The LaRue life...: September 2017

Before we get into September, gotta give a shout out to my girl Liz.

At the end of last month there was a little reunion for the Schaumburg Stake. (where i grew up in chicago, a lot of people from the stake have moved out to utah so we all got together, it was great to see everyone, it had been 10 years since i'd seen some of them!)

But anway i went down with Liz and it's always fun to catch up with her!

If you look up the word "September" in the dictionary, the definition would be something along the lines of: the month of the LaRue rodeo, all things are crazy.

That pretty much sums it up. Lets get started.

One day I was driving home from work, only about 1 min away from where we live (on a windey dirt road) and I was going a little too fast around one of the bends and I lost control and slid off the road down into a grain field. Now honestly it was no big deal, I didnt hurt the car, I didn't hit anything. The crappy part though was that the car had an open box of peaches in front seat, 2 pieces of pizza on my lap, an open box of laundry soap (the powder kind) laundry in the back seat, andddd a 6 gallon gas can that slammed against the back of the driver seat when we thudded down the small hill, breaking open an spilling gasoline all over the laundry, my pizza, and myself, somehow getting into my mouth and left eye. Thank goodness i had a full water bottle because there was a lot of spitting and eye rinsing that followed. But after the excitement I just got back in the car and drove home, reaking of gasoline.

My car stunk for days, but the good thing that came out of it was I got my car detailed and it was beautiful! I felt very fancy.

On to some other depressing news-The mini bull we borrowed from Jon's friend, to breed to our lowlines.. Well.. He had somewhat of an accident.

Let me do some 'splaning.

We have a small herd of angus lowline cows. Not many people around here have them. So breeding is a bit complicated sometimes. Well, Jon's friend Tyler owns a mini, well, like, a micro mini charolais bull. Now if you Google "charolais bull" you'll see something like this (this is a photo of a charolais bull next to a lowline bull.

But now imagine that white bull practically half the size of the black one... Thats what Tyler's bull looks like. Anywayyyy long story short. When a little teenie guy tries to breed females that are bigger than him sometimes bad things happen.

We broke him.

So.... Tyler's bull is no longer masculine, you could say.

SO we were in quite a pickle. The cows needed to be bred so we finally bought our own lowline bull and glad we did, this guy is a beast!

His name is spud, he is a regiatered lowline Angus bull and I love him lol. If that's not the goofiest looking thing you've ever seen... Idk what is!.

Moving on. As some of you may know Jon has always wanted to be a cattle man. It's something we've been working towards our whole marriage and we have finally come to a place where things have worked out quite perfectly for us. So, jon began meeting with rhe FSA and we are finally starting our herd! A few weeks ago the first load of cows arrived.

We branded them, tagged, and vaccinated. It was a good time. I'm not huge into the participating of burning animal flesh, but I was more than happy to prep ear tags, fill vaccinations, and keep track of #s on the tablet. It was actually pretty exciting!

Jon's dad and brother jake, and brother in law alex came up to help. The LaRue boys usually put on a good rodeo regardless of if there are cows involved or not! ;)

This first batch we only branded the bull and the lowlines. But in November we will do a big brand and that'll be a rodeo for sure! (Honestly I dont really even like rodeos, thats just the only word I can think of to describe all this stuff haha)

Thats tylers mini bull! Hes like the size of our calves!

Our brand!! It's obviously a J L but i tell jon it looks like the PI symbol.

The next part of the rodeo was when we had to move the horses from the pen about 5 miles away. We decided to bring them over to our place and at the time i was still too scared to ride so it consisted of Jon riding Jack, while leading the colt, the 2 mares following along, and me driving behind the colt. They only ran off a few times. Good times.

The next rodeo starts with Pete. Who is pete? Well he's the new dog we bought, after we sold Quincy, cuz you know me, i trade dogs on the black market like nobody's business.

Pete though, is already trained on cows and he is awesome. The first day we brought him home we put him to work right away. We were out chasing Tyler's little bull, becuase he got out of the fence (which was a whole other rodeo in and of itself, at one point the stupid thing fell into a hole and we had to use a tractor to pull him out..

But anyway, back to pete. We were all chasing this bull, and Pete ran under the fence, which happened to be an electric fence, which apparently he's never encountered before because he took off and we could find him. He was gone all night, and then the next morning while i was putting up lost dog signs i got a call that my neighbor found him. Thank GOODNESS!
So we have pete back. He knows to avoid the fence now.

But then that next morning we woke up to missing horses! Come on!! So jon spent allll saturday out looking for and bringing back these horses, while i hung out at the laundromat ( i guess i skipped a couple weeks because there was ton of laundry! sheesh!)

All the horses shamefully hiding in the shed... they know they're in trouble!

Poncho is still adorable.

I was finally brave, and got on a horse again! (it only took me 10 months since my accident!)

And i still love my job, It's a great place to work and great people to work for. i mean, how many office's magazine tables look like this?