Week 7 Recap (including Girls Night Out and Christmas in July)

First of all, I apologize for not getting to this sooner...it's been a heck of a couple of weeks (having been sick and feeling like I'm hitting the infamous mid-summer 'wall' and banging my head against it doesn't help) with SO much happening. But I'm going to try to get a successful recap going anyway.

Sunset over Estes Cone...Darron thinks I should sent it in to a magazine contest or something, but he has a tendency of over-exaggerating how good something is. Meh.

David's family came to visit, and he and his brother were playing a leetle music after fireside. :P

Housekeeping gals!

And s'mores. Which are very important.

More fog...it's been so crazy lately weather-wise. So much rain and cloud cover.

EB and Copper!

One of the former wranglers came as a guest with her family, so she helped jingle most mornings.

Oh yes...so part of week 7 I was pretty sick with coughing, general malaise, headache, feeling incredibly tired, sore throat, etc, so I got quarantined for two days on pain of physical harm by the wranglers. So after two days I ventured out and was allowed to go pull weeds in the pasture with Miss Bev (she's married, but all of the wives of permanent staff we call 'miss'). So we spent all day pulling thistles, and this was our second pile in a little over an hour. There were SO. MANY. THISTLES. Y'all. I don't even know how to describe the sheer amount of thistles. It was CRAZY.

And then after pulling weeds all day I meandered over to the barn to sit in the shade, drink some water, and observe some of the following shenanigans. Observe:

Here we have a Darron, hauling a water trough...

...and managing to look very pathetic at the same time. (His words, not mine.)

Andrew!

Speaking of Andrew, this is probably one of my favorite pictures of him that I've gotten thus far.

Also speaking of favorite pictures, here's a great one of Casey. :D

Day 2 of pulling weeds! This time I was alone, with just my thoughts, the weeds, a trash bag, and some weedkiller.

Around noon that day I had my head down amongst the weeds, when an enormous crack of thunder sounded over my head and I looked up to see this marching over Longs:

Yeah. Let's just say that I grabbed my stuff and hauled my little wagon like it was on fire back to the maintenance shed. The worst part was that all the wranglers were out on rides, so Missy (the former wrangler/current guest) and I were the only ones in the barn to listen to the chaos coming over the radio. No one got hurt, and everyone got back safely with a good soaking and a modicum of pain from the hail, but it was pretty scary for a little while.

When the wranglers got back I ran around helping pull saddles off and put them away, and during a lull they hauled butt and got the horses jingled out before it could cut loose again.

This was the bit that cut loose...the lightning was insane and the rain was absolutely crazy. But it was so much fun. :3 And then we got to spend lots of time inside because it was raining/hailing/lightning too much for anyone to do anything. It was awesome.

Friday morning! We were celebrating Christmas in July, and my secret santa made sure that I got to ride on the early morning 'adventure ride' (read: a little trotting and loping to liven things up) to wrangler breakfast. I rode the Rascally horse again, and even got to jingle on him beforehand.

Speaking of jingling on Rascal: I would like to reiterate that he is an awesome horse on the trail and AWFUL to jingle on. He's so barn and buddy sour that it's almost impossible to get him to go in a straight line, and he reared with me once in the pasture. It made me frustrated rather than angry, and I got after him for it, but he needs a lot of work.

Weirdly enough I have an affinity for problem horses...but I doubt they'll let me work on him. I'm just hoping to get to ride Remington again at some point (Darron is gone for a month on an overseas tour--has to do with the Air Force--and Luke has implied that they need someone to ride Remington at least a few times in the interim. Needless to say I volunteered rather quickly. But we'll see if anything comes of it).

On a good note, I've been getting ideas from Rascal for the sequel to my last NaNovel/the next NaNovel. Mwahaha.

Anne (on the right) got to go on a ride with Claire M a couple of days before she left...I think she had a blast. ^-^

And this is where we get into girls' night. The Thursday before Saturday I had been plotting a going away party for Anne with Cody and Jason, but that idea got shot down because the higher-ups didn't want anyone to feel left out. So Friday we get these invitations on all of our beds, and talk about curious. Gah.

Also, Secret Santa and birthday presents (Kay's is on the right, Moriah's is on the left). Moriah turned 22, and we had to celebrate somehow. :P

Moriah's hair in a waterfall braid, courtesy of the lovely Melanie!

My hair with fishtail braids, also courtesy of Melanie. (My hair really isn't that red...kinda wish it was, but have to blame the lighting here)

Speaking of Melanie, there's the lady herself! I LOVE her skirt.

Roomies!

Our gang, loaded up in the Pickle and awaiting a drive to the undisclosed location...

The guys were all wearing sunglasses and being very secretive. O.e

Storytime! Jason drove the Pickle, and about a mile down the road he said 'oh no, I've forgotten my wallet' and claimed that we had to turn around. Cody and Darron were driving the other vehicles and they insisted on turning around and following us. Needless to say their ruse wasn't exactly subtle, and we figured out that they were just taking us back to the ranch. We pulled up to the kitchen and were given a welcoming reception by the remaining guys as they cheered us in and escorted us on their arms. It was awesome.

Then, they treated us to supper (a bountiful feast of KFC beautifully laid out on the nice dishes--I almost died laughing) and conversation and all the little niceties before telling us that we needed to go load up in the vehicles again.

Group shot...we looked awesome. :3

So after pictures we loaded up, they drove us to the rec hall, and escorted us into said hall to see...

...this. :3

Also, there was sparkling apple juice and they freakin' TOASTED us. Talk about awesome.

The cake was for Moriah's birthday...I'm glad that they remembered her. ^-^

Some of the gentlemen to put on the evening...

These two are roommates, and make me smile.

Housekeeping...

...and housekeeping being silly. XD

Roomies again!

The rest of the housekeeping gang!

We can't help being silly...what can I say?

Oh yes, and there was dancing!

Kay and Anna were being crazy and came out to dance to 'You Don't Know You're Beautiful'. I tell you what, that song has become the anthem of this summer thanks to Alijah.

And then everyone joined in and it got CRAZY. O.o

Then somehow Moriah got shoved in the middle and everyone started singing to her and it was AWESOME.

Also, this is quite easily my favorite picture of the entire evening. It represents everyone so well, somehow.

After dancing we all changed into warm clothes and went down to the pool where they had set up a projector, all the chairs were arranged like a theater, and they served us popcorn and had an ice cream bar while we watched Father of the Bride. Talk about a fantastic evening--the guys here are so incredible. While toasting us they said that we're the glue to hold the place together and said so many great things, but I think they give themselves too little credit.

Oh! Finished journals!

This one's for Kay...

...and this one's for Moriah. Emily Brown made the covers and stamped them while I made the paper signatures, and it makes me want to start making journals again. :3

Downstairs! It was all decorated for Christmas, as you can tell.

Frosty the Refrigerator. Isn't he majestic?

Gift exchange! I won't caption all of these, but it was awesome. Just sayin'.

Oh! I had to get all these pictures. Emily made a storybook for Cam based off of 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?' and it was the cutest thing ever.

NO PURPLE!!

So yes...the recap for Week 7 is very long in coming, but here it finally is. And here it is, with week 10 almost about to start and people have left, more people have arrived....sigh. So much craziness. See you soon with week 8!