many cool colors, I have always liked Pink, then Chrome, then Copper, and the have some nice light blue and light green colors also! It came in the mail pretty quick I really didn't expect it until Wednesday the 25th. I opened up the box this morning and decided that I had to make something. Toll House Cookies was the maiden voyage for my new mixer! Yipee!

Walnut Harvest Bounty

Hurricane Sadie

Sweet Adelaide

Welcome to the world, Adelaide! She joined us on Saturday morning September 26. She did have some struggles to overcome in her first few hours. Her mom, Sydney, was really not ready to be a mom yet and she rejected her little donkey baby. But with a lot of help and encouragement we were able to get many mini-feedings for sweet little Addy. We have been bottle feeding her, and the vet is coming out today to test her igG to see how much antibodies she got from her mother. If you are wondering about her name, well, being that her mom is named Sydney we thought of naming her after another city in Australia. Oh by the way, this little donkey was fathered by Hershey who we lost two weeks ago..

So Long Hershey

I have very sad news to report about lil Hershey, we lost him last Friday. Hershey had a bladder stone that proceeded to block his ability to pee. The damage was so severe, and he did not respond to treatment. Sadly, he had to be put down and he was only 7 years old. He was an exciting little donkey with a lot of life in him.. He was a true miniture donkey. The picture belows shows Hershey with Sean, both toddlers at the time, and Sean is crying because Hershey bit his finger. I love how Hershey is looking like he is checking on Sean but not really.

A bit a good news in amongst the grief is that my two four year old donkeys, Sierra and Sydney, are both set to have their first foils and I am pleased to report that Hershey is the father. Let us pray that these little donkeys come into this world and live a long full life.

Alfalfa Has Arrived My Friends

Hay season has arrived up at the ranch and it was time for the annual ritual of hauling in a big load of hay from our friends down by the river in Colusa county. This is my favorite picture of the event because Logan was wearing that funny hat that came from Isabelle's back alley. That kid is funny! You can see from the picture, that Donna was helping Nick and Logan get the tarps out and ready to go for covering up the hay stacks. Which Thanks goodness that we did that because we had some "Weather" this past weekend.. Rained all night, last night, off and on!

Here is a picture showing the semi-truck and the squeeze that pull the hay off the truck. Arlene and I were heading out to help with traffic control. This is taking at the driveway entrace to the ranch.

I quickly took this shot, while on traffic duty. Looking back down from the intersection!

This is five stacks of hay, each stack has I think about 69 bales, there is another two stacks in front of the barn. I love the smell of fresh alfalfa, so sweet smelling. This is enought hay to feed two bales of hay every day until about March 2010.

Second set of stacks, I guess I should have said 2 1/2 stacks of hay!

Say hi Nick, this is Nick taking on In-and-Outs famous 4 x 4, four meat patties, and four cheese slices. Honestly, I thought he would struggle a little bit, but I was totally wrong. He devoured it and the drink. He said his only problem was getting started, had to strategize a bit.

We picked up some yummy pears and here is a picture of Logan enjoying a pear.

Here is Hurricane Sadie, who loves my shoes for some reason, sitting in amongst my shoes and tissues that she has shredded. Looking cute and innocent as ever.

Well this is all for now.

Summer Saturday

Today was a perfect summer Saturday in Sacramento, the weather was just right not too hot. I spent the day doing typical things. Garage sale hopping, farmers market, grochery store, and chatting with my sisters on the iphone. Now it is later on in the day and I am heading up to Auburn to see my gang of donkeys, and unload the green quad. Hopefully I will have some pictures to put up later today..

Rest in Peace, Miss Lily and Jesse

We lost both Miss Lily and baby Jesse due to unknown reasons. The vet said that sometimes when donkeys give birth there bodies go through some type of shock, and then their systems start shutting down. We had to put down both mom and baby, about a week after the baby arrived. That was hard. They will both be missed tremendiously.

Jesse

Say Hello to Jesse! He was born sometime between 8 pm last night and 7 am this morning. Mom and baby are doing fine.

Cherry Picking

On Saturday we had a chance to pick some delicious Bing Cherrys' from Jim's tree up in Auburn. I recruited some good helpers to assist in the task. We got a nice amount of cherries, besides the ones that we ate. If you are wondering where is Logan, Hawaii of course. With Grandpa and cousins.

Piggy Sickness

The Piggy Sickness showed up at my school last week, four confirmed cases. Nope they didn't shut down the school, they just sent out a letter to parents letting them know about the problem and to use their own judgement as to sending in their children to school. To my friends and family if you get a letter like that you might want to NOT go to school or work.

No Donkey Baby Yet!!

Well, we have been waiting and waiting and no baby donkey yet. Ms. Lili is holding strong on waiting to give birth to another long legged long ear jack or jennet.. I was really hoping for a May date but as of now I don't think that will be an option.

TEA PARTY FUN @ the Capitol

Well today was kinda fun. I took a holiday from work to go down to the state capitol and participate in a TEA Party. TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. It was interesting to see the people and listen to the speakers. I especially loved watching the Police/Sheriff Mounted Posse as the people would come up to see them and try to pet them or take pictures. I also got to see a couple of my favorite local talk show talents Armstrong and Getty. Here are a few pictures:

MY NEW TRUCK

LOOKY, LOOKY-- Here is my new truck. It is a 2006, Chevy, Silverado! It has 39K miles on the engine. New tires, spray on bed-liner. I also bought a warranty that has unlimited miles but only for four years. I think I did a pretty good job of dickering down the price from $21,997 to $19,977. It is not light gray but more of a darker gray!

I was T P-eed :>)

I looked out the window and this is what I saw---I got t-peed. I thought it was funny!

They appearently went up the street t-peeing at random. It is kinda funny. I remember many years ago being part of the t-peeing crew and loving every minute of it. So, I chuckled a little as I cleaned up the remenants. I thought you'd might laugh a little too. Happy Saturday, everybody!

Spagetti Dinner & Raffle & I WON!

I WON! Last night my school had a fundraiser, a spagetti feed and raffle of baskets, so I went. It was important that I go because I am a teacher at the school and they like it when we go to these events. We they had lots of baskets with different themes, as you can see from the picture the theme of this basket was game night. It was very exciting, because there were lots of really cool baskets themes. I bought some twenty dollars worth of tickets and got twenty four tickets. They had a wii, and an American Girl doll so I put the majority of my tickets in to those two baskets. I also put in for about eight other baskets, and this was one of them. It had Backgammon, Dominoes, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Memory, and some candy and pop corn. All very exciting! The really funny thing is that the crowd was really a small turn out and I thought my chances of getting the doll or the wii were very high but sadly no doll or wii, the doll when to another teacher at the school and the wii went to a young boy!

Soccer Ball 4 Hershey Boy

This donkey is Hershey, and he likes to play with toys especially balls. Here he is trying to impress Daisy with his new toy that Isabelle gave me to give him. Daisy of course could care less because she was busy eating the fresh green grasses out in the pasture.

Still trying to get her attention!

He decided to come over and show me his new toy.

Sewing Project ~ TV remote control holder!

Today I made a TV Remote control holder for my bed. Have you ever been fustrated because you are watching tv in bed and you drop the remote off the bed on to the floor. Time after time I have done this and I am actually amazed that my remote even works after owning this tv set for 10 years now. So today I grabbed some extra fabric that I had and made a little mock up for my project. It took some fabric, some more fabric, and a little velcro. My working sample is pictured here but it will not be the final project. I used white thread which is a no no, also didn't finish off the edges. But the cool thing is it WORKS.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

"I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life!"

Here is President Reagan in Sacramento the day before he was reelected on November 6, 1984, at a rally on the west steps of the State Capitol! The school's wouldn't allow the student or even better the school bands to leave school and play for the president. Lovely little petty dictators at the schools. We showed them, we skipped school and went to see the President! That was one of my first lessons about how teachers and schools administrators have enfluence over there students.

This is a close up of the same event. Had to wait in line outside for a couple of hours to be funneled into the event, but it was worth it. The media had the country thinking that Reagan didn't have a chance, it in the end it was a blowout in Reagan's favor. Nobody can even remember who ran against him!

This is President Reagan toasting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Here is President Reagan ride with the Queen of England!

I wish America was in good hands like were once were under President Reagan, you knew without question that he wanted the best for you and this great country and would defend it at all costs.


Here is a picture of the USS Ronald Reagan passing by the USS Arizona Memorial!

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH

Totally E-Wasted

Here is the Microwave that tried to break my leg after I slipped and fell on the pile of decomposing fig leaves. I was only trying to avoid the steps because I couldn't see where I was going with this big heavy 30 year old microwave.

Here is my truck loaded up with all the e-waste from the ranch--3 tvs, 1 microwave, 1 printer, and 1 computer. After I got back home I added another heavy old microwave, monitor, and little tiny printer to the load. Yep, all this taken in to the free e-waste recycle day put on by the tv station. Thanks Channel 3, Love you, but PLEASE bring back DAVE AND LOIS!

I think I will go home and crash for a while! I have one question for the world to answer at this point in the game, why are all the old microwaves heavier that 27 inch tv? Was the weight to justify the ridiculous prices people paid for these things when they first came out. If you buy a microwave now there are a fraction of the size and the weight.

NEW RANCH RESIDENT~DAISY

She is the talk of the stable, beautiful palamino mare, 15 years old, named Daisy. She is truely a sweetheart. She belongs to Chloe, Travis' girlfriend, and she is now a resident of the ranch. Please take notice of her light pink halter, isn't it pretty, on a light colored horse. I set out to be the photographer and of course had to take a picture of myself.

As you can see the donkeys are all perplexed as to what is going on with the new resident on the property. They aren't ready to be friends just yet, but of course don't want to miss out on all the goings on around the place. Just a side note, I can't tell you how hard it is to get all the girl donkeys to face the same direction at the same time. It just takes a common interest in another animal.

I wanted to take a few pictures of her running around the place in full gallop. Here are a couple of shots of her doing just that. I think there is nothing more beautiful than a running horse, unless of course it is a running donkey.

I really love this next shot with the well in the back ground.

So next time you come up to the ranch don't forget to ask about Daisy! Make her feel welcome! Did I mention that she was a rescue animal, I don't know the full story but she was abused by somebody. I can't understand why anyone would abuse such a wonderful animal.