About Mama Hens

We’ve all heard of “mama bear” syndrome. You hear a lot of references to being a protective “mama bear” type mother, but you never hear about being a mama hen type mom. Mama hens are overlooked and underestimated.

Mama Bears are big and scary, get pissed off easy and don’t take any crap when it comes to someone bothering their babies. Mama bears are big and can take care of themselves – and their babies too!

Unlike a Mama Bear, Mama Hens aren’t big. They aren’t scary. They get pissed off easy but they can’t kick everybody’s butt. Mama Hens are however, VERY protective and would die defending their chicks. Mother bears do not.

Mama hens aren’t very scary looking.

Some mama hens are small

Some mama hens are grumpy

Some mama hens like to primp

Some mama hens are hot and tired

Some mama hens like to eat out with friends

Some mama hens are at their wit's end

Some mama hens are red heads

Some mama hens are blonds

Some mama hens have crazy hair

Some (most) mama hens like guys with a cute bottom, with cute little pants

But all mama hens love their babies and would die protecting them!

"I love my mama!"

All photos taken by ME and used with permission by Granny's hens (and Fluffy the Rooster!)

Trip out of town!

On Monday the kids and I threw Granny in the car and headed to Bozeman for some fun. I had wanted to head back to Bozeman to see my old friend who gave birth to TWINS this summer, and take my kids to the museum (which I'd never been to myself!). Another friend in Bozeman, who makes several trips a year to Uganda, said that he'd take a suitcase over for us on his next trip in October, so we had a suitcase full of 2nd grade curriculum and Christmas presents from Granny for him. So away we went for a fun filled day in Montana!

First stop - the Prairie Dog Town State Park in Greycliff!

Do we spot some prairie dogs?

Yes we do!

Here's Granny, trying to entice a lil prairie dog out of a hole with a peanut

Next stop - Susan's twins!

Here we are fighting over one twin. Granny was hogging the other!

Lovin' them some baby! These babies were amazing. So tiny, perfect and clean! Plus, they are my old friend's (of 20 years!) which makes them even more sweet!

Museum of the Rockies

Next stop was the Museum of the Rockies, which holds the most dinosaur bones in the whole entire world. Many of them found right here in Montana - many in Carbon County and some only 10 miles from our house!

This is obviously a fake replica, but they had several Triceratops skulls that had been found in Montana, on display. Some remains have also been found in Alberta.

As seen by their faces in this picture - the kids were half afraid of some of these mannequins! This is a dienonychus, which was one dinosaur whose teeth were found about 10 miles from our house.

This little fellow was a plesyiosaurs, and was also found in Carbon County. That's really interesting as it was a water dinosaur and well, there is not a lot of water in Carbon County, let alone the rest of Montana! Hello flood!  

And here is our neighbor, the Tenantasauras, that was found about 10 miles from our Montana home, near our friends ranch! In fact, their names are even displayed in appreciation for letting the field crews cross their land to get to the dig sight :) I remember when this happened as I was about 11 or 12 at the time. That's a pretty good fossil!

Granny, reading about our neighbors and the Tenantasauras

The kids, flanked by the vicious Dienonychus that used to roam these parts!

A Dienonychus, attacking a Brontasauraus

The museum has a pretty good dinosaur display, but it's not really set up so much for kids. However they do have a great Yellowstone display for kids that my youngsters really enjoyed! Me, I like the dinosaurs ;)

Cool bison, made with an assortment of objects

Eagle with binoculars

A chicken or our national bird? Couldn't decide.

Chicken fight?

A cool bear, made out of an assortment of objects

Fishing! The kids LOVED this!

Little fisher Frankie, making up for the fishing trip he missed this summer

Ella on the cool bobcat, made of assorted objects

Eagle fishing. Isn't this how they do it?

All in all, we had a great day, visiting friends and being tourists in our own State! We met up with our friend and his wife who were taking my suitcase, and had lunch at Applebees, so we really did have a great day with friends and dinosaurs! It really is amazing to know that this was a main stomping grounds for so many different kinds of DINOSAURS years back. Who would of thunk? What a cool place to be from! 

MT Fair!

This week the kids went to the Montana F@ir - twice! Once with their Grandpa last Saturday, and then again with me and their Granny on Thursday. We had fun but mom and I both agreed that this was the lamest we'd ever seen the MT Fair!

 In the day we would spend over a week at the fair, living in our little camping trailer, as we showed 4H animals of every kind for just about every single day for ten days. So I have a lot of good memories of hanging out in the barns PACKED with animals, cleaning stalls, b-s'ing with friends all day and hitting the shows on the midway in between our show times. Yeah, I was a wild child all right ;) Didn't even do rides because I've got such a queasy stomach ( so I was really glad when their Grandpa took them on the rides on Saturday!).  It was a lot of work but ten days of a lot of fun! So it was a bit shocking this year to see the barns so NOT full of animals and only one VERY lame "show" on the midway. Thankfully the fair food was still the same and I could eat a gyro - my favorite from 15 years ago!! Ha!

Anyhow, we STILL had fun at the fair and the kids loved it - they had no idea that the real fun is spending 10 days there, working your butt off everyday caring for and showing your gazillion animals, and sleeping in a camper between the carnies and the race horses! Anyways, I digress. I had not planned on writing a book reminiscing about my glory days as a champion chicken, swine, sheep, goat and dairy cow showman ;) Plus, I'm too old for all that now anyways.


  
Frank and Ella standing proudly by the Metra

Because of our Norwegian last name, Granny HAD to get the kids their lunch from the Son's of Norway booth. Here is Frankie with his Viking and his Norskie.

And here is Ella with hers! Granny thinks she's so funny with her little "Norwegian" grandchildren ;)

While the show WAS pretty lame, the kids loved it anyways :) Ella was REALLY into Sonic!

The kids loved scrambling for the toilet paper that the guy was shooting out into the crowd. Ella collected 88 grams of the stuff. Granny and I thought the whole thing was pretty lame compared to past shows of lions and tigers, trick dogs and jugglers, but the kids sure did love it!

Playing in corn. Every child should be able to play in a bunch of corn at least once in their lives!

We're gearing up to head back to Uganda - in less than a month! I'm letting myself get excited, something that I haven't let myself do for the last three months because it would have just been too torturous. This last month we have been making the most of our time here in the fun and seeing people department - we've been having so much fun it's almost ridiculous! I've been speaking at different local churches every Sunday too, and have started back to doing a little bit of work in the mornings.  It's good to know that in less than a month I'll be back to my Pack and my dull little routine life of a hermit in Uganda again :) I can't wait!