Big Help

Randen is only 20 months, but he is already good help.

This past weekend, him and his momma gathered heifers and pushed them up the chute on Scoop. When things got a little boring his just fell asleep on old Scoop. Then he slept on the 4 wheeler while he and Grandpa finished putting heifers back out.
He helps Auntie watch the gate.

He loves helping his other Auntie drive the panel trailer while gathering bulls. Evidently, he thinks we should be in 4 wheel drive.

He helps Grandpa lead Scoop to the trailer. It is so cute, he clicks to the horse and says "mon" for "come on." Scoop just follows dad and has no idea what shorty is doing.

Randen is also very good at driving. He drives the tractor or pickup or whatever. Here, he gives Auntie a lesson on driving the car .

He shows Auntie how to honk the horn and put the wipers on.

He also helps Grandpa put his boots on when he deems naptime has been long enough.

He is too cute

Randen is just too cute. Love that boy.

Jammies and his cowboy hat.

And snowboots..

Mickelson Trail Marathon Recap

Recently, Annie, Larissa, Kendra, Kannon, and Tenise relayed the Mickelson Trail Marathon. They did great!! This picture is their approximate time. I think they finished about five minutes faster than this, but we forgot a phot until later.
Here is Kannon after running the final leg. She actually had to run a mile further than she had trained for or anticipated. She did great! On a side note: This is the first time I have seen Kannon wear anything other than high heels. Seriously, this girl wears heels camping!

Here is Tenise finishing strong on her 5 mile leg. She had planned to run 6, but evidently they marked the trail out differently, thus the reason Kannon had to run extra.

Here is Ris finishing up her leg of the relay. She was showing off here.

Kendra is pounding out her leg of the journey. She is used to pushing two kids in a side-by-side jogging stroller that is almost as tall as she is. This worked to her advantage since her leg was uphill.

Here is Annie finishing up her leg. She ran the first and longest leg of 8 miles. She finished looking like she could have ran much longer. Some of her splits were 8.5 minute miles - much faster than she thought

Here are the two sisters (our cousins). The team name was Gypsy Joggers. They took the team name to a whole 'notha level by dressing the part of Gypsies!

Here is the team at the finish line in beautiful Deadwood.

More about Justin

So, seeing Justin recently got us thinking about what a cool dude he is. The 5 summers that he worked for us when he was in high school were fun summers for us girls. As mentioned before, we were VERY annoying little grade-school girls that followed him and pestered him constantly. I am sure that he looked forward to long days in the hayfield just to get away from us!

However, he was always a good sport and we had so much fun with him. He could do no wrong in our eyes. He could do cool stuff like a series of backflips across the entire yard. He had a Walkman and listened to Def Lep and Metallica and Alice Cooper. He also teased us as much as we pestered him. He would also take us fencing with him. We would sit in the back of the pickup and hand him staples while listening to metal music on his boom box.

One time, Justin was going to mow the lawn on the riding mower. Annie must have been taunting him or something. I don't remember exactly how it ensued, but he finally challenged Annie (probably about 5- 7 years old at the time) to a contest. He marked off a tiny chunk of the lawn for Annie to cut with her jack-knife in the time he mowed the rest of the yard. Now, us girls always packed a nice, dull jack-knife pretty much all the time. She had a particularly dull, little, tiny jack-knife she packed around and would proudly whip out when something needed cutting. So the game was on. She wielded that dull little knife over the patch of grass like a machete through the jungle. All the while, Justin would drive past her on the lawn tractor in road-gear, making her scream and cut even faster. Ris and I cheered and hustled Annie on like she was in the Olympic finals.

Of course Justin was going to finish WAY ahead of Annie, but looking back, I am sure he stalled and drove in circles so she could finish.

Where are we?

While we have been absent from blogging, we have not been absent from everything else! I don't even know where to pick up to give you an update, so I will just do random posts of things we have been doing lately.

Last Sat. night we road-tripped to Edgemont. Annie, Ris, Randen, I and the guys went down to watch our cousins Justin and JR in a ranch rodeo. They did really awesome! We have lots more pictures of the night, including Justin in the wild ride! We had a great time catching up with the Colorado Smiths! It had been years since we saw Justin.

Justin lived with us in the summers when he was in high school. We were pesky little grade-school kiddos that followed him around non-stop and tried to "help" him. He slaved away in the hayfield, fixed fence, chased cows, fixed stuff, watched Mary Poppins with us, teased us, and patiently played Junk Poker with us. (Junk Poker was a poker game that we came up with when we were little. The pot consisted of useless crap we no longer wanted anymore.)
Justin is married to one of the sweetest, cutest women you will ever meet. He and Brenda have three awesome kids and live in Colorado. They run yearlings and chase the kids.

Here is a picture of Justin winning the Top Hand award at the ranch rodeo.

Here is a family picture of us after the rodeo. From left to right: Uncle Steve, Aunt Roxie, Joe, Ris, Matt, Lindsey, Justin, Brenda, Randen, Annie, Zach, and our cousin JR.

We had a blast seeing everyone!