Cider Bend-March

March Storms:

 We had some weather in March, and by 'some weather' I mean the biggest snow storm of the entire winter. We got dumped on!

This is how much snow accumulated overnight, and it just kept coming down all weekend.

My poor girls were so confused! I think they were in just as much denial as I was.

It just kept coming all weekend long!

Bailey, Mason, and Nora were here visiting, but as soon as they left, we spent a lot of hours digging out. It was a heavy snow that accumulated so fast, that the animals couldn't venture out past their covered corral areas. Poor Reeses could hardly get out to go to the bathroom. We couldn't open any gates, or even push the wheelbarrow. We spent hours on Sunday clearing out the corrals, and plowing paths around the farm. We hauled 11 cartloads of snow out of two small corrals, and did our best to clear out the big corral areas with the 4 wheeler. We had to take the snow filled carts through the inside of the barn to dump them until we cleared enough of a path through the snow. It was crazy!

It was all worth it to see the donkeys able to kick up their heels and run again. 😁

Then we got hit again at the end of March! This storm wasn't as bad, just annoying!

The goats were the ones in denial this time!

St. Patrick's Day:

We had Bailey, Mason, and Nora here for St. Patrick's Day, so I already posted all the fun pictures and videos on that blog post, but I'm reposting some of my favorites here, because I love them so much!

We lit the barn up for St. Patrick's Day.

I wish Nora lived here! She adds so much fun to the farm!

I could just die! Look at her sweet face looking at Willow!

Nora and Clover had a stare off, checking out the fun things on each other's heads. 😆

Even the goats got in on the fun!

Reeses and Nora have the sweetest connection! 😊

Random Stuff:

Beautiful sunrises like always at Cider Bend.

Our farm is like the fly over zone for the trumpeter swans this time of year, and I love it! They hang out in the farm fields around us. We didn't get many of them last year, because our winter was so bad. I was so happy when they started showing up again. I took some videos and made a reel for Instagram. Check out how much bigger they are than the Canadian geese. 

We've been having moose come through here like crazy! This one went through while the donkeys were out in the pasture.

I love my morning walks and sunrises.

We have a big hawk's nest in our tree. The hawks come back and have babies each year. They have been actively working on their nest. One of them stays in the nest while the other hunts, and they often communicate with each other from across the yard. I love listening to them. I can't wait until the babies start learning to fly. It's so fun to watch.

Goats:

The goats have been enjoying their walks, and seem to be extra happy when the sun is shining bright. I think they are ready for winter to be over.

The goats and donkeys love playing along the fence line. This video cracks me up. Watch really closely at the end to catch Clover's little speed kick. 😂

Nora still likes to FaceTime the animals while I feed them dinner. 😆

The goats like to race each other to the barn. Watch Roxie be sneaky and go zooming by for the win! 😂

Apparently we have half goat, half pig! We've never heard her make that sound before! 😆

The goat stall clean out is probably the least glamorous farm chore there is!

But it looks and smells so much better once it's done!

I went to Walmart to get the goats a new bed. Clearly I'm not good at estimating sizes, and I think my goats are still babies. The bed I got is WAY too small, but they still seem to love it. I'm keeping the bed, because it makes me laugh every time I see a goat try to fit in it. 😅

The majority of the time I'm wondering why I spend money on beds anyways. 😑

Donkeys:

I love my little donks so much! Even after a year and a half, I still look at them and just can't believe they are mine, and this is my life. 

I made the best Harry Potter reel on Instagram! It could possible be my very best work. 😂 It won't let me download it with the audio, so you just get a random video of the donkeys with socks on their ears. 😅 If you are a Harry Potter fan, go over to my Instagram (@thecozycorral), and take a look. I promise you won't be disappointed.

I was walking the donkeys through the field, and Willow was being a little bit unruly. I was trying to take a  video for a reel I was doing, while keeping her under control at the same time. My phone was forgotten, and I must have been holding it weird. It just started taking pictures, and this is the result. That is Willow pulling on Clover's lead rope. 😆 It's my favorite thing!

We had a nice stretch with blue skies and sunshine, so I took my chair out to the donkey's corral to soak up the nice weather. They love when I sit out there with them, and they don't leave my side. 😄

Willow gets a little obnoxious, but I love her! 😅

She makes up for her naughtiness by being my foot rest.

The end of March was Easter, so of course we had a little barnyard celebration.

Most people think that when I make reels, the animals cooperate, it's easy peasy, and just takes a few minutes. I assure you that isn't the case. I use only a few of the best seconds of several minutes worth of videos. The behind the scenes look is usually total chaos. Here is a small snippet of what most of the footage is like. 😆

Black Canyon Donkey Derby:

Mark took a work trip to Arizona, and got to spend a few days with his family down there. I found out on one of my favorite Instagrams accounts that she would be hosting the Black Canyon Donkey Derby while Mark was there. I told him all about it, so him and Scott drove an hour to check it out. We would love to do pack burro races with Clover and Willow, so it was fun for him to go see what a fun donkey event is like. I wish I could have been there to see it too! So fun!

The chaos right before start time.

The start makes me laugh! I would totally be getting drug around by Clover! 😅

I could seriously watch an event like this all day!

Mark got to meet the face behind the donkey derby, and one of my favorite Instagram accounts, Hope the Wild Burro Place. 

Chickens:

Cider Bend got 12 new residents! We are going to start our chicken journey, and I'm so excited about it! We picked out a variety of chicks, so we should end up with lots of different looks, personalities, and eggs. 

So stinking CUTE!

I love their little peeps!

We got them all set up in a tote in the laundry room. I bet Mark never thought he would have chickens in his brand new house! 😅

Sawyer and Amanda came right over to see them!

Amanda loves them! She holds them every Sunday when they come over.

My friends are all out living productive lives, and this is what I'm doing! 😂

It only took them two weeks to outgrown the tote in the laundry room. We made a much larger home for them in the garage out of a garden box.

They really seem to like having more space.

With chickens comes the construction of a chicken coup! I have big plans for my coup, and Mark has been going above and beyond! He works on it every daylight hour that he is home. It's been a huge job, but it is going to be amazing! I'm only posting a sneak peak here, but I'll do a bigger post when it's finished next month. Stay tuned, because you definitely won't want to miss our chicken coup reveal!

That's a wrap for life on the farm in March. We are always amazed at the work that goes into it, but also the joy and satisfaction we get from the work. With the warmer weather, comes lots of big outside projects, so the next couple months should be filled with big farm improvements. Stay tuned!

March Running

 March's running was pretty dismal. I had a few good runs, but took some time off, because I was having a hip flexor issue for a couple weeks. All seems fine now.

Women's Run:

We had a St. Patrick's Day run with the ladies. We all wore green and ran around Shamrock Park. 😁

We had a new lady that came, and she was pushing a triple stroller! I'm telling you, I run with some tough ladies! 

Grammy and Papa lived in Shamrock Park, so this was a fun stroll down memory lane.

The Henry-Taylors:

We did 20 miles on the Henry-Taylor roads. This run was tough for me! I don't know how I can run a great 30 miles less than 2 weeks before this, and then struggle so much on 20 miles. I think running in the snow did me in, because my hip was a bit wonky for the next few weeks after this one. I didn't take a lot of scenery or people pictures on this one, but you better believe I got pictures of every single baby cow we passed. 😆

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It was a very pretty morning!

Antelope Island:

I went back to Antelope Island for round two of running there. Ashlee wanted some good dirt training for her 100 miler, and she wanted company, so I was happy to go along. Mark had just got back from a week long trip to AZ, so he stayed home. We took a different running route than the past couple times, and I loved it. Beautiful, sunny day!

I always love the snowy mountains and very blue water down there.

Elephant Head

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I didn't do much more running than that in March. I feel fully recovered, and I'm ready to hit it hard in April. 

Puzzles

 I love having an area to do puzzles in the basement of our new house. Here are a couple I've done the past couple months. 

This is from our trip to Glacier National Park. It was such an awesome place!

This is a fun one I got in Custer State Park. 

I have so many I'm dying to do, but we've had workers in the basement finishing some stuff up, so I've been waiting for them to finish before I get another one out.

Happy 25th Birthday Amanda!

 Amanda turned 25 the day I got back from my Capitol Reef girl's trip. We went to their house for a fun birthday celebration. We had a yummy Italian dinner, she opened her presents, and then we ate the dreamy cake she made. She loves to make her own birthday cake each year, and the rest of us love it too! She is quite the baker!

Cute little Bean helping her open her presents.

We got her a set of baskets to put her homemade rolls and hamburger buns in.

😂😂😂

We also got her a book (I love picking out books for her), and a tray thing to display her cupcakes and cookies on. 

Isn't that cake pretty!

Yes, it tasted as good as it looks!

Happy birthday Amanda! I hope year 25 is your best one yet! We feel blessed everyday to have you as part of our family.

Capitol Reef IFTR Girl's Trip

A few of us IFTR ladies have talked about how fun it would be to take a girl's trip to one of the national parks in southern Utah for years. I finally decided that we needed to stop talking about it and just do it. I picked a park and a weekend, created an event, and we made it happen.  I'm pretty sure I was the only one who had ever been to Capitol Reef, so it was awesome to show these ladies some of my favorite trails there. We have the best ladies in our running group! They encourage, support, and cheer for each other, they are fun, adventurous, and have a genuine love of the outdoors, they are inclusive, happy, hilarious, and easy going. I love them all! We explored amazing places, ate yummy food, had great conversations, and were in awe everywhere we looked.

We started with a sunrise hike at Chimney Rock on Friday morning. It's one of my favorite trails in the park.

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This is one of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

This is such a great hike to see all the crazy layers in the park. We listened to a geology talk about how they all formed while we were there.

Steph is a photographer, and brought her nice camera on a lot of the hikes. I love this picture of her all ready for the perfect sunrise photo.

Chimney Rock

Such a fun crew!

Next we did a couple short hikes to the Gooseneck Overlook, and Sunset Point. Then we stopped at the old schoolhouse, and the petroglyph panel.

Sunset Point

I love the Castle, because you can see it from all over the park.

The old schoolhouse.

When enjoyed looking at all the petroglyphs. I think we found more than in the previous two times I've been there. It's good to have 11 set of eyes walking along the petroglyph wall.

Next we did the Hickman Bridge hike.

The Hickman Bridge

The bridge from the backside.

We stopped for lunch, and had pie at the Gifford House. The cherry pie is so good!

😋😋😋

Pie break!

Our final hike of the day was a great one. We hiked through the Grand Wash, and then continued on to Cassidy Arch. I love the trail leading to the arch.

Starting through the wash.

I remember taking this picture with Mark, so I was determined to find the rock again.

The wash makes you feel really small.

Heading up to Cassidy Arch.

The arch from a distance.

Ashley and Joyce
I love them!

We got to the arch right when another group of 9 women got there. We had them take our picture, and we took theirs. That worked out perfectly.

Jumping on the arch. 😆

That night we ate at the hotel steakhouse. It was quite tasty!

Saturday was equally awesome!

We stopped on the way in for a sign picture.

Our first trail of the day was the Fremont River Trail, another one of my favorites! The trail itself is fun, and the views in every direction are fantastic!

    Steph and Amanda
Two of the kindest, most down to earth women I will ever know.

Steph was a pro at setting up her camera to get group pictures. Her camera was balancing in a tree for this one! 😆

It is so fun to run down the Fremont River Trail!

Once we finished that hike, we found out the Gifford house had Cinnamon rolls, so we definitely took advantage of that.

I was super excited to take the ladies into Cohab Canyon. I remembered how cool it was from when I was there with Bailey, and then again with Mark. We spent a lot of time exploring the canyon, and then we went a little ways up the Frying Pan Trail. It was such a gorgeous day. The sky was amazing!

I love this selfie Joyce took!

Hiking up to the start of the canyon.

I love this picture so much! Watching everyone climb up and then try to figure out how to get back down was fantastic. 

There are a lot of side slots in Cohab Canyon.

This was one of the view points we detoured to off of Cohab Canyon.

This picture was taken from the Frying Pan Trail, across Cohab Canyon. So pretty!

What a great picture! Another one of my favorites from the trip.

No big deal, just holding up the clouds. 😄

Tammy-Steph-Tricia-Joyce

After that hike we had lunch, and then listened to a geology talk. The last thing we did was take the scenic drive. I'm glad we got to do it, because it will be closed for construction this summer. It is so pretty!

We left the park early that day because the other area we wanted to explore was closed. We had a great dinner at a pizza place, and then called it a night. On Sunday we all headed home with our buckets full. I hope this can be a yearly trip to other fun places. I loved spending time with the ladies I know and love, and I loved making a few new friends too.