Dan's Sh*tty Website

This has been a busy period for us. We had Ruth's grandparents visit, and had a wonderful time with them. Then after they left much of my family was in the area for my aunt and uncle's 60th anniversary, and of course we had a great time visiting with them (even though one or two of them got rather demanding, insisting that we take them on a tour of the most beautiful areas of Montana, but I suppose going on a drive through Glacier Park is just the burden we have to bear for family; such a sacrifice). Meanwhile Ruth had been preparing for a dollhouse convention--the largest she's done so far.

I didn't have the right lens on for this pic, I was planning on bird rather than macro shooting. But I found all of the activity (and exuberance, at least in the case of the flies on the left) around this beautiful thistle flower too interesting to pass up.

Ruth took this one when the three of us went on a short hike in Glacier Park (the Lower MacDonald Creek oxbow hike). Normally I hate to further reduce the quality of my site by posting pics with me in them, but I thought this one might be worth it.

We took a trip to Glacier Park last weekend to go camping. It was Sophia's fist time sleeping in a tent, and true to form, the girl just loved it. She likes being outside for any reason, and the trees, mountains and bugs were just a whole new area of fascination for her.

I took this pic yesterday (6/5/09) it was a beautiful spring day. Today it snowed much of the morning; Montana has to have some of the craziest weather anywhere.

Fortunately she hasn't yet realized that the juice box makes a good impromptu squirt gun.

This is the sight that Ruth gets to look forward to every morning.

All cats enjoy the sun, but I think that Eliza just might be the head feline priestess of the Cult of the Sun Goddess. (But hey, at least her religion is better than the Scientologists'.)

The sunset was just too beautiful to stay inside, obviously Sophia was enjoying herself.

We branded today. Not the best job, not the absolute worst either, but it really isn’t much fun for anyone concerned—us or the calves. The whole thing almost didn’t happen. We’d arranged to hire some help because we no longer have anyone else working for us, and we can’t do labor intensive jobs like that ourselves (there are only three of us after all). We hired one guy from the nearby Hutterite Colony, and, or so we thought, arranged for another who lives in Fort Benton to come out and help.