Is that...SNOW?

Yesterday we received our first snowfall of the fall/winter season here in Montana, and boy did it get cold quick!!  As it was falling I thought to myself "is that SNOW?  ALREADY?!"  I couldn't believe it...but it was!  Monday our high was about 78 degrees, and yesterday our high barely made it to 40 degrees…and that was at about 6:00 AM before the front moved through.  Of course the snow didn’t stick to the ground, but it sure did come down pretty hard on and off through most of the day yesterday!  It is still so weird for me to see snow, and I feel like a child all over again when I do see it…I want to go out in it and play and make a snow man!  Today the weather is sort of overcast here, and definitely cool.  The cool fall weather is here to stay now for sure.  Ready or not…winter’s on its way.  Not that it’s a bad thing, because this sort of weather is perfect for making stews, soups, and a big pot of chili!  So, I guess if its going to get cold we might as well eat all the good stuff we don’t necessarily enjoy at other times of the year!

The month of October is full of processing new calves we’ve purchased from other ranchers.  David (of course) gets in the bulk of the calves around the ranch,  but Wesley and I have our fair share of the little guys (actually…ours are all girls to be exact) coming our way in a couple weeks.  With the new cattle comes LOTS of work.  Wesley and David spent all day Tuesday processing about 260 head of calves (they’re about 6 months old).  By “processing” the calves I mean this – each calf is ran thru the chute, branded, given 3 shots, get Ivomec poured on their backs, and gets their current ear tags removed.  Its quite the process that’s for sure!  The last load of about 60 head came right at 5:00 PM on Tuesday, and it was a race against time for us to get them processed before the sun set.  BUT, with the 4 of us there to help each other out, we got them all done just in time.  And good thing too, with the snow the following day it would have been miserable for Wesley and David to have to work them by themselves!  We’re getting shipments in all throughout the month of October, and each time a new shipment comes in they must have all this done to them as well. 

On another note, with the Montana wedding just around the corner, and our Texas vacation not far off either, I’ve decided the best way to display what all we did this past year together was to make a Shutterfly book about it.  So far, the book looks fantastic if I do say so myself!  That website is amazing!  If you haven’t checked it out, you should definitely do so – www.shutterfly.com.  You can make all kinds of things with your own personalized pictures on them.   The calendars are a very nice gift for grandparents I’ve found.  Anyway, the book not only lets you display pictures, but you get to “tell a story” of sorts along the way so everyone knows kind of what goes on in the pictures and about favorite moments of the year & such.  I can’t wait to get it finished, printed, and take it to Texas with us to share with all our family & friends back there!!

And speaking of the Montana wedding, its only 5 weekends away from this one!  YIKES!!!  The good news is my dress came in and I can’t wait to go try it on!  Now if I can wrap up the decorations, get all my last minute running around in Billings done, and get things organized to take with us to the hall that Saturday I’ll be in good shape!

We aren’t sure of what exactly we are going to do this weekend, but I know it will involve Wesley roping…we just aren’t sure where yet!  We have a few different things to choose from and of course they are all on the same day!  So I told Wesley to pick whatever he thinks he’ll have the most fun at & we’ll go there.  Either way I know I’ll get some good pictures of him roping that I can add to our book!  J