Happy Halloween!

My nephew, the lil dragon, SO scary!

My niece, the lil lamb, SO adorable!

All the dressing-up I did this year was wear these earrings to work.

Of course Kaden had to try them on first...

I hope everyone gets lots of chocolate and has a Happy Halloween!

Rope 'em N Ride 'em!

Or just brand them actually...well except for Cody and George, they actually got a little riding in.

So yes, we got to help out on the Melling Farm this weekend and get our hands dirty (literally with poo, eww!) by helping brand the cows. I guess most years they have 80+ cows, but this year we only had 20 so it went pretty quickly. I just went to watch, but I couldn't resist helping out. I think it'd be fun to live on a ranch someday, yeehaw!

Proof that we really got our hands dirty. Yes that is manure, gross!

Here they are nice and peaceful, just eating before the round-up began.

Brittany, Cody, Wayne, and Joe herding the moo moo's.

In the chute on the way to the hot iron, eek!

Our job was to put the boards in behind the cows once they got in the chute.

Cody doing a little cow surfing :)

This cow was a little too small so he kept moving around, fortunately George was happy to help out with his headlock.

Grandpa doing the actual branding...it stunk SO bad!

Part of the "rounding up" included getting the horses tied up and out of the way. George thought it was necessary to ride them bareback, crazy kid.

Fresh off the press!

We just spent the most wonderful weekend in Cedaredge, Colorado. I grew up there until my family moved to Alaska when I was 13-years-old. My uncle still lives there and owns an organic apple orchard. When my parents moved they left their cider press with close family friends...so that leaves us the perfect equation for our annual autumn tradition...fresh apple cider! The whole weekend was full of smiles as we caught up with family and friends. And it was so much fun to get to show George what my childhood was like. Plus the weather was perfect...beautiful fall day in the 70's. Below is my brother, David, driving the tractor.

Our good friends Hannah and Whitney Watts - we worked together and picked a bin of golden delicious apples in about 45 minutes.

We made 30+ gallons of cider in just a couple of hours.

The whole cider-pressing operation. We wash the apples, throw them in the grinder which turns them to pulp. We then press the pulp and viola the most naturally sweet apple cider begins pouring out! A big buck even helped with clean-up and came by the next morning and ate the left-over apple pulp.

Go ahead - stick your cup under that stream of as-fresh-as-it-gets apple cider, it's so delightful!

The whole weekend ended up being a mini-reunion. It'd been almost three years since I'd seen my cousins, uncles, and aunt. It was wonderful to get to catch up!

I just have to brag about Terrie's cooking...she makes spreads like this appear so easily, and it always tastes amazing. Thank you for taking care of us!

If anyone is coming through Cedar soon we'll give you a taste. If you wait too long though it might be considered moonshine goods :)

The Call

My parent's finally received that big white envelope in the mail...they will be headed to West Virginia!!! They report on November 10th to serve an 18-month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The neat things is that the mission president currently there is one of the missionaries that taught and baptized them some 30+ years ago. They'll serve in a small town called Spencer (pop. 2000). I'm SO excited just thinking of all the experiences that await them. I know they will be such a blessing to the people there. With all the excitement of their call, it's brought back so many memories from when I served in Albania. What an amazing experience that was for me. I love you mom and dad! Thank you for your wonderful example.

The Deschutes

Bug guarding our gear at the put-in...he liked the solid ground

We just got back from a long and fun weekend in Oregon. Most of our time was spent on the Deschutes River. The whole raft trip was a wedding present from my bro, Mac, and his girlfriend, Stephanie. It was SO much fun...my parents came up from California and my lil sis flew out from Colorado too. The Deschutes River flows through the area of Oregon known as the "rain shadow" which basically means it gets no rain. And lucky for us it was sunny the whole time we were there. The mountains and hills are covered in cheat grass and columnar basalt...bizarre landscape for a large river to be flowing.

The wildlife was great, although I didn't get many pictures. We saw a ton of Great Blue Herons, Big Horn Sheep of the desert race, an osprey dive bombed into the river and came out with a good-sized trout. We stopped on the side of the river for a few minutes and it was right by this tree that was COVERED in caterpillar nests...so I did get a picture of one of them.


One of our camp spots had a very active night...the train passed by a couple of times, a bunch of deer ran through, a rock slide happened across the river, and an owl proceeded to kill a rodent...you could hear the hoo-hooing for a while and then the rodent screamed and then it got nice and quiet after that.



As hard as I tried, we never got a group photo, but here is one of our fully-loaded boats. Enough gear for 7 people and a dog for 3 days.


The rapids weren't crazy...the highest rating was a 3+ I believe. There was one particular wave I remember because I swam through it...the duckie bucked me off...luckily I came up right by the boat and was able to climb back in, and most importantly I held onto my paddle the whole time! George was proud of me because I didn't "freak out".

Our guide extraordinaire

The cute MOM :)

A lunch break

Mac & Steph - the guides and cooks

It was tons of fun, thanks Mac & Steph!

Also a BIG thanks to the padres and Alethea for coming out for the party!