Baby Goats Galore and There Will Still Be More

 We were met with the surprise of baby goats from Lady Tuesday morning; there were a healthy pair and one still born baby. The third baby looked perfect and it was sad to not know what happened to him. 

  
We did our hike to the animal burying ground and buried the baby goat before we spent too much time with the other new babies. I notice now that James did not even get dressed.

While it is sad, I think my kids handle death well and Elijah requested to lower the baby into the hole. 

Then we headed back to the barn to get to know the new twins. They are Alfred and Alice; we are going with A names this year for goats that will remain in the herd. (Alfred is only a maybe, but just in case.)
 

Nathan loves the baby goats and makes several trips to the barn a day to see and hold them.

Alfred

Alice

 Today the new baby goats were two days old, but this afternoon brought Flutter into full labor. I thought it would go much quicker than it did and Alayna rushed home from town, skipping Wal-Mart only to wait several hours.   

  
The waiting got old. The boys had karate and I had an important phone call. We all still stayed on alert.
 

 Flutter couldn't get comfortable and kept moving around. 

Nathan came in a hung out with Grand-dad; this is what I found on a quick visit to the house.  

 

Finally, finally, the first baby came. I don't think Flutter knew what happened and didn't even look at the baby until I cleaned it a bit and gave it to her. She then started cleaning him.

  

A few minutes later brought another baby boy - Brownie and Cookie.  

 

One more goat birth to go - Leia is due anytime. We are hoping for one more girl this year!

Birthday Boy

Nathan turned two yesterday. We are having a small party next weekend, but we had cupcakes for his actual birthday. (Of course, small is relative when you use that word in our family!)

He was pretty pleased with the cupcake and singing; he blew the candles out right as we started singing, so we just relit.

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

Hunter

After a costly trip to the vet, we found out that Hunter is losing weight due to a thyroid tumor. He has lost 25% of his body weight since last fall. While I am largely not in favor of heroic measures to extend animal lives, Hunter is by large our favorite cat of all time. He is the only cat that lives indoors and will probably be our last inside cat. He is currently 12, and we had hoped to have him around several more years. While I am not jumping on the bandwagon for radiation in Northern Virginia, I am going to attempt to give Hunter two pills a day - one in the morning and another at night. Hopefully it will allow him to stabilize and have a few more happy years with us. 

His afternoon agenda - hairing up JD's computer bag

Look Who is Here for Valentine's Day

Look who is back at our house for a while - he brought him Momma also. Nathan turns two this weekend and we are going to host the party. He is having a good time with his doting aunts and uncles. This look was trying to figure out the big camera; he is accustomed to his picture taken only with phones.

Dark picture but I love the smile

This is a common look when he is analyzing something; his concern was once again my large black camera.

It's really nice how comfortable he is in different situations and with different people - perfect little military kid. He is living my life as a child much more than my kids did; mine lived their entire childhood in Virginia, different cities but all Virginia. My childhood consisted of major moves every few years, so far Nathan's experience looks very similar.

Since Valentine's Day hit on a Tuesday, we had a celebration at Classical Conversations today. The kids worked on making their cards yesterday and attaching skittles. Amazing what a mess they were able to make with that project.

Alayna is hanging out with the kids tonight for JD and I to go to dinner. 

Jenny

Julia and the World Puzzle

Julia has started this 600 piece world puzzle before and it got messed up.
This time she was smart enough to put it on a white board that we could move around. Elijah and I worked with her one morning for a bit, and James helped some at the end, but mostly it was her effort.

Honestly, it was so much more difficult than it looked, because the countries and states were individual and did not snap into each other. You couldn't bump them or move them without messing the tiny pieces up.

When she got all done, we found out that it was missing a few tiny pieces; we had bought it used. I'm wondering if anyone will do it again knowing that. 

I'm proud of Julia for working so hard at it and learning more geography along the way. 

                                                                                                                             Jenny

Birthday Week

Yesterday was Tori's birthday, today is Alayna's and Monday is Bella's. While Alayna isn't back in Virginia yet, Tori and Bella wanted to try out the new trampoline park, Sky Zone, in town for their birthday event. I felt like an hour wasn't going to be long enough, but it sure was expensive enough, and it turned out to be plenty of time. They didn't do any sitting or resting, but they had time to enjoy everything that was offered. We will hope to go back sometime when the ninja warrior course is completed.

Elijah probably flipped 100 times in the first 20 minutes we were there and was in pain with an aching back. We outlawed any more flipping and he still had fun. He can flip frontward and backwards effortlessly on a trampoline or diving board. He has been working on back flips on the ground in karate also.

We watched a handful of teenage boys strive to jump high enough to slam dunk the basketball; once they gave up, they handed Tori the ball and she made it several times. I think they were a bit embarrassed.

Today was Tori, Elijah and Selah's first basketball game. I didn't get to see Tori's since I had a birthday party to take the younger crowd to, but she scored 12 of the 18 winning goals!

Dodge ball is a favorite since they play it weekly at home school PE. At one point, Selah was the only one in on her side and dodged three boys throwing balls at her until the whistle was blown. It was humorous because she trips over her own feet regularity, but can dodge speeding balls!

Once we finished up our hour at Sky Zone, we headed to CiCi's pizza buffet for dinner and then home for Tori's cake and gifts. Her major gift is acting lessons in CYT's (Christian Youth Theater) spring session. She is certain at this point that her career is in Hollywood; unlikely from rural VA, but local theater perhaps.

                                                                                                                                            Jenny

Books, Teeth and Hair

Over Christmas break, I took the kids to the library. After being there a LONG time already, I found out that there was a book sale going on down the hall. By the time I made it out of there, Tori and James had taken the kids outside to play. My largest score was this set of out of print books by Lois Lenski, featuring a story of a child set in different parts of the country in different eras. They look so good and like I said, are out of print. I'm thinking libraries ought to keep copies of out of print historical books much more than things like multiple volumes of Captain Underpants. Just my crazy opinion.

The two huge boxes I staggered home with forced me to clean off the school bookshelves. I did pull off a large box of books to get rid of. I have been tired of the history shelves confusion that were supposed to be in timeline order, but often crammed back in the wrong place. This attempt at organization was adding baskets for different times - like one basket is WWII and one is the Civil War time.

We also caught up with the kid's DVDs; I toss the cases and cut the front paper to fit in a little plastic sleeve and we keep them in these two boxes in somewhat alphabetical order. JD's DVDs are going to be the next project, which should free up an entire cabinet.

We did some fun stuff over Christmas also. I stopped at Bass Pro Shop on the way home from Selah and Bella's Christmas party at the hospital in Richmond. Our intention was so get a free picture with Santa, but once the line was estimated at three hours, we just visited with the animals.

This was the first New Years Eve in a long time that we didn't have a bunch of teenagers at our house, so we took the younger crowd bowling. They love it and we should do it more often.

Bella lost her front tooth on Christmas Eve, right between church and the sibling present exchange.

Elijah woke up like this after going to bed with wet hair - I told him you couldn't even create that if you wanted to without the use of serious hair spray. 

                    

                                                                                            Jenny

                                                                                                                   

Goat Milk Soap

I made my second ever large batch of goat milk soap a few days ago. The first one was a success, so I decided to add essential oils to this batch - it happens to be peppermint. I find it rather challenging to keep the two pots at the correct temperature, but thankfully it seems to be slightly forgiving of spiking temperatures.

Elijah was appointed goat milk soap stamper; he did an outstanding job.

I like the rough cuts, possibly wrapped in a burlap bow for gift giving.

The soap sits for 24 hours in the mold, then is cut and stamped. After that it has to sit for 3-4 weeks before curing for use. My stacking cookie trays have become soap trays and they cure in the cool basement storage room.

                                                                          Jenny