New Year's Eve Cattle Drive

Yesterday was such a wonderful day!  It started out quite early but it was a day of great success and lots of fun with family and friends!

Jared decided that instead of trucking the cows and calves back to the home quarter we should walk them the 3 miles home!  We weren't entirely sure how it would work but a friend and neighbour of ours walks his cows twice a year from his farm just north of Champion to his pasture land just north of Carmangay!  We enlisted the help of several people!  Another neighbour of ours has 11 children and their 4 oldest girls are quite the horsemen.  I gave them a call to see if they would like to saddle up their horses and help us out!  They were more than willing to help, their horses love moving cattle, without their help we are almost positive that this cattle trek would have taken the entire day just to move the 3 short miles home!  Buck and Arren also came to lend a hand, Arren drove their truck and Buck was on the quad.  Dave and Char and their three kids of course were part of the action and played a vital role in leading the cows home and creating barriers for where we didn't want the cows to go!  The Elder's also came to help and had a great time!  The only area of trouble we ran into was when we had to go by a pile of grain, the cows got a whiff of the tasty barley and desperately wanted to have a taste!  Thank goodness for the girls and their horses, they were able to round up the cows that broke away from the herd before we lost complete control.  What we were sure would take the better part of a day to move the cows only took us a little more than an hour!  It was a spectacular experience and I can't wait until the summer when we move them back.  The weather was just perfect too, it was definitely cool but not COLD, and about half a mile from the gate where the cows were to go through it started to snow, slow falling flakes that made the nip in the air feel totally refreshing!  After all the cows were in and the gate closed the Vandebruinhorst girls offered to let the kids have a ride on the horses!  Emry was in seventh heaven, as I am sure all the other kids were too!  The horse Emry rode was Jazz, Leah and Cora each had a ride on Flicka, Gilbert and Lily each went on Dodge and for the life of me I cannot remember the last horses name!  It was a great morning and we are so thankful for the help of friends and family.

Lexi always stays right with the horses so it was just natural for her to help with the cattle drive too!

We even had a spectator! 

Later that afternoon Jared and I decided to take the kids to a movie before we met Myrna, Rachel, Dave and Char and the rest of the kids for Chinese Food.  We remember Calum laughing hysterically at a preview for the newest muppet movie and when we saw that it was at the Movie Mill we knew we had to see it!  Well, as usual Calum did great for the first 45 minutes of the movie and then he was done!  It was a super cute show, and we do know that Calum can sit through a whole show but the novelty of being at the "mooie fearter" is just too much for him to handle!  We did have a good time and having Chinese food with everyone is also lots of fun.  At the restaurant Emry asked me if she could stay up until midnight!  I told her without any hesitation that she absolutely could stay up till midnight!!  On our way home both her and Calum fell fast asleep, they were even able to stay asleep through Armin crying the ENTIRE way home!  When we got home we told Emry that it was almost midnight and she should hurry and get her jammies on, and get ready for bed.  While she was in the bathroom Jared changed the time on her watch to just 4 minutes before midnight and then also set the timer on his iPod to count down the last four minutes of 2011.  I poured some sparkling apple juice into fancy goblets and together we counted down!  Emry was so excited and had no idea that it was only 9:40pm!  We toasted in the New Year all while Calum was passed out on the couch!

After the kids were all asleep Jared and I watched The King's Speech, both of us falling promptly asleep and waking up just before the real midnight to ring it in together!

It was a fantastic day, I look forward to the new year and what it will bring!  I wish all of you a very happy year filled with many wonderful memories, lots of love and even more laughter!