Fishing for Cows??

I spent my last birthday today as a single man, and I got to tell ya, it wasn't really how I imagined it would be. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, but I never would have guessed that I would spend it feeding cows, fishin', and going to the zoo! Hahaha, but such is life. And don't worry, I talked to my beautiful fiancee and she said that she would cook me all my birthday dinners from now on. Then after a small pause pause she changed her mind and told me that she would take me out for my future birthdays!!! ;) Thanks B, you are so precious. Anyway, this picture is me feeding the Young's cows. For those of you who don't know, the Youngs are my host family. That's Craig in the back of the pickup(the state car of Texas). They have a couple dozen cows and their family owns a thousand acres of land. I was trying to call the cows over to feed them out of my hand, you have to call them over like this, "Soot, cow, soot!" I didn't get it, but that is just what you say. I got one to eat the pellet out of my hand, the tongue was huge and fury. Cows are huge! Just in case you were wondering, kinda intimidating, but they are gentle giants, more scared of you then anything.

They actually followed us around all over the ranch, it was kinda fun. I sorta felt like a cowboy! I know I'm a huge dork, but I thought that was fun. It's so peaceful out there in the middle of nowhere. All the trees in the background are mesquite trees. They are terrible! Really more like huge bushes then everything. Everyone down here hates them and they have huge thorns that wreck tires and are a huge pain. The only thing that they are good for is to burn and grill meat over.

They had quite a few baby cows too. I don't really have much to say about them other then they were around too.

Lesson in how to speak Texan:

Tank=Pond

So if you are going to the tank, that is really just a pond. So we were fishing in their tank. And the cows come in there to drink and cool off. Some of the cows would get into the water and muck deep enough so the water touched their bellies. They were a fun backdrop to the morning. They would lie down and relax in the mesquite trees too. You can see a cow hiding in the background of this picture.

This is me with one of the bass that I caught. We were using minnows for bait. That was a new one for me. They had a lot of turtles in the pond that likes to sneak off with your bait. Sneaky turtles.... But after catching a couple of fish, I got bored and wanted to catch something a little bigger......

That's when I started fishing for cows!


I just wanted to thank everyone for making my birthday special! I really appreciated all of the calls, facebook posts, and a special thanks to the Youngs for everything. You are all great and I love you all!

I also forgot to mention that I had an outing with youth group at the zoo. It was a pretty nice zoo for a smaller city. It was really cool. I had a great time with the kids, we did a fun photo scavenger hunt. I really like the kids and they are starting to open up to me more and more. So that is really exciting!

Oh yeah, the Young's made some a great Texas dinner for me with steak and potatoes and strawberry shortcake for dessert! I was great. I really like meals like that. And I didn't tell them this, but the dinner reminded me a lot of home.

PS- I just saw a Pure Michigan commercial on tv!! Hahaha! Is that Tim Allen that narrates those?