Confessions of Me, a Wannabe Pioneer Woman.

On our trip out west this week, Liz, Traci and I stayed at a ranch in Montana. No – we did not get to stay with the Pioneer Woman and join in the cow pregnancy testing fun, but we did stay with some very nice ranchers in Eastern Montana named Willy and Anne. That’s right! When I called and found out Mrs. Rancher’s first name was Anne with an “e” I knew we’d hit the jackpot.

We flew into Denver, picked up our lovely white rental car (laugh all you want, Brian) and headed north toward Montana. As is typical with the Anne/Liz road trip, we got caught in several torrential downpours and a couple of hail storms. But we forged our way through the road kill splattered, partially paved roads of Wyoming to cross into Montana and arrive at the ranch a little after 9pm.

I was relieved when Mrs. Rancher told us she would have breakfast ready at 7:30. That meant I could easily get 8 hours of sleep which we were all in desperate need of since we'd gotten up at 4:30 eastern time that morning to get to the airport. So it was off to bed for a great night's sleep under the big Montana sky.

Fast forward to 4:37 am the next morning. Cockadoodle-doo!! Actually it was more of a Ca-cock-a-doo! I remember thinking "Wow, it's still really dark outside! I thought the rooster crowed when the sun came up." Little did I know that the rooster comes with a snooze button. The Pioneer Woman never mentioned that one. He crowed every few minutes for the next hour and a half. What's up with that rooster???

I considered my options and thought about throwing shoes at him out the window, or looking for a baseball bat, but I decided my best option was to pray. I prayed that that rooster would be content with number of times he had already crowed to the Lord that morning, and I asked the Lord to reveal to him that we had come from a different time zone and his crows were confusing us more than helping us, and maybe he could find it in his little rooster heart to allow us to get another hour of sleep. And I kid you not – a few minutes after those prayers were lifted up to heaven I truly believed that rooster (it was later that we found out there were multiple roosters) had cockadoodle-doo’d his last. I was literally thanking Jesus like nobody's business every minute that went by without a crow. But it turns out he decided to take a 7 minute break instead of 3. And he was with us the rest of the morning until the sun finally came up.

There is one positive thing that came out of my morning hours with the rooster. This scene (which is one of my favorites from Arrested Development) kept running through my head:





Lindsay's chicken is the best!


Other than the rooster, the time at the ranch was great! Here are some of my favorite pics:

The tractor pic (taken for my Dad):


The cabin (right next to the hen house, of course):



Our cow friends:

My favorite cow pic (she doesn't come close to the Pioneer Woman's Ursula, but I still love her):

The Report from Jamaica.

"Limb fell off the ackee tree and ran out of beer." I guess that means everyone is ok. Oh and Shabba got his tooth fixed. Here's the before pic. After my trip with the girls in October, I'll post the after pic with new tooth.

Double the Reunion, Double the Fun!

This weekend I went down to NN for the Wiatt family reunion. This year was interesting because my uncle found some link 8 generations back to the Wyatt's with a "Y" and so they were invited for the first time! I kept seeing all these "Wyatt" name tags and was wondering what the heck was going on until Uncle Alex gave his 10 minute speech on the wonders of DNA and everybody's related to everybody and now we're inviting Wyatt's and blah blah blah. He likes to talk:)

The younger generation:

I did enjoy this picture very much. It's my uncle Tom as a young lad in 1971 next to a picture of Sir Thomas Wyatt as a young lad in 15??. Quite the resemblance. Actually, Sir Thomas ended up with his head hanging from the Tower of London soon after this portrait was made. Tom the uncle is still with us. And of course, I must highlight the moment that I wait for all year. The sing-a-long with Roberta on the concertina. This is when most of the cousins like to leave which is terribly unfortunate because what's a family reunion without a couple of rounds of Oh! Susanna and Home on the Range?

Anyway, that's enough of the crazy Wiatt clan. The surprise of the weekend was the mini reunion we had on my Dad's side. Turns out my cousin Jason and his lovely wife Melanie were taking a little road trip through VA to see my grandmother and visit the farm. And on Sunday they ventured down to NN. This was quite an exciting moment for me because I had not seen my cousin since 1991! 16 years! I didn't think I'd been alive for 16 years, but I can't argue with my parents or my birth certificate on that one so here we are.

This was such a fun weekend!! It was one of those rare (but becoming more frequent) moments when I actually wished I could spend more time with my family! I guess when you pray about something God is bound to change your heart eventually :)

Eyes, eyes, nostrils, silent scream.

If anyone is curious to know what I’ll be doing tonight, I’ll be at home (actually at Cecily’s – I’m dog sitting this week) watching this clip over and over until I learn the moves:



Who would have thought that one day of cake making with Rachel and Gina would change my life forever?

God Bless you both.

I'm melting.

God's greatest gift to man: J.C.

God's second greatest gift: AC.