The Fake Holiday I Used to Celebrate.

Have you heard of Fake Patty's Day? I have, and for many years it was the highlight of my spring. You see in Manhattan, KS the weekend before Spring Break/the real St. Patrick's Day there is holiday called Fake Patty's Day. It involves activities such as kegs and eggs, green beer, Louisville Slugger, Pita Pit, green togas, doing the KSU chant on table tops and all kinds of other shenanigans that can go down in a college town, and I was there to celebrate. It was really quite a clever idea that the Aggieville Bar Association put together to generate a little more business before everyone else for Spring Break.

The memories created from the weekend are some of my very favorite college memories. I made a return for a couple Fake Patty's Day post graduation. The funny thing was that during this time I thought every college town celebrated this glorious day. I was wrong. It was Manhattan's own little secret.

As Saturday approached I began to see the posts on Facebook, and sense an excitement in the air. And even though some of my alumni friends still took part my life is a little different now. 1. It's a 7.5 hour drive to Manhattan, 2. The Boy was at the state bowling tournament, so that meant I was chore girl this weekend, 3. we had a couple cows due to calve, and 4. I don't know if my body could handle such an event anymore.

So instead of feeling sad that I was missing Fake Patty's Day I looked back on the photos that we took, and prayed that our future children never hear the stories of that weekend. It made me very thankful that I try to live life to fullest and don't have any regrets. Yes, some bad decisions were made that weekend and probably college in general but they were learning lessons. I wouldn't exchange the memories and the fun for anything.

 Plus, the new baby calf we got this weekend is pretty darn cute.

Here she is all ooey and gooey. 

What Barbie taught me about being a farm girl

It was destiny.

Growing up my sister and I loved Barbie. We had tons of dolls, the house, a couple cars, a Barbie horse, the clothes, a popcorn machine, a swimming pool, etc. And yes our Barbie's had bank accounts, money was usually exchanged in the form of Light Bright pegs (LiteBrites were used for many things, keep reading). Our Barbie's also were very involved in agriculture. The occupation of vet was quite often played.

That was the great thing about Barbie she could be whoever we wanted her to be. So while our friends were playing Rockstar Barbie, ours were discussing treatment options or reproduction strategies for our cattle. Which leads me to my next story.

My parents didn't hid much from my sister and I as we were growing up. We knew the circle of life was apart of the farm. We also were pretty familiar with how it began. I remember we used to have this slide that looked  kind of like a chute. And we had these stuffed animal dogs and horses that their bellies would velcro open and shut, revealing bean bag babies inside. It was always a surprise how many you would get the first time.

And this brings me back to the LiteBrites. Yup, those were the straws of semen for A.I. (artificial insemination). See where I am going - chute, stuffed animals that reproduce, semen. Yeah, that's right at the ages of six and eight my sister and I were A.I.ing our stuff animals, just like we had seen dad do it.

Guess we were destined to be farm girls.

On my trip to Minneapolis we got to go to the Mall of America. Inside they had a Barbie store! Every girls dream.