three weeks of catchup :)

Adam

Whew!!!  these past three weeks have been super crazy

Pictures for the last three weeks :)

Three weeks ago our Head Cook got sick, which caused me to become the baker. These were chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. They were monstrous. We only had enough for the guests but luckily, since they were huge, some came back half eaten so the staff got to try some. 
I also made banana bread, french/garlic bread, momma's brownies, rolls, Momma's cookies, corn bread, and a few other things that week for the guests. It's crazy cool how much I have been able to do. I definitely love baking so much more than cooking and salad making :)  But Adam loves cooking so we're a great match. We could have our own little bed and breakfast! Ha ya right. Adam actually is the one our cook Dawn goes to when she wants another opinion on flavor, he's sure got the spiffy taste buds.

We got Employee(s) of the week!!! We work our butts off at this job. It is so constant and never ending. This was awarded to us after the week that I came in extra to cover for the baking and when some others didn't make it in. When I'm not in the kitchen Adam is and vice versa so we tend to be around when we're off. After two months we've started wearing down so we stay away when we're off, we take the rest.  With this award we got a money bonus :)

This is a part of our home/shabbin... well basically all of our shabbin. Bathroom is the doorway on the left, Adam is taking the picture from the door. The dresser is a six drawer set with mirror on the right, then on the left there is a bookshelf and recliner. 

Adam has been working on another knife!

He had some scrap Black walnut wood that Grandpa Tullis had given him which he used for the handle. The rivets through the knife are made from a bolt that he cut up. To hold it all securely together he used JB Weld and let it sit for a bit.  When some of the other staff saw the knife like this they kinda grimaced and said it looked like a five year old made it. Then the magic grinding happened!!!! 

And The Final Product! It slices like a dream! Adam may have used it to cut 80 plus pork chops, afterwards it was still sharp enough to shave hair off his arm..... ya success? I think so!
Seriously this knife is so heavy duty. 

Cleaning the grill. Daily duty, adam rocks it, I'm still learning. It gets black and gummy gross but shines up like a dream. 

Some staff prepping for our outside lunch for 4th of July

Dawn, originally our baker turned head chef.
What a doll.

Cameo and Adam preping the burgers for lunch.

A Family reunion that came in this week.
4th of July Lunch

We were asked to sing at a flag retiring ceremony on the 3rd. It was just a few families from the ward but it was a pretty cool experience. After singing here we were asked to sing at the town event which would be after the parade the next day. But sadly we were told we weren't allowed to go because of housekeeping and whatnot. 

This is the view from the side of our shabbin :)
Being inside so often I forget to look at how beautiful this area is.
We'll surely miss the quiet when we leave.

Making Corn bread for Dinner on the 4th of July. 

Our time in the kitchen.

I fell off of a horse!! :)  (Nykele)
We hopped onto the Rockin' R wagon for the parade, (it was only a few blocks long).
Well we had to hurry back afterwards to get back to housekeeping and lunch prep.
Our manager Brandi told us to hop on behind a few riders so they could take us back quick.
I had never hopped on behind someone before. I went to get on with Brandi.
She told me how to do it but I didn't realize I needed to use only my momentum to get up
I suspected that I would pull up with our arms linked. Well she had her baby in front of her
and when I was pulling her she felt like she was tilting so she let go of my arm, thinking
my foot was out of the stirup and on the ground. Alas, I had nothing to catch me but my arm
and back. It wasn't too bad, it swelled up that night but has scabbed over.
I got up onto the horse the second time. And when we got back she had me do it again so I
could get the hang of it.
When people asked what happened I just started saying Brandi pushed me off a horse.

This is darling Danielle :) We have adopted her as our own. She is such a doll, all smiles and songs. She calls us Mamma and Pappa.
Adam and I are a part of the older crowd of the staff. The majority are 20 or younger.

Watching fireworks.

PICTURES~!! :)

Alrighty, we've decided to add some color to our blog :)

Here are pictures from the very beginning! 

We need to get better at taking pictures but here's a bit of what we've been up to. 

We made it! After a few split up days of travel we were happy to get to the ranch! And nervous to find out what we were in for.

We have dances at least once a week here at the ranch. We're not in this picture. I believe this was our first dance. This is the main area of the lodge,  To the left of the dancers is the dinning room, to the right are rooms. There are three floors of rooms that spout off from here. Normally there are couches that circle this floor, we pull them up to create the dance floor.

My (Nykele's) boots after the first day around the ranch. The only picture of them originally is on Adam's phone. We sure learned to let them get scuffed and not cry about it.

The Stand off!
This is our poor little calf that got separated from her mom then the cow they tried to attach her to died :/ poor girl. When we got her into the petting barn she was a feisty one for a while. She took some coaxing to let us feed her.

This is our precious little goat Sport :) He's going to be the daddy goat when he grows up. He is like a dog though, he answers to his name and comes out when you call him.

The PIG! This is Chunk. He's a funny dude. He's new to the ranch as of this year and is starting to warm up to people. He gets all of our thrown away carbs and what not.

Adam won the stand off and got her to eat.

And sport again, we never did catch a picture of his cuteness.

We were being trained on how to facilitate rock climbing and repelling. Here's Nykele Repelling. Adam went first and caught these pictures.

I missed the pushing off of the rocks after I went under the overhang

Adam's first day as the official Breakfast cook! Woohoo! look at that precision!

Adam burnt himself on his forge, he was out of commission for a few days (from forging). It blistered up pretty bad, as you can see.  Some guests made fun of him when they saw me bandaging him up, saying he was doing it for attention from the ladies. They later found out that I was his wife.

SOOO LONG!!!! READY ... SET...............

CUT!!!!!!!

That braid!! So much hair!!! No more braids for me :(
After I did it I started questioning my decision since I realized
I wouldn't be able to braid it up to play the cowgirl role.
Whoops, tad too late.

I was planning to just do a trim and bring it up to my shoulder blades....but....   Then I realized it was long enough to do Locks of Love and still have it long enough for a pony-tail. It was thought about but somewhat a sudden decision. Adam didn't know that I was going for it, when he came back in he almost flipped thinking that they cut off WAY more than I had asked. But he saw me smiling so realized that I must have gone for the chop.
I haven't had it this short since 4TH GRADE!!!

This is little Bella! She's a blue healer and is only nine or ten months old, but she's now a mamma! She's one of the cow dogs, or will be when she learns how. Last Sunday we went on a search to find where she had the pups, we found them and brought them where we could watch them. They ended up being put next to our shabbin in a little dog run that's over there.

Little Girl pup, she's recently been named Zoe. She is huge now!!  Sadly her little brother died mid last week, we're not sure what caused it, either heat or Bells sat on her... we dunno. But after he died she started staying more often with the other pup.

Adam made a knife on his forge! This was originally a railroad spike. :)  He's having a blast creating things on the forge. 
So far he has made a dinner bell, multiple fire strikers, this knife, and he's been working on long-handled pliers and angle brackets for shelves.

Lastly, for now, Adam was challenged by our cousin Emilee to participate in the cold water plunge for Charity Challenge. :)   The challenge is that after hearing of the challenge you have 24 hours to plunge into a body of cold water and donate $30 to charity. If you don't take on the plunge challenge you then are to donate $100 to a charity. Then must challenge 4 more people. We have not yet put this challenge out on a public site for our friends to see, we will do so soon. For those that read this, the challenge is going out to Alex Withers, Korbin Keller, Taylor Shapiro and Spencer Bogardus.  :)

Well it's late, not a lot of crazy happened this week, just a normal busy busy week! So we'll get on later to post about some details. Hope you enjoyed the tid bit of our life. 

If you want pictures of anything specific just let us know :)

Lots and lots of people :)

Adam

This last week was absolutely nuts we had Monday off though so it wasn't bad. we went up to Richfield and spent the day in Walmart....YAY!! we really are white trash.   
We had a huge youth conference and a family reunion come in and we had over 100 guests.  The Breakfasts were INSANE!! They went through 14 cartons eggs and they killed two full pans of french toast in SEVEN MINUTES.  It was absolutely insane, Nykele helped me cook french toast on one side of the grill while I cooked more eggs.  And that was the second morning doing breakfast, the first morning was pancakes and I was just way behind the whole time.  It sucked.  But the rest of the week was really nice.  After the youth conference left it quieted down quite a bit and we were able to get things done.  The only other thing that I remember happening that was exciting was a sheep got sick and they had to shoot it to put it out of it's misery.  I have tomorrow off yay!!! that means I'm blacksmithing all day tomorrow: )  So excited.


Nykele

Alrighty, so the week didn't seem as crazy for me. We have a set schedule now as far as who is in the kitchen when. I am in Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays then every-other Sunday for breakfast. Adam's new schedule has him working full kitchen days with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays:) Yeye!! Then Mondays off and the other days he's done at three.

To answer Lizzy's question (I attempted to answer earlier this week but the ipad wouldn't let me), Adam and I work with each other all the time. The kitchen is pretty small and there are only 3-6 people in there at one time. We each have our particular jobs that we have to do but we get the chance to give eyes to each other every now and then ;)  I am really glad that they have us in there so often together now.

For my exciting adventure of the week! - I helped with a rodeo that we put on! We do rodeos for the large groups that come in, this week we had one for the youth conference and one for a family reunion, I helped with the family reunion. Our rodeos are really all about the guests, they do it all. They do barrel racing, poll bending, fat fryer race (sitting on donkeys trying to get them to run, one person on and another pulling), roping, mutton busting (kids riding sheep), and calf riding (adults).  
And the calf riding is where the adventure began. We get the calves in the chute then had to separate them to get one set up for a rider to get on. When the one got in place we put a board behind it to keep him there, they try backing up so the board is right up against their rump and I stood on the board. Cows are funny little animals, in their nervousness they pee, all over! Then as soon as a rider sits on them (now let me tell you - each and every cow did this, some twice!) they would excrete dark matter all over the board I was standing on! The first time I wasn't looking so I didn't notice, missed my boots, thank goodness! So I started watching to make sure my feet weren't in the line of fire. THEN! It was the third riders turn, same process rider got on, cow pooped all over, and when the gate was pulled open... what did the calf do? He sure as heck didn't run out of the gate, no he whipped around with the rider holding tight and ran straight through the board I was standing on!! Took me out and barreled the rider into the other calves. I took a fall, somehow caught myself and didn't biff it to the ground, but pretty sure I ended up riding the cow for a second but I was holding onto the fence so he kept going past.  The best part was getting up and then realizing that I had cow poop smeared on my pants and a tad on my shirt. Hahaha officially initiated in with the cows haha. And I ended up with a wicked bruise on my knee. 

The family reunion group that was here were really great! Such a fun group. The kids were ready waiting at the buffet as early as fifteen minutes before a meal, they were hilarious. Some could hardly see over the counter but had their plate sitting and their eyes peering at what I was bringing out. When the meal is ready we ring a cow bell and yell, in as gruffy of a voice as we can, "COME AND GET IT!!!" Everyone loves it! Especially the French they always clap, laugh, and cheer. Going for the iconic.  
Back to the family, Adam and I at separate moments got into conversation with the Patriarch and Matriarch of the family and found out that they were serving IN GHANA when we were there! It was so wonderful to sit and chat about the people of Ghana and the experiences we had. The couple had come to one of our concerts and I can't help but wonder if we talked with them, wish I would have paid more attention to faces. I love the little reminders of our amazing adventure in Ghana! We learned so much from those two weeks. 

A cool experience from last week - Some nights we have a campfire and sing songs to/with the guests and have s'mores. Last week I did this twice and both times had the opportunity to talk with the guests about our standards and beliefs. During both occasions the few people were drinking wine, one of the times they offered us some, (I think that was my first time saying no to alcohol...hmm). We got to tell the guests that we don't drink. Their response both times... "What!? Never!?"  They were very surprised. One of the groups were European and had never heard of the church the other from California who lives a very different lifestyle. We then got to talk a little bit about why we live the way that we do.

 I have realized that this opportunity to work here could be my mini mission. We come into contact with people from all around the world, many who know about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and many others who don't. We have the chance to show them who we are and let them see the difference in the way we live.     Tonight we gave the lesson in FHE (with other staff members). We talked about how we can show our faith so clearly here. Many are intrigued by the way we live. There is a chance that we can effect the lives of others. We have realized that we are here for a reason. I always wanted to serve a mission, but didn't have the opportunity. Here I have the chance to show what I believe in and talk to others about it. 

Alrighty, it is getting pretty late, we need to head to bed. 

I do have to write about a few other experiences at a later time - Our kitchen guest and a dinner I was in charge of.

remind me if I don't remember :)


Thanks all for the interest in our adventure here! We have pictures, we'll try to upload them soon!!!  LOVE YOU ALL!!

"The deep breath before the plunge...."

First of all we both apologize for the long break between posts. A lot has happened so we'll catch you up. 

    We got our first day off last Monday! As soon as we found out on Sunday night we took off for Beaver to enjoy our day with the Stephenson's. We spent the day appreciating Memorial Day as we went to different activities and events in Beaver. It was nice to get away for a while. Family just makes life great!

    So at Candi's we decided to weigh ourselves.... we thought we'd loose weight on this job.... HAHAHAHAHAHA Mama Dawn makes way too much goodness for that. We may have gained a bit... We'll be attempting to work it off. They just started doing Zumba twice a week so that'll be Nykele's outlet. We have also been sharing our meal plates. We went from barely eating at school to three FULL meals a day, with desserts after Lunch and Dinner. 

Adam

I am now the official breakfast cook for the Rockin' R Ranch.  It means early mornings but it also has it's perks,  I get every other Monday off and I get off at three the other days.  Which means I get a lot of time to play on my Forge! :)  I have successfully made a few strikers (flint and steel fire strikers) and I'm almost finished with a set of tongs.  And I managed to get a second degree burn on my wrist... I decided it was a good idea to comb the coals while the billows were running... not such a good idea.... but it's healing and I'll be back to the anvil tomorrow. :) The only other super exciting thing that happened was that I helped fix a bridge that washed out last year. Simple rope bridge with concrete anchors, I won't get into the details of what the problems were... : )  but it was fun to analyze and execute.  

Nykele

      Man so much to go through. First of all I almost became the front desk person for the ranch... for the whole summer... : /  I said yes at first but then after a day on the job reconsidered. I didn't come to a ranch to be behind a desk all day. I am now back in the kitchen. Starting this week I'll be switching every other day with our new prep cook.  Did I mention our head cook quit? .... :D  yeye! I mean... : /   He and I didn't get a long very well. Now we have our beautiful Mama Dawn as the head of the kitchen. She is a doll! She teaches us rather than demands of us. As previously stated she was our baker or, as we say, pastry magician, now she has the full load. I am doing a lot more than dishes now because we have an extra set of hands in the kitchen each day to do the main brunt work of the dishes. It has been nice to get my hands on the bulk of the food not just the veggies. I am definitely perfecting my cutting skills and I've gotten good about keeping the tears away while cutting the onions. Did you know if you wet your knife down in cold water then chop it somehow stifles the fumes that cause you to cry? and then re-wet as you go along. :) Learned that in Meal Management woo. So I'm loving being in the kitchen now, I'm actually using the skills that I learned in my foods classes, of which I thought I would only use in my own home. Thank you FCS (family & consumer sciences)! Kitchen days can go long, I'm in the kitchen sometimes as early as six and in there until closing after dinner, around nine... ya count that up = 15 hour days! Dawn makes sure to let us have breaks to take a sit. I am enjoying the kitchen a lot more than I thought I would.

      On my days out of the kitchen I either do house keeping, random work projects, or activities. Break down of time we are supposed to spend on cleaning a room -> 5 minutes in the bathroom, 3 minutes making one bed (usually two in a room), then 4 minutes with the rest vacuuming, dusting, and placing towels -to a total of 15 minutes per room. Eeek! Not quite there yet. Bathroom I've got down to 6 minutes, bed... ha about 6 minutes, takes forever on your own and making everything crisp. And I haven't timed the rest. But luckily I've been in the kitchen for our last few big house keeping days. 


      This next week is going to be insane! Summer has officially started and with that in roll the family reunions and youth conferences. This week we have one of each, 109 guests from Monday till Thursday! And here we take the plunge! Our manager said that it'll be this heavy until August, we're ready for the crazy!
      Our new plan for our blog is to make our posts every Sunday, instead of taking our lovely long naps we have been enjoying. Daily blogs seemed to be a bit of a lofty goal with our long days. 
Well we love you all! You all being our moms that like to look at our blog, maybe there are a few more friends out there too :)

Dishes, dishes, dishes, beer, and more dishes

Nykele

So. Many. Dishes.  They rarely stop coming. Adam and I switched today, he got to play outside and I was in the kitchen. The kitchen can certainly be enjoyable. And I would rather do dishes than toilets any day so there's a plus. I was able to practice my dicing skills, got myself a blister and I was even holding the knife the way I was taught....hmmm fishy. 

We got our first round of German's today. They are... A bit more demanding than the French. I was hoping to be able to practice my German but haven't quite gotten the chance. Any time I was around them today they were asking me for a beer, coke, Arnold Palmer  or wine. We don't serve alcohol at the Rockin' R but people can bring their own in. All of it was in the fridge so we had to bring it out for them. So I cracked open my first beers tonight, guess that's what you're supped to do before you give it to them. We'll see what fun they bring tomorrow.

Recap from the past few days: we have an English family staying here, the kids are two (S) and four (T) and are so precious! The four year old boy (T) talks like an adult, from first conversation I would have labeled him as six or seven. And his little sister is such a doll, she has cute cheeks and a darling smile. I was able to spend a lot of time with them the past few days. I could listen to them talk all day long. I went on a hike with them yesterday to Butch Cassidy's old hideout. Ya that's pretty sweet, his descendants still live around here so they have shown one of his spot in a grouping of rocks. T would say "we're going to the naughty cowboys hideout"- put that in an bright English accent :) yup cute. We learned some of the different words they have for things, like sweat pants are tracksie-bottoms, our chips are their crisps, our fries are their chips.    We later rode in the arena. Little S rode the donkey-Hallelujah, and T rode a horse. We rode the day before as well. I got the horse to run for him the day before so he was asking that I lead his horse :). Made me happy. I love being able to get to know families. This family has been here since Tuesday and leaves tomorrow. They are such a joy! I'll be sad when they go.

Well sleep is calling.

Adam is not feeling so well. He's had a soar throat the past day or two, so he's already asleep. He'll catch up tomorrow. He enjoyed the sun today though :) Yey! 

Awe! Sunday!

Sundays are the day of rest, and for a job like this it certainly is true. We are so grateful to have time to just relax. Church was enjoyable and uplofting, we go to the Antimony ward, so with 169 people in the town and not all being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints it makes for a small congregation. All that we met were very inviting. They are used to adding people during the summer months because of added staff at the Rockin' R. Adam got to meet his first mission companion's father today and found out his companion will be visiting this next weekend. He's excited for the reunion.

We are quickly catching on to the swing of things. The staff treats us as part of the team. I thought it would take a while to integrate but we feel like a part of the crew. There are about ... 15 of the main staff, I believe. Four of which are the farmers (Creston-owner, Wilfrado, Tony, Rudy), two head managers (Brandon & Brandi), cook (Stan), pastry chef (Dawn), assistant manager (Sarah), head wrangler (Dachelle- said like Nykele but with a D- talk about confusing), other staff (Adam & I, Hannah, Melissa, Billy), the little hires (sky, tichelle, cameo), and photographer (Haley).  I hear we'll get more as the season progresses. 

There was another bus of French who came in yesterday evening. They didn't do any activities, just here to stay a night. We fed them dinner, had the band again, and fed breakfast then they were off. 

Nykele:

I helped with cleaning the rooms before the new bus came in. We really do every aspect of ranch and hotel work. Put that on the job apps. I also had to run the register for the store for a while. This was a bit of a stress because my asst. mngr explained it, I thought I had it, then she left and the floods came in. It's a computer operated register, I got it now :) .  The evening was spent in the kitchen helping get dinner out and washing all the dishes. Woohoo my favorite chore :/.  But actually i stand and use the power sprayer and rinse everything off, it can be fun...when I don't soak myself.

Adam:

I was in the kitchen all day yesterday, literally. It was dishes, dishes, vegetable chopping, and more dishes. I worked a 14 hour day and by the time I was done I was dead tired. A day of rest has never been so welcome. I was to the point where you're so tired you can't fall asleep.  If you know what I'm talking about say yeehaw... Thank you for those who actually said it. This next week should bring new adventures, it'll be interesting when Nykele any I switch and she's in the kitchen all day. 

Love you all!

Day one!!

Whew what a long day!!  We were thrown into the mix of it all. Trained during the slow part of the day and were a part of the huge rush tonight. We're just part of the crew :)

Nykele:
I started off the morning being a maid, but a cowgirl maid so all was well. :)  my morning chores are cleaning the bathrooms and some gathering areas. I was feeling a tad down when I could hear Adam laughin and lovin the kitchen, but hope is on the horizon for me because after this first week of his kitchen training we'll switch and I'll get trained. But after chores and breakfast I was trained at the front desk, talk about intimidating! After a quick run through of my duties my supervisor left. I was in charge of answering phones and greeting people, eek I don't know much about this place yet so I was weary of being able to talk to people as a rep. Luckily all those that called I was able to just take down messages. Then finally after lunch I got to go outside :) worked in the tack shed organizing, let horses off their posts to move them somewhere else, and stained a deck beside the arena. Then dinner, THEN the guests arrived!! We had a bus of 42 French people! We hear a lot of our guests are foreigners. Dinner was a rush and fun to help serve. And to complete the night we had a band and dance. A whole lot of country dancing.  We also swing.... Adam and I might need to learn more of a country swing cause we may have been a wait too quick paced? We just need to relax it a bit but we had a blast:). The guests cameras were out the whole time, so our faces will be showing up on someone else's photo albums and facebooks. Now it's bed time! I'm pooped!


Adam:
Today started in the kitchen..... And ended in the kitchen. It was fun though! They're training me in the kitchen so that I can get started as the breakfast cook if I want to. The cook's name is Stan and he's a nice guy. A little hard to read but still nice.  I tried to show him that I wasn't completely incompetent. I chopped veggitables and did dishes after breakfast.  Preparing lunch wasn't too bad, we had chicken and waffles in sandwich form... I would have done it a little differently.... But it was good.  After lunch we had a big break because we were waiting on. Huge bus of 42 French people to come at 8:30. So I took a nap only to get woken up by a little finger tapping on my knee (the managers little girl wanted me to play dominos with her... She's 3) and hearing "play with me!" she was really cute.
   The rest of the day till dinner involved unloading supplies from the managers car and chopping more veggies... I am getting pretty good at it.  It didn't get really fun till the bus full of French people arrived and we had to rush to get all the plates put together and brought out to them.  It felt like lunch rush at chick-fil-A... And I loved it. : ) after the guests ate we had a band play music and they were taught line dancing. I didn't get to join until I finished cleaning the kitchen with a few others. But I was able to jump out on the dance floor and bust a move.

Now I am tired. Goodnight.