PW wanna-be

Conveniently, the half-way-point of our 5 1/2 hour trek back to Minnesota from Eureka, is my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Richard's house. It would truly be an understatement to say that the flowing snacks, cans of pop, the break from driving, and their bathroom, have all "come in handy" a time or two in the past 10 years.

And aside from always being such gracious hosts at a spur of the moment, there's one thing about Nancy and Richard's place that leaves my city-kids in a state of wonder and awe.

They live on a ranch.

Yep. A real ranch. Like with cows and horses and dogs and 4-wheelers.


As the kids were checking out the cows and the cows were checking out the kids, guess who I thought of? Yep - you know it...I felt just like The Pioneer Woman standing there beside the barn, holding my camera, watching my "punks" next to those huge beasts, and breathing in the manure-scented air.

So, here are some Pioneer Woman-esque photos loaded with lots of dirty, stinky cows. And for any of you PhotoShop junkies out there, I even used Ree's trick of using the Hard Light filter on some them. You know...in her honor.

After all, she is my blog hero.



It was so funny to see all the kids lined up to look at the cows. They were all holding out grass for the cows to eat. Funny thing is, I bet the kids would have totally freaked out if one of them would have actually come over to get a little snack.

Something tells me that these city-kids wouldn't stand a chance in this stand-off...


OK...so I'm not trained in Animal Science and I've actually never really been around cows, but even I could see that something wasn't right here. Poor mama cow.

While looking at this picture, I can't help but be reminded of those God-awful, miserable, hormonally-crazed days of breast feeding. Sorry, I digress...