Mama's Night Out

Last weekend Patrick and I attended a local fundraiser for the Mondak Stockgrower's Association and the Foundation for Community Care. Both are local non-profit organizations. Obviously Stockgrower's helps promote animal agriculture, and the Foundation helps support local healthcare. This was the second year the two teamed up to put on the Cattleman's Ball. It's a night full of food, dancing, drinks and an auction.

My friend Chay was in town again, so we went dress shopping in the morning. I got a new Calvin Klein dress that I absolutely love. Since I've lost so much weight after baby, most of my dresses don't fit me. Oh darn, have to go shopping! Chay and I were friends in college, so when we were getting ready for the evening it was just like old times. 

Before we left for the evening, my mother in law came over to watch Hunter and got a few pictures of us.

Our first family picture :) I hate that it's a  little blurry, but the lighting wasn't the best at the time.

How lucky is he that he had 2 hot dates?!

I love that Hunter is smiling for the camera!

And last but certainly not least...

This event was pretty fancy-they had a red carpet and everything! The evening started out with a social hour, and salad and rolls. A few people got up to talk about the organizations, including a representative from the Montana Beef Council. Then we were served a dinner of prime rib, and baked or scalloped potatoes. They had a dessert bar, and we told Patrick to get us one of everything, so he did! Hey, this was my cheat day for eating, so I took full advantage!

Let's just say after a few cocktails, Chay and I decided to have our own photo shoot on the red carpet...

 It started out nice...

Then things got a little western...

I don't know what got into me on Saturday night, but I just felt like having a whiskey night. That almost never happens. It just sounded good for some reason though. Who knows.

Patrick with our good friend Vanessa, Russell, and Vanessa's friend Megan.

It was a great night out with friends, and we look forward to doing another fun outing in a couple weeks to a local brewery! 

Photos from my phone

I know I'm not the only one who randomly will go through all of the photos  in their camera roll on their phone and reminisce about all the good times had over the past year. 

I was scrolling through these last night and was just laughing out loud at some of them, and thought it would be fun to share them with you all. I'm sure you've probably seen most of these at some point or another on my blog, but hey if I didn't remember the pictures, surely you guys won't remember some of them too. That's my hope anyways...

Calving shed from last March...love all the icicles!

Helping my hubby load grain. That was probably the first and last day I'll go with him for the entire day...he said I asked too many questions :)

A weekend trip to Billings for an FFA state officer 10 year reunion and the PBR rodeo. In the grand scheme of things, Baby Hackley was about 3 weeks old at the time :)

My handsome boys after their annual spring haircut!

My backyard fire pit...my favorite place to spend time in the summer...

Branding...

Ohhhh and the dancing cows!! How could we forget that?! I literally crack up laughing every time I see these pictures!

Miranda Lambert concert...only my 3rd time seeing her :)

My MIL's birthday present...patriotic pallet flag that I made!

My friend Chay and I at the Wolf Point Stampede rodeo.

Good friends wedding....don't mind the giant goblet of booze my friend Emily is holding...it's a sorority tradition :)

My garden!!

Back when I had a teeny tiny baby bump, and looked more bloated than pregnant. Pretty sure that shirt would fit about halfway down my stomach right now, ha ha.

So I just realized there are way too many pictures to share with you for one blog post! This is the first half of the year, so I'll save the second half for another day!

Happy Wednesday friends! I'm working from the comfort of my living room in sweatpants :) roads were crappy and my boss didn't want me driving on them, oh darn :)

Baby Shower #2

How lucky am I that the people in my life love me enough to throw me 2 baby showers? One in Western Montana with my sisters, mom and some college friends, the other in Eastern Montana where I live with my coworkers, in-laws, family and other friends. I am so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.

Last Sunday my boss and co-worker threw me a baby shower, and just like my first one, it did NOT disappoint! First and foremost...the food. I mean, it's not a shower/party without a picture of the food spread. Am I right?!

We had 2 different kinds of homemade cheese balls with crackers, 2 different kinds of quiche-one with a pie crust and sausage, the other with croissant crust and bacon. There was also fruit kabobs with 2 different kinds of dip, chocolate covered strawberries, and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. It was all SO good and I got to take a lot of the leftovers home :)

All of the gifts for Baby H! You see the little monkey with the hat? One of my MIL's friends' daughters made that. The wheels are made out of diapers, the mud flaps are bibs, the seat and handle bars are wash cloths, and the headlight is a bottle. How creative is that?!

My friend Chay (in the pink) and her little boy Lyndon came over for the weekend to hang out too since Patrick was gone, and Lyndon helped me open the gifts. He was pretty excited about them too! To the right of me is my MIL, and the lady on the far right is our Aunt Carol. 

Here was a monkey blanket from my MIL's best friend, who will be another adoptive grandma for baby.

My coworkers-Kayla (on the left) is one of the shower hosts, and Melissa also works with us. She has 4 boys :)

You can't tell by my face, but it was hilarious watching Lyndon dance! You put on any country song and he starts jamming out. He even moves his mouth like he's singing the words. It is SO funny!

 And just another cute little outfit for baby :)

Overall it was a great time!

This weekend, Chay, my brother and I also got a lot of stuff done around our house. I couldn't have done everything without them! I bought 2 area rugs a couple weeks ago and they moved all of my furniture out of the rooms, cleaned the floors, put the rugs down and moved all the furniture back. They both helped me clean out my flower beds and put the flower pots away for the winter, then my brother put the changing table together, and Chay helped me put the stroller and carseat all together. It was a really productive weekend!

I am so grateful to have such wonderful people in my life that care about me so much. I don't generally like being the center of attention, so this kind of stuff is hard for me. I'd much rather be in the background taking care of the food or hosting the party. I appreciate every person that came to the shower to help us celebrate Baby H. Less than 2 months until he gets here! I go on Thursday for another ultrasound, so you guys will get to see him again SOON :)

Childhood Memories

Friends, I had one of the BEST weekends last weekend that I've had in a long, long time. About 2 months ago, my childhood best friend messaged me on Facebook, saying that she would love to come visit me in Montana. Of course I'm always up for a visitor, so we went over a couple of dates that worked and she booked her flight! Mind you, we hadn't seen each other in 20 years!! (Side note: there are a lot of things I don't like about Facebook, but THIS is one of the reasons it's so great!)

She got here last Friday, and that was the beginning of an action-packed, fun-filled weekend. Friday she helped me get ready for Farmer's Market, and Saturday morning we set out bright and early to sell all of my goods. And this week was particularly exciting, because I sold out of everything! I did not have a single loaf of bread or muffin left! That's never happened before so I was pretty excited.

 Saturday evening we got a phone call from the neighbor that the Schwann's man had called him and was stuck on a county road that had been washed out. (For those of you who don't have it, Schwann's is like a home delivery service for frozen foods-ice cream, pasta dishes, anything you can deep fry, pot pies, etc. They come around every 3 weeks I think). So Patrick loads up in the giant tractor and my brother, friend and I followed behind cause we were NOT about to miss this!

Well, let's just say this man wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. You have a heavy truck with no 4-wheel drive, and you just attempt to drive through mud and washed out roads. Genius, I swear. He was obviously not from here, and didn't speak English very well. When Patrick was hooked up and dragging the guy out of there it became apparent that this guy REALLY didn't know what he was doing. He was trying to steer back onto the road and was going all over the place. Fortunately, Patrick does know what he's doing, so he just gunned it and drug the guy into the empty field where it was dry.

Hey, at the end of the day we got a free gallon of vanilla ice cream. And that made this preggo lady pretty happy, because we had bought a fresh apple pie that morning at the market :)

The rest of the weekend we had to herd some cows, haul some barley and grain, and just run around the farm doing fun stuff.

It was a fantastic trip and we all had a lot of fun! We also re-created this picture from when we were 2 years old...

Now it's back to my regularly scheduled baking for next week's Farmer's Market...

Another Wedding Weekend!

This past weekend we traveled to Great Falls, Montana to attend wedding #3 of 4 for us this year. It was an absolute gorgeous wedding at a beautiful church and a great reception with my sorority sisters. And man oh man, if you're younger and reading this blog (like, college age) and you are thinking about joining a sorority, you should just prepare yourself for the amount of weddings that you'll be attending later in life :) They are FUN!

Back to this wedding...

 Like I said, gorgeous church! I brought my  regular camera with me to get better pictures, but forgot to charge the battery...FAIL.

 

And as luck would have it, we got caught up in a small parade and had to take a detour so we were late to the wedding. However, if we weren't late, I wouldn't have got this great picture as the happy couple was heading out of the ceremony!

And onto the reception...there were probably about 12 of us sorority girls there. I do have a complete group shot, but I think it's on Patrick's phone. These are a few of my favorite girls-

Brianne, my best friend Stef and myself.

 Isn't the bride beautiful?! The other two girls on the right of the picture were 2 of my roommates after we moved out of the sorority.

Stef and I

And I can't leave out the best looking guy there ;)

Afterward we headed to Cascade, MT, about a 25 mile drive south to go to the Cascade rodeo street dance. My friend Chay lives there and that's who we stayed with. We were at the street dance for about half hour before deciding to head home to bed. 

We got a good pic of all of us here too. The other preggo in the middle is Chay's sister Shantell. She's due about 2 months before I am.

It was a quick trip over (6 hours) and a quick trip back yesterday, but WELL worth it!

Hope you all had a great weekend too!

Life Lately

I like doing these little life updates once in awhile, because sometimes I feel like I just put random stuff on my blog and you guys don't actually know what I do in my day to day life. Or that you care? Not sure, but my stats tell me people still read my blog so I must be doing something right!

Per the usual, Patrick has had long days working on the farm and hauling grain. That's just the way things go these days. We are starting to see the fields change from green to golden, which means harvest is coming up. Which means we have a LOT of hay to put up in between now and then. 

Last weekend my best friend came to stay with us for a night. We went to a little local festival. I use that term loosely, because the festival at night is really nothing more than a big drunk fest where they block of a section of the street and people can walk from bar to bar. Patrick and my friend had a lot of fun. I was there for work purposes and getting paid, so I was the driver :)

Sunday was spent relaxing and napping, and moving some cows to a different field for the rest of the summer. 

Yesterday, we had our cousin and 2 of his friends come down to help us put up about 2 miles of fence. I work in town, so when they called me to get an attachment for our skid steer, I called and got everything set up, met them at the rental yard and got that taken care of. Then had to call our local USDA office to call about some other paperwork we need. Thankfully my boss is really great about letting me do this stuff during work hours. 

Later I'm informed that I will need to feed these 3 extra boys for the next 3 days, in addition to my  husband and brother that I usually feed too. So off to the store after work for me. I get home and hit the door running. I make blueberry muffins for breakfast, rice krispies and no bake cookies for snacks, then wash a bunch of fruit so they aren't eating just crap food. 

After all of that, I start to cook dinner and make sure they're all fed when they come in at 7:30 p.m. After that, I decide that I need to detail my pickup, because my family is coming next week and my pickup is filthy on the inside. So while they're eating, I clean my pickup. I clean up dinner, then start making lunches for the 5 of them for the next day so I don't have to do it in the morning.

After that, Patrick and I go over to talk to his parents about regular old farm stuff. It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm finally eating my dinner.  Come home and in bed at 11 p.m.

And this morning I got myself ready for work, made sure they had breakfast stuff ready for them, and packed their lunch and snacks for the day. 

I mentioned that my family is coming next week-my mom, grandma, niece and brother's girlfriend. Which means I need to deep clean my house so it's presentable, and why I needed to clean my pickup. They'll be here Monday, and we have a wedding to drive to this weekend-thankfully just for the day. Half the weekend is shot, which means I have to do little stuff each night to get my house ready. 

I'm exhausted just thinking about everything that has to get done each night this week, but I'm taking it one day at a time. Say it with me, "I think I can! I think I can!"

Weekend for the Books

I can't even begin to tell you what an amazing time I had the past 3 days! It all started Thursday night with one of my best friends coming into town. Friday morning we got up, drove to Dickinson, North Dakota, did a little shopping, and came back and just hung out in my backyard in the beautiful weather.

That night we got ready and headed to the Wild Horse Stampede for the annual rodeo. Part of this rodeo is what's called a Wild Horse Race, which I have posted a video of before.

Is it just me, or do other people get choked up when soldiers come out holding a flag and the national anthem plays? Maybe it was just me in this case...but all of these soldiers carrying the flag this year weren't able to come to the rodeo last year, because they were all deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I promise, you do NOT want to miss this video! Basically, they round up 6 wild horses and there are 6 teams of 3 people. The object is to get a saddle on the horse, and have a team member ride the horse to a designated spot in the arena. All three nights this took place, the horses won each night. Also, no people or horses were injured. It gets pretty crazy, but the horses were totally fine afterwards.



Saturday morning I got up bright and early to make the drive to Billings for a wedding of one of my sorority sisters. I got to town early afternoon, did some furniture shopping and headed to the venue.

 The happy couple!

Who needs wedding cake these days when you can have a giant tower of cupcakes! By the way, the wedding food was fantastic, which I think we can all agree makes a wedding THAT much better!

Let me explain the giant goblet the bride is holding in this crazy picture...at our sorority weddings, it's tradition for the girls to get the bride a goblet and decorate it. Usually we use puff paint and ribbon in our sorority's colors. We just put our letters and the couple's name and wedding date on it. I still have mine 5 years later!

Me, Kim, Emily and Emily. Both Emily's and I were roommates in the sorority house.

Waiting to give her the goblet

Kim and Emily enjoying the cupcakes...and right after this pic the top of the cupcake fell off onto the sidewalk :( Party foul!

Me and my Emily :)

Sunday morning we all had brunch together and then I hit the road home. As soon as I got home at 4, I took a 2 hour nap, and then went to bed at 10 and go another 8 hours of sleep! Needless to say I was pretty exhausted after 3 long days of fun!

Hope you guys all had a great weekend as well!