Those Bowers Boys + Sadie: Memorial Day Weekend

What do you do at your family reunion?

We spent last weekend with my family in Santa Anna and it was soooooo nice. Shout out to cousin Carol (& Bob!) for organizing everything...and doing such a great job! We just relaxed all weekend. Santa Anna is so small that there is nothing to do. Unless you're into hunting rattlesnakes, fossils, hiking, shooting all sorts of guns (think AR, AK-47, and any type of handgun you can think of), and eating too much delicious food. In that case, we stayed busy. :)

Mollie & J - This one makes me smile. :)

Saturday morning we started (at 8:00am) with a workout at the local track. Aunt Sarah and Mollie joined us and the boys for a mile run (L had a hard time understanding why we all ran away without him, poor guy.), then all sorts of human torture exercises led by both Mollie and Brian. After a good hour of 'fun', we headed over to Double H (local greasy spoon-and I say that with much love) to cancel out the work we'd just done. Yes, it was worth it.

Mollie is in far better shape than the rest of us, (read: hard-core), so we were perplexed-and amused-when she turned up lame after those calf raises. I'm thinking that the larger your muscles and the lower your body fat %, the more muscle pain. That's the only way to make sense of this.

We even worked out again Sunday morning in order to justify a second trip to Double H. You read correctly.

After breakfast we headed to the ranch to hike and let the boys explore. (We drove through two gaps, resulting in J developing an obsession with gaps and continually asking, "Can we go down there through that gap to check my cows at my raaaaanch?" He's asked 16 times today.)

With L in the jogger and J on foot, we headed down to the tank. As we came up over the bank, we saw this. Can I get an "Ouch!" on her behalf from all you mommas out there?

And then, this.

They'd been there all night; at least all night. :(

The calf was lying in the shallow part of the water, bogged down and unable to get out, pitifully holding it's nose just above the surface of the water. And the poor cow...if you've ever lactated, you can feel her pain.

Since we had the kids and the calf wasn't in imminent danger (He probably thought otherwise.), we opted to call Carol (they're her cows) and wait for backup.

A Couple of Photo ops while waiting for C &M

Carol and Mollie arrived in record time and I guess Mollie hadn't had enough of those calf raises the day before. She shed her shoes and socks and dove (okay, stepped) right into that mud to help get the calf out.

Momma was not happy. Unfortunately the action was blocked from my view by a group of mesquite, but I did get an 'after' pic.

Carol wanted to let the rope go for a few minutes and watch the calf, giving the cow a chance to calm down and rejoin the herd before removing it. A few minutes later she used her cow whispering skills to enter the herd and reclaim her rope.

Cha-ching! And $500 walked away on 4 wobbly legs. It was the least we could do. :)

What a nice morning. We returned to the Lodge, all happy with the morning's rescue, when my sister asked about a just-now-having-appeared-bruise on L's cheek.

About that...Possibly we (and by 'we', I mean Brian) left L on a small cliff in the jogger with Tess tied to it, above a small mesquite tree with a downed limb sitting at its base to assess the drowning calf situation from several angles. (Note: L was well out of the way of the concerned momma cow; which I realize now was not his biggest threat.)

So after we'd done a complete assessment, I circled back to L in the jogger-again, where B had left him-only to see it quickly approaching me, Tess being dragged behind and nothing but that cliff between us.

The stroller barreled over the cliff, turned over as it hit the tree, launched Tess over it's top, and dumped L right into that limb. I released Tess (she was fine) and picked up my screaming baby as fast as humanly possible. He cried for a whole 10 seconds and was fine. Whew.

The Tale of Sarah & the Rattlesnake Tail
I'd hoped to have many pics and trophies from this year's Kingsbery Rattlesnake Hunt, but, again, it was not our year. They must have heard we were coming and got the heck outta Dodge. Boooooooo.

Anyway, we did come upon this guy, smashed on a county road and since Sarah was on a rattle-collecting mission (For a friend. Who lives in Austin. I know, I know.), we stopped to take pics and collect the rattle. Aurbrey was nice enough to cut it off for her, leaving a decent length of tail attached.

Here's where it gets funny. Just want to prepare you.

S was getting ready for the day in the open area of the bathroom, attached to one of the bedrooms in the lodge. B takes the rattlesnake tail and puts it right outside of the bathroom area. M assesses the situation and concludes S would, "never see it there on her own." A sly smile spread across her face as she surmised S would, however, see the snake very easily if it were pointed out by a freaking-out-cousin. Oh, yes, we're related. ;)

Putting her plan into action with a "Brian, are ya ready?", she jumps up on one of the bunk beds and...

M: Sarah! DO NOT MOVE! There's a snake! Oh my gosh! Snake!

S: What?! Where?

M: Right there!

S: (She sees it now & jumps up on the counter.) Is it a rattlesnake? It's a RATTLESNAKE! Get the kids! Get the kids!

M: Snake! Brian! Snake!

Back and forth yelling continued for a good 15 seconds, which is a l o n g time when there's a 2 and 1/2 foot (minus 2 and 1/4 ft) rattlesnake in your room and had J not just fallen off of the couch, nailing his chin on the coffee table, we would've really been able to work this!

After S figures it out, M heads into the living room and says, "Barb, you've GOT to go see Sarah!"

There she was, still up on that counter, still worried about the kids. Glad you can take a joke, Sis. :) Oh, and you do get points for looking out for the kids. Nice one, M & B!

And now S has an entire year to plan her revenge. I was not involved, I repeat, I was not involved. Now had J not had his run in with the coffee table, I would've been hanging from the next bunk bed, yelling louder than the rest of 'em! But, again, I was not involved.

A Few More Pics

J sporting his ear protection