Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Pretty Darn Cute

Kelly & Pinky (4 weeks old). Pinky is her new tag along and tries to follow her everywhere he can.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Best Babysitter

Every time Mama Kitty goes outside, Kelly steps right in, crawls in their box and pretends that she is the mama. It's the cutest thing! I let the kittens out of their box for awhile this afternoon so they could explore. Tommy (the big chubby, mamas boy) headed straight for the cat food and tried to chow down. This proved to be difficult since he doesn't have teeth!

They are very active now and ready to check out the world!







Saturday, January 17, 2009

Kelly's Discovery

Yesterday morning I bundled up in my eight layers to venture outside and feed the chickens. The wind chill was said to be -25. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was darn cold! Kelly & I walked into the machine shed and Kelly runs, climbs to the top of the haystack and stares at a haybale. Thinking this was pretty unusual I thought I better check it out.

When I got closer I could hear a faint meow coming from the haystack. I started moving bales until I saw a little yellow kitten face staring up at me. Kelly had found Mama Kitty's kittens! I knew that she had the kittens on the Saturday after Christmas, but had never been able to find them. Mama Kitty wasn't around, so I covered them back up and left them alone for the day.

That evening I once again bundled up in my eight layers and headed outside to do chores. This time Mama Kitty was around and I let her inside (in our laundry room) like I did when she was pregnant. Then I went back and uncovered the kittens to see how they were doing. I pulled 2 kittens out that were just fine. The next two felt like icicles.

I hurried to the house and fixed up a box with an old towel and went back out to get the kittens. Mama Kitty laid down with them and the two started nursing right away. The two cold kittens didn't nurse and I wasn't sure they were going to make it. They're the 2 on the outside in this picture:


I'm happy to say though, this morning Mama Kitty and her 4 kittens are all doing well. They are so cute! They are exactly 3 weeks old today. Kelly is very curious about them but doesn't seem like she wants to hurt them, she just wants to check them out...we are watching her closely though.


This picture is from this morning. All the kittens are very active and healthy today:
They are already starting to wrestle and play with each other:Bright eyes:

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Brrrr!

Today is a good day to stay inside. Yesterday, some "arctic air" moved in from, well, the arctic and has really frozen us here in Missouri. As I write this I am checking weather.com and they say it currently feels like -7 and is getting colder. The only time I went outside today was to check the chickens and unfreeze their water. They are staying inside today, too. I'm really starting to get bored staying inside though. Even though I have work to do, I have managed to work on taxes, fill up photo albums, exercise on my new elliptical and cook! However, all these things are getting old...I'm ready for either snow or warmer temps!

We've been watching lots of movies lately so I thought I would offer my opinion on a few. First of all, we saw Gran Torino in the theater and it was REALLY good. It's a very raw movie about a Korean War veteran who takes justice into his own hands and stands up for the good people in the community. Its really emotional and really good--I recommend you should go! On the completely opposite spectram, we saw Mama Mia and I loved that too. You just can't help but laugh when they randomly burst out into song. It's a really fun, light-hearted movie.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Dairy Conference


Last Thursday was the Northeast Missouri Dairy Management Conference. This year was the 8th Annual Meeting. The event is hosted by one of the owners of the company that I work for, so lots of the planning and behind the scenes work was on my shoulders over the holidays. I was really happy to have the meeting over with and was thrilled with the attendance. We had 19 sponsors and 80 attendees this year. This was about double from last year. We had three great speakers come in to speak about reproduction, forage selection & raising calves. There was also a great lunch and a trade show of the sponsors.
Here, Dave Taysom of Dairyland Labs was speaking on forage digestibility:In addition to the planning, I was also in charge of creating our booth and a booth for our animal health store:



This meeting was just the start of the upcoming Dairy Conferences. We will be in Lake of the Ozarks, Lebanon & Concordia in the next two months for trade shows.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Resolution

I picked the generic resolution this year and decided to get back to my pre-grad school fitness level (or close at least!). Since there are no gyms around here and the road is always too muddy to go jogging, I bought this with my Christmas bonus (now I have no excuses!):



It's called the Gold's Gym Stride Trainer 300. With these few simple steps, Luke assembled it for me and it has been kickin' my ass ever since!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a gorgeous day in Missouri. It was very cold and we even had a fresh dusting of snow. Here's some pictures I took that morning when we were feeding the cows before our trip to Carrollton:







Kelly checked out the tubs to make sure there was enough to get the cows by:

Since then, all the snow has melted and we are back to a muddy mess. I'm sure glad we had wintry weather for Christmas though--I can't imagine not having a white Christmas!

Monday, January 5, 2009

Christmas Time

I know it's been awhile since I posted, but we have been very busy with the Holidays. Luke & I had Christmas together on Christmas Eve morning. He got me a pair of Muck Boots (which I LOVE) and a cedar coffee table made by a local Amish man (I will post pictures soon).

Here is part of Luke's present from me (the shirt & hat):

Here's me, helping Kelly open her presents. She must of been a good dog this year:


On Christmas Eve we drove to Chillicothe and had Christmas with Luke's Grandma and his mom's side of the family. Christmas morning was spent in Carrollton with Luke's family:



Luke's mother fixed a huge meal (big suprise) for Christmas. It was a nice day and we enjoyed getting to spend time with the family.


Hope everyone had a great Christmas!