The Circus That was Branding...

One of our favorite family activities is the yearly branding of the calves. This year it was more like a circus!! It started snowing just as they were getting everything set up, but my dad decided to go for it anyway. Everything went pretty smoothly at first other than the crew was getting completely drenched! Then towards the end, one little calf caused all kinds of chaos when it slipped out before being branded. Oh how I wish I would have had my camera to catch all the action! The ground was snow-covered and slippery and wasn't all too condusive to running or making sharp corners and several people biffed it good! It started with a very impressive slide/splits move by Jared as he tried to cut off the calf going one direction and was soon followed with Kelli going down as well. Before they caught the little booger, Van did a belly-flop and my dad tried dismounting the 4-wheeler through the front handle bars, but didn't clear them and landed on them instead. Kelli also steer-wrestled a calf because it came too far through the chute and needed to be pushed back in. Finally Bryce and Jared realized what was going on and tried to help her. By the time they finished, everyone was sopping wet and muddy from head to toe. Well, except for my mom, Jana, Amanda Jean, Brandt, and me since we stayed in the van and watched the madness from there. Has to be the most hilarious branding day we've had to date.