We spent the last week of October in Kansas City, Missouri. The first day there we spent driving to several prominent church history sites: Independence, Liberty Jail, and the site of Adam-Ondi-Ahman. It was a wonderful day and the perfect start of our trip. I was surprised at how beautiful Missouri looked at this time of year! The fall colors were everywhere and we thoroughly enjoyed them!

The rest of the week was all about cattle. We attended the Lowline auction & show- but w/o our stock trailer we were "just looking", not buying. We learned a lot at a beef showmanship clinic. And we also spent time looking at Charolais - a French breed of cattle - all white, and quite large - to cross breed with our Lowlines for beef production. Kansas City is famous for BBQ - so we enjoyed several fabulous meals. KC is also famous for fountains - they are everywhere! Many quite fabulous and beautiful. We enjoyed walking around the new Country Plaza district in the evenings, even though it was really cold! Kansas City is clean and quite beautiful!

A week in Missouri

A week in Missouri

Our new dock!

We are looking forward to fun times picnicing by our lake in the coming weeks! Our new dock is in! We're in the process of removing pond weeds and clearing up the water so we can use it before the summer's end. We have several BBQs planned for family and ward members in September - should be fun!

It's June!

Lately I’ve been working on a drip system for the landscaping near the building (almost done!). John has been building a chicken coop. We’re also preparing an area for the kid goats (due end of June) to be until they’re big enough for the large pasture. And I’m trying to plan out our vegetable & flower garden (really late – I know). We also bought 14 trees (@ $10 each!), 5-15 gal pots. So now we need to extend the irrigation to the areas we want to plant so the trees will get water through the summer. In the meantime, of course, we’re watering them by hose.

In lieu of taking a summer vacation this year, we’re going to put in a new culvert under our driveway (at the spillway in the entrance), raise the level of the driveway (to lessen the worry about extra NID water or rains going over the dam), clean up the lake and put in our dock!

Needless to say, the work is never done.

Our Latest Project

Our newest project is a newborn goat we named "Minnie" (as in Minnie Mouse). She is a bottle-fed baby who we just adopted. Hopefully we'll have her integrated into the herd by month's end. Isn't she a cutie?

March

During march we spent two weekends with special "granddaughter events". In the beginning of March Brooke was baptized by her father in Simi Valley. We enjoyed the quick trip to witness her baptism and visit with Mark's family and Tate a bit. Toward the end of March we traveled south to the San Diego area. Tate gave our newest granddaughter, Jocelyn, a beautiful blessing. We enjoyed a fun weekend with family and friends! Then on Monday, Jody treated John & I, Karina & Karlee and Michelle & Juan's family all to a day at the San Diego zoo. March was a fun month! (Unfortunately, I forgot my camera on both trips.)