The Best Things in Life Are Free!!

We learned that this is absolutely true once again on April 25 of this year. We had the privilege of attending the National Ranching Heritage Center's annual Ranch Day with our wonderful Gran, who made us aware of the event in the first place. Thanks so much, Gran, for always looking out for fun things to do together! At approximately 10:30 am on that day, we became official Ranch Hands, time cards in hand, and ready to tackle the tasks laid before us. We started out with horseback riding, essential of course to every ranch hand's daily duties. Nathan wasn't too sure about it... But soon gained confidence with big brother riding behind him: Riley was like an old pro, having started her riding career earlier than either of the boys. She looks like she could fall asleep up there. As a matter of fact, she has fallen asleep in the saddle, but that's another story... After our riding lessons, we moved on to the post office to write some letters. We used a quill and ink, which proved to be a much messier process than using a plain old Bic pen like we're used to. The post office was so crowded, our photographer couldn't see squeezing in right then.

We moved on next to the tepee and a guy in buckskin clothing let us use his old fashioned coffee grinder. Mom thought the coffee grinder was prettier than hers at home. We picked up on this skill in no time and could imagine coffee being an important part of a hard working ranch hand's breakfast. We moved on next to carding wool. After carding the wool, the ladies of the day would spin it into yarn. Mom thought the spinning wheel was neat, but was still glad her crocheting yarn is available at the local Wal Mart. Here's Kole working hard at getting the wool carded: Next, it was on to the cattle branding station. We were all pretty sure that Nathan's cow was glad he was branding with just paint and not a hot iron brand. He had brands from head to toe by the time this little cowboy was finished with him! We had to work hard at the next station - steer roping. That lasso is harder to get around those horns than you would think! We learned how to send a telegraph along the way as well. We had to write out our names in Morse Code and tap it out on the weird looking contraption. We think email is much better, but thinking back to those times, realized what an amazing invention the telegraph really was. This day made us grateful for a whole lot of modern inventions, not the least of which is our washing machine and dryer. As much as we really do like water, we decided it's much more fun to swim in it than wash clothes out by hand in it. Still, it was cool to experience how they did things back then.



One of our favorite events of the day was the stick horse rodeo. After making our very own stick horse, we ran barrels and were awarded blue ribbons for it. Go, Cowboy Kole!!