We went back to Nevada for spring break and it was so nice and sunny!  We played in the river...in fact the kids played in the river all day.  They had made up some restaurant in the middle of the river where they served up fresh onions, (some kind of weed in the river that they were actually eating, they looked like green onions)  Seaweed on a stick, and seaweed sushi....yum!
     Ryan showed up two days later and had a bull to butcher.  He and the guys had been out cowboying out at gold butte and they had a pretty rough time.  One of the horses he borrowed had been gored to death, Ammon had been hooked by a cow, and the horse he had been riding was hooked too.  She and Ammon were both hobbling around.  They had been eating rabbit, and rattlesnake (which they love), but any time anyone eats rattlesnake it means that there are rattlesnakes around and that is always a scary thing.
     He and I butchered the bull which was kind of a new experience for me.  Our dog Farley kept taking certain pieces of the bulls guts and dragging them around.  It made me want to throw up a little when he was chewing on the lungs and kidneys.  Yuck.  Anyhow, Ryan is really skilled and experienced in the butchering arena and for that I am very grateful.  I think he was still a little shocked at the horse being gored out from under him.  A bull charged and gored the horse right through the heart with a single hit.  The second time he hit he gutted the horse with one swoop which left Ryan looking for cover from the raging bull.  The problem with Gold Butte is that the cattle out there have not been worked for a long time.  This means that instead of steers out roaming the range, there are mainly bulls.  These bulls haven't had hardly any contact with people, and because of this they are pretty hot tempered.  I was sad for the horse, but glad that Ryan was ok.  The bull we were butchering was a different one from the one that hit the horse.  They had a lot of pretty serious encouonters with bulls all week.  This one got choked down when he got roped by one of the cowboys.
     Anyhow, after we were done with the butchering we went back out to Gold Butte to camp so Ryan could assist with the round-up.  We got out there to find that Rooshkie only had one shoe.  I have totally lost control in this arena.  I have the hardest time keeping track of everyone's shoes and coats etc.  Chlo even expects me to keep track of trinkets like favorite rocks and weeds and stuff.  I simply cannot keep up any more.  So, Jerusha walked around camp for three days with one shoe.  Great.  Chlo ended up wearing one of Jazzerz shirts the last day too.  Just the shirt.  We all looked pretty hammered.  Poor Chlo.
     The wildflowers were amazing this year.  I love that range when it gets plenty of water because it has a beautiful green carpet dotted with different colors of wildflowers everywhere.  This year it was filled with yellow California poppies, Orange slippery elm and some deep purple flowers.  I loved it out there.  We drank out of the water trough, climbed rocks and had a great talk about the resurrection on Easter morning.  Rooshkie never complained once about only having one shoe.
     At night, we slept out under the stars.  It was great until at 3am on the second night when I heard Ryan yell, "BOO"  really loud.  I was stirred out of a deep sleep and I thought that some man was in camp trying to scare me.  Ryan explained that the horses had all gotten out and that we just about got trompled.  He woke up to one of the horses in his face and so he booed to scare it away.  I am still not sure what those horses were up to.  Arden's horse Chumacko (sp?) had been dilly dallying around the whole time and he had been all over the place.

The top picture shows the flowers, the second one shows rooshkie with her one shoe, the third shows a Chlo in misery, and the fourth shows the kids playing in the river.  Their restaurant is located in the background.