Before leaving the dinner last night, I was asked if I wanted the carcass of the turkey for soup, and I said sure, if we could keep it down there overnight (no room in my fridge!). We decided I would make a big pot of soup in the commercial kitchen the next day, so after breakfast and a dump run, I headed over to the Bumble Bee’s well appointed commercial kitchen and started chopping and simmering and otherwise getting the soup going. Several trips back and forth during the day to continue the process, until at 5:00 I had a delicious soup simmering, with a score of little mashed potato dumplings floating on the top. I filled a pan up to bring home, and left it for whoever else wanted to come in and get some. In the evening, I finally came back and turned it off, and later Marilyn put it in the fridge. Everyone seemed to like it (we certainly did), and it was nice to work in a big kitchen again, even if I had to do my own cleaning up afterwards! Finally settled down for a movie and shows before heading off to bed. Gave Hubby some Alka-Seltzer Plus, though, he had acquired a scratchy throat and the symptoms of a beginning of a cold.

Spent an hour or so in the arena watching some calf-roping practice, and I took Apollo in with me to get him used to the activity. He got pretty excited at first, but eventually he settled down, thankfully. Afterward, I made a nice sweet potato casserole for the pot luck dinner we’re having tonight, and at 4:00, we headed over to our hostess’ house to join in the activities. We chatted for a while with the dozen plus folks, family members and neighbors, then dinner was served, and there was more food than we could possibly eat! Delicious, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Just before 7:00 we headed back to the RV and settled down for the rest of the night.

After a week of hanging around the ranch, doing two audio conferences and otherwise doing business, we finally took a trip out to Prescott. Our little dog Billy wrenched his back last week, and though he’s been getting progressively better, we decided to go ahead and keep our appointment for acupuncture, which frankly, worked a miracle when he had a back problem a couple of years ago, and we wanted to help him out. He didn’t like this girl as much as the other one, however. Last time, the vet put one needle in the back of his neck and he practically dozed off immediately. This time, he got all snappy and upset, even barking through his muzzle, which was a necessity this time. He really misbehaved worse than I’ve seen him in a long time, even growling when the girl first came in, which is unusual. Despite that, we managed to get him through it, including using electro-stimulation. We just hope it helps, because it was pretty traumatic.

Having decided to stay for another month, Hubby and I had to go shopping, and because of the roughness of the road out of the ranch, we only want to do it once, so we headed out after breakfast to Anthem where the nearest Walmart is, with stops first at a feed store, an auto parts store, a mall for lunch, then on to Walmart. We were a bit delayed because of having to wait for Hubby’s prescriptions, so we got back at dusk, but managed to get the horses fed before it got too dark. Settled down for the evening shortly thereafter.

One of the activities they do consistently here at the Bumblebee Ranch is to host various charity event, and this weekend, they were hosting a few dozen blind and visually impaired kids. Kelly had asked me to assist, which I was happy to do, so I spent the afternoon walking and jogging kids around on a nice little pale palomino named Jasper. A fun day, and the kids seemed to have a great time.