Gobble Gobblin´ Good Time!

I hope EVERYONE had a FANTASTIC Turkey Day and that you all have as much to be THANKFUL for as I do. There is just somethin´ about coming home and being around "your people."

I have to tickle her to get her to smile at a camera these days :).

We had LOTS of time with family and friends and it seemed like the holidays just kinda flew by. Over the Thanksgiving holidays I went to two Thanksgiving gatherings, a dance Wednesday and Saturday night, Black Friday Shopping, a Ranch Sorting get-together, and to help Uncle Mele pick up, write-up, tag, pen cattle for the sale on Monday. Yeah....It was BUSY, but me and Uncle Mele got a little time to bounce some ideas off of each other. The license still hasn´t come in the mail, but it should any day now :).

So starting from Wednesday when we got to town...Kyle and I met up with a few friends at a little dance hall that has re-opened in Nechanitz. We had a really good time!! Lots of our friends showed up and we ran into a few class mates we hadn´t seen in awhile. The Emotions played and I was really impressed. They need to get them back there sometime!

Megan, Me, and Shayne

Kyle and a few of his classmates: RaChelle, Cordes, Jenny, and Lauren!

Then for lunch on Thanksgiving we went to my Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Fritz´s. We had lots of turkey, ham, sweet rice, potatoes, rolls, sweets...the list goes on. We looked at some deer horns that my cousin and her sweetie shot.

Sue´s Horns

Kim´s Deer (Sue´s Sweetie :))

Then, Kylee helped Cody tend his herd :) and saw Uncle Mele palpate a few cows for him.

They were trying to pet Smokey :).

I´m pretty sure this calf was ready to come at´r, so I snatched her up real fast.

Can´t say that this happens at everyone´s Thanksgiving....

Kylee and Aunt Mandy. Kylee was tryin´ to figure out what Uncle Mele was doín´ :).

Then we played a little 31, sat around and visited, watched Kylee play with the puppies and left for the next one with some of Mandy´s Cranberry/Apple Sauce in tow...(It´s REALLY good.)

Kylee was lovin´ on Moon and leadin´ him around until we left.

She kept trying to make him look in the house through the door. Reminds me of how we looked trying to set up show lambs when we were little.

She got it done!

We had dinner at Kyle´s Mom and Daddy´s. Kylee played with all her cousins, we ate more turkey, and started figuring out our Black Friday plans.

Here she is with Kelsey and Kaben on Kinsey´s scooter - which I now have to track one down for her for Christmas. She LOVED it!!

Her and Kandon on the 4-wheeler.

I went with my Mom and Sister and my little Brother and his friend met us at Wal-Mart. My sister, brother, and his friend have NEVER been. Mom and I have gone before. So.....Mandy wants a laptop and a shop vac and a camera and maybe a few other things. Chance and Ben just kind of came along to check it out (I put them to work :)) and Mom mainly wanted to look for things for Kylee. The main thing I wanted was a camera and later decided I also wanted a hard drive. I´m gonna do my best to not bore those of you that already think I´m CrAzY for taking part in this. We all got EVERYTHING we came there for and wound up going home with a little more. We are all pretty good at makin´ friends with the people around us, so we didn´t have TOO MUCH craziness. We did have a  little.

My sister waited in line for the computer for over 2 hours and saw one girl she made friends with exchange words with this guy that was trying to help her b/c she thought he was trying to steal her computer :). They didn´t bring out the cameras until right before midnight and after they cleared out some of the toys that you could start buying at 10pm. So...I was already in line for the hard drive. I put Chance and Ben in charge of grabbing a camera for me and Mandy.

My little brother is not really AGGRESSIVE like me, Mandy, or Mom. He´s kind of calm, likes to be funny and make jokes, and isn´t exactly Mr. Muscles....so I was nervous. They wheeled the cameras out and he was standing by Mom and our shopping cart. I´m looking at him like "GET OVER THERE!!" He looked confused. Finally...he came over and we got him there. He wasn´t right in the front, but I figured he was close enough. So....midnight is approaching. (In the mean time these two people get grumpy with me and another girl that was in line for a hard drive. Ultimately we told them that if they didn´t like people and felt claustrophobic in such a tight space, with so many people, that Black Friday shopping was OBVIOUSLY not the place they needed to be. They got all chummy after we gave them a couple of memory cards....:).

Anyways...back to Chance.... I see him and Ben laughing and cuttin´ up with these other people in line. Definitely not very DETERMINED to get those cameras. So I´m texting him and making faces and hand signals at him and he´s looking at me like..."I got this" when I knew he was not ready for what was about to ensue.

He even lets Little Girls beat him up :)!

It´s midnight. They unwrap the packages. I get my hard drive and snatch a different camera that was right beside the hard drives....just in case Chance doesn´t pull through for me.

I was right between both of them, so I had a REALLY good spot.

After I pick myself up off of the cameras that I was pretty much pushed into I look over at Chance..... He´s still fighting for the cameras...none in his hand. I just look down at the one I grabbed and think at least I got one.... Then I look up again and the people in front of him just start passing cameras back to HIM!!! I couldn´t believe it. By the time I made my way to him...he had 3 cameras and a hand FULL of memory cards.

Chance was like 3 people behind the tall guy to the right.

So we venture over to my Mom... We get there and realize that Mom ALSO has cameras... 3 of them (one in every color) and memory cards. She said she looked at Chance and thought the same thing I did....He wasn´t gonna get´m. Mind you...that MOM was on the OTHER side of the aisle. So....she had to run around the aisle to the other side where ALL these people are GRABBING and PUSHING to get to the items they want, push through them, grab 3 cameras (1 of each color), the memory cards and STILL get back to the shopping cart to make sure no one snags something out of it - BEFORE we get there. I´d have to say that´s where we get our SCRAPINESS. WHEW!! It WAS as INTENSE as it sounds. I´ve been Black Friday shopping in Katy and College Station and never saw it that CrAzY!! I mean someone got stepped on over SHEETS.....from WAL-MART! Then...we had breakfast at Denny´s where I laughed off a few calories. My family is NuTs...but Hilarious!

The Wal-Mart employees and Security kept telling us if we were on the white part of the aisle we were too close. We all had to squeeze onto the brown part, which was a single strip of brown tile, OR move into the clothing section.



People are in line on the other side...the same way we are.

Me, Mom, and Mandy made a few more stops then went home to catch a little sleep. Then a few hours later...Kylee wakes me up and we meet my Mother-in-Law at Bealls in La Grange to try and get this Zebra Print Duffel Bag with wheels. They didn´t have it. She still wanted to see if Wal-Mart had a few things - so we decide to drive on over to Giddings, see if the Bealls there has the bag, and go to Wal-Mart there. I couldn´t hardly believe it! They had ONE Zebra Print bag left!!! Lois didn´t get everything she wanted, but we still did a pretty darn good job.
Okay....SO...if that´s not enough adventure for one weekend we decide to got to a little Thanksgiving gathering at a little ranch out in Caldwell to do a little ranch and arena sorting. Well...it rains pretty much all morning, but we decide we´re still going. I´m kinda glad. I got to visit with Mrs. Shirley and dance a little jig with Buddy. Plus...they haven´t seen Kylee in a LONG time and she really enjoyed herself.

Kylee playing in puddles... I was just happy to see water on the ground.

Well...the main sortin´ pen has water standin´ in it, so we decide to do some 3-man arena sorting. This is where there is a line across the arena. The calves are numbered and they call out a number and you run them across the line in numerical order. No other calves can cross the line until they are supposed to and if a calf runs back you are DQ´d. Well it was all for fun b/c the rain kept people at home, but we had a good time. Little Miss Kylee Jo sorted some cows with me and Aunt Mandy and enjoyed every minute of it.

Later...we moved it over to the covered arena where we did some actual 2-man ranch sorting....all practice. Kylee really liked that!! 2-man ranch sorting is ultimately the same concept I described above except there is no line. There are two pens and a gate. One person works the gate and the other goes and gets whatever number the announcer calls out. Then...depending on the circumstances, the person in the gate usually switches off and goes to the herd and gets the next number. That cycle keeps going until all the calves are penned in the correct order without any mistakes in the opposite pen. Your working in a much smaller amount of space also.

Later on that night we met a few friends at a little dance hall in Fayetteville. I hadn´t gone out with Little Sister in a while, so it was a much needed outing!

Willie was breakin´ down with all of us gals. I got my first cutting/penning mare from him many years ago.

I´d say Mandy had a good time :)!

With all of these goins on...I still fit in a few hunts. All these people shootin´ deer have me itchin´ to get one. The right one´s gotta walk out though and so far....no bueno.

My Father-In-Law´s Buck he shot this past Wednesday.
(Low fence 12pt..probably scoring around 140)

McKenna´s (Kyle´s cousin) 8-pt buck.

Uncle Mike´s 12-pt buck (Kyle´s Uncle).

To end the holiday break....I rode around with Uncle Mele on Sunday... pickin´ up cows from people that wanted to sell´m at the sale on Monday. We had to pen some, doctor on some, load´m, unload´m, check´m in, tag´m....you get the point. IT WAS COLD!! I kinda dig cool weather, but not COLD weather :/. It was good. I got the chance to pick his brain a little, make sure what I was plannin´ on doin´ was the right thing to do. We bounced around some ideas and the best way to go about them. We talked about what steps we need to take, upcoming auctions, what works, what doesn´t, tax stuff....all kinds of things really. It´s just what I needed.

I´ll be honest... I´m exhausted just reading about all this excitement. BUT.....It´s time to BUCK UP BABY!! The holidays are approachin´ and I´m fixing to get REAL busy with EVERYTHING - (Real work, auction stuff, upcoming fundraising auction, the holidays, other events....). There is just simply....NO TIME TO WHINE!

Thanks everyone for reading. I APPRECIATE it.