This spring has been crazy busy for me, but it’s been fun as well. I’m in my last quarter at TVCC, thank goodness. It’s nice to finally feel like I’m making some progress in school. As excited as I am to go to USU I’m sure I’ll miss Ontario a little, haha I never thought I’d say that. Anywho, aside from work and school there’s been a lot of other things happening at the Huff mini-farm. My parents decided to do away with the 1960’s mint green tile in the main bathroom and remodel it. As usual I became the general contractor for the job. I’m not sure why that seems to happen every time, but I’m cool with it. I contracted Dad to do all the plumbing, Mike for the electrical, paint, and trim, Mom and Sis for the meals, and I stood around and watched. Haha just kidding I put a lot of time into the project, partly because I had the most time to give and because I like doing that type of work. I’m sure Lowes and Home Depot loved us because we were in there nearly every day. As you can see from the before and after pics our Extreme Bathroom Makeover turned out pretty well.
About this same time our cow Rosie was dew to drop a calf. I’m sure it was in the back of my dad’s mind for weeks, but I really didn’t care much. That is unt
il my dad woke me up at 4:30 in the morning and asked me to help him pull the calf. So I did. All he really needed me to do was hold the flashlight, so it was all good. Or so I thought. Now, I think I’m pretty tough guy. I hunt, I gut animals, I donate blood, and I shovel cow crap on occasion. But when that cow slid out and blood and fluid slopped all over my face, I gotta admit that was pretty freakin gross! I hope that’s not how it is when my kids are born. Anyways, the next day we discovered that the calf had some undeveloped front legs meaning he couldn’t straiten his legs out and therefore couldn’t stand or walk properly. On the range a calf like that would never survive and most 
cattlemen would just put it down because its not worth their time to try to help them, but dad and I knew that he could be helped so we determined to try. Dad got some suggestions from the vet and we brain stormed for a few days and finally decided to start by putting some braces on his ankles to help his hooves stay strait thus stretching his tendons while his muscles gained strength. After this we planned on putting braces on his knees to help straighten them, but after about a week and a half of wearing his ankle braces, he surprisingly looked really good. So we left well enough alone and now he runs and plays like a normal calf. Because he was a little handicapped and he had to wear braces for a while we named him Forrest, after Forrest Gump.
We got the bathroom done just before Easter weekend when we had a family Easter Egg Hunt which really should have been called The Stoddard Family Reunion 2009. We also refer to it as Redneck Weekend. There must have been 100 people here for the egg hunt and barbeque. It was crazy! We had about five times as many eggs as we did hiding places, so the kids were happy. And as it turned out there was a special egg for my cousin Renee which had and engagement ring in it. Congrats Barry and Renee!
After the barbeque things got down right redneck. We threw open the gate to the pasture and it became a dirt track for four wheelers, motorcycles, and anything else that had a motor. For hours it was non-stop motorized, hick fun, complete with kids wrecking into fences and riding lawn mower races.As fun as all this was, the height of my excitement this spring has to be the Eagles concert I got to go to with Jake and Lara and my parents. The Eagles are my favorite band and the concert was off the hook awesome!
