An interesting day

Today I headed down to the Logan County Courthouse again. This time to possibly be a juror on a case. I got there at about 8:30 a.m. and sat and waited....one thing I have learned about the court is that everything moves VERY slow. And when they say they are going to start at 9:00 it dosen't usually start until 9:30. :) So FINALLY the Judge came in and got things going. First he told us a little bit about the case, some guy actually an inmate of the Jail there had been accused of assaulting the detention officer, if he was proved guilty the sentence would be incarceration. Which in my language is imprisonment. :) So it was quite serious. After he explained that to us the Judges secretary started rolling the little "wheel thing" (sorry I don't know what it's called) and drawing names. She named off 3 and then mine was the fourth one! So I went up and sat in the Jury box. After they had drawn 12 names the Judge then proceeded to ask us some questions, and had us take an oath to answer all questions that were put to us truthfully. Then everybody had to stand up and tell their name, where they were from, where they worked, if they were married, and if they had children. When it came my turn I will admit that I was REALLY nervous, I told them that I lived in Coyle with my parents, that I worked at home on the farm, and of course was not married. After that the prosecuting Lawyer got up and started asking us questions. Some were just general, like he asked me if things were going slow on the farm, I said at the moment yes, but it was about to start picking up really quickly when the goats started having kids. So then he started asking about the goats. :) How many I had, and what I did with them. Seemed like he stayed on me for quite some time. The questioning took all morning and some of the questions were really hard, things like "what do you expected the accused to act like when he gets on the witness stand." If you were the accused would you want you to be on the Jury, and lots of questions asking if we had anybody close to us that had ever commited crimes and stuff. After a while, we had a 15 minute break and the 12 of us went up stairs to the Jury room, I'm not sure why, we didn't do anything except use the restroom, and some folks drank coffee. The stairs were really interesting, the ceiling was so low at one point, that you had to duck way down to avoid whacking your head. After we came back down there was more questioning from the defending lawyer. FINALLY we had a break for lunch, Elijah came and picked me up and we came home for a quick lunch. Went back at 1:30, and then it was time for the Lawyers to excuse some of the Jury if they wished and pick different ones. About 3 people got excused and each time a new person came they would have to ask a bunch of questions again. And then the defending Lawyer excused me. :( Oh well, it was still a pretty fun experience, and maybe sometime in the next two months I'll get to actually be on a case, we'll see.

~Bethany

Jury Duty

This morning I had to report at the Logan County Courthouse for Jury Duty. I was a little bit nervous, Mom dropped me off because she had to take Duffy to the groomer for me. There was a long line of people coming all the way out the doors and down the stairs. So I stood in line and waited. Finally I got up to the top, I was watching the people in front of me very closely so I would know what to do. I had to go through security which mean't walking through a metal detector and handing my cell phone and purse to the policeman who looked through my purse to make sure I wasn't carrying anything dangerous. :) Thankfully he didn't find anything. So then I followed the crowd upstairs and waited in line some more. Finally I got to the place where I checked in I had to sign an oath saying that I was over 18 years of age a resident of Logan County and that I was not mentally retarded, which hopefully I'm not so I signed. :) Then I went into the court room which was packed full, there was pratically no seats at all and I had to go to the middle of the row and sit right in the middle of a bunch of people I didn't know. A little too close for comfort. It seemed like a really really long time before the Hon. Judge Worthington finally came in and started things. He gave a really nice little speech about our duty to serve as jurors and such. And then people started giving their excuses, they had health problems, sick children, no one to take care of their children, one guy was self employed, some had just started a new job and stuff like that. The Judge excused most of them that requested it. Then they called out everybody's names and passed out cards that divided everybody up into two different panels. I ended up on panel 2. Panel one had to stay today for a case, and my group panel 2 has to go in Wednesday morning. So all in all it was a pretty neat experience. I'm looking forward to hopefully being on a case soon. Just really hoping I don't have to be gone when the goats are having kids....

Last night we had a big "Super Bowl party." Which consisted of going to town and spending too much money on a bunch of junk (cokes, candy, chips, and dip) and then coming home and eating it along with homeade pizza while listening to the Super Bowl on the radio and playing ping pong. It was a fun evening, even though I didn't do very well at ping pong.

To my cold weather friends Melinda and Abbie, while you've been dreaming of snow and ice, I've been lovin this 75 degree weather!!! WOW! it was SO great!! I just had to stay outside in it. But it dosen't look like it's going to last long, you might get your snow tomorrow. :(

As to the pictures, it looks like I might have a little farm helper in the making!! Notice the "photo story?" Mercy is quite the animal lover, and has no fear of anything goats, dogs or cows. She loves them all!

~Bethany

Snow!!

Yesterday, we got about 3 inches of snow. Which is probably the most we've gotten all year so far. I'm sure most everybody knows that I am not a "cold weather" person, and I really don't like snow. But this time it really didn't bother me too much. But I guess I stayed inside most of the time. And then today it's pretty much all melted. That's my kind of snow, here one day and gone the next! Duffy thought it was just great!

Nana and Papa left this morning to head back to Texas. We had a really nice visit with them. Had a big game of Scrabble, and of course the traditional Pizza Hut pizza, and Bluebell Ice cream! On Wednesday, Elijah and I both took our drivers test, and thankfully both passed! Just barely though. :)

I'm getting ready to begin the spring kidding with all the goats. Just 16 more days until the first one is due!! The guys are busy building a new pen for the kids with another shelter. Lord willing the herd will almost double so the extra shelter will be nice.

~Bethany

A really fun week

On the 14th a dear friend of mine Danielle, came down from MO to stay with our family for about a week. She was a bit nervous about coming which I don't blame her for because we are a pretty interesting family. :) But after the initial getting to know everybody she just fit right in. The little ones thought she was absolutely great, and they had so much fun playing with her.

Tuesday morning she helped out with the goats for the first time, I loved having help, because I usually do it all myself. It took her a little while to get used to all the goats but it wasn't long before she was touching them and helping me get them out of the barn when somebody left the gate open. I think she was pretty shocked that she was actually leading a goat! And then we had some things going on with the goats while she was here and she learned alot about some interesting stuff goats do. :) We also took a walk through the pasture. She was making us all laugh so hard when we came to this certain "hill" that she wasn't sure she could make it down. But she did, and didn't fall either!

We played games together in the evenings and had so much fun. We also stayed up really late alot of the nights talking, telling crazy stories (which we have plenty of) and taking pictures of each other. We ended up with some really interesting pictures! I could post a really funny one of Danielle, but I guess I'll be nice. :)

Wednesday morning we had to load up the steers and take them to the butcher. Well, not us but the guys. I had a bit of an accident where I smashed my nose REALLY hard against a metal gate, it hurt really bad and started bleeding but thankfully it wasn't broken or anything. Although I did seem to be having some mental problems after it happened! Or at least I had something to blame all my mistakes on! Danielle and I fixed a meal together that afternoon and I put Basil on the twice baked potatoes instead of parsley, but they did end up tasting okay. We had alot of fun doing that, and I think everyone (including me) really enjoyed the meal! Then we stayed up until 2:00 in the morning talking!

Thursday the guys had a big football game that they wanted us to video tape. So I filmed and Danielle took pictures, she got some really neat ones! We also burned a very small brush pile, that ended up catching onto a big cedar tree, it was pretty neat, although not nearly so big as some that we've burned in the past. And then that evening Danielle showed me how to use a video editing program on Caleb and Daniel's Mac and we worked until about 1:00 a.m. editing our football footage until I was getting kind of delirious and decided I'd better get to bed.

Friday morning Danielle headed to Dallas with some friends to go to a meeting. She got back late Sunday evening, which was no problem with us, we were glad to get her back! The guys had been out playing football at 9:00 p.m., and we were just making a night of it. We had to catch up on everything that happened over the weekend and I think we went to bed sometime after midnight.

We had a great time on Monday also, Micah convinced Danielle to go "bird hunting" with him! Which actually quite amazed me that she would do it!! She didn't end up getting anything, but I thought it was great none the less!! Monday night we pulled out a bunch of old home video's and watched them, they were so funny!! We hadn't seen them in years we were all laughing SO hard!! Then I was quite shocked to see myself on there doing this goofy "physical fitness" class, that I really didn't hardly remember doing!!

She thought she was a "country girl" before she came, but I think we made a 'real' one out of her!! It was really sad saying good bye on Tuesday morning, but we're hoping she'll come back and see us again soon.

Oh I almost forgot the concert!! We pulled our instruments out and played for Danielle one evening. And then somehow she convinced us to sing for her...which was pretty amazing because we do not usually (if ever) sing for people!!

~Bethany

A Trip to the Zoo

Monday's in January and February are free at the OKC Zoo, so we took advantage again of the nice weather and went with the Chatham family. There was some new stuff since we last went that was pretty neat. A Oklahoma Trails section where they had animals that were all from Oklahoma. The Grizzly bears were really fun to watch, they were playing with each other, and throwing this rag thing around. And then of course we always enjoy watching the Gorilla's. We had a great time, but I think that'll do me for a while, as there's only so much to see!

~Bethany

Horseback Ridin'

Since the weather was so nice on Saturday some of us decided to head over to our neighbor's and ride horses. They hadn't been ridden in quite some time so they were kind of acting up. We tried riding them around just in a small area and then decided to try out in the pasture to see if we would have more success. So off we went, I was on a horse named Charm with Jeremiah, Anna was on Chick with Hosanna, and Joshua was on Paco with Josiah, (which I was kind of worried about). So we took off, Paco immediantly went off to where the pen was and just stood there staring at the hay. Josh kept trying to turn him around, but just couldn't handle him. So I told Anna to trade off with Josh, Anna took Paco with Josiah, and Josh took Chick with Hosanna. About this time Charm started totally acting up, and it was all I could do to keep her under control. Anna still couldn't get Paco to come away from the hay and Chick just took off walking through the pasture with Josh and Hosanna on her.

They started getting farther and farther away and began holloring for us to come get them. I was still having problems with Charm and Paco still wouldn't come away from the hay. So there wasn't much we could do. Now they were really far out there, and they started getting really scared that they were going to go off in the woods and get lost, and started screaming hysterically. Finally our neighbor Carla, ran out and saved them, but they had quite a scare!! Poor Josh, it took him a while to get over it. Anyway by the time we were done riding the horses had finally calmed down and started acting decent. :) I guess we should ride more often....it was still fun though. (Chick is the little black pony and Charm is the big brown one).

~Bethany

Too Cute!

As I was working on organizing all our pictures (which is a never ending task) I came across these two from October that I thought were just adorable. I got about 400 or so named so they will be easy to find and still about 2500 to go, pictures taken just since October!! And then of course they keep multiplying, because Anna dosen't stop taking pictures. :)

Anyway, just thought I'd post something, not alot going on around here right now. Some friends brought their two goats over today that they had gotten from me back in the summer to get bred. So I was very happy to get to see "my babies" again! They have gotten so big and pretty.

~Bethany