April Fools!

Welcome our baby girl calf that was born on April Fools. Here she is with her Momma. Darin and I were able to watch her be born. Again, no assistance needed by us. She looks exactly like Uno who was born four days earlier than her.

We watch these two play together in the evenings. Their Momma's have to smell them in order to tell them apart. It is fun to watch. We were told that Uno is a bull calf but she is a girl. ;>)

2008 New Baby Calf!

Here is Uno 2008! (Names are starting over for 2008.)

He was born on friday March 28th early in the morning. Momma was able to have him all by herself with no assistance. ;) He weighs 87 lbs. By the time I headed to work he was all cleaned up and walking around checking things out.

Here he is getting a good bath from Momma. He is very clean and soft baby.

Momma and Uno side by side. She is very good with him. Always on the lookout and keeping him close to her.

Austin's Easter 2008

Here is the Gang!! Arhie, Jett, Gus, Sean, Matthew, Alex and Luke. They are all lined up and ready to go.

This our cousin's youngest boy Gus. He got himself quite a few eggs ;>)

This is Jett who was our youngest egg hunter. He did pretty good for a one year old. He is pictured here with his Dad, Cody.

This is Alex who immediatly devours his egg ;>) He is our friends Dave and Amanda's oldest boy.

This is Luke with a blue egg. He is our friends Dave and Amanda's boy.

Crab Feed 2008

It was that time of the year again to head to Oregon for the all you can eat Crab Feed. It's also the time to get out our Camper for the season. We camped in Oxbow about 17 miles outside of Halfway, OR. This campsite is great. This time of the year it is inexpensive to camp and includes a nice hot shower!! We camped there for 2 nights. It was a very nice warm weekend. Our friends John and Joni joined us Saturday and stayed the night.

Here we all are at the Crab Feed!! As expected the line was long and we barely made in for the first round. It was very fresh -good-eating crab. I ate nothing else but crab and drank good ol Sprite ok...I did eat a little bit of garlic bread. We hope to continue this because we enjoy our first camping trip weekend get away. We will have a new addition to the family next year and hope that he/she will enjoy it as much as Mommy and Daddy does ;>)

Winter Wonerland!

Between 5:00 -6:00am down came the snow!! Darin took our tractor and plowed down our driveway, back around our house and in the riding arena.

Our poor dogs were stuck in their house. This snow drift covered their water bucket. Darin did shovel it out.

New Carpet is in!!!!

Here is Darin working on getting all the staples removed. We decided that we would remove the old carpet ourselves. We removed all the carpet including our bedrooms 3 weeks in advance. It wasn't too bad removing the old carpet but we both couldn't believe how dirty and filthy the old carpet was.

Here I am vaccuming up the loose paddings and staples and the dirt that you wouldn't believe. It was a dirty job. I can't believe we let kids crawl around in this carpet!!!

Here it is. It was instald Jan. 23rd. This carpet has specks of green, brown and light cream. I am very please on how it turned out. We also put this carpet in 3 of our bedrooms. It smells so good and feels so nice, we finally have fresh clean carpet.

The Austin's Family Cruise /Panama Canal

This is our Princess Cruise Ship. There were about 2000 people on this ship with 850 staff workers. It is a huge ship. There was a casino, movie theatre, 2 resturants, bars, a buffett, 2 pools, hot tubs galore, gym, spa, just to name a few. We sure had a great time relaxing and being with our family.

The Panama Canal. This is an amazing experience. This picture was taken from our balcony and you can see another ship behind us. This ship is 87 feet above sea level and before it can move forward the water ahead of him has to rise to 87 feet also. There are six total locks, 3 on the Pacific side and 3 on the Atlantic side. It is gravity driven no pumps. There is a canal captain steering us along with little trains pulling against us to keep from hitting the sides of the lock. It is very interesting and amazing experience. This took most of the day to go through.

Huatituko, Mexico. Our first Port. Dan, Emily, Darin and I went into town and looked around. We were there for only 4 hours. It is a beautiful place. We will hopefully come back someday. I love Mexico.

Emily and I went and did wine tasting on our Princess Cruise Ship. It was set up in our Dining area were we ate our dinners. We were able to taste samples of Chardonnay from Kendall-Jackson, Pinot Noir from La Crema, Cabernet Sauvignon from Wolf Blass (Australia)Sauvignon Blac from Errazuriz and Sauvignon Blac from Nobilo. From this we recieved a shooter glass to take home. It was fun.

In Costa Rica Diane, Doug, Darin and I went on a Countryside tour and Coffee plantation tour. It was very fun.

As you can see I volunteered to taste their coffee. I am smelling the coffee aroma by continuously sturring my spoon. HMMMM!!!

Only if you had smellavision. ;>) With your spoon you would then slurp your coffee instead of sipping it. You get more flavor from the coffee that way.

They used a coffee press instead of a coffee maker. BIG difference. I got a complementary hat.

Sunset from Aruba.

Aruba is only 19 miles long 6 miles wide. Beautiful white sandy beaches and blue water. The whole island looks like a desert with cactus galore.

We were able to rent a van and tour the island ourselves. We went to a beach and swam for a while and then drove around the rest of the island exploring.