A Week at Home

 Since I normally seem to spend my days in the car driving kids from event to event, I often used to say that I could get things done if I could have one week at home. Well, I wouldn't choose this but I have had my week at home. I have gotten a lot more done....

Alyssa and I tacked the baby boy clothes in my storage room. A lot of Nathan's baby clothes were left here as Alayna and Nathan spent a good bit of his babyhood here. Moriah brings clothes home from the little boy that she is a nanny for and they get dispersed to Samuel and Oliver and then everything somehow finds it's way back here because I'm the one with the storage room. 

We unpacked and repacked MANY boxes and labeled by size, so whoever needs them next will not have to tackle all the boxes at once. If the next person has a girl, we don't have anything for that!

It's the first time Oliver played downstairs and really enjoyed pushing trucks and tractors around, so some need to move upstairs. 

We found the tiger hat that I had bought Nathan on a trip to the San Diego Zoo. It was hot and sunny and Nathan spent the whole time taking it off and throwing it on the ground like a normal baby. Oliver, however, was thrilled with every hat we tried on him! He turned 11 months the other day and remains the most outgoing baby I have ever seen.

I started Selah and Bella on packing up their winter clothes and getting out the summer, so after Alyssa went home, we worked another few hours. It's finally to the point that it's not a three day task for me each season swap - just part of a day since the girls are the only ones that we even swap for. They still have a ton of clothes - Elijah and the girls above them just don't have many. 

My task was separating and dispersing the ones that Bella has outgrown. Since we are on lockdown, they are waiting to be delivered to their new owners. 

Other than clothes, I spent a good few days organizing all the bookshelves. This is definitely a post organize photo; they were a mess. I have gotten rid of most of what my kids have outgrown, but then Nathan starts K in the fall, so there is still things I don't want to part with. We have a lot of bookcases; I organized nine bookshelves in three rooms. 

Today we did massive goat maintenance and treating a baby that seems to have a touch of something. I drove the kids down our easement road and we cut pine branches for them to snack on. 

The fruit trees are blossoming pink and white and I truly appreciate my laying chickens as eggs were scarce when I was shopping last week. 

Yesterday the kids learned to play chess at Aunt Debs, so this morning I dug out the chess board that JD bought in Turkey many years ago. They were thrilled.

 Bella made us some cookies here and then brownies at Aunt Debs. 

 I hope you are all well during this trying time - I grieve at the impact in other places in the world that are so much worse off than ours! I pray it ends as quickly as it seemed to come!

Spring Goats

 There is a lot of action in the barnyard these days. 

Jewell the lapaca 

Just days after Agnus had her quads, Storn had twin kids, a girl that looks just like her and a darling black and white little boy. 

The next day, Claudia had twin boys, one also looking just like her and one solid black. Claudia and Carmelle were last year kids and I would have never intentionally bred them, but sometimes things happen when you have a stud just a fence over.  While Claudia's babies are great, Carmelle had one stillborn and the other die after Selah and I devoted 48 hours to trying to save her. 

We are supplementing the quads with bottles morning and night, so they are beyond tame and all jump on our legs upon arrival. We are starting to give tastes of the bottle to the other four so they will be as tame and friendly. 

We also welcome friends to come and love on the babies - 

We took the quads to a local preschool a few days ago for the kids to pet and hold. We all really enjoyed it. I am not going to show any darling kids holding the goats, but here is two of my helpers waiting for the next class to come out. 

When we aren't out at the barn, we have some excitment in the backyard; the pool is finally getting finished in time for summer swimming. 

The Last Two Weeks

The last two weeks have been fast paced! It started with Alei's crack of dawn flight to CO only to return the following day with Alayna, Nathan and Samuel. Gabriel is at three months of schools around the country before they relocate from Colorado to WA State. Since Gabriel had to miss Nathan's 5th birthday, they decided to come to Mimi's house to make it special. 

Here's Alei after the return flight. 

Nathan is very outgoing and loves his aunts and uncles, so he hit the ground thrilled to be here! Glacier and Jewell were happy to entertain the little carrot feeder. 

Samuel had a pretty nasty cold, so didn't feel too great at the beginning of the trip; he perked up by the end. 

They were visiting over two weekends, so we had a combo Bella turns 10 and Nathan turns 5 birthday event, with some Bella friends and more of Nathan's family. They both had a great time. 

After dark we did a fire with smores and used some leftover wedding sparklers. 

The babies did pretty well sharing their mommas and their Mimi and Grandad. 

Elijah, Selah and Bella are constantly playing the piano; now they have some competition. 

 The lapacas came to expect the little carrot feeder to come every morning. 

We had some decent weather for walks -

Chris and Samuel 

Samuel was feeling better after a few days. 

In spite of sharing all the toys, Oliver managed to not catch Samuel's cold. 

 Here is our cheering squad at Tori's last basketball game of the year. She played JV for the high school team. I managed to call her Tori at school, but Alayna and Moriah just kept yelling, "Go, Bugs" which has been her long term nick-name. 

Samuel really liked his Granddad; poor little guy is very attached to his Daddy and misses him so Grandad was a good substitute. He learned how to open the office door and come on in and visit during the day while Granddad was working and often on the phone. 

On Sunday, I did the get up in the middle of the night to get to DC for the first flight out with Alayna and the boys. 

I had one full day in CO before returning on Tuesday again - I'm about 110% sure I could never hold down a "get up at 4 a.m. job"!!!

It was enough time to build a few legos and duplos, take Nathan to school, grocery shop with Alayna, make cookies and watch Mr. Rogers movie since Alayna and I were the only two people who wanted to see it!

See the cookie evidence?

So, all these years of breeding goats and me coming and going, I have never had baby goats born while I was gone until this time. Monday morning, Selah found Agnus in obvious labor. My friend, Katy, spent most of the day in the barn reading a book and waiting. She had to leave for an hour in the evening and in that hour, Selah assisted with the birth of FOUR babies; JD was there as moral support for Selah. She handled it like a champ. 

Since there are four, the kids and I are working on getting them to take a bottle to supplement Agnus' milk twice a day. It takes a few days of work! It's E year so meet Edward, Esther, Eleanor and Edith. In spite of saying that I wasn't keeping any baby goats this year, I'm pretty enamored with Edith's dark colors!

One more picture from the last two weeks - 

Finally Tile

 Believe it or not, the tile was the toughest thing to pick out on the whole renovation project! Any pattern was too miuch for the counter top and anything glossy was out, as the counters are leathered and not glossy at all. Those two things took out about 90% of the tile on the market. I ended up buying individual slate tiles from Wayfair. It took three rounds to get them all to us not broken. Then we realized they weren't quite consistant in size. We had to make piles by size and try to keep the rows even; they aren't in a few places but overall it looks great. 

JD did the tiling; I just came in as the grout and tile scrubber. Works out well as I can say "we did the tile" now. 

Our last item is to rock the fireplace, but it will be about a month before we tackle that as we have hooked it up to use for the rest of the winter.

This is the only thing I love about winter -