Escape!

Even though the winters are generally long and uneventful around here, we still have a tough time breaking away for the weekend. I mean, who really wants to leave the cold, the ice, the frozen cow pies, the endless trips to the hay yard and back? Me. That's who. After Danish Cowboy finishes refereeing basketball tournaments, we generally have one weekend before calving starts that we can escape. However, this year that weekend also happened to be the same one that my annual work meeting occurred. So we left home for exactly 30.5 hours to make a trip to Billings. Eight hours of that time was spent in the car. The rest was spent in a noble, and highly successful, effort to exhaust ourselves.

We made the obligatory trips to Costco, the mall, the farm/ranch supply store and Cabela's, we ate out a few times, we tried on many scents at Bath & Body Works, we waited two hours for a restaurant table on Saturday night, we had three separate rounds of swimming, we attended a niece's basketball game, we ate ice cream cones, we went undergarment shopping with the male help at Victoria's Secret (?), we thoroughly enjoyed the balcony of our room, we hot tubbed. We are nothing if not efficient.

(photo courtesy Danish Cowboy)

By the time we arrived home mid-Sunday afternoon, it had arrived. Spring, that is. Spring is here. It's official. 2010 baby calf number one arrived sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning. And so begins the busiest, muddiest, smelliest, most meaningful time of the year.