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Thursday, November 1, 2007

Final Cria-tion of 2007 - A Suri Cria!!







Here's the final cria at Split Rock Ranch for 2007 - a gorgeous male suri cria! We haven't named him yet - anybody have any suggestions? His Dam is Charisma and his Sire is Suri Solution ( a suri mini male owned by Stage Stop Llamas). We were hoping for a mini llama - Suri Solution is a mini and Charisma is a foundation mini (she was a mini until she reached 3.5 years of age and then she grew another inch, making her a foundation mini llama). But this boy weighed 25 pounds when born! He has the most unusual coloring - his face is definitely gray - his ears are gray with white on them, his feet are gray with white hairs overlaying - and the rest of him is... I hate the use of the color "taupe" to describe this llama - that is soooo dull and boring and his coloring is anything BUT boring! I'm thinking it is more of a rose gray color - and the luster is spectacular! This is the first cria we have had born at night. Charisma was in labor all day long and didn't deliver him until about 7:30 PM. We rushed out with towels and a cria coat that I had tumbled in the dryer to warm them up, and whisked mom and baby into the warm enclosure of our stock trailer (fully enclosed except for open at the top of the back doors), dried the cria off, put on the cria coat and put a dim nightlight in one of the mangers so they could see, filled a large bucket with fresh hay for Momma and left them to bond overnight. The next morning, Mom and Cria were resting and it was snowing so I left them in the trailer all day. When I got home from work, it was nice and sunny and warm so I put them back into the girls' pasture and all the girls and other crias welcomed the new cria into the herd. The new little guy jumped and ran and stretched his new little legs. These photos were taken the next morning.

Jackie at Miss Colorado USA Pageant




Here are some photos of Jackie in her evening gown taken on Saturday evening, October 27th at the Miss Colorado USA pageant in Loveland, Colorado. She looked absolutely stunning!


The pageant weekend was exciting, emotional, educational... and very draining! Jackie and Jim traveled to Loveland Friday evening and got Jackie registered for the pageant. Jim's sister Marsha and her husband Gary live in Loveland so Jim and Jackie stayed at Marsha's house Friday night. Orientation took place starting at 9:00 AM on Saturday - family and friends were encouraged to attend this session of the pageant. There were over 500 applications for the Miss Colorado USA pageant and 49 ladies were selected to participate this year. Congratulations to these ladies for making the cut to the top ten percent of applicants! The orientation session was followed by the individual Interview portion of the pageant where each judge had just two minutes to spend interviewing each contestant. The rest of the day Saturday was spent in rehearsal for the public portion of the event Saturday night from 8 to 10 PM - Pageant Preliminaries - where contestants were judged in swimsuit and evening gown competition. Contestants were allowed time after the event Saturday night to spend time with family and friends in the lobby of the auditorium. Jackie had to wait at the auditorium over 1-1/2 hours that night for the bus to take her to her hotel. They didn't have enough buses or room on the buses for all of the contestants (poor planning!!!) Then she got a dismal 2 hours sleep before waking up Sunday at 4 AM to start getting ready for that day's events - rehearsals all day long, followed by the Pageant Finals that started at 4 PM Sunday. She got a total of 5 hours sleep that weekend...boy was she beat Sunday night! I was able to make it to the Pageant Finals Sunday evening, thank goodness! I stayed home to feed the animals and take care of the ranch (I figured Jim should spend time with Marsha over the weekend!) I was so disappointed when they didn't announce Jackie's name for the 15 Semi-Finalists but it certainly made the rest of the pageant easier to breathe! Jackie realized early on in the competition that this was a dog-eat-dog world that she really didn't want to be a part of. Jackie is such a positive, happy person with such a great sense of humor - this was all waaaay toooo much trauma and drama! The winner of the pageant competed SIX TIMES IN A ROW (in this very same pageant) before winning!!! And now Future Productions owns her until the crowning of Miss Colorado 2009! Jackie, on the other hand, is now free to enjoy her senior year at high school and is looking forward to graduation next May, followed by a move to Florida to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale where she will study Fashion Design.
Congratulations Jackie on a job well done!!! We're so proud of you!
Love Mom and Dad