Hoofprints: Hay Haulin' Time

Ahh...Labor Day weekend. A time to kick back, relax, and BBQ. Right? Generally that would be true, but tis the season for hay hauling. If you are unfamiliar with that term, it can roughly be translated as 'an incredibly long, hot weekend of blood, sweat, and tears.' The blood and sweat were mine and the tears were Abby's. Let me start at the beginning. When the weather is right, and the prairie grass is tall enough, it is time to cut it down and bale it up. That time was this past weekend. My aunt owns a lot of pasture and every year about this time, she cuts it down and puts it in bales so we can store it in my parents barn for winter feeding. I have three old cows that my parents are keeping for me until I can get land of my own. They are my beautiful ladies. I'll try to post some pictures of them sometime. Anyhow, on Sunday i dropped Abby off with my friend Mandy and hoped for her to not cry the entire time I was gone. You see, I helped get her 150 bales into their barn so I figured the trade was fair. I do the haying, and she does the babysitting. :-) Much to Mandy's disappointment, Abby was not agreeable with the leaving of Mommy. She screamed for at least 1 1/2 hours straight right after I left. Apparently she is not willing to take a bottle from anyone...including me. Then we got to go and get the last 250 bales of hay to put in my parents barn. It was a long hard weekend, but it's done. The bales weigh about 60 pounds each and the weather was nice and hot during the day. So I figure after throwing around that much weight, in that kind of heat, I deserve a nice break. Ten minutes oughta do it.
Of course, on Saturday we got to go to the Drive-In movie theater. It was so much fun. It was a nice family outing. We got to see three movies for a carload price of $10.00. We saw Star Wars: Clone Wars, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Batman: The Dark Knight. Batman was by far the best of the three but Star Wars was fun too. Journey was okay. Alex had fun too. He got to walk around the place and see a lot of kids playing around. He got his fill of junk food and beverages and got to sleep in a make-shift bed in the van backseat. Abby slept in a makeshift bed on the floor and Josh and I watched the movies. It was just like old times...only there were four of us instead of two. My parents went too and we all crawled into bed at 4:00 in the morning. I hope to go again next year.

And seeing as how I haven't blogged in a week, here are some picture updates of the crazy monkeys.