Showing Cattle: A 365 Day Project

#BannerChasing #StockShowLife #GoneShowin' 

Remember in Monday's post when I eluded to a video my brother submitted for a scholarship contest for the Minnesota State Fair? Well, hopefully, you clicked on the link to vote, he would love your help!

However, even if you don't vote, I still want to share the complete video with you here. It's a good look into our crazy life.

 

Now, I know what you are thinking. Yes, he really does get up every morning and put his steers in the cooler to grow hair and yes, he stays out in the barn until well after dark every night to take them out.

Plus, they require work in between. This summer is the first summer he has been able to have a job because he needed to be home to check the cooler every few hours. And realistically, the only reason he managed a job this summer was because he had an awesome boss who let him drive home every 2 hours to check cattle. Fortunately for him, in the past, his "summer job" of working with cattle usually payed out okay at the MN State Fair.

And, my summers were exactly the same...except I had a big brother that made me get up at 5 am to put steers in. Jas is lucky... :)

For a lot of people, showing cattle is a summer project, and let me stress, that is completly okay. But for my family and a lot of cattle families, it really is a year-long project. No, we don't run our cooler barn 365 days a year (man that would get spendy!), but shows don't end after the state fair, either. For us, state fair is usually just the beginning of a busy run and four seasons of shows means four seasons of work.

But luckily, it's work we love with people with love.

I really can't stress that enough.

One last thing, if you enjoyed the video, click here to go vote for it. Every vote helps.

I will take a little credit for the video editing, but my chatty little brother was great at talking and providing footage. This stuff comes so natural to him. And one disclaimer, this is the "cool" version of the video with actual music in the background. We read the rules and saw that no copyright music could be included so we cut it out and used some iMovie music for the video we turned in for the scholarship application. Then we watched all the rest and they all had copyright music included................

Such is life.

And lastly, don't even hesitate to ask questions if you have any.

xOxO,

Cattle Show Marathon

Where the heck have I been? 

Good question, friends, good question.

Tonight, is not the night to go into details. I just did a Jillian Micheals' tape and my worn out legs are making my think funny. However, it's not fair to keep everything a secret forever.

So, follow closely...

Basically, since my last post (over a month ago), I went to Grand Island, NE, to watch my little bro get a maroon jacket, hopped in the car and celebrated a wedding, hopped back in the car and went to Milwaukee to drink bad Miller Light and be spoiled by my favorite company, sent my husband road tripping to Kentucky, somehow managed to do enough laundry in the two short days he was gone to pack for my trip to Louisville for the NJAS, got distracted from any type of work once our bull won grand champion, drove 13 long hours home to get back in the car to go to a county fair (we are die-hards), got overly obsessed with decorating for a baby shower the next week, then had a "normal" week that involved breaking calves, judging practices and clipping cattle, which brings us to the best week of the summer, AKA the Dakota County Fair and lake week where I watched my baby brother show at his last county fair, drank too much of that darn beer garden beer and got necessary sun on my shoulders from a day of REAL vacation in the water.

Hello, longest run on sentence in the world.

And now I am here, catching up on life in general and savoring a #singlegirl night as April at A.Liz Adventures calls it. Mine included the Kardashians, working out and Reeses Pieces cereal.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, I will be crossing my fingers & toes and waiting for a call from my husband about the Iowa State Fair Angus Bull Show.

Short & sweet: We have been all about #bannerchasing lately.

By the way, just in case you aren't on Twitter (follow me: @jamielmay) #bannerchasing is my new favorite hashtag. It's total Twitter lingo for the show jocks, sorry if you aren't on that bandwagon and sorry if I am inappropriately using hash tags in normal writing. Like I said, Jillian is making me loopy.

And if isn't over yet. 

Last week, was week 1 of 4 of our month-long fair stunt. This week is Iowa State Fair and Steele County Fair, next week is MN 4-H Show and the following is MN Open Class. 

Life is good? Yes.

By the way, before I leave you, one small request. Go check out the video my little brother put together about why he shows cattle and vote for it to help him win a $500 scholarship. Click here to watch the video and vote. 

The video with the most votes win, so we need your help -- plus, I think you will really like it. It helps explain our crazy life and why we turn on the cooler for our cattle before the air conditioner in our house in the summer. :)

Until next time (which will hopefully be sooner than later),