Things to do in Fort Smith....

Well I've returned from a fun-filled week at the Brahman Junior Nationals in Fort Smith, Arkansas. In my entire life I'd never been to Arkansas -- but I've now been there TWICE in one month! So, knowing I would be in Fort Smith for an entire week, I began researching things to do there about a week before I left, and unfortunately did not find all that much. So needless to say, I wasn't all that thrilled about going. I knew the show would be great, but since this is my only vacation for the summer, I wasn't finding all that much to do outside of going to the show.

#1. DON'T go see "Love Guru" at the movies. After killing 2 hours in a hotel room with a "name that tune" contest on our laptop iTunes, my friend John and I decided we had to get out, so we drove to the nearest theatre and picked the new movie "Love Guru" and I have to say, it was the stupidest movie I've ever seen. Not to offend any Mike Myers fans, but I hated it, and seriously wanted to leave within the first 20 minutes. So if you're a summer movie fan, skip that one.

#2. DO go to eat at The Lighthouse Restaurant. I got to go to dinner one night at this awesome local restaurant, called The Lighthouse. When I was getting ready to head up there, I went on Yahoo and searched for what restaurants were in Fort Smith -- and this place kept coming up as "the" place to eat. Turns out, my friends at J&R Farms also heard great things about it so we went to eat there on Friday night. It's a neat little place right on the river and so you can sit out and watch the boats go by while you're eating. And the food was really good too -- great seafood! If you're ever in Fort Smith, I definitely recommend it.

#3. Use name-dropping to get things you want. With my job as chairman of the ABBA Youth Activities Committee, I get to work with Chris Shivers who is the Executive Director of the Brahman Association. For those of you are are bull riding fans, you might notice that there is also a pretty famous bull rider also named Chris Shivers. (NOT THE SAME PERSON). However, while Chris and I are setting up the office and unloading all the awards on Monday, the facilities manager of the fairgrounds comes in there and is like SUPER pumped up to meet Chris. At first I thought it was weird, because although Chris is definitely cool, this guy was like TOTALLY excited. Then, the guy starts talking about how he has a friend who used to be a bull rider and used to know Don Gay, bla bla bla -- when we realize that he thinks he is talking with the bull rider, not the Brahman exec. We didn't bother to tell him any different.

#4. Hope that there is a Brahman show going on in the town while you are there.

If you are lucky enough to be there during a Brahman show, then your list of things to do is greatly expanded.....

#4a. Find the Louisiana people and hang out with them 24/7. It's a generally accepted fact that the Louisiana people have the most fun at Brahman shows. Since there is no fitting, blowing, or clipping to be done at the show --- we get a lot of time to hang out, and most of it involves food and refreshments. So as soon as I get to the show, I made a b-line over to the Louisiana area to get in the group and do some serious snacking. The week's highlights included boudin, grilled shrimp ka-bobs, pork chops, ribs, fire crackers, and lots more! I kept taking pictures on my camera phone of the food and picture messaging it to my dad, who didn't get to come to the show. Honestly he probably likes eating at the Louisiana stalls better than actually watching the show at the All American. So I was tormenting him all week with the gourmet pictures cooked by the Fontenot's and Richards and Vaughns. The J-S crew had found an empty pavillion at the show and converted it to their personal hospitality area, and that quickly became "the" hangout of the show. It was awesome -- complete with food, drinks, music and even a dance floor! So needless to say, I spent a lot of time there!

#4B. Talk about people who aren't at the show (a.k.a Catherine). While I was at the show, I got several "shout outs" of people who said they love reading the blog! Jennifer Parker, Stuart Watkins both said they prefer Luke's postings the best. This proceeded to start a discussion on how funny Luke and Catherine were, followed by a discussion of some of Catherine's famous "Catherine-ism's". This conversation was taking place on the announcer's stand which included me, Stuart, Trish Collins, Jennifer Parker, Barry Parks, and Jimmy Sartwelle. So in our infinite boredom, we started a list of good Catherine-ism's that are funny phrases that she uses to describe people/things. The top two choices were "skanks" and "rif-raff" -- which we then proceeded to call each other these names over the the next 3 days

of the show.

Other highlights of the week.....

• My friend Amy Terry was elected as the new AJBA president
• Rennie Rogers was Reserve Grand Champion with her V8 heifer.
• On show day we had a big storm come through and had about half of the show with no power or lights in the showring.

So....it's now Sunday and I'm back in Boling, catching up on my 300 missed e-mails from the week and trying to re-group before big ad design rush for the August show circuit in the next week. I'm having cravings for Larry's, so guess where I'll be eating every day this week :)

Back to Work

As many of you know, last week Luke and I were out most of the week because we took a trip to Indiana to visit Luke's parents, as well as go to the wedding of our friends Clayton Lampe and Erin Limes. Aside from the snake that threatened our lives (see below) we had a wonderful time. The weather was cooler, which was a welcomed treat. Luke's family is such a fun group of people to spend time with. I thoroughly enjoyed our time hanging out by the pool, eating good food (although I missed Larry's here in Wharton, terribly!), and having good conversation. We were away a total of 7 days, but as usual, time flies when you are having fun. As Luke's mom was dropping us off at the airport, she kept saying that it seemed like our trip went so fast.

But, when I got back to work yesterday, I was reminded just how much work I have to do that came in during my 5 day vacay from the office here at RHD. So, since I got back to the office yesterday morning, I have been slowly but surely sorting through all of my emails and getting back on track. I have been reminded (via my flooded inbox) that it's never easy to be gone!

One thing that made my busy workday fly by yesterday and today was my newest CD purchase over on iTunes. I must confess, I am one of those die hard Coldplay fans. I'll admit, I have every CD they've ever put out. And, like a true fan, I don't just know the songs that they have that play on the radio... I know ALL of them... even the crazy ones that most people have never heard of! So, any time I've been alone in my office for the past 2 days, I've been steadily listening to the new Coldplay CD. If Rachel was here, she'd probably be tired of hearing the same songs over and over again. And, while Tricia was here most of the day, I kept it on our usual country mix (since Tricia loves country music). But as soon as I'm alone, it's back to hearing Chris Martin (lead singer and husband of Gwyneth Paltrow, of course) belting out these U2-esque ballads and rock songs. Anyways, if anyone if a fan of Coldplay and likes their music, I highly recommend investing in their new CD. I might be a little biased since I've been waiting 2 years now for this CD to come out, but for the most part, I couldn't be more pleased!

I also should mention that today and yesterday at lunch at (where else?) Larry's, the restaurant was packed. Today we got the last empty table! It must be all the free-publicity that we are giving over here at the RHD blog! Ha ha!

Heroes and Legends.....

Every once in a while, we get the honor of doing work for some of our heroes - someone who is one of the most highly-respected people in the cattle business. Whenever someone like this asks us to help them with a project, obviously we are really HONORED. But also, it creates a lot of pressure!! Everyone knows that I am a competitive perfectionist. So, most of the time, I put more un-necessary pressure on myself, because I want every design we do to be perfect. Best of the best.

Actually, this reminds me of this past December, when we were working on the bull banners for Denver this year. We were working on all of Phil Lautner and Matt Lautner's projects, and the last one to do was the banner for "I Am Legend" - the $83,000 high selling bull of the year. I have to admit, this was the first time I "cracked" under the pressure. I simply couldn't do it, I was too nervous. I wanted Phil and Matt to be blown away, and I just cracked. So....in that situation, I had to call in super-designer Catherine....who never even broke a sweat and designed quite possibly the coolest bull banner we have ever done. Teamwork at it's best!!!

ANYWAY....so about 2 weeks ago me and Cat were working at the office, and the phone rang and it came up with an 812 area code. Before I answered it, Cat said she thought it was her friend Allison Meyer calling (from Indiana). When I answered the phone, I was suprised to hear that famous slow-talking-drawl of Bill Couch from Indiana. He wanted to hire us to design an ad for his foundation Simmental/Angus genetics that will appear in the July issue of The Register.

Now, anyone who knows me, Catherine or my dad know that Bill Couch is one of our biggest heroes. I mean, he's right up there with Gary Buchholz and Max Watts in terms of our all-time most respected cattlemen. My dad always talks about lots of good ol' times from earlier stock show days judging and showing with Bill Couch. In 2000, when he was at Express, we trusted his judgement so much that we bought two Limousin show heifers -- sight unseen -- based on his suggestion alone. Dad and Catherine had been toying around the idea of getting a heifer from Express because of their scholarship program. Then one day (the day of their sale) -- we got a call from a friend of ours who asked us if we were getting in the Limousin business because we had purchased a heifer at the Express Sale. We were kinda shocked, because we had not talked about purchasing a heifer at the Express Sale...we only tire-kicked the idea a bit but never decided anything OFFICIAL.

Well, when Dad called Mr. Couch, he told us that this heifer was the sleeper of the sale and he went ahead and bought her for us, and if we weren't 100% happy and satisfied, they would take her back -- no questions asked. Obviously when Bill Couch tells you a heifer is good, she's gonna be good. So we took his word and bought the heifer. That heifer was virtually unbeatable in Texas and won her division at the Limi Junior Nationals. We liked her so much we went back the next year and bought ANOTHER Limi heifer, who was the champion heifer at Houston for Catherine. In fact, Cat won so much with those 2 Express heifers, she was the High Point Limi Heifer exhibitor in the state of Texas that year. She also earned money from their scholarship program to pay for 1 year of college.

But, of all the great memories we have with Bill Couch through the years, the BEST one is this. In 1999, my Shorthorn heifer, Waukaru Prima Bella 804 was the Grand Champion Heifer of the North American International Livestock Exposition Major PACE Open Shorthorn Show. In 1998, she had won Reserve Champion as a baby calf and she was coming back as the senior yearling to defend her title. That was one of the best days of my life, showing my favorite Shorthorn heifer on the green shavings while the organ was playing in Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky. Looking back, the only bad part of that day was my hideous choice of wearing these tight khaki Rocky Mountain jeans.

And, you'll never guess who the judge was........look in the picture. One of my heroes in the cattle business, Bill Couch.

Snakes and Sports!

Greetings from the Hoosier State! Catherine and I fled the heat to come visit my family in Indiana as well as go to a wedding of one of my good friends from Butler. The weather here is great, it has not been over 75 and the humidity is almost zero! This morning I was frying bacon for Catherine and saw my Dad's laptop sitting on the counter. Of course I had to check the RHD blog, facebook, email, and youtube. This is my normal practice when I get on a computer. Anyway, I thought that I would give some highlights of our trip.

When we first got back to the homestead we got in my Mom's car and drove to see my sister. She only lives about 5 minutes away. When we got there, we were standing on the porch and Catherine said "Look that cat is playing with something. ITS A SNAKE!" I immeadiately said that we have never seen a snake in any of our yards in Indiana, but sure enough there was a 3 foot water moccasin a few feet away from where we were standing. Like a small child I screamed jumped in Catherine's arms and told her to get me out of there! Ok so maybe I did not jump into her arms, but I am horrified of snakes and do not want anything to do with them. I stood on the porch and decided to throw some rocks at the snake. When I did it coiled up and looked like it was fixin' to ruff me up. So my sister Cassie called my brother-in-law Steve to come home to kill the snake. When Steve got back he got a shovel and walked over to the snake which had slithered to the side of the house. The snake was not going to take this matter lightly and again coiled up into the "in not going down without a fight" pose. Steve carefully walked towards the snake and had the shovel extended in front of him. When the shovel was about one foot from the snakes head, the snake struck at the shovel and sure caught Steve off guard. After cleaning out his pants the score was Snake - 1 and Steve - 0. Round two ensued and with a quick stab with the shovel the snake was wondering why his head was barely attached to his body. After many more blows with the shovel Battle Snake was over. Then my nieces who are two and five decided they wanted to play with the snake. I stood at a distance thinking that there is no way that I would go within 10 feet of that thing, but the girls thought that is was great. The next day my sister reported that Hunter, the five-year-old, had gone out in the yard, found the body of the snake and tied it in a knot. So much for little girls being afraid of creepy crawly things...oh wait, thats me!

Catherine and I have also been spending alot of time playing on the Wii on my parents big screen. If you are not familiar with the Wii, it is the greatest game console ever. I do not think that I can truly explain how detailed the games for the Wii are, but I will try. Catherine and I were playing the sports games; tennis, bowling, boxing, golf, and baseball. The Wii controllers act as the tennis racket, golf club, etc and you swing them just like you would in a real game. Catherine and I decided that we like the tennis game the best and played game after game against each other. The next day Catherine said "Man, my arms sure hurt...I think that I have tennis elbow." I started laughing so hard at her diagnosis. It reminded me of a time that she thought she had dry sockets when she had not ever had any teeth pulled. But that is another blog, another time. So I had to call Anne McCain (a good friend of ours) and tell her of Catherine's sports injury and we all go a big laugh out of it.

The Wii also has a training lesson for each sport. Again Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum decided that we would "take lessons" on how to play tennis. Well Catherine was player #2 and had to follow me and try to beat my scores. She was getting so MAD! Finally she snapped and started yelling "I hate player #2, I hate being player #2, I hate everything about player #2, I QUIT!" So being the nice guy that I am, I let Catherine be player #1 and we continued with our lessons.

Well that is our trip up till now. I will give another report once we get back to RHD Headquarters. With a road trip to Ohio and a wedding, I am sure there will be more good stories!

V8 Ranch Invitational Recip Cow Show

On Friday morning, we hosted the very first ever V8 Ranch Invitational Recip Cow Show. Okay obviously you can tell this is something funny. A while back, a person in our family needed some bulls to breed their commercial cows to. Being the sweet person she is, Catherine offered a couple of her Shorthorn bulls to this family member to use. Now, these calves are ready to be weaned and so the bull borrower gave us 10 heifer calves. I would get 5, and Catherine would get 5. I'm not quite sure how I got into this mix, considering it was Catherine who donated the bulls, not me. But none the less, I'll take them. We have been using Brahman x Shorthorns as our recip cows on the ranch and they are the best we have! They're the perfect mix of the Brahman for the heat tolerance, but the milking and the disposition of the Shorthorn. And, we get lots of cool color patterns which make it easy during heat checking to know which cow is which.

So....back to the story. So the 10 heifers come to the pen, and of COURSE, we decide to make this simple event into a contest. I had been out of town for a while and Cat and Luke decided that we would have a selection of the heifers, one by one, with NO outside help from anyone. Just Rachel vs. Catherine/Luke on selecting these heifers. Well....anyone who knows our family knows that Catherine is the one that got the majority all the cattle evaluation skills. Then, throw Luke into the mix, who happened to be the high individual in beef cattle judging at Denver this year....and it's clear: I'M DOOMED!!!

So, we go into the pen, the dust is flying like we're in a western shootout. Catherine and Luke on one side of the pen, me on the other. Dad, Frank, my grandpa Gene, my friend John, and some customers are all the spectators.

First we have to decide who gets the first pick....paper rock scissors of course. Standing back to back (so no one can change their guess) with Luke in the middle, the fists come down, 1...2....boom. Catherine chooses paper (like she always does) and I choose SCISSORS. Oh yeah, luck is on my side. Knowing I have the first pick (and knowing I'm already at a disadvantage on the judging ability), I step into the pen. All eyes on me. I pretend like I'm judging the Louisville steer show in Freedom Hall. I know if I pick a complete dud, they're going to completely laugh me out of the pen. So, I look. And I look again. And I look some more. I finally decide on my pick "Big Red" who is a solid red, larger framed heifer. Immediately I hear Catherine and Luke let out a disappointed groan. She wasn't their first pick but she was in their top and they thought for sure I'd miss her. Luke being the Angus breeder he is, wanted to opt for the solid blacks. So L&C get to make their pick and they pick the big black heifer with a white switch. My turn again. Oh geez, how am I going to do this. I ask if I can get some assistance from dad, since technically it's 2 against 1 L&C vs. me) and they ADAMENTLY say no, I'm on my own. I ask my friend John for advice, and he keeps silent too. So then, I again pretend like I'm judging Denver and I very decisively take a little black heifer with white on the belly. Hey, if you're not sure what you're doing, at least do it with authority and you might fool some people. The crowd goes wild...turns out she's actually the next best pick!!! She's a little green but eveyone agrees she has the most potential. I've suprised everyone with my livestock judging selection ability.

As the picking continues, we get them all sorted out thanks to the gate-cutting skills of Dad, Frank and John. These cowboys really know their business. You would have thought Catherine and I were some Latin American royalty selecting the finest Brahman heifers on the ranch as much attention we were getting.

When we finally get the two sets of heifers grouped into their new pens we decide we should have a contest and award the Grand Champion Pen of the Show. After some discussion, Catherine and Luke award themselves this award, because they feel they have a better color consistency. Theirs are mostly black with a dark roan. Mine is a mixture of reds, blacks and 2 roans. We then award a Grand and Reserve Champion Individual Heifer award. I feel like Big Red was the winner, but again, Luke & Cat give themselves Champion & Reserve, because they had two blacks and if you used Big Black as the Champion, they think you'd have to follow her up with another black for uniformity. So, we agree that Big Red is the 3rd Overall Heifer.

Following the show, we then had to work the new heifers. I'm sure Frank who is our cow herd manager was thinking we are the biggest bunch of dummies around because it took us about an hour to brand, worm and tag 10 head. But hey, we had fun. I got to brand my 5 heifers, and Luke branded his and Catherine's. C55 and C56 (the C is for Catherine) were the Grand and Reserve, so Dad branded them.

And of course, the morning wouldn't be complete without some sort of rodeo-type-fiasco. Usually this involves me getting trampled or attempting to bulldog something. This time, we were finishing branding, and someone forgot to replace the side bars on the off-side of the chute. So when Luke branded her, she tried to jump out the chute through that little opening. Dad had to bust out his 1972 State Champion Defensive Football moves and block her in. She was all over him trying to jump out but he pretended like she was one of those Boling High School tackling dummies long enough for Frank and John to get over there and help get her back in.

Really, it was a very fun event. I suprised everyone (including myself) with my selection ability! Now, the heifers are going to be turned over to Cat & Luke to put in the little trap by Cat's house where we can get them real gentle and grow them up until they're ready to breed. So the first V8 Ranch Invitational is history....but who knows.....3 years from now Big Red might just be carrying the next National Champion. You never know :)

Can't Slow Down

For those of you who called the office this past week, you know I've been out of town since Tuesday.

You may have noticed that Catherine likes to stalk the reality tv shows....well I like to stalk Texas country music singers and my favorite is Randy Rogers. Last year, Catherine and me deemed his song "Can't Slow Down" as our theme song of the spring of 2007. We have a little restaurant in El Campo, about 30 minutes from Boling, that gets a lot of great Texas country artists playing there during the summer. Well about once a week I visit both the Greek Brothers web site (that's the place) and the Randy Rogers band web site to see if they are coming to our town. No luck last summer. No luck this summer either. In fact, anytime I go out of town on a weekend I always check Randy's web site too, just to see if by CHANCE he might be playing in a town I'm going.

So, this past Tuesday, I did something that is very "un-Rachel-ish" and more something like my friends Cassie Abney, Kyla Neisham, or Shane & Gretchen Richey would do. I took a day of work vacation (actually 4 days vacation), booked a plane ticket to Little Rock on a Tuesday night and went to the concert with my friend who lives about 30 minutes from there. And...not only did I get to see Randy, I also got to see Wade Bowen, who I also love. The concert was at this great little spot in Little Rock called the Rev Room. It was their acoustic concert and was so awesome because it was just Randy, Wade and their guitars. Randy started off the night with his song "Who I Am" and played lots of hits like "One More Goodbye", "Just a Matter of Time," "Like It Used to Be" and "Still Be Losing You." It was so cool to hear the stories behind the music and how he wrote the lyrics and stuff.

I also really loved the Wade Bowen part too. Actually probably my two favorite songs they played the entire night were Wade's songs which were "Who I Am" (a different one than Randy's song) and then his version of "Please Come to Boston."

All in all, it was amazing. It was one of the best times I've ever had, and definitely one of the best Texas country music concerts I've ever been to in my 10 years as a fan. The only downfall was that I still wasn't able to dance it up like I usually do since this was my first outing without my ankle brace. Since this was such an important event I had to scrap the Nike Air's and go back to my cowboy boots for one night!

Hello World

Hello World... This is my first blog how exciting!!

This week at Ranch House Designs has been a relaxing one that is for sure. We are usually overwhelmed with updates, but this week I have been able to finish them and have no update emails left by the time the clock hits that wonderful 5:00. Though work is amazing it is always nice to go home.

This morning we got a wonderful surprise. The most gorgeous flowers were sent to us from Randa of Southern Jewlz. She is so wonderful and creates amazing jewlrey everyone should go look at southernjewlz.com you will want to buy it all!!!

Well if any of yall have every been to our office you know that I had my desk in the bigger room all by myself. I have recently changed computers and now sit in the office that use to be our "storage" type room. I am in here with Luke and our new coworker Liz. I love working in here me and Luke laugh at the stupidest things all day. This makes work pretty entertaining.



The last new thing in my life this week is big news. I am finally selling my old nasty truck "Big Red" It is a 1995 F-150 which I got my freshman year of High School. Though I have loved my truck and have many many memories it is way past time for an upgrade. I have been car shopping mostly online But I have decided the car I would love to have. A 2008 Hyundai Tiberon preferable this silver one I found. I will be going car shopping tomorrow hopefully some good comes out of it.

Bye World!!!!

World Pork Expo and more

Hey all! So I know I am way OVERDUE on my blog status. Lots of things have been going on in the Cooper household that have been keeping me busy! But, most importantly, for those of you that don't know yet, Aaron and I are expecting and are due around December 7th. Although, the doctor warns me that the baby is HUGE and don't go anywhere after November 1st, because most likely it will be early growing at this pace. So we are way pumped and just thinking of more names every day! AND, We just had the most wonderful nephew, Kaden Wayne Mason, born on May 28th, 2008!

Well, in the midst of all of this, Aaron and I made a very eventful trip up to Nebraska and Iowa last week and spent several days at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines. We flew in on Monday afternoon and visited a few friends in Nebraska that we haven't seen since we moved back to Texas in December! We had a great time looking at pigs and cattle and visiting with friends. Aaron and I enjoyed our rental car so much that I think I need a new car to welcome the baby!

We visited RW Genetics on Tuesday afternoon and bought a couple Dallas hogs for some friends in West Texas. Then Rick proceeded to tell me that he would like to turn all advertising services over to RHD, which is GREAT news and we are so excited to get him and his great pig operation on board with us!! On Wednesday we headed into Des Moines to enjoy the most relaxing, competetive and fun national swine show ever!

We first delivered the Hoosier State Banners to Daniel and Telynda Hendrickson and by the wa their daugher, Hadley is the CUTEST, I love her!!!!!!! They hung the banners right east of the ring where if you were sitting in either stands you could see them. I might add that they looked AWESOME and RHD received numerous compliments about them! Also, saw the Clay Farms catalogs that we designed a few weeks ago and they looked really neat too...he said that he handed out 2 boxes in a couple hours. We then watched the show and I had at least 50 and maybe even 100 people tell me they saw me in the Seedstock with RHD advertising, which made me feel very proud and I told all of them how much I loved my job and how great my co-workers are!!!! The show was wonderful, it is always interesting and very rewarding to watch Dr. Kim Brock evaluate swine and hear his way of talking them!

In addition to RW Genetics, we gained lots more interest in RHD and now have several potential customers! We are happy to have Clay Farms, Winning Enterprises, Kneese Show Pigs, Knight Show Pigs, and Wintex Farms already on board as new pig website customers for summer 2008.

The week at the Expo was long, because I was more tired than usual being pregnant and all, and Aaron might have considered me a fuddy-duddy, but I couldn't help that if I wasn't at the show, I wanted to be sleeping!! We were in bad weather most of the week. The town we visited first in Ceresco, Nebraska had two F1 tornadoes pas through there on Wednesday night and flattened some of the town and had numerous roofs gone and trees uplifted. The folks we stayed with had all their windows blown out and all the surrounding houses beside them were levelled. So, we were fortunate to have left on Wednesday morning. Then on Thursday night in Des Moines, there was a tornado spotted less than a mile from the hotel, sirens were going off and we had to go to lobby hall and wait for what looked like a hurricane to pass. Once again, before flying out in Omaha, on Saturday night, sirens prevailed and we went to take cover for the final time! I was never so happy to be out of the midwest and tornado alley and was glad to see that the weather didn't follow us home, although the rain would be nice!!!

Until next time, this has been our life for the last couple weeks! See ya soon! OH and My Birthday is tommorrow, I will be 25 big years old!!!! Adios!

Summer

It seems to me that in the winter, especially at times when I am freezing to death at Denver in January, I can't wait for summer to get here. At cold times of the year, I always think back to fun times by the pool, or cooking out in the yard, or going to the beach. Then, sure enough, about 5 months later, summer sets in, and I'm envious of times when I have to break out my puff coat and gloves and run the seat warmer in my car. Now its so hot that when I get in my car I have to be careful to not get branded by any metal object that had been in there heating up!

I'm also envious of those areas of the world that get 4 seasons a year - summer, fall, winter, and spring. For you northerners, here in Texas, we really get only 2 seasons: "hot" and "not-so-hot." Winter isn't that cold at all — maybe we get about a month of cool (not cold) weather. Then we get about a week of what most people call "spring," and pretty soon, it starts heating up, and before long the air conditioners are running and we're griping about the humidity and heat. I've been thinking it is summer since about March this year. Now we're in June, and there's no question about what season we're in.

To celebrate summer, yesterday I purchased my first lawnmower. I'd been paying a person to mow my yard for the past 3 years that I have lived in Boling, and since I really do enjoy mowing on my mom's lawnmower, I decided to bite the bullet and enter the world of lawnmower owners. I decided on a Snapper Zero Turn Mower... which I fell in love with at first sight when I entered Wharton Lawn & Garden. A few negotiations (I got a free weedeater!) and a few hours later, I was watching my new mower be unloaded off of the trailer in my driveway. After a short instructional lesson from the owner of WL&G, I was mowing away!

After several hours of mowing, and several minutes (yuck) of weedeating, I was hot, tired, and covered in lawn clippings. But I couldn't be more happy to be in control of my own yard destiny. So at least I have something good to say about summer... and that is that I get to do a lot of mowing on my new mower. Now if we could just get some more rain... then I'd really get to mow!

As a reality TV buff, my lovely day was topped off by getting to watch the finale of Top Chef. Of course I was rooting for Richard to win, but I was a little disappointed that his dishes weren't as good as normal. Stephanie ended up winning, which was more than okay with me, as I have gone back and forth all season on whether I liked Richard or Stephanie best. But, now that Top Chef is over, what will I do with my Wednesday nights? Shear Genius! This is another one of our favorite reality shows, and a new season is starting in 2 weeks. Last year we loved watching all of the hairdresser drama (Tabitha vs. Theodore was our favorite, followed closely by Dr. Boogie's mullet), and I can't wait to watch again this year!

Alabama -- an old flame

If George Strait is the current love-of-my-life country singer, Randy Owen was one of my first. Randy was the lead singer of the hot country group Alabama back in the 80’s. In fact, the first date I ever had with my husband Lance, was to an Alabama concert on the Texas A&M campus.

That was back when concert tickets weren’t priced out of reach, even for starving college students. Which was pretty much the motivation for him agreeing to go to the concert. A mutual friend of ours told Lance if he would stand in line (or rather camp out in line) for four tickets to the concert, he would treat all of us to dinner before the concert. I think he was one of the first ones in line, because we had really good seats. And as an 18 year old I remember thinking Randy Owen was soooo good looking, in a very distinguished older man kind of way.

So recently when Rachel told me RHD had been hired by Tennessee River Music, Inc., Randy’s cattle business, to design letterhead and envelopes, a flood of memories came back: Cranking up the volume when “My Home’s in Alabama” came on the radio; scooting across the dance floor to “If You're Gonna Play In Texas” and singing along to “Old Flame”.

Not that all of our clients aren’t famous in their own right, but this will most likely be the closest I’ll ever come to having contact with someone I’ve admired for a long time from afar.

I wonder if George Strait needs a web site, or some business cards, or a brochure…

Special Project Making a Big Impact

It's been a year in the making, but RHD has finally finished a very special project for the American Brahman Breeder's Association and the World Brahman Congress. This post is officially dedicated to Tyler Hahn, former RHD intern from summer 2007 (you'll see why later).

It all started at Houston in March 2007, when I had a conversation with RHD client and World Brahman Congress chairman Kevin Bryant. We were trying to think of a cool fund-raiser for the Congress that people would actually enjoy giving to....not feel hassled. So, we borrowed an idea from the Texas Longhorn Association and I volunteered to coordinate a special edition poster featuring 100 brands of Brahman breeders.

So, we started out by trying to sell the brand spaces. We had 100 spots to sell, and lucky for me they just sold out like hotcakes. Since there really isn't a lot of Brahman memorabilia everyone was really getting excited.

Well.....it just so happened that all the brand spots started selling in June 2007, which is right about the time when our 2007 intern, Tyler Hahn, arrived in Boling. This was his first project, and one of the major projects he did all summer. First of all he had to design all the brands -- which if you know about brands -- you know some can get pretty elaborate. Of course there were some easy ones, like the V8, but there were others that took literally hours and hours to try to create. After that, he had to contact all the brand buyers, just to confirm that we had their brand, their ranch name, and their city and state correct. I bet if you ask Tyler about any Brahman ranch on the poster today -- he'd still be able to tell you the ranch name, brand and state! After Tyler left, we still had a lot to do, and that is when Tricia began working here so she got the project next. She picked up on designing and getting brands approved. She worked steadily on this from September to April.

Besides the brands -- we had the artwork part of the poster. I hired C.J. Brown, our Shorthorn friend from Illinois, to be the artist. The Brahman group auctioned off 9 cow spaces and 1 bull space to be on the poster. The final print turned out to be amazing! All the breeders were just blown away by how accurate C.J. made the drawing based on the pictures they sent in.

So, the official "unveiling" of this big project was a few weeks ago at the World Brahman Congress in Fort Worth. I donated 1,000 posters (on behalf of the ranch my dad works at -- V8 Ranch) to the association so that each participant at the Congress would have one to take home as a souvenier. All in all the project was the biggest fund-raiser for the congress...all in all it brought in over $30,000 for the event, and is something that many Brahman breeder's from across the world will treasure!

Brahman Girls at RHD

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm the "Brahman Girl" in our family and Cat is the "Shorthorn Girl". This week at RHD we've also had two other world famous "Brahman Girls" here helping out...Emily Forgason and Amy Terry. Emily is going to be working here again this summer in our web updates division. Emily is part of the J.D. Hudgins Ranch and Forgason Cattle Company and we love it when she comes here because she really keeps us "in the know" of what's cool and what's not.

Emily's best friend - Amy Terry - was down visiting so she came in and helped out too. These girls have had a busy week!!! First job was updating our RHD client map, which is a big wall map where we have a MAP TACK location of all of our clients. It's actually really cool when you can see it. Most of our clients are from Texas, then a huge strip in the midwest, then some in pretty much every state. We got our first Alabama client this week too - Tennessee River Music -- so we got a new map tack there. Considering we hadn't updated the map since last summer, they had a lot of searching to do for towns. Let's just say they're really familiar with the location of small towns in Iowa and Illinois right now :)

Another thing they've been working on was quality control reports for our web division. We started monitoring this really closely in November and so we have about 6 months of reports to file. This is Luann's job, and takes a lot of time to monitor, but it helps us make sure there aren't typos or problems on people's web sites. It also allows us to have a really accurate idea of the average turnaround time on our web update times -- which averaged about a 1/2 day turnound in the month of May. The web division does a really good job of staying on top of people's updates in a fast manner -- we know how exciting it is when you have new pictures to put up!!

Their last project has been working on lots of stuff for the Brahman "All American" which is the junior nationals. Since I am the youth committee chairman I get to volunteer with a lot of the show projects and they have totally helped me out!

Oh, and of course, in exchange for the great job at work, we've been treating them to lunch at Larry's every day!!!

Excitement and Disappointments...

As we all know life is full of up's and down's and that is what today's blog is about. First the bad news. Recently we have done a little rearranging of the work force at the office. Normally I work on updates for web sites, but recently I have been helping Catherine alleviate some of her work load by taking her initial design and building the entire web site from there. This has allowed us to really crank out the web site proofs and we have got almost 10 proofs out in the past two days. That has to be some sort of a record! Anyway, there is a great deal of satisfaction that goes along with building the web site from the ground up and then being able to see it pop up on your computer on the internet. Not to brag on my "special friend," but Catherine has been designing some real hum-dingers lately and we are all impressed by her recent web designs. With all of the hype behind these web sites that we like so much, the worst thing is when you send a client an email saying that their proof is online and then they write back and say they do not like it. The wind is taken right out of your sails and you just want to shut down your computer and go home. Although, sometimes when we do make a different design we all like it better than the first and then we are happy once again.

Another HUGE disappointment was that Antonia got sent home last night on Top Chef. They did her sorry! I do not know if the majority of our blog readers watch this great show, but Antonia was down to the final four and got eliminated before the finale AND the girl she got beat by had her head on the chopping block for about four weeks in a row. Catherine and I got so mad when that happened last night. Reality TV sure gets you engrossed in things that really do not matter but we all love it.

Finally the good news. For anyone that has been around Wharton County, Texas lately you noticed that the dust is flying and we have not had rain since before I was born. Well today on my way to the office raindrops started hitting my windshield and the wipers had to come on. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even though it is not currently raining, it is still cloudy outside and looks like it could start again at any time.

Well it is back to building web sites. Be sure to keep an eye out on the RHD web site for these new sites as we will be putting up new ones as they get approved.

Until next time!

In A Timely Manner...

It's a busy busy morning here at RHD. Even though it's a Tuesday morning, it seems like a Monday to me since yesterday Rachel, Luke, and I were out of the office while Rachel was meeting with the King Ranch Institute.

It's a busy but exciting morning for me — busy because there is a lot of things going on here today; exciting because I finally get to share one of my favorite web sites that we've ever created with you.

Tricia and I have been working with Mike Tabor, a very talented and nationally-recognized western artist, on a new web site for about a month now. According to Mike's wife Suzy, their daughter Hannah works for The Cattleman Magazine and was familiar with our work, so when her father needed a new look for his existing web site, she suggested our crew. With every email from the Tabors, we couldn't wait to check out the new paintings or sculptures that Mike would be sending us. The title of my post here, In A Timely Manner, happens to be one of Mike's paintings. We were all so impressed with his artwork, and I know you will be too. Take a look at Mike's web site at miketabor.net. I keep trying to pick my favorite painting, but I don't think I can! Thank you to Mike, Suzy, and Hannah for your confidence in our team, and best of luck with your new site!

Well, I should get back to work so that I can get some things done in a timely manner, of course!