It’s a mild, nice “Chinooky” winter morning here at the foot of the Rockies. I am only working in the office one day this week so due to having a few tenders scheduled to close I will likely be spending most of my day right here. Thought I would post a couple of brief updates this morning so that I don’t forget these adventures as the busy-ness of the week unfolds.

Friday was an awesome regular day, however both the sunrise and sunset were worthy of pictures and had a nice way of book-ending a normal day.

Sunrise the start of a new day.

Sunset the end of a normal day and a busy week

Saturday was a busy day of moving sheep, some sorting had to be done and four ewe lambs were sold to a client that needed to be delivered. Larry the ram was going to accompany them for a visit to their new home. Larry didn't think he wanted to go with them so we had a little set too! A few nicks and a pair of glasses later, Larry was successfully loaded on the trailer.

Later in the day I would also trip when running through a sheep pen and do a full on face plant in the muck. I don't think I was smiling as much after that, however it wasn't worthy of a picture so didn't take one.

Sunday after an amazing mtg and "Potluck" lunch I went to work helping pack some wool sacks with fleeces for shipping this week. Then I cleaned and prepped the barn for some new tenants. 

This makes a difficult job a whole lot easier.

This was the barn when I started (Had some ongoing residents for about a month)

All cleaned up ready for some tweaking and the new tenants can move in.

My mom has spent several weeks in Alberta this fall, she was helping us get our house in town ready for renting and also a few projects at the Sheep Ranch to make the small Cabin there feel a little more like home. We so appreciated all she did and the time she spent. One of the highlights of her visit was the three weeks she and Kelsey spent together at the Riding Academy where Kelsey works and trains.

She insisted that she wanted a family picture before she left, so last evening we all were clothed and in our right minds and having corralled the cat and the dog we managed to get a picture as follows.

Once again, downloading plans and while this is going on decided I would post a small update. I was at my second Grand Opening of a Divine showroom yesterday. The first was slightly after I joined the company 9 ¾, years ago. Last night was very spectacular as we launched what promises to be a new way of selling flooring. One client as they walked through the space said, “This feels and looks like an Art Gallery not a Flooring Store!”

The food and beverage for the Grand Opening was provided by CRAFT.

 It was very good, very nicely presented and if I had been at all on the ball I would have recorded what each one was. The standout of the evening was the Rack of Lamb pictured above as of course seeing this caught my attention due to the past few months living on the sheep ranch.

The showroom has several vignettes of several "life styles" which are to be used to select and direct people to the products we sell that fit this description. Below are some shots of vignettes to give an illustration of what we are talking about.

You can then narrow down your choices and quickly find what goes together.

Then further into the showroom the actual samples are cataloged and stored so that large sections can be viewed and selected from.

So there you have it a very abridged version of our new showroom. Please contact me for your own personal tour.

Life has been a blur to say the least… as you are aware if you are reading this, we undertook a move to a Sheep Ranch earlier this year. This has unfolded in a huge learning curve and interesting adventures that continue. I have been remiss in that I haven’t updated this in forever; however working on tenders at my desk today so maybe will post some pictures of various activities up until today!

Lets go a little back in time:

It was down right hot outside:

Time to shear sheep... a new experience and the following pictures better tell the story than my feeble typing.

This then was followed by some cleaning duties as we scrambled to get the barn cleaned before the snow arrived.

I will not post all the before and after pictures but here are a couple that help you understand why I counted this cleaning as my workout!

Before (Note it was almost to the top rail)

After... clean as can be ready for a new tenant

Soon a bobcat arrived onsite and this was then used to address the corrals and feedlots. This was surprisingly hard work as things were relatively firmly packed and took a fair bit of digging to get it loose.

The following are some sunrise pictures taken over the past months...we get some very stunning morning pictures on our way to work.

The next adventure was the process of artificially impregnating some sheep to introduce new bloodlines to the flock. This was interesting and its interesting to note that the vet who did this is flown all over the world to do the procedure that took place right on the ranch.