big sky

My sister (who lives in Iowa) was in Montana this past weekend for a family reunion with her husband's family, so Somebody and I drove up to visit her. It was a long drive, but it was going to be the only time that she and Somebody could meet before the wedding.

Big Sky & Strong Wind: My friends Zach and Ginet lived in Great Falls for years and always encouraged me to come visit, and told me how beautiful it was in Montana. "You will love it!" they would say. There is not a better way to describe how I felt about Montana. I loved it. Being a Midwestern girl at heart anyway, it felt an awful lot like home. I know, I KNOW, that Montana is not the Midwest: I'm just saying that the rolling hills, the eternal sky, the farm country, the welcoming people, the small country towns, and the sunsets that can take your breath away just felt like home. Especially that big sky. Also, this guy was there. With this baby. It was like I'd died and gone to heaven with the boy and the baby and the big sky. Dang, my siblings produce pretty babies.


The Farm: The family that hosted the reunion has a large farm about an hour west of Great Falls. Farm. As in lots of animals. Some of those animals had babies. The cutest, of course, were the baby pigs. Man, those things are LOUD. They apparently hate all humans, and as they are too small to physically attack us, their method of fighting was an attempt to shatter our eardrums. It almost worked.
Poop Hill: I'm not sure that this was the official name of the hill, but it's how we referred to it. (Apparently I'm not much of a farm person, because I just couldn't/can't stop talking about how much poop there was on the ground.) Anyway, the hill that led down to the ponds was also the grazing area of the sheep, cows, horses, and pigs. There literally was not even a clear space big enough to sit down. Poop. Everywhere. Good times. At one point a large pig wandered near us and Ezra decided to chase it down so Annabelle could ride it. He would have caught it, I'm sure, except he had to watch every step in order avoid all that poop.