A Sad Day turned Joyful

Well, Saturday was sad because we decided to give away our goats. But then a really sweet and wonderful young family came to get them and have them as family pets.......so something difficult turned into joy - Thank you God! Goodbye Cookie and Cream - enjoy your new family. :)

Sunshine! Glorious Sunshine!

It's been a while, sorry guys. We've been pretty busy around here! Cleo had her stitches taken out, when, in my opinion, they should have been left in. But she is healing nicely, if slowly. When I saw it was sunshiny outside yesterday, I begged Kayla into going out with me and my camera. Well, the camera I steal from Dad all the time. :)

As you can see, her cut is pretty intense.

It was almost a heart, if Tavi had just arched her neck a little...

Haha this is courtesy of Kayla's photography. :) She was chewing her cud, but I like to picture her as seeing something awesome, and couldn't resist a jawdrop. :D

Oh, and have y'all been watching the Olympics? You should be! They're wicked! Haha. But seriously. Who is y'all's favorite? Mine are probably Shaun White, Apolo Ohno, or Evan Lysacek. But those are probably everyone's favorites. :)

I'm back! :)

So hey everybody!! :) Mom has been doing the blog, but I've been wanting to do it, so now I am.

A lot has happened recently. First, we got a new longhorn calf. She is the cutest thing! But here's the deal. When we let her go in the pasture, I'm not sure what got into our wonderful horse, but she got super excited. Like, super de duper excited. So excited, in fact, that she jumped a barbed wire fence. She cleared it, sort of. She got across, but cut her front left leg directly above her knee. She fell and scared us all (I thought she was going to die) but she was ok. We called the vet, and she got some stitches, and is healing nicely. Here are some pictures of Cleo all excited, the baby longhorn, and then us doctoring her. Haha, I say us. I took pictures and Erica and Kayla took care of her.

She splashed around in the pond. :)

The wrap was just to reduce the swelling. The cut isn't that bad.

The shot they're giving her is an antibiotic.

Cleo did not appreciate all of our work for her. Haha.

Applying some goo to help her out.

So, after all of this joyfulness, we had another problem. Dad, Kayla, and Erica were going to pick up Tavi, who had been at her boyfriend's house. :) They decided to take Pixie (Kayla's dog) along for fun. Pixie was put in the trailer for the ride there. Halfway through, she fell out. They saw someone pick her up, and drive off. They got Tavi and came home, hoping that the person would call the number on the tag.

Turns out, someone didn't pick her up, or she ran away from them, because the next day someone called saying they had Pixie for a while but she ran off. We drove around that neighborhood and surrounding areas, but didn't find her. Someone called the next day. They had found her! So she got lost on Sunday, and God brought her back Tuesday. Needless to say, we are hoping the next couple days are uneventful. :)

And what do y'all think of the new layout? Comments would be great! I'm going to try to do a couple more things, but I don't know if it'll work out or not, since I'm not good at that kind of stuff. We'll see. And does anyone know how to widen the what-cha-ma-call-it? You know, the bar on either side? To make the width wider? If any of you geniuses can figure me out, and knows what to do, could give me a few tips? Thanks! :)

Christmas & visiting w/Hastings

don't know what this is - but it looks funny! :)

copy catting

I LOVE big smiles :))

I'm glad Seth only shocked himself & made his heart rate go up......I wonder what is next?

what??

soccer!

BLING is always good for girls :)

See caption above about bling

a book & music!

togetherness!

another big smile :))

playing Mastermind......together

We had a personal show from Andrew, very nice!

WOW!

Hagestings

funny/sad faces

Our family went to visit our friends, the Hastings, the day after Christmas. It is a long (10 hour) drive - but very worth it!! We were able to celebrate Christmas; but more importantly - just spend time together with good friends building relationships - "relationships matter most!" Anyway, the time went by too quickly, but we were able to bowl, meet some new friends, celebrate Christmas (& 3 birthdays!), eat a LOT, sleep very little, worship together, play games - including Mastermind and play outside in the cold, snowy weather. God is so good to bless us with such good friends and we are very thankful for them (Dave, Sandy, Luke, Nathan, Seth, Andrew, Sarah & Stephen) and the sweet friendships we have cultivated over the years. Till next time - Shelly

Farm Life

Well, it is a sad day on the Hag Ranch as one of our very first animals to arrive has died. She was our banty hen named Blondie. She was a mama to most of the young chicks as they were growing up. But, that is the way of life. We buried her in the back pasture.

Ice?!

one inch thick on dog bowl

one and one half inches thick on horse trough

Early January brought some colder than normal weather for us southern Texans - it was in the 20's(!!!) at night for 4 nights in a row. So the ice was pretty cool looking - but the pictures don't capture the reality, oh well.
Now we are all wishing for at least slightly warmer weather - at least something enjoyable. :)

Christmas!

Kayla's long-awaited new belt :)

my stocking!

Bret's new gloves from his girls

Kayla's gift to Alissa

Alissa's gift to Erica

Is there an ipod to go with that?

Alissa's gift to Kayla

Kayla's gift to Erica - she made the calendar with pictures from our computer! very cool!

Erica's gift to Alissa

rain coat for Lamar! the scarf and hat are fabulous!

Kayla's bookmark for me, she designed & cross-stitched it! :)

Erica & Alissa got me a new cool wallet!

well, there's that ipod! :)

New boots?? really?

Ready to go!

Merry Christmas to all! It was fun to celebrate the birth of Christ with gifts for one another. There were other gifts - but no more pictures! Kayla made Bret a CD of piano music she played. We were listening to it for the rest of the morning. We had a slow day because we left the next day for North Texas and Arkansas for a funeral and then to celebrate & visit friends. Funny, our Christmas dinner was soup - but that's okay because we were with family and everything is better with the ones you love. Hope everyone had a wonderful celebration!