Fun Times

It's been a while since I posted....reason being I've been having so much fun I haven't wanted to be on the computer! Danielle got in last Sunday evening. She actually rode a bus here, which we decided not to EVER do again. And we were very glad that she had decided to take a airplane back to MO yesterday.

We had SO much fun talking, working together, and just being plain crazy. :D Last time she came we were not milking any goats, so this time she got to learn. :) The first time was pretty funny, took her a while to get up the nerve to actually touch "the thing." But once she started there was no going back and by the middle of the week she was milking them all by herself like a pro. AND loving to do it as well! She jumped right in with helping with everything, even the late night trips up to the barn to feed the kids. :)

Of course we had to pull out the ping pong table too, Danielle supposedly had only played a few times before, but she beat me the very first time I played her!! Not that I'm a pro at ping pong by any means though. :) We had a big tournament one evening, we had lots of fun even though both Danielle and I were out pretty early. We had some pretty fun "Rook" card games as well, for those of you that don't know it's kind of like "Spades."

We also had to take a walk out in the pasture, and climb over a HUGE pile of brush, just for fun of course. :)

We've also made the tradition of getting Blue Bell ice cream when she comes....so one evening we made a trip to town to pick that up, AND it was on sale so we came home with way too much!!

The younger ones love for Danielle to read stories to them. The "theme" book of the week was "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie." I don't know how many times they had her read that book! :) They never got tired of it though.

Wednesday was Joshua's birthday, he had an "Indian" theme. All the little ones painted their faces and made indian shirts out of old T-shirts. And somehow they convinced Danielle and I to do it too. :D We looked a little weird, but it sure wasn't as bad as something we did earlier in the week, we just claimed to be temporarily insane. :P Too embarrasing to even post pictures of.

Thursday evening we went to some friends house in Guthrie to play volley ball and fellowship. It was alot of fun.

Friday afternoon we headed to Stillwater to take some goats to a show, but I'm going to post about that in a separate post.

Saturday night was our last night together so we had to make the most of it, actually we stayed up till 2:30 in the morning! We were recording a song out in the guys studio "just for fun." Well, there were too many perfectionists in the room, (I was NOT one of them) and we ended up spending like 3 hours on one verse of "Living for Jesus!" I was getting a bit delirious, but we finally got it to where they were half way satisified, and I thought it sounded great. We also helped Dad plant our corn in the afternoon. We planted TONS of corn, hopefully God will bless it and it will be some good eating!!

Sunday, church was at the Chatham's in Blanchard. Danielle got to meet all of our homechurch families, which was neat. And then we dropped her off at the airport on our way back home. It was really sad to say goodbye, but we made so many good memories and hopefully it won't be too long before she can come visit again.

Love you so much Dannie!! ;)

Globetrotting Goats

I posted a while back about my "kids" (goats) that were born in CA, and that they would be shipped in on April 12th. Well that date ended up getting changed, and guess what?? They shipped in this afternoon!! Pretty interesting picking up goats at the airport! :D We got there at about 3:30 and their flight was scheduled to get in at 4:05.

Since we had to wait awhile we got kinda bored and Dad wanted some coffee...and he wanted me to buy it for him. I figured since he was buying these really expensive goats for me I could at least get him a cup of coffee. :) So he and Andrew got coffee, and I got a icecream sundae, which turned out to be REALLY sick!! It was not good at all and I was not very happy that I spent $4.00 on it. Oh well.

Also I ended up running in to a friend at the airport who I rarely ever see. Kind of neat, so we talked to her for a few minutes and told her we were waiting for our goats to arrive. :)

Finally the plane made it in, we were waiting in the area where the baggage comes in because they were supposed to be brought through a door in that area. All of a sudden I heard a baby goat hollor and there they were, getting carried right through the airport! We took them to the baggage claim office and signed for them, the guy in there thought it was pretty interesting having goats come through! And then we headed out. Dad had to go get the truck so Andrew, and I got them out and held them while we waited. We got a lot of looks, and had one person ask what kind of "dog" it was! :D

I'm sure I'll have some more pictures of the goats to post later, but I've been in such a rush ever since we got home trying to get all my chores taken care of. They sure do look nice, I can't wait to start showing them when they get bigger and see how they do.

Also my friend Danielle is coming to visit us tomorrow, she gets to stay for a week. I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to tell later! :)

Spring!

Spring is here! I know I'm a little late, but today just feels so "springy." :) Things are starting to look green and the flowers are coming up, I just love it. There is one thing though that I don't like about the warm weather if you can believe it. Wasps!! We have tons of them, and soon as the weather gets warm they come out from their hiding places. It really seems that they know I don't like them and are constantly trying to find me. So if you were to see me suddenly ducking and running like crazy.....it's just the wasps. :D I do have reason to run though, I've been stung before and it's NOT fun.

Yesterday I had to go to the court house again for Jury Duty, I rushed through my milking and chores in order to leave the house at 8:30. I made it, and got there in time. After about 10 minutes a lady came out and told us we could leave! Yay! So I think that's the end of my 2 month "term" of Jury service.

I'm sure you read all about Andrew's birthday party on my Mom's blog. It sure was alot of fun. Andrew is such a blessing to me, he's my main goat helper and I sure don't know what I'd do without him. He's always ready to help with the not so fun things about goat raising, such as disbudding the babies, tattooing, castrating, and trimming hooves. And then of course helping out with the everyday milking and feeding. What a great brother! Speaking of tattooing, I really need to get some more of the kids done...I'm planning on taking some of them to a show the middle of April and that's got to be done first. :) I need to get some new pictures of the kids, those little Boers are getting so big!! Really cute too! :)

Happy Birthday Mercy!

My sweet little sister Mercy is 2 today! She had "bunny rabbit" party theme, decorating was pretty easy with it being close to Easter. She has had a fun day so far, donuts, presents, and a Easter egg hunt. :) She is such a precious little sister and brings so much joy to our family.

I thought I'd post some updated pictures of the puppies. They are just the cutest little things. 4 weeks old now and walking around and playing with each other. We can't convince Mom to let us keep one though....oh well, I guess we really don't need one.

Kidding season has pretty much ended with a total of 21 kids, 10 does and 11 bucks. The last doe until 1 due in June kidded on Sunday with a single buck. SO many bucks this year. :( I missed the birth, she probably had him while we were on our way home from church, he was standing up and dry when I found him. Cute little thing though! We've gotten alot of rain lately, and my poor little Boer kids are no longer white. They are SO dirty!!

Some exciting news, back in the fall I had reserved 2 kids from a Nubian breeder in CA Lakeshore Farms. I got news about a week ago that the kids were born! And they had what I wanted as well. So Lord willing on April 12th I'm going to have these little cuties shipped in. A buck and a doe.

Stuff we've been doin'

The guys have been picking up bunch of brush piles in the pasture left over from clearing it off back in the summer. Sure looks nice now without all those piles. They used a Bobcat and Bill a friend of ours came out with a dump truck, we had rented a dump trailer, but it didn't end up doing the job. Bill is so funny and I just love this picture of him and Caleb! I got to get on the Bobcat for a little while and "play" with it, took a bit of practice to figure out all the different ways to dump and raise the bucket but I finally got the hang of it and was able to pick up some brush. :) It was fun, very rough though.

Monday another one of my Boer does had kids, a buck and a doe. She did pretty good, kind of a small doe so it was a little difficult but they finally came out. They are SO tiny, or maybe I've just gotten used to looking about my big 3 week old babies. Very cute and they are doing well, I have yet to get pictures of them though.

Last Friday night our friends the Burnett family surprised us by coming over for a Friday Fun night. We played games, laughed, ate, and of course had some ping pong! :) We have so much fun when we get together with them. Later that evening we had to go up to the barn to give the kids some milk and Abbie and Anna put the guys big Carhartt work jackets on because it was really cold, and we had to make them pose for a picture!

This week the weather has been SO nice and I've been outside as much as possible. Oh also Anna got a Registered black Angus heifer last week she had been wanting one for a really long time and was so happy to finally get one.

Tagged!

I got tagged by Bethany Cole

Here's the rules, but I'm going to modify them just a bit. :)

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random and some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Note: I'm changing this to just tagging 2 other people.
4. Let them know the are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Okay, 7 weird or random things about myself...

1. I was born in Little Rock Arkansas

2. People always think I look young, like about 14, and just for your information I'm 18. :)

3. I've pushed over trees with a bull dozer.

4. I love goats, (I think that's pretty obvious).

5. When we butcher chickens I'm the "gut girl" and I think it's neat.

6. I ate part of a grass-hopper leg once when I was younger, just for fun.

7. Also when I was younger I used to shoot mice in our well house with a BB gun, once I got a really large rat, probably 8 inches long! :D

Alright, I'm tagging

Danielle and

Bethany Grace Roberts

I would tag Gem, but I think she's played this game before.

Another Baby

Well, I had a pretty interesting weekend. First though, I've been really dreadfully sick with some kind of cold for about a week, still not over it yet. So on Saturday night I noticed on of my Boers starting early labor, and she was not due until March 15th. I kept checking on her up until about 1:00 in the morning and then finally went to bed because I was not feeling well at all. I woke up at about 6:30 to my Dad saying that she had just given birth to a dead kid. :( I rushed out of bed and headed up to the barn. Oh my, it was horrible, the kid had most likely been dead for several days, (that explains why she went into labor early) and it was just so gross. You couldn't even hardly tell that it was a goat. :( The Mom wasn't doing so well though, she seemed really weak and pretty much worn out. And then also I didn't know if there was another kid. So I called my vet and he ended up meeting me at the clinic with the goat at about 8:30, which was very nice of him because he wasn't even the doctor on call. He checked for another kid which thankfully there wasn't. I don't think the doe could have handled the stress of getting it out and would probably have had to have a C-section. He then did a uterine flush to get some of the rotted stuff out and gave her a really strong antibiotic and some other shots. She seems to be doing okay but there is a very high chance of infection since the kid was dead inside of her so it's kind of "iffy" as to whether she will make it or not. :( I really hope she pulls through. It was a really good reminder not to take all those healthy kids for granted though.

The day wasn't quite over yet though. I had another Boer doe start going into labor a few hours after all the above happened. She was taking her time so I ended up taking a REALLY long nap and finally woke up sometime after lunch. By that time she was getting closer and I stayed up at the barn waiting. She finally started pushing and before long had plopped out a big beautiful buck kid! Now this doe was SO huge, she really looked like she could have 3 in there, but you guessed it she just had one. I was just sure there had to be another one but no there wasn't! He is just the cutest little guy! And his mom is so protective of him, it's so funny because he is so rambunctious, and she is just constantly having to follow him around to keep him in her sight. :)

So that was my weekend, not even to mention the tornado weather we had on Sunday night. All we got though was just alot of high winds, rain, and lightening. We were ready though, Dad had the storm shelter cleaned out and Mom and already packed up all her Creative Memories photo albums and stored them safely away down there. :)