*Update: Adoption & Our New Ranch*

We've been a ball of stress/excitement/exhaustion around here lately because... wait for it...

1. We bought another ranch

and...

2. We are all ready to start our application process for adoption!

I get giddy and/or more like panicked just thinking about it all! This time next year we could possibly have a child, in a brand new house, on our very own Idaho ranch! Joey, his older brother Brett his dad (Monty) all decided to expand our ranching business, and even though this new ranch (Winecup Land & Livestock) will be a "separate" operation from the Winecup Cattle Co. here in UT, we will still just be "The Winecup Bunch". Joey will still continue to work for the WC Co. and someday, however it all works out, it will all be one big operation. But, for the sake of not losing our minds with the particulars they will be considered 2 different ranching operations run by the same 3 guys... Make sense? As for The WC L&L ranch.... It's located on the northern side of Bear Lake, in a beautiful location. It is smaller than the WC Co., it has 450 acres and can run around 300 head of cows and we also have a summer forest permit close by for the same amount of cattle. It has a super nice shop, barn, bunk house, scales, corrals and outdoor arena. AND... it comes with about 1000 head of cats... They run the place. We're in love with it. As for the cattle, Joey has applied for a 1st time Ag. loan and we have already bought 5 bulls and are looking at about 90 head of cows at the moment and are in the market for around 100-200 more before they start to calve and prices sky-rocket more than they already have (so, if anyone knows anyone with bred, nice looking, Angus cows who calve around the end of March/early April for sale PLEASE let us know!). And wish us luck... this is a big step for us all!

As for our adoption process, I'm glad to say we have decided on one adoption agency for now. We decided to go through LDS Family Services and we are working with a couple different offices here in UT. The wait has been because of 2 things... the first was the decision of which adoption agency(ies) to go with and second was when we decided on LDSFS we had to have our LDS Bishop fill out a letter of recommendation and he must have been pretty busy because it took him quite a while to get them that letter. But, as of this past Friday we are now in the LDSFS adoption system and working on getting all of our paperwork started, finished and turned in! We also have to take some classes before we are all ready to be eligible to adopt! I will keep this blog and also the blog we made for our adoption updated on how this process is going and when exactly we are "up" for adoption! Hopefully it will only take a couple months and then when all of our paperwork and classes are done with it can take anywhere from that next week to... well, a long time. So here's to prayer and faith and hoping that we are meant to adopt a beautiful little person into our family someday (soon we hope!).

Here is the blog we made specifically for our adoption process. We would love it if you would share this blog with others. It will be a little less about our personal everyday going ons and more about us and our adoption journey. I will be working on it more and more (right now it isn't anything special and I have hardly written anything on it...). If anyone has any suggestions for this blog or would like to help "spruce" it up a little please, let us know! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers we have gotten this far, we appreciate every little bit!

http://waitingforourlilcowboyorcowgirl.blogspot.com/

*My Sweet Puppy & The US President ;)*

I know I have posted this picture before but I am in love with it. He's the sweetest little guy. I can't believe how far he's come from that scared, shaky, untrusting, little piece of skin and bones he was when I brought him home!

 And here are couple pictures I took of our kitty Mr. President a couple weeks ago. He's gotten big. He look almost exactly like his big sister Opi except he has white whiskers and a bigger white spot on his chest. As for personalities they are complete opposites, I don't know if it's because he is an outdoor cat and she is an indoor cat or what but he is super sweet and she's the Devil's mistress... Ain't he cute!?!

*1st Snow Of Our 2011-2012 Winter*

These are for my parents who are missing out on our Fall snow storm. The 1st picture I took earlier today. Look at how blue, all I did was enhance the whole photo slightly, it's crazy how our world went from a brilliant green to a chilly blue in just a few weeks! 

This 2nd picture was taken just a few minutes ago. It's getting dark and cold out. And I think it's getting ready to snow again. Well, it was a beautiful 1 week of Fall we got to enjoy. I guess there is some good to this weather, the cows will most likely head down from the mountains sooner than later so we can get them home. It's definitely not my house where it's outrageously cold because I haven't had anyone come get our chimney cleaned so we can have a fire in the wood burning stove because we can't afford to heat our 150 year old house that has absolutely no insulation whatsoever. I worked at the boat shop today and it was funny to watch Scott & Kendall work... Kendall had to hold up a heater while Scott glued the small wooden pieces in the screw holes, they had about a thousand or more to do hahaha. The shop has the same problem as my house, it has no insulation just yet. So I wake up and freeze, go to work and freeze, come home and freeze again. I'm SO excited for winter :) Anyway, here's the pretty awesome picture I got...

*Coldmorning*

Brrrrr, it was cold this morning but, also, gorgeous with the sun shining. I wish I would have had a better camera to capture it but I did my best:

We are getting ready to go round up our first calf heifers to Scour guard, "Big Girl Tag"(as Joey calls it), and Preg check. At least the sun is shining :) I'm gonna try and take some pictures. Have a great day! 

*Tundra- Right Here, Right Now*

Goodmorning ranch

It's a mere -15 degrees and probably dropping

I've forgotten what my face feels like

Oh it's great to be home... {sigh}

*Got The Babies Out In Time*

Wow, talk about a thankful month. Lots of family and friends have been loosing calves to this horrible weather we've been having. A family even lost TEN, 8 in that nasty blizzard last week and 2 afterwards. We were able to ship our calvies and get them on their way (THANKFULLY) the weekend before the storm. We ended up, unfortunately, loosing one of our small calves we had to keep because she was too little to sell just then. But, only one compared to what we could have lost was totally okay with us! We haven't lost any replacement heifers. They are all beautiful and doing great, and they are even weaned! Ahh, if only it were always like this. AND, to top it off we got a call from someone at the base of the mountains where we run half the herd in the summer that two pair showed up at their place and to come and get them. Ended up being two HUGE steer and their mommies. Perfect! I like to see Joe & his dad puff out their chests and be happy every once in a while. Joey loves every second of this life.  Sometimes, I'm sad to admit, I just need a month like this one to boost my faith on this livelihood. Now we have a breather before we ship half the cows out to our winter range and a while before the new babies start to arrive this winter!

*Black & White Day At The Winecup*

Getting vaccinations ready

Ready to go sort the calves from the cows

All the Mommas

A couple bulls showing off

Refilling syringes & recording heifers(females) and steers(males) 

Dogs waiting for the calves to run through the shoot

Calves in the lane being tagged & vaccinated

The Winecup 

*Round-up Time*

Who in their right minds wake up 2 hours before the sun has even made an appearance??? Oh, yeah.....

We do!

Monday was one of the big round-up days for the Winecup.  We woke up at 5:30, drove over an hour to the mountains, unloaded the horses and gathered the cows.  We had to push them to the corrals at the bottom of the mountains so we could load them in the semis and get them home! 

Pretty sunrise on our way to the mountains near Star Valley 

Just an example of where we were riding and the long line of cows & calves we were herding.  It was so beautiful with fall colors and clear skies!  The ride only takes about 4 hours or a little more, but when the sun came out it made everything seem A LOT longer!

He's too cute!

So beautiful! But, holy for dust!  It got in every crook and cranny on my body, my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my ears, my hair, covered my body and clothes with an inch of nastiness... So, needless to say a shower and a blown nose later I was a happy camper!

Hehe what did I tell you about dust.  He looks a bit wild.  We were all kind of twitchy on the ride home 

Yay! We did it!!!

Beautiful sunset on the drive home. Ahhh

*They've Arrived In Full Force*

Okay, so remember how I said I LOVE calving season? Well, this weekend not so much. We have 2 new little ones that were born this week. We moved all our cows here at the ranch down a field and because it is winter they have to be fed hay everyday. When the cows were being moved there was a cow with her brand new calf that we left behind to give the calf a few days to get strong so it will be able to walk the whole way. So, yesterday Joey and I got on our horses and rode out there to find the cow and her calf to finally move to the field with all the other cows so the cow could get some good hay but..... we couldn't find her calf ANYWHERE. By then the wind had picked up and it had started snowing hard. We both had 4-5 layers of clothes on, gloves, hats and all that but good heck it was still FREEZING. The problem with this field is there are loads of batches of cattails in the middle of small half frozen half slushy/muddy/sticky swamps. We looked everywhere the calf could be besides in the mini swamps but couldn't find it. And the stupid, ignorant mother would not lead us to it for the life of her. So then we chanced riding our horses through the accident-waiting-to-happen swamp to keep looking for it. After TWO hours in the wet, literally bone chilling blizzard we decided the calf was either dead in the swamp and the cow had forgotten about it, or it was tucked in the shelter of the cattails and the cow just didn't want us anywhere near it. SO, finally... but unfortunately we headed back home. But, Rancher Joe remembered one of the neighbor cows had made her way through a fence into our herd and he decided we'd just cut her out and take her home. We spent a few minutes trying to find a yellow and green ear tagged cow in the middle of a bunch of pink tagged cows. When we finally found her and started cutting her out everything was going fine... THEN she realized how far we had led her away from the other cows and she turned and started after the horses... Joy... Joey lost his hat and my horse Scar thought he was the cutting champion of the world and figured he could take on the cow till I whirled him out of the way right as she came at us. To say the least we left our 2 1/2 hour expedition empty handed, snowman like and pretty ticked off. AHH it's days like this I have to ask Joey what the heck his grandpa was thinking to start a ranch here in good ol' Randolph. And now today it is a blue sky, windless, beautiful sabbath day in which we don't work at all... Go figure.

*Winter's Ending At The Wine-Cup Cattle Co.*

It's almost here! My favorite time of the year around here. The babies are about to arrive! When they are here it's kind of bitter/sweet, we can loose them so easy to many things, weather, disease, bad mothers, premature and many other things. BUT, they are so adorable! And it's a rush when you can save ones life, not only to see them live another day but also they are pretty pricey little squirts to loose so it's always nice to have as many spared as possible. Joe's favorite thing is to see them runnin' around, all legs with their little tails sticking strait in the air. Last calving season it almost seemed like we were bringing more calves back to the shop to the calf incubator so they could warm up and live, and shooting calves up with antibiotics than calves that were able to stay alive on their own. I love calving, lots of work but worth it!

My baby girl being shy as usual.

Vidalia hangin' out with the grown ups. She's gotten SO big. Can't wait to ride her!

Some of the soon to be mama's enjoying some mineral.

They are all about to pop it's kinda hilarious.

We had a couple calves born pretty early. This one is one of the 1 month olds.

This is the other month old calf. He's a cutie.

This picture is for Jared. There's more where that came from :) Can't wait for you to come visit. We'll let you rake all of them out and spread them around for us hehe.

Our 1st Month Together

Joey started school about a month ago and is enjoying it as much as you can enjoy school :) I have been working at Checker auto parts for the same store that 4 of Joe's sisters and also his brother Tom have all worked at. We have a cute apartment there in Logan, UT and it is finally about all put together! I have been trying to balance working, cleaning the apartment, cooking dinners and being an all around good house wife haha. Joey is an awesome Hubby and I am so thankful I have him! We've been back to the temple a couple times and have gone on quite a few dates. He's so good to me.

Pretty much every weekend since we've been married Joey & I have been in Randolph. Joe and Tom finally finished mowing, bailing and moving the hay that they have been working on all summer! Yay! We've also been moving some of the cows and their calves home to the ranch. We still have the ones up in the ID mountains to bring home which we should be doing here in the next week or so. Joe also just does some odds and ends around the ranch and can't sit inside for more than 30 minutes when he is back home on the ranch. He's been shoeing the horses and getting them ready for some rough rides up in the mountains.

Other than that we've just been enjoying being newlyweds. AND no babies yet :) haha.

Some of the bales Joey had been working on. Beautiful! Thank goodness it's all done! My dog Hagen (who is pregnant again we are pretty sure) and Joe's dog Blue sleeping at Joe's feet in the tractor with him keeping him company.

Joey shoeing Panama. He was a good boy and stood nice and still for Joe. His other horse Nibbs on the other hand was a pain in the rear, he'd never had shoes put on him before. It was interesting.

Nice butt shot haha.

Mid-Swing shot.

Our first real homemade dinner in our new apartment haha.

Joey picked me a flower while we were on a walk together. He's such a sweetheart :)