Confirming I Am Still Alive

After getting multiple emails checking on my well being after a week of blog silence, I want to assure you all that I am, indeed, still alive.  Here's a little summary of what's been goin' on 'round these parts.

*  Southern Dairy Conference.  Last week, I made a whirlwind trip to Atlanta to speak at the Southern Dairy Conference.  It was a really fun presentation on how to prevent and survive an undercover video on your farm.  There was a great group of dairy industry folks in attendance, and this was a fun (and important!) new topic for me to speak about!

* Bucket List Checkmark:  Meet a Blogger in Real Life.  For years I've hoped to meet one of the bloggers who I follow (and didn't already know) in real life.  I was able to do that in Atlanta when I met Dairy Carrie.  She is a huge blog and twitter sensation, so when I saw her on the agenda, I had big hopes that I could introduce myself and check this one off the list.  Sure enough, she actually raised her hand to comment during my presentation, Tweeted that I had done a good job, and we got to visit for about half an hour while waiting for an airport shuttle.  She was the sweetest person in the world and, turns out, we have quite a few things in common.  Biggest blogger regret to date....no picture was taken. What was I thinking??

*  We suspect a pregnant dog in our midst.  Don't even get me started.  Apparently the dog The Boy from Texas repeatedly told me as old and barren is like Sarah of the Bible and it looks like we will have puppies in the next month or so.  The puppy daddy belongs to my parents, so I'm on a mission to make these things half their responsibility.  They claim no parental responsibility.  Sheesh.

*  We've hit up several sheep shows.  So we've been running all over the Panhandle going to sheep shows.  Our lambs have been doing an excellent job of bringing home purple banners.

*  We bought a house!  We are so excited to have closed yesterday on our very first house together!  It's a tiny little cottage (well, not quite like that show Tiny House, but not that far from it) with a few acres.  As you know, The Boy from Texas and I are both farm kids and we love the idea of having our own land.  So the next week is going to be chaos as we clean out junk (why is it that when people move they don't haul off all of their crap??), doing a bit of work and painting, and moving in.  I took before pictures last night and will have after pics soon.....stay tuned!