The Roundup

Every year, on June 16 (unless that happens to be a Sunday), we move our cows from the winter range on Cedar Mesa to the Elk Mountain by the Bears Ears. This is one of the "fun" parts of owning a ranch, as we usually have good food and great company. We were so excited to have almost all of Kenny's family here for the event. Steve and Shauna and their girls were at a family reunion in Tennesse, and Kenny's parents are serving a mission in Africa, but everyone else was there!

Planning and preparing meals for the 30 to 40 people who come to help usually stresses me out a little, but with the help of my sister-in-law, Suzie, it all turned out okay. Kenny is a much better cook than me, especially outdoors, so he did most of the cooking. We are definately looking forward to having his parents come home - we sure miss their cooking!

We traveled up to the Mountain Monday evening, ate dinner, and camped that night. Stetson had a blast playing in the dirt and getting super dirty. It was so nice to be able to put him down and let him play (last summer he was still crawling, and I had to carry him everywhere). We did have a little trouble getting him to sleep because he hates the dark. As soon as we turned the lights off, he started screaming. I picked him up and he wrapped his chubby little arms around my neck so tight that I almost couldn't breathe! So, I put him in bed with me. He finally fell into a fitfull sleep, but would wake up as soon as he realized that he wasn't touching me anymore.

Thanks so much to Alicia for watching Stetson while I went riding the next day! It was so fun to be on a horse again. One highlight for me was a bull fight. Andy and I were moving some cows away from a pond when these two bulls started fighting. All at once the bigger bull pushed the smaller bull into the pond! He went clear under and then came up, gasping for air. It was pretty entertaining. Once we got the cows out of the canyon Kenny and I took off alone to look for more cows. It was so much fun just riding with my sweetheart again! It has been too long - we need to do that more often. The weather was perfect - not too hot and not too cold, with a little breeze. We didn't count the cows as they crossed the road, but my guess is that we had about 150, which is just 50 short of getting them all up there. After lunch Alicia and I took some of the kids back up to the cabin while the adults did a re-ride. We had a relaxing afternoon, and they got about 25 more cows across the road.

We headed back up to the mountain on Friday where we had another yummy dinner and lots of good company. We spent that night in the camper and let my sister and her family stay in the cabin. Between Stetson's crying and the dogs barking, I didn't get much sleep. On Saturday we gathered the cows into the corral, sorted out the calves that hadn't been branded, and then went to work branding them. The calves were pretty big, but we had a great crew, and were able to brand 62 calves. A couple highlights for that day were seeing Suzie riding a horse, watching Derek ride two calves, and seeing Alicia, nine months pregnant, sitting on a calf - what a woman! Thanks so much to Brielle, Shaeli, Suzie, and Candice for keeping an eye on Stetson so I could help with the branding! We tried to put Stetson on a calf, but he screamed bloody murder! Hopefully someday he won't be so scared!

I didn't take very many photos because I was too busy doing everything else, but I did get a few, hope you enjoy!