Cat Video- Make sure your carpet is clean so you can ROFLOL

We watched this on an e-mail that passed around and LOVED it!  If you have ever had cats, this is so true.  They are all clean fun, so grab your kids or siblings. 



It is bittersweet watching this as my loved cat, Snickers, has gone missing. If anything, these videos were thought-up by watching him. Anyway, as much as Snickers was a stinker at times, he was my favorite cat. I really have been missing him...

In Christ,
Rebecca

The Cat who almost lost his life.... all 9 of them

Last night, I was awakened by our cat, Snickers, meowing from the inside of our bedroom.  I was not surprised as the screen is broken at the moment, and so he just crawls through and sleeps on the foot of my bed.  I started calling for him to go ahead, hop on my bed, and go to sleep so I could.  Of course, he was all hyper and was jumping and playing around.  I turned on my lamp to get him and calm him down and .......


He had brought a MOUSE into the bedroom!!!



A MOUSE!









I just sat there horrified watching him "play" with his mouse and meowingly inviting me to come and "play" as well.  Of course, I did not, which he didn't seem to understand. 

My dilemma was how to get the mouse OUT!   I tried to wait until Snickers had it picked up and would try to pick him up to haul the pair OUT of the house.  As soon as I would pick Snickers up, he would, of course- drop the mouse.  I finally just grabbed a piece of denim something that was in the dirty laundry, picked up the mouse, and hauled the poor thing out onto the porch.  I then promptly went inside, grabbed that cat, and dumped him on the front porch with his prize.  (no cats were injured in the process, unfortunately)

Me?  Want a mouse?  I don't think so.  As much as I love this cat, that was almost the end of our relationship.  I think I just sat on the bed staring at him playing with the mouse in horror wondering HOW was I going to get them OUT! 


Although I am glad he is such a good mouser, he does not have to provide me with food, thank you very much.  I hope he learns that as I don't think I want another night hoping that the mouse doesn't crawl under our bed and stay there!



A girl who will NOT be snuggling with her cat for a while,
Rebecca

Puppies anyone??

Last night, Lady finally went into labor.   In looking for a place to have her puppies (for some reason, the box we picked out just didn't appeal to her) she almost got herself stuck in the barn. Thankfully Josh was able to unstick her.  She wanted outside all the time so we had to watch her to make sure she didn't got to the barn once again.  Finally after dark we put her, her box and lots of good wishes on the porch.  Last time she just needed to be stuck somewhere to just have them.  It worked this time as we were watching our movie and we heard this hi-pitched squeak from the porch!  Pup #1 made his appearance!  Slowly she had another one, and another one, and another one, and another one!  By this time it was midnight.  Lady was looking pretty tired and happy and all the babies were up and nursing.  I figured we were done, made sure everyone was comfy and hit the sack.

I was awakened by my sister telling me we had....  Are you ready?? 

11 puppies!!!  

Yes, our dog that had had 1 pup her first time had 11 the second!  We are a bit in shock and absolute delight.  Right now Momma dog is wiped out and snoring heavily while pups either sleep or fuss.  We are going to give momma a much needed bath, move everyone out of the disintegrated cardboard box (water and cardboard don't do well together) and onto a clean space. 



Please be praying that we would find good homes for these guys.  They come from friendly, friendly parents but look like a good guard dog.  And of course, they will be little time for them to be left to themselves to get nasty habits.  :):) 



Hope you all are having a wonderful Tuesday!  We are off to drama later on.  After we do some cleaning.  We are re-arranging rooms.  :D
Rebecca

Rain & Lady

We have had a total of 1 inch and 3 tenths so far at our house!  We are praising God for the rain we have had, and asking for more to keep the grass growing.   Remember how I said that our feed bin had stayed full?  Well, right before we got a bit of rain, it went empty.  God knew that we wouldn't need any more because we would be growing grass from the rain.  Praise Him for keeping it full as long as He did!!!

A side note on all the beautiful thunder storms we have been having. Our dog, Lady, hates all the noise rain storms make.  She just sits there and shivers.  Hates them.  Right now she is ready to pop her puppies out at any time!  So we had a scared, scared pregnant momma everyone was comforting while the thunder was going on.  Unfortunately she doesn't share our joy of rain..... 

Yes, our dog should be having puppies soon.  Anytime now.  She is so big right now!  HUGE!  All she has to do is come up to one of us and we will sit there and rub her tummy for hours on end.  Yeah, she's spoiled.  We are really excited though.  We are in need of a good male dog to keep the headquarters "secure". *ahem*  We also have some friends who live out in Edgewood near some lots that nobody owns and those lots are notorious for having...interesting....characters out there.  We need another good "Hank Head of Security" dog for them as well.  Plus the owner of the father wants a dog for his daughter.  We need her to have 3 puppies.  She only had 1 puppy last time!  That was the fattest pup you ever did see. 

Alright, we are hosting church at our house tomorrow so I need to get going.  Goodnight!

Rebecca

Happy 11th Birthday Caleb!

 My little brother turned 11 today!  Can you believe it!  11!!  I can still remember going to see him in the hospital.  Mom being gone a lot during the 56 days he was in the hospital.  (you can read more of his story at Mom's Blog!)   I remember lugging him around while playing games with friends.  At times it was great, and at others he was just a bother. :)  He used to call me "Bom".  We think it was a combination of "Becca" and "mom". :D  I thought that was so sweet.  I hated it when he quit calling me that. 

Here are some pictures of his day.  To read it go to Sarah's Blog.

We had fun wrapping his gifts- even if it wasn't fancy wrapping paper!

Lady was not sure what to make of all this racket.  She just kept getting "under foot".

Ussens waiting for everyone to gather. We do breakfast in bed and take the presents as well.  :)

 Yup, bathrobes, pj's and everything!

Caleb wanted in that BIG box!

He actually posed for me!  I asked him to for this one, and they he kept posing the rest of the time!!!!

The BIG box was..... A jump rope!  (some rocks taped to the bottom to

make it heavy is a great way to fool them..... )

He picked Cap'n Crunch for his breakfast (no, we don't usually eat cereal and usually have Monkey Bread. But some need to go against the norm. Or rather, they aren't the norm. )

Can you guess what he is getting??? 

I think he did about here.

Here's the certificate! 

We fooled him!!!!  He thought he was just getting a jump rope and not a parakeet like he was wanting and we surprised him and got him!.....

This cute little...guy/girl!  We aren't sure why he picked yellow, but he will be easy to find!  He It is a nice youngin, so hopefully we can tame him easily.  We won't know if it is a male or female until it is about a year old.  We did learn how to tell how old they are, so this one is under 4 months. 

As you can see, this first day is pretty traumatic for the poor fella.  He will get used to us.... I hope!

Happy Birthday Caleb!  You are such a Joy in our lives.  I can't imagine life without you.

Love,

Rebecca

Cute Kitty

Although we do not have this kitten anymore, :( I thought these were really cute pictures.  This is Button and this is why offices have a door. 



She was having a blast watching the ink container go back and forth.  I love how her front legs are on the stand, but her back end is sitting on the printer!  Kittens are soooo much fun!  We are down to 1 cat again. so hopefully we can get some more.  Joshua needs a new wood project, so he can build them a house to keep them out of the way of predators.  Although they have the barn, shop, lean-to's, house.....

Love,

Rebecca

Prayers Please!

~Hey there!  We are heading out tomorrow for a bull sale to sell 3 of our bulls.  Please pray for safe travel as we go, and that our bulls would sell well.  We are pretty excited as we enjoy going off and being away from the house.  :)

~I also ask that you would be praying as we have someone interested in the ranch.  Actually, we have a lot of people interested in the land and/or ranch.  Please be praying that God would make it clear to us what we need to do, and that everything will work smoothly.  We have been cleaning like crazy!  Mainly because we are leaving for the bull sale.  God has just been amazing and took us a whole year farther than we thought we would be able to go!!! Is our God good, or what? 

~Our calf's name is Millie!  Here are a few pictures of her with her Momma Dolly.  Dolly is doing so well with us milking her!  It has been so nice to not have to deal with a cow that wants to kick you every second. 

The second day we go out to milk and... the calf wasn't there in the pen!  I mean, you can't really go anywhere, it isn't a huge pen and we can see all of it from the door of the barn!  We laughed at ourselves and walked around the feeder... No calf. 

We got a bit worried wondering where she would be able to go.  I stepped around the tank to go look in the other pens and there she was!  She just thought that nice black tire would be a warm spot to sleep next too! 

Sure scared us.

Dolly is so gentle and doesn't mind us petting her calf or her out in the pen. 

Alright, I am going to go curl up and go to bed.  It has been a long day.

What do you think of the Calf's new name? 

Your Sister in Christ,

Rebecca

Dolly had a baby

As you know (or will find out in two seconds) we have had milk cows for a while now.  We started out with an older milk cow named Clarice, and recently traded a beef cow for a younger milk heifer.  (Clarice was past the prime of her life)  Our youngen' is Dolly.  She is about 2 1/2.  We had let Clarice dry up about 5 months ago, and while enjoying our time off from milking, we were missing the milk.   Dolly had been bagging up for a while and we were expecting a calf any day now.  We were wanting to keep an eye on her as Jerseys are real delicate and tend to get problems if you don't take care of things. (we have learned the hard way) 

Well, Josh and Dad had fed the cows yesterday (Sunday), and noticed that she was really bagged up.  (I mean her udder was full of milk which means she will be calving soon).  On Clarice we had had to milk before she calved as she got too full and had problems.  Dad mentioned it to us tonight as we were visiting, and since it was still daylight and a pretty evening I went out to go check on her and everyone else.

 I walked out past the barn to the pasture she is in and the pen they come in for water and say a cute little black calf!  Now, one of the black cows we have out there was standing next to it so I thought it was her calf.  Not sure who we had that was due to calve anytime, I went a different route to get to that pasture.  (them mommas can get real picky about how close you are.  And in general I can run faster then they can for a short distance, but I have never really wanted to push it) 
As I came around the corner of the pen and looked out I could just see Dolly go running into the pen with the calf in it.  Mooing.  That's about when the light bulb came on and I realized that.... DOLLY HAD HER CALF!!!!!!!!

Yup, Dolly is a proud mother of a cute little black heifer.  Name is still undecided but we will let you know as soon as we all agree on it.  :D

We had to milk Dolly out some as she was producing more than the little heifer could eat.  She did really well.  She kicked a little, but Dad would just tap her with a rope and she decided to hold still.  Considering that she was really full she did great!  We will have to keep milking her until we get her milk under control, but I think we can get it going.  Yeah!!! 

Man, I am so looking forward to some good, fresh, pure milk!  Isn't she so cute?

Love in Christ,
Rebecca

Random Pictures

Here are a few random pictures from my repertoire.  Thought I would share some of the cute ones with you...

^Sarah and Caleb cooking in the kitchen^

^Tinker and Button^

^Button found a perfect place to take a nap. Made one girl happy^

^Hang on to that sister!^

^These two are pathetic. Even when they are taking naps they have to be together.^

^Can you see Button's foot?^

(Under Tinker's head)

^Pretty Clouds from the East^

^Ever heard of Ferdinand that Bull?^

^This is actually my bull^

^I am telling you, that sister relationship is fun^

^Enjoy Life!^

Love in Christ,

Rebecca

Winter on a Ranch

It is New Mexico, so winters here are really not bad.  It has been getting pretty cold- cold enough to freeze the ice so that we   Joshua has to go break ice.  It can get pretty thick too.  Anywhere from an inch to half a foot.  Try lifting that out of the water after breaking it....  Not fun after the fourth tank.  :)   Poor Josh was getting REALLY chapped hands even with all the gloves he was putting on.  He didn't complain until we started noticing.  We found a pair of long gloves (up your arm) that are made of PVC plastic- or something like that- to protect him from the ice and cold water.  Now his hands stay protected through all the abuse. :)

Here are a few pictures from last year;

Of course, when you have snow you have to take the opportunity to play in it!!

Joshua breaking ice while Daisy "helps" warm it up and cool her off.

Loading a big hay bale onto the back of the truck while Daisy supervises.  Them cows eat a lot, ya know.

Our cousin and Josh feeding hay to the Mommas.  Amazing how those cows hear the feed truck. 

Even more fun to watch grown cows run!!!

Although it is nothing to crow about...

It is a lot of fun on the Ranch, and we pray daily that God continues to let us live it.

Love in Christ,

Rebecca

Still to come, The Case of the Mad Momma