2012 Branding

Well, here I am 2 weeks behind on my blogging!  Time is just flying by & I am finding it hard to find a few minutes each week and write.  Since the branding was 2 weeks ago, I am guessing I have already forgotten many of the details of the day.  I will do my best to recap it. 

We were so fortunate to have lots of good help & a beautiful day to brand.  It was cool & cloudy all day.  I do not think it got out of the 60's all day.  They were predicting temps near 90 & my parents who live just 75 miles from us did have a day in the 90's.  They also branded the same day, I feel bad their day was so different than ours.  The Morton family & the Newberg family came down from MN to help with the day.  The girls had a blast playing with the Morton kids.  We had lots of help from local friends & neighbors.  Burton, Valerie & Hagen Mikkelsen also joined us for the day.  You will see in the pictures to follow that Aubree & Hagen kept themselves very busy!!!

Kyle was pretty wore out from his trip to Guymon.  He got home late Friday night & got up before dawn Saturday morning to start saddling horses.  After branding all day Saturday he left  at 2:00 Sunday morning to go back to Guymon for his 3rd steer.  Even though he was exhausted it was worth the trip.  He ended up 6th in the round & 4th in the average.

The Morton family stayed until after breakfast Sunday morning.  My girls were very sad to see them go!  Hopefully we will see them again soon!

I am sure there are so many more things I should write about, but for now I am going to call it a night & put my little darlings to bed!

Jenae & Firecraker before sun up Saturday morning. Kyle was up saddling horses at 4:30 in the morning. I fed the crew breakfast around 5:00 & by 6:30 they were off to the pasture gathering up the cattle.

Chase & Whitney hanging out in the house while Marilyn & I were getting things ready for dinner

Jenae & Donnae.  They had so much fun riding toghter.  They are good buddies, if only they lived closer than 6 hours away!

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

2012 Branding

Kids watching the branding.

Never a dull moment at the Whitaker Branding! Hagen & Aubree found some blue oil based paint. They thought it was their war paint!

We were not sure how to get our blue kids cleaned up.  Soap & water would not touch it!  After trying several things, Valerie thought we should try peanut butter.  As crazy as it sounds, the peanut butter worked!!! 

Aubree & Hagen adventure continued yesterday. They decided to play in the mud. Aubree got stuck in the mud & had to have Valerie pull her out. I would love to have heard their conversation along the way of their adventures.

This photo really doesn't do show the whole picture of this adventure--unless you can see that on Hagen's feet are his once (although probably never again) white socks! And you can't really smell that it wasn't exactly "fresh" water they ventured into!