Welcome!

I'm happy to announce the birth of my newest nephew! Bennett Byron was born this morning at 9:19, weighing 7 lbs 12 oz. Congratulations to my sister and brother-in-law! He's a cutie, can't wait to hold him (the baby, not my brother-in-law...hmmm that might need rewording)!

I was showing the kids pictures of their newest cousin on the internet and Greta really enjoyed looking at the baby. I had to get a video because she was positive that little Bennett was a character on Sesame Street.

Rainy Day Fun

What do you do on cold, overcast, rainy days? Us? I load up the kids into the car and drive twenty minutes to the grocery store where they have fun car carts and I push these kids up and down the empty isles while they scream in delight. They LOVE it! The funny part about all this is we go there for the fun of it not because I need groceries......although I always pick something up....need it or not. 

All Clear

I've been somewhat dreading this day. Today was Wesley's first dental visit. I grew up dreading dental visits because of the dreaded C word. Cavities are scary, especially for kids. It means getting a big fat shot in your gums and drilling, oh the horrible drilling. I don't have a ton of cavities but I've got a few. So I was keeping my fingers crossed for Wesley today, hoping for the best. And I wasn't disappointed, he did awesome. I'm so proud of that little three year old. He laid in the that chair and let them take X-rays, and do a thorough cleaning. Some credit has to go to Sponge Bob Square Pants that was on the TV right in front of him, but hey, gotta do what you gotta do. They said his teeth look great. He must take after his Dad. Good job Wesley!

Weekly Winners

The plumbers assistant. Wesley loves helping his Dad, even brings his own tools.

Silly face for a silly little girl.

Greta: "You mean you are supposed to DRAW with these tasty wax cookies?!"

That's silly!

Sealing the chimney. What would I do without my fix it man? Oh that's right, I'D be doing it.

The swing set is back in use, we LOVE spring!

Crashing during quiet time.  Still in love with Nigh Night Doggie, it's his best friend.

The Wednesday Write Up

-The spring chore list is already off and running. A portion of the walnut grove has been measured and flagged and last weekend Hubby was out there digging holes with the gas powered auger. He got two corners put in and set with concrete. The goats are just drooling in their pen waiting to be released into the almost lush grass of the grove. Maybe we can get it done this weekend, here's hoping.......sometimes I wish we had a babysitter. 

-My garden seeds came a few weeks ago and I can't wait to get them planted. The peppers have already been started indoors and are peeking up through the dirt. I'm trying a lot of new things this year including butternut squash, watermelon, cantaloupe and hot peppers.  Oh and the sunflower forest, that should be fun!

-My sister is scheduled to have her baby next week and I can't wait to meet the newest member of the family. I'm desperately trying to dry up the goat so I can head up there to meet the baby. Milking a goat every morning doesn't make it easy to leave home for any amount of time. Plus I am SO ready to be done milking the goat. That is something I'm happy to add to my list of things I've done in my life, but not something I'd prefer to do again.

-Wesley is on spring break this week so no preschool. I didn't realize how much I miss preschool. Greta and I go grocery shopping while he's at school so I had to do a little change up this week since dragging two children shopping is not happening.

-My folks are traveling to see family in California this week so we are dog sitting their two dogs. A couple of times a year we watch the dogs and have developed a good schedule to incorporate them into the menagerie. They don't get to run around the house anymore like they used to, I'm done cleaning up urine. They are caged dogs. I'm sure they can't wait until their Mom and Dad get home.....only four days to go.

Greta at 18 months

Guess who's 18 months old today? Miss Greta! Both Sean and I comment on how much we like this age. She's mobile and can entertain herself to some degree, she's beginning to talk more and more and she's happy most of the time.We know what happens around two years old so we'll take this happy, content little girl as long as possible. At 18 months Greta is:

-in love with her baby doll. She carries it around constantly, always trying to put on it's hat and blanket. She pushes it around in it's baby stroller all day long. It makes me smile.

-quite the Daddy's girl. The happy screams that come out of that girl when Dad gets home could make you deaf.

-a mad demon on the ride on toys. We have a few different ride on toys that they ride around on the hard wood floors and she can keep up with crazy Wesley when it's time to race around. It's cute seeing them play well together (it can be a rare occurrence).

-walking everywhere! She's pretty fast now and I think running will be happening soon. She's also very good at going up and down the stairs (something we have many of).

-cutting teeth like crazy. Her lower two molars have just come in.

Fruits of our labor

In my constant need to be as self sufficient as I possibly can, I spent the afternoon planting fruit trees. Yea! I've wanted fruit trees ever since we moved out to the sticks and it looks like this year is the year of the fruit tree. I think I've just figured out that we're probably gonna be living here forever (knock on wood) and it's time to actually LIVE here. I, of course, didn't do any research at all on buying fruit trees and just went to Wally World and bought some. I started out with two sweet cherry trees and one sour tree and while loading them in the truck read that they need a pollinator tree. Doh. Naturally the store doesn't sell the pollinator tree. Double Doh. Why would you sell a fruit tree but not the pollinator tree that makes it produce fruit? So for instance I bought two Bing cherry trees. They need a Stella Sweet cherry tree planted around them to pollinate their buds to produce the cherry. So I went to Lowes and sure enough they had the Stella Sweet. Victory! BUT, then I looked at the sour cherry tree, a Montmorency cherry tree, and it needed a pollinator tree as well. They listed a bunch of trees and there on the list was another Montmorency tree. So I bought another one at Lowes. I guess they pollinate each other? This is about the time I started kicking myself about not doing a little research. So I went out to buy several different kinds of fruit trees and ended up coming home with five cherry trees. If this all works then we are going to have cherries coming out of our ears. And I can't wait.

I also discovered that buying the trees was a lot more fun than planting them. Luckily we've been getting a decent amount of rain so the ground is nice and soft, great for digging big holes. I was almost done with the last tree and decided to let the goats out to graze the back yard a bit. Bad idea. I let them out and Dym, the Momma, goes B-lining for the freshly planted trees. I thought "What can she do with trees with no leaves on them?" HA! She ran right up to the nearest one and ripped off the lowest branch (one of only five branches I might add) and proceeded to eat it whole. I just stood there with my mouth open watching the massacre. After a lot of screaming and waving my arms she moved off to graze elsewhere (away from the crazy woman). So the goats aren't allowed in the back yard anymore. It was really just a matter of time, the garden seeds will be planted in a month and other things will start to bloom soon.....and the goats eat EVERYTHING. So, the newest project is to fence in part of the walnut grove for the goats. There they can eat to their hearts desire while not eating anything they're not supposed to. Plus they can take care of our poison ivy problem in the grove (a delicacy for goats).

Deceiving picture, I actually dug ALL the holes minus half of one.  

Motorcycle babe.....we're gonna need another motorcycle.

What a trip!

One parent, two children, and one screaming goat kid. Oh what a fun trip! And this was on the way TO the vet, he hadn't even been neutered at this point. Oddly enough he was very quiet on the trip home.

Oh what a difference......

......nine months makes. Wesley looks the same, yet Greta grew a small animal on her head.

June 2010

March 2011

We are back to picking up "yucky old trash" (as Wesley calls it) on the dirt roads. After a long winter indoors it's nice to be out and active again. Last week we took a plastic bag, like one from Wal Mart, and filled it within a quarter mile from the house. The kids love it, trying to spy any and all garbage while I haul their hineys around in the wagon. It's amazing how many beer cans can be collected in a half an hour stretch. Yuck. We're thinking of starting our own Adopt a Country Road campaign.

The Wednesday Write Up

-Greta is officially a walker! Finally! For about a week now she's decided crawling is for the birds and walking rocks. It's great. I can finally set up another well baby doctor appointment since she's now walking, the doc said she needed to be walking the next time she saw her. 17.5 months old and a walker. She is quite the talker too. This morning Hubby said bye to her and she said "Bye Daddy". So it looks like she's starting to string together two words. There doesn't seem to be a word that she won't try to pronounce.

-I just enrolled Wesley in the 4 yr old preschool class for this fall. It's a big enough class that Miss Cindy had to make an afternoon class in addition to the morning class (that he currently is in). Instead of Tuesday and Thursdays he'll go Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She was pleading with parents to at least think about moving their kids to the afternoon class (apparently a more undesirable time?). The afternoon class is from 12:30-3 which is right when Greta is taking a nap so it was out, but Jessica is enrolling Alex and offered to car pool him home at 3, so it looks like he'll be in the afternoon preschool class. Yeah! No more insanely crazy, running around mornings.....at least until he starts kindergarten......but at least then I won't be milking a goat too. :)

-I am dropping off my application for a CPR training class tomorrow. Our little town offers the class four times a year and it is time. I think all parents should take a CPR training class and I'm sad it's taken this long to follow through with those plans. But after April 3rd, I will be better educated.

-Project: Fight Fatigue is in full swing. The treadmill is getting it's workout every day for 20 minutes. I'm keeping it right at 3.9 speed and a 5 incline and that royally kicks my hiney. It's about as fast as I can go without running....I'm not a runner. I don't know if it's giving me more energy but I seem to be a happier person so it's a win win. That along with extra Vitamin D (thanks for the suggestion Becca....the gummies rock) and fish oil (a known mood increaser)  I'm hoping will help me dig my way out of my blues.

-We've been having fun with Netflix lately. I love HBO's series Big Love. I've watched it through the years and just finished up the fourth season, man was it good. If you can get over the strange plural marriage thing, it's a suspenseful, well written show. Highly recommended.

-I just set up Heston's brain surgery appointment (neutering). As of this Friday he'll no longer be a humpy little boy goat. Poor guy. It's for the best though.

That's about all that's going on around here. Hope you all are having a good week!

Weekly Winners

Classic three year old.

I couldn't decide between this one....

....and this one, so you get them both. She still loves that swing.

Baby goats on the swing set, jumping to new heights.

One of my favorite times of the day......bedtime.

Such a happy little smile.

Spring is in the air

You can tell spring is in the air. Birds are everywhere, they seem to have appeared out of nowhere. Baby grass is poking up among the brown and this is all I see:

Heston is one horny little goat. The goat babies turned two months old this week and seemly overnight the male hormones kicked in and he became a horn dog. It seems to be more of a game for him to chase his sister around trying to launch his body at her. Sometimes he'll just rest up there like she's a Lazy Boy recliner. She wants nothing to do with this and usually just lies down eventually. He gives up and goes about his business. I'm desperately trying to wait until 10 weeks old (a week and a half away) to neuter him but I feel I'm going to cave soon. The thought of more baby goats running around just doesn't do anything for me. I'll be making an appointment at the goat vet to have his procedure done. They are just going to band him. That's where they put a strong little rubber band over his family jewels which shuts off circulation and they eventually shrivel up and fall off. I was going to band him myself but the tool costs about $15 plus shipping and the vet will do it for $5 (and I don't have to do it). Bonus! Maybe if I ever had to do this again I'd just buy the tool, but THAT WILL NOT BE HAPPENING. It's good to wait as long as possible to castrate, if the goat is intended to be a pet, so their plumbing can mature to prevent bladder stones. We lost Buddy the goat to Urinary Calculi about two years ago, and that is something I never want to witness again. I've learned more about raising goats over the past two years and hope to prevent any issues with my two current (one almost) wethers.

I was curious yesterday as to how much the kids weighed since they just turned two months old so I hauled the bathroom scale outside and picked each one up and weighed it. Beef cake #1 (Heston the boy) is already 56 pounds. Yikes! He was exactly 30 pounds at one month. Almost a 30 pound weight gain in a month, no wonder people eat these animals! That's crazy. Coco, the girl, weighs 42 pounds at two months old. They sure are growing like weeds.

They moved out of their shop pen this past weekend. The night temperatures have been staying above 25 degrees consistently so it was time. They enjoy their pen in the horse pen and enjoy it more when I let them out every morning. I think a portion of the walnut grove will be fenced off at some point for them to graze down as we don't want the back yard to become grassless and poop filled.

Woman Tea

I know I'm not going to be able to share this stuff forever so I'm going to while I can. Having a three year old (soon to be four year old) in the house is quite hilarious at times (other times you just want to crawl under a rock). Lately it's been pretty funny. Wesley enjoys "cooking" for me. This involves his little kitchen and me sitting on a bean bag chair right next to it. He then whips up all sorts of different dishes for me, most of them containing jelly beans as the main ingredient. Last week he started making tea for me. Woman tea.


Wesley: "Here Mom I made you some tea (offering me an empty plastic cup)!"


Me: "Oh cool, I really wanted some tea, what kind is it?"


Wesley: "Woman tea!!"


Me: "What is woman tea?"


Wesley: "It makes you turn into a woman when you drink it!"


Me: (confused) "What am I now? I thought I was a woman?"


Wesley: "No, you're just a mommy."

So now I drink woman tea at least three times a day in a desperate attempt to turn back into a woman. And as I pretend to drink my woman tea in his presence, I contort and make horrid faces as I turn from a mommy into a woman. He cackles.