Let's give this a shot!

Alright so this is my first blog and I'm not really sure what to write about/ what I'm doing. I guess I will start by telling you about my summer break so far!

​Summer break for the school system where I work started on the Saturday afternoon of Memeorial Day weekend. (Yeah we had to work on the holiday weeeknd 🙄) All teachers had to be present at graduation which is awesome, but why in the world does graduation ALWAYS have to be at 1 in the afternoon on the Saturday of the holiday weekend ?!?? It's crazy to me, but I'm not paid the big bucks to make those decision.... I guess for me the most frustrating part is the fact that as soon as break starts I want to go to Michigan! I want to be able to spend some much needed relaxation time with my family.
​
Graduation rant over.

​Fast forward 10 hours of driving from Northeast Tennessee to West Michigan where I got about 5 hours of sleep before heading out on a 3 day drive to Saskatchewan Canada!  Talk about being sick of being in a car!!!  It was well worth the sore butt since I got to participate in my first cattle round up and branding.  Holy crap, talk about FUN!!!  My parents and I got to help in bringing in the cattle from the fields to pens around the branding pen.  

​The first day of the festivities consisted of us going out to the fields Friday morning with about 15 people on horses and 3-4 ATV's.  We brought in 5 groups of heifers and their calves to be sorted, one group on Friday night and 3 groups on Saturday.  Friday night was the first round of branding and castrating.  The guys sorted the calves from the mammas and herded the calves into the branding pen.  Once in the branding pen they began to rope the calves by the hind legs (which I will learn how to do very soon because it was extremely handy and looked fun!) and drag them to the middle of the pen.  There the calves were held down and branded, given pain meds, vaccinations and if they were bull calves they castrated them.  This first night I squirted the disinfectant (don't remember the name right now) in where the bulls nuts were cut from, ouch!  Hehe!  Saturday we finished branding and castrating the remaining groups.  I spent much of the day taking pictures and learning what each person was doing since everyone seemed to have their role.  When it was time to bring in and sort the calves of the final group however, I got the chance to help sort off the calves.  This is something I am told that new people do not get the honor of doing very often so I was feeling extremely excited and lucky!

Once all the work was done, it was time for food and drinks!  Woohoo!!   The food was amazing and of course they cooked up the "prairie oysters" from the bull calves...... I was dead set on not eating any of them because... well... ew!  After a little prodding and convincing however I did end up eating one!  I must say if I hadn't known what it was it wouldn't have been bad, but since I new it was a cow nut I gagged a few times just thinking about it! ​

​That was my very exciting first 10 days of summer break and I look forward to going back another year!  Once we made our 25 hour trip in 2 days back to Michigan I spent the rest of my trip visiting my brother and other family and friends.  I even got in 4 rounds of golf in less than 2 weeks!  So that puts you up to speed with my summer break as of the moment... other than the awesome state standards training I attended the past 2 days (maybe I'll go into more about that another day but then again I don't want to bore you... lol)   Feel free to comment and let me know what you think about my first post and I look forward to sharing more about me and my summer!! 

---