Pictures from the homestead

After church on Sunday morning, the whole crew met up for Mother's day lunch at our favorite homestyle cookin' joint.  (The whole crew = my grandparents, my parents, my aunt & uncle, cousin & his wife, my sister & her kids, Jay & me.)  The restaurant was giving away free red velvet cake to all the mothers, but as my cousin's wife and I learned, they didn't bother to ask who was a mother and who was not.  All of us adult women at the table got a piece.  I suppose I earned my piece by being the best auntie in the world & she earned hers by being a mommy to a beagle.

Jay and I followed my parents (who were driving my sister's minivan with her crew in toe) back to their house to just hang out for the afternoon.  We found ourselves out by the swing set.  After the Princess demostrated her mad skillz on the monkey bars, we decided to go track down Beautiful the donkey.

My grandparents came over to the house as we were loading up, so they decided to join us on our journey.  Mamaw hates having her picture taken so for the entire afternoon these are the only shots we were able to get of her.

Jay was slightly more creative getting his picture of her than I was. 

He captioned this one "sexiness in a pickup", but prefaced that the redneck in him wanted it to be a picture of me holding a beer can, rather than a Pepsi can.

We found Beautiful on the back part of the farm, protecting her charges.

My pawaw got Beautiful because several of his calves went missing the night they were born - no doubt cyotes were to blame.  Its her job to protect them, kick the crap out of anyone who tries to mess with them.  Although she's not above kicking them if they come between her and her feed.

At first the Princess didn't want to get her shoes dirty, so she requested that Jay hold her.  She quickly got over that though and got down to the business of letting the donkey eat out of her hand.  Beautiful sneezed on her, so the Princess had enough.  I stepped in to help Jay out feeding the donkey.

The countrified men looked on, probably amazed that what they consider chores we consider a fun way to spend the afternoon.

We call this section of the farm "honeymoon lane" because my Papaw (on the right) had to go milk cows on this part of the farm on his wedding night. 

I'm not sure how I became lucky enough to get all blessings of growing up on land this beautiful and none of the chores, but I'm not going to complain!