A Ketchup Post

Ketchup, haha, aren't I so punny?

OK, maybe not.

Now, I do not have very many pictures from my trip yet. My sister April used her camera most of the time and I haven't gotten a copy of them yet. Hopefully I'll have them before the weekend is over but I can't make any promises. I will get them and do a big post sometime though!

Can I just say though, I LOOOOVE the Chicago O'Hare airport! The bathrooms, oh, the bathrooms. Have you ever in your life had a bathroom with automatic toilet seat protectors? I think every public restroom should have these installed! There is nothing to wipe up after someone, the toilet seat is fresh each time you use it. Oh my word. Perfection. Now there is an automatic feature for everything you could possibly need in a bathroom! Toilet seat covers, flushers, sinks, soap dispensers and paper towel dispenser! You don't have to touch anything! My one complaint is that O'Hare did not have everything automatic, but I can excuse that since they had the toilet seat thing. They have had these for a while, they had it last time I went to Chicago, over a year and a half ago, but I didn't have a blog to blog about it then.

Now you might be wondering, if you've never come across this before in your public restroom experiences, how on earth do these automatic wonders work? Never fear, blogger friends, I took pictures! :D

You just wave your hand in front of the sensor when you first get into the stall, then it magically moves the plastic around. Now, it does look like it is the same two plastic covers moving back and forth, but it says very clearly on the sign that it is always new and never reused. It has a counter that shows how many seat covers are left, so 85 on this one, and a green light shines when it is ready with a fresh cover. The entire seat part is covered!

So very cool!

OK, enough about toilets though.

After I got back from Chicago, I was asked by my very good friend, Cheri, to do her a favor. I kind of freaked out when she told me what it was, but I wanted to be a good friend so I couldn't very well say no. The question was, "Would you be willing to feed my calves one time while we're out of town?" Oh, you mean the calves that are bottle fed? Um..... I guess so? I am about as far from a farm girl as you can get. This is a once in a lifetime event. (Unless Cheri thinks I will always want to do this while she's out of town... Um... I am not so sure. ;) ) She had Raymond and I come over last Friday so she could show us what to do. OK, I can do this, it's really easy. I told her, eh, I'll take pictures so I can blog about it, haha!

So the next day, we drove the three miles to her house and went over to feed the calves. Raymond has had lots of experience with feeding animals, horses, lambs, etc. I decided to be adventurous and do most of the work myself.

First I had to make the bottles. There are two calves and they each get one bottle. I measured out the dry milk powder and filled up the bottles.
The big bag of formula, or whatever you call it, haha!

Then once the milk is properly mixed, it was time to feed them! The calves are eagerly waiting for their milk.
It is quite a workout for my arms as the calves pull and try to take the bottles away!

Slurp, slurp!

The calves finish their bottles in about thirty seconds. It really doesn't take them long to down the whole thing. Watching the milk foam and run down their chins was quite a sight.

All done! Aren't these bottles huge?
Once they finished their bottles, I gave them some feed.
Then we were done! As I was washing out the bottles I was suddenly grossed out that I was touching a bunch of cow saliva and drool. ::shudder::

We decided to stay a little longer and look at the horses. I wanted to take pictures for my sister, April, who has been a horse lover for as long as I can remember.
Cheri and her husband have a few horses. Her husband is a farrier, or a horseshoer. One of the horses had just had a baby while I was away so I was curious to see him.

My kids love the dog, Jasmine.

So yeah, that was my five minutes of farm living! And I think I've had enough to last me a lifetime. ;) No, it really was not that bad and I am happy to help out. I can always make Raymond do it next time. LOL! Now what torturous thing can I do to Cheri to get her back?

I know! She is going to run the 5k with me! Our race is this Saturday! I am rather scared of it. I have no idea how fast (*cough* or slow) I am going to be. I haven't practiced nearly enough. I usually try to go jogging on Saturday mornings but it takes me forever and I don't go very far. I've been doing different exercise dvds during the week, so hopefully just building up endurance and stamina will help me during my race. Kourtni is also going to run with us. We're all terrified, but we'll stick together and do the best we can! Besides, the results of the race are going to be posted online and there's nothing like public humiliation to get ya going! Haha! I am just going to be glad to get it over with and meet my goal of completing a 5k! I can't wait to earn that t-shirt and "finisher's medal", LOL!

Well, I had better end this. I will post about my trip soon though. But just as a sneak peek, my trip was all about this little guy.

Has your heat melted into a puddle yet, because mine has!