Matt hit the quarter century mark on Tuesday and we celebrated like any proper residents of the Lone Star State should - by castrating some calves. Okay, this wasn't actually Matt's preferred birthday activity, but Mom and Dad needed our help with the seven bull calves. So we trucked up to the ranch. Mike Shannon and Claude Locke were also wrangling with us. Mom and Dad had already trapped the boys in the barn, so we had part of our work done for us. We had to catch each calf with a rope around their neck, the men tackled the poor little boy, spread their back legs apart, and Dad popped an industrial-strength rubber band around their balls. The end. Those pesky things should just drop off eventually. It sounds pretty horrific but it is a lot less painful and more sanitary than cutting things.
After the castration, we helped Claude play with his dock (work temporarily halted when he dropped his wrench into the lake...oops). Then we messed around for a while. Matt and I are going with Mike and his daughter to a Tool concert next month, so we exposed the 'rents to their music before dinner. Mom made us an awesome birthday dinner - Cornish game hen, wild rice, fresh green beans, with pineapple upside down cake for dessert. Mike stuck around for both dinner and the requisite bonfire afterwards, which was really fun. Overnight we had a gnarly storm - mostly LOUD wind and rain at the ranch, but it spawned tornadoes in both the Metroplex and College Station. The morning dawned clear though, enabling us to do some chainsawing and burning of another dead tree, and Mom and I sprayed the cows for black flies.
Matt and I went on to Dallas on Wednesday so we could have birthday celebration #2. Matt bowled with Dad and Jerry that afternoon, and then we went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner with John and Susie, had angel food cake with pink icing (a Matt tradition) for dessert, and watched the last two episodes of Planet Earth on the Roberts' HD. Then we came on back to College Station yesterday.
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