South for the Winter...

No photos because it's been a crazy week and the camera's still in the bag...

While not as long a migration as most birds, we have made our now annual migration south to the Treasure Valley. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with bits and pieces of both our families. Now for the unpacking -- arg! If you're in or around Boise, come see us! We had a great summer and a cold fall and we're ready to be back in civilization.

It's Officially Winter....

You know it's officially winter when:

New snow falls on top of old snow before it melts....
All the leaves are gone...

There are icicles....
The temperature barely gets up to freezing...

But how do you really know it's winter??? This is when you know:

When it takes 4 men and a tractor to get you unstuck, that's when you know it's winter!

In other amusing snow news, I was certain we had a prowler last night. I kept hearing these noises around the house and then when I woke up all the way at 2 a.m. I realized it was just snow falling off the roof and not a prowler.

Shipping Calves

So it's getting cold up here and now is the time we take all the baby calves away from their mommies and ship them off to sunny California where they can get all fat and happy (until they're sold again and wind up as T-bones). Mommy was in charge of weighing them this year. She got nominated for her penmanship, which isn't all that great but better than cowboys and old men. Here's one of our days...

The first truck, loaded and ready to go, with Jughandle Mtn. in the background.

Mommy's domain, the scalehouse:

Our daddy the cowboy on the white mare:

Now the mommies will stay here a few more weeks until there's too much snow to get to the grass. We're moving back to Boise in time for Thanksgiving. Our 6 months in the mountains is up for this year!

Halloween

Mumsy brought Clyde the kimono jammies from her Japan trip, so I decided to make him a panda mask. Total cost less than $1.00 and turned out pretty cute. Alice was given the darling bunny outfit by a family friend. Clyde was pretty excited about dressing up but still didn't get the concept of Halloween. We dressed up most days that week. They both of course loved getting treats. The photos were taken at a friend's place on Payette Lake. I tried to get some of both of them, but they're squirrelly these days!