MS practice rides, vaca prep, Grp's bday

The evening of May 24th, when we returned from an action packed trip to the ranch where we branded all the calves, though we were all tired, there was no rest for the weary. Terry had a middle school bike ride planned and even though his heart was giving him weird palpitations, he of course went through with it. 

We had a huge crew! 42 or 43 I think. He leads the middle school bike trip every two years and it's good for the kids to get in a little seat time before the trip (because three days on a bike really hurts your butt). Plus, it weeds out some who are intimidated by even an hour and a half ride.

We began at Founders Park with rain threatening and followed the bike path to Cleghorn Canyon. Once there we biked up and down the canyon twice. Terry bribed the kids to go back up the canyon with ice cream at McDonalds and then didn't deliver because we ran out of time. Ha! Several parents did take their kids for a reward afterwards though. 

At the top of Cleghorn Canyon, and thankfully the rain held off and we were only sprinkled on.

Here's a small snippet of that huge crew on the bike path.

 The next Saturday, May 26th, Terry had another practice ride. It was a much smaller, more committed group. But poor Noah did not feel well upon trucking up Cleghorn Canyon. His stomach demanded his attention... 

The morning after branding Ezra complained of an earache. I thought he had an ear infection since his nose was runny but when I looked I discovered something much worse, a TICK! 

Ticks gross me out more than any other creature. Nothing else really bothers me besides ticks. Something sucking your blood that's hard to remove and can give you life altering diseases? GROSS. I freaked out. I tried putting an alcohol soaked cottonball on it to coax it out but that didn't work. So then I tried the next trick I had read, putting a dish soap soaked cotton ball on the tick. Nope. I tried to steal myself to pull it out with my fingernails but I just couldn't. The heebee geebees were real. I got a tweezer and pulled it out. Terry said the white bit left on the head was skin and that meant I got the head out. 

That day I finished Luna's haircut by trimming her ears and other uneven areas. 

Evie read to the littles for their summer reading program.

Fast forward again, on June 5th Noah also read to the littles.

I made lots and lots of food for our upcoming vacation to Red Lodge and Yellowstone. I was rather  exhausted afterwards.  

GF cookies, GF muffins, GF pasta, tater tot casserole

But as a reward we got to take Noah to Infinity War (didn't think the others were up for such a dark movie).  

We had dropped Evie, Samuel, and Ezra with my folks and when we returned from the movie, we celebrated my dad's 68th birthday since it really was May 24th. 

Happy birthday dad! 

The following day was spent doing laundry and packing. The cat crawled into one of the bags we had got out for packing. Evie thought he was rather cute and that's why she's strangling him. 😜

The night before we left for our trip we took Luna and Trouncer to my folks' house to stay. 

The cat was less than enthused. That is the face of a scaredy cat. 

Luna, however, loves car rides. And she especially loves Evie. 

Evie didn't mind all the attention. And after that, the following day we left for our late spring vacation!