Sunday, October 31, 2010

Kids Dressed Up





































































Here are pictures of this kids in costume. Not all the costumes are Halloween costumes, but they all could have been Halloween costumes.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Orville the Kid





I was randomly thinking about Orville the other day and giggling at his antics as a little boy. I remember that he loved the Disney Movie Flight of the Navigator. He thought the line, "See you later, Navigator!" was hysterical.
Orville was the only one of the children that was a biter. As a two-year-old, if something wasn't going his way, lookout! He would bite and then sit there innocently with an expression that said, "What's this all about?I'm just sitting here minding my own business."
He was about five months old when Prudence and Petunia went back to school after summer vacation. He became really fussy every morning when they left for school. I would venture to guess he was wondering where his entertainment committee went.
When we moved into Leisure Village while we built our house, Orville loved it! There were kids everywhere to play with. He thought Laser (as he said) Village rocked. One of the kids there was devastated that Orville had to go with our family when we moved.
Orville's uncle gave us an animated video of some raisins singing a certain kind of music which Orville watched every morning. Later we were at the mall when one of the songs from the video came on. He turned to me and said, "That's raisin music!"
I wouldn't have missed out on having Orville in our family.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Horses

This week Pippi will have a birthday. Since she likes horses so much, I thought I would share some horse stories. Past members of our family had a lot of dealings with horses. Here are some of the stories I remember:

THE HORSE WHO REFUSED TO MOVE
My Mom was born on a farm near Sugarville, Utah. They had a mare who was a special horse. Mom’s family was forced to sell the farm when the government or some other entity began pumping water out of the ground to drain a swamp or something. Then, the well on the family farm went dry. They sold their mare to the neighbors. Later the neighbors moved too. Years later, some of Mom’s family went back to the farm where the found the mare still living on the abandoned farm.

RACE HORSES
My Great grandfather Oscar A. Robertson came to Montana in 1864. Believe it or not, at one time in his life he had race horses. Here is the story in my father’s words:
Q. Didn’t you say he [O.A. Robertson] gambled a lot of his money away too?
A. Well, he really wasn’t a gambler. He had race horses. He spent a lot of money on race horses. Now, he really didn’t gamble any money away because from what my Dad [O.D. Robertson] told me anyway, and what George Cooney said (who used to ride for him as a jockey when he was a young fellow), that he never knew him [O.A. Robertson] to lose a race. He bet quite heavily on them. They’d put up a $50,000 purse - winner take all. And instead of running just one race, they’d run heats. And he’d [O.A. Robertson] bet on each heat. Generally, they’d let the opposition win the first heat. And they’d really bet on the second heat. They’d just nip ‘em on the second heat. And on the last heat, they’d whop ‘em good!
George Cooney said he never knew of O.A. Robertson to lose any of those match races , and they put up a $50,000 purse. Of course, they used to have a lot of money. And they spent a lot of money on horses because he sent some of his brood mares back to Kentucky after the railroad came through and had them bred at $5,000 a piece to raise colts. So you know, he had the best there were in those days. He had good blooded stock.

In addition, my Uncle Les owned race horses and spent quite a few years on the race horse circuit. My Uncle Gene also owned race horses.


BREAKING HORSES
My grandfather, O.D. Robertson used to break horses so they could be ridden. He said it took two weeks. Once he spent two weeks breaking horses for a man, and the man never paid him. Years later when the man passed away, Grandpa submitted a claim against the estate for his money. He got the money he was owed.

BRANDS AND HORSES
My grandfather had a brand, but I can’t remember what it was. I know it had an R in it. To use it on horses, he had to brand his horses on their jaws. That wasn’t a good place to brand horses, so he used my grandma’s brand, the lazy B K to brand the horses on their hip, which was a better place.

HORSE RANCH
In Grandpa’s [O.D. Robertson] own words:
I took up a ranch and filed a Quit claim Deed. You could prove up in five years, see, but it proved to be on railroad land. After I lived on it for three years, the railroad took it away from me. And then I bought from the railroad company. I run horses there. I had a regular (?) horse ranch. I bought a bunch of horses at an administrative sale and took them down there. Those horses wasn’t worth nothing then. Four dollars a head I paid for them, borrowing money from the Union Bank and Trust Company to buy them with. Then I brought these horses and shipped some of them to Sioux City, Iowa – a hundred head of them; a hundred head of them to St. Louis, Missouri. Got eighty dollars a head for them. Then, I shipped the rest to Canada and sold them up there.
When they had this boom in Alaska, I sold out my ranch there and went to the Dawson City Stampede.

MY MOM & HORSES
My Mom was very leery of horses. I gather, she'd seen some terrible accidents and deaths that involved horses. I remember both her and my Dad saying, "You never can tell what a horse is going to do."

Pumpkins


This year I grew a pumpkin for each of my grandchildren. When are you coming to pick them up?

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Stacy's Garden


The garden I planted in memory of Stacy is doing the best it has ever done. Max has only dug it up once this summer. And he only dug up a few white carnations.
Another plus is that the deer don't seem to like the flowers I planted.

Cars that Go Fast


Wilbur knows how to make cars go fast.