First Day Photo

 As usual, I forgot to take a first day of CC photo before we left the house, so I was pretty excited when I got there and some brilliant person had a table for us to snap a quick pic. Here are my three CC'ers this year; it felt sad to not have Tori and Julia there, but they are doing another home school co-op instead.
 

Elijah and Selah are 5th grade and Bella is 4th. This is the first year that Selah and Elijah are doing afternoon Essentials class, which is pretty intensive grammar and IEW writing. Bella is observing with me. 

Here's to another great year - Elijah and Bella's 6th year; Selah's 5th and the 5th I have tutored. Our Classical Conversation community has been a real blessing! 

School

 Ready or not, (I'm not!), the new school year is upon us. We start CC tomorrow and Selah was working on her memory work in this picture.  Montana demands being pet and will slap you with her huge paw if you take a break.  

That's one thing, but Lucca running around with his squeaky bunny distracted both girl and dog - 

 Lucca's momma is on a cruise this week and we are blessed with his hyper self all week long!
 

Llama Babies - Crias

 So, an update on Bree is that she is still in the home and care of the zoo-keeper in Richmond. She is doing much better in the health department, but whatever happened to her neck is not healing as hoped. A third vet that is weighing in says to let it go another week, but if it doesn't show any improvement, then it's unlikely to heal at all. The whole thing has been rather emotionally and financially exhausting. 

In the meantime, I scheduled the llama vet #1 to come out on Monday to check Glacier and give the llamas shots. I was also going to do an ultrasound on Glacier to see if she was pregnant. That morning, Julia and I de-wormed the goats, trimmed their hooves and scooped llama poop. I then mowed the back yard and went in to take a shower before the vet's 1:00 arrival. When she arrived, Selah and I headed out and Selah started yelling that Glacier had her baby. I guess she saved me the price of the ultrasound and the vet was able to give the baby her first shot also. 

We are so fortunate that it's another girl, because boy llamas can not live with a herd of females long term normally. This baby is doing very well and her name is Jewel, after the unicorn in The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Bree is named after the talking horse in The Horse and His Boy. (As a plug for that series, listen to the Focus on the Family CDs as an adult - it is so, so good and there is so much hidden in there that I never got as a child!)

Here is Jewel with her momma just a few hours after birth - she weighs only 14 pounds!

  
We are feeling sorry for Butte since she doesn't have her baby anymore, but I'm not sure she really remembers.
 

 Jewel is less people friendly than Bree was, just like Glacier is more skiddish than Butte.

I am babysitting Alei's dog, Lucca, for the weekend. His entire goal in life is to get wet, and although we try to minimize his water options, he usually finds something. This morning it was the old, small llama pool upside down that accumulated a small amount of rain. 

Then I have to fill "his pool" with clean water to clean him up before he comes back in. It's a continual water cycle. 
 

Finals and Baby Llama

 We had swim team finals on Saturday - finals are when you swim against all six teams in your division. We were division champs after winning 5 of 6 swim meets, but we did not win finals. A finals win requires a large team because of the way it is scored and we swim against several larger teams. 

This is our picture at the end of the long hot day. We had to leave at 6 a.m. for warm ups at 7, for the meet start at 8:00. It finally ended about 4:30 p.m.

 We did our regular Chick-Fil-a milk-shake stop. (We also did breakfast there so they saw us twice that day!)

JD and I went out to dinner that night, so it was rather late once I made it out to feed the animals. When I arrived, I found a very lethargic baby llama. After a few calls, Julia and I were on our way to Richmond to a "llama vet". I was so exhausted once I dropped into bed around 1:00 a.m., only to get up for a middle of the night and again early feeding. 

There are a lot of theories about what is wrong, but we do know that she has pneumonia in one lung; beyond that she isn't holding her head up correctly and has no energy. We had to transfer her to bottles and while I was encouraged at her progress yesterday, today is definitely worse. I am currently awaiting another vet and a portable x-ray machine to rule out a neck injury and/or brittle bone disease. After many calls, there is a more qualified lady than I that works for the Richmond Zoo willing to take over her care. (I have done next to NOTHING else for two days!) that I am driving her to this evening. It will be my second rather lengthy road-trip with the baby llama. I am praying she makes it and want to give her every chance. 

 She will legally belong to the zoo once I take her, but they may or may not want her long term. I am OK either way as long as she gets the care she desperately needs. Pray for baby Bree.