Saturday Morning With The Bryce's

For the first time in a long time, I stayed here in Pima, AZ and spent a Saturday with the Bryces. After breakfast, I decided to break out the ol' air rifle. Everyone had a pretty good time taking turns shooting the air rifle. Kitt and Klaire both managed to get their faces a bit too close to the scope. Klaire has two little marks on her forehead now.

After she pulled the trigger and got hit in the forehead with the scope for the second time, she reloaded and took aim, being careful this time not to get to close to the scope.

What happened? As soon as she pulled the trigger, the scope just fell off the rifle and landed in the dirt.

So, that pretty much ended that activity.

Michael wanted to let the calf graze on some grass growing on the side of the house. There's not much grass there, but there is also only one bale of hay left, and no firm appointment set with the butcher yet.The problem is that the little area is not fenced in. The idea was that we'd rope the calf and then let him out as long as there was a rope dragging from his neck so that we could grab on to it if need be. Supervised release for the calf basically.

Michael tried to coax the calf into the rope with some grain.

The closest we ever got to getting a rope around that calf's neck was when he didn't see it slipped around a big grain pail.

Turns out the calf ran off as soon as he saw the rope. That led to some practicing on a bucket. And of course, Michael had to teach Kitt how to rope so that she wouldn't forget her ranching heritage.

Kitt did okay, but struggled to keep her eyes open.

In the end, Michael ended up roping the calf's hind leg which scared it to death, and after the calf nearly tore down the fence in two different spots, we decided to give up on the whole idea of doing supervised grazing.

It was about time for lunch anyway. We gathered some dead branches from behind the yard, and we started a fire in the newly finished pizza oven for the inaugural pizza bake.

Everybody got to make their own pizza. This is mine.

Although I am still looking forward to my house being done and getting to live with my wife, I have been having a pretty darn good time living with the Bryce's for the last four months.