Family Reunion

We had a family reunion yesterday, my mothers family, the Gilberts. Descendans of Ile and Mable Gilbert. We had a great time. Of course not everyone could be there, we did have 4 generations, and to my best calculation is that we had 80 relatives there.

Does anybody know how many Great great grand kids there are at the moment?

We took family group pictures, which was a major production in itself, and tried to get pictures of each generation but, we did not get the Great Great Grand children because some of them were napping.

I sent an e-mail to several of you, but just in case you read this and don't get my e-mail. I need names birth dates and parents names of our fifth (5th) Generation, The Great Great Grand kids,
so I can up date our family history book.

Here are a few pictures, I have also put the family group pictures, on Flickr.com. If you do a search for "Gilbert Family Reunion 2009 you should get 9 pictures, if you do a search for betzspt, you should get all of my pictures.

Here are a few that are not on Flickr.

8-80 days and cow plop

Apparently I need to explain some things about Springport's 8-80 days for some people.

Barry asked: "sounds great, what exactly is 8-80 days?"

8-80 days is the local summer "festival." It is called 8-80 days because there are things for everyone from 8 to 80. They have pedal tractor pulls, frog jumping contest, Pet shows, cow plop contest, tractor pull, horse pull, belt sander races. The typical summer festival stuff.

Then Arthur said: "Cow plop contest? I have to see this one."

For the cow plop contest they make a grid on the ground in some kind of enclosed area, Springport uses the tennis court, people then purchase "a square," at the end of the day, they put the cow in the tennis court, and whoever purchased the square where the cow drops its "plop" or "pie" wins half the money.
Not the same as a cow pie tossing contest, where I have heard contestants throw dried cow pies.

Springport 8-80 days

Charlie's 4H group rode their horses in the 8-80 days parade today. It was a beautiful day, and there were lots of people. Some years there don't seem to be very many, this was a good year.












































Charlie had to have the farrier (horse shoe-er) come this morning before, they could go to the parade, to put a pad and shoes on one of the horses. The "girls" apparently were having her do sliding stops in the arena, yes Charlie has told them not to, and it has worn one of her back hooves down to the frog (the soft part of the foot in the center) The poor horse was in so much pain she couldn't walk yesterday afternoon, her back legs kept collapsing.

They do have roping and speed competitions where the horses do need to do sliding stops, but they have special shoes, so it does not wear down the hoof.

I am on vacation this week, but I don't think we are doing anything, or going anywhere.
Next weekend- the Gilbert Reunion. See some of you there.

Vacation

Just got back from a camping trip to Fort Custer State Recreation area, in Augusta.












I have been there before, but Charlie had not. I had it confused with one of the other camp grounds where we had camped.
Some of the sites at Custer are a little samll, but most of them hav a lot of wooded space between sites. On Thursday about noon while the guys were off doing something, I drove around the park there were only 13 sites occupied. The first week of June, before school gets out is not a bad week to go camping if you can manage it.

We got set up on Tuesday and Charlie and the dog went for a walk. I was alone at the camp site and heard, in the distance, what sounded like somebody pounding on a tree with a hammer. It got closer and closer, then I saw it a huge Pileated Woodpecker, I went to get may camera and it was gone by the time I got back, but this is what it looked like. The sound it makes when it is peeking at a tree is really loud. Like I said like someone hitting a tree with a baseball bat.

While I'm talking about birds, I don't know if I have every mentioned this site before, but it is really cool, it has great pictures of birds, and you are able to hear the song, or call.

Ed came on Tuesday and went to gather fire wood he came back with a piece of wood about 8 feet long.
He and Charlie took a long time to cut it up so it would partially fit in the fire pit. We never did figure out what kind of wood it was, but it was really hard, and didn't burn very hot.

While we were gone, something got into the hen house and got several of the baby chicks, Charlie found parts and pieces of at least 7 chicks and we think a duck it got a duck because we haven't seen it around. Charlie thinks it was probably a raccoon and says he his going to sit out with his gun tonight and wait for them.

In the strange critter happenings category.

• A neighbor down the road said he heard a cougar in the woods in back of his house. He said the horses and dogs were all upset. He called a few nights later and said it was out again. We went out and heard nothing from our yard. We drove down the road and definitely heard something but it did not sound like a cat, or a dog, maybe a mad raccoon.
• A couple of other neighbors, said they have seen very large tracks that looked like dog track but had claw prints. One of them had a 40 pound bag of dog food carried off, leaving a trail to the woods.