Bunnies! Again!

Don't you just want to snuggle these little cuties?   I guess you can't really snuggle them yet because they are a little wiggly at this age.  But still, they are just so soft and lovable.  Unless you are my Mom, who despises what rabbits do to her garden.  Then I understand if you don't love them. 

The difference in size and color of these two litter mates is striking. 

We have 5 - 2 with brown and 3 with gray markings- that will be for sale in mid May. 

You need one. 

Really, you do. 

A Date

Ella loves to write letters to Daddy while he is away at work.  They usually end up being taped to our bedroom door for him to discover.  Sometimes they contain her narrative of our Bible verse for the day.  Other times they are just simple wishes for his day.

This was one he received last month.  Unfortunately, she inherited my gene for spelling.

He said he would love to.

She began planning what they would both wear and what restaurant they would go to.  Here were the choices for food:

Her excitement built each day.  This note was left on the kitchen table the night before the big date.  She was lucky for spell check on this one.

I snapped a photo of them, wearing the outfits Ella had chosen, just before they left. 

They ate at Skoops, a local malt shop and burger joint (that happens to have the best malts known to man), and discussed the drama of 6-year-old life - along with other important world happenings. 

I hope her future husband knows what he will have to live up to.  

Stop The Cuteness!

There is a whole lot of cuteness going on around here.


I can't stop gushing over Samuel's curly hair.  It's just like his daddy's and that makes me love it more.  And it makes up for getting nailed by food that he is rejecting on a daily basis that is catapulted from his high chair, or just spit out of his mouth.


The food thing isn't so cute. 


But the hair and his blue eyes get me.  And when I tell him I love him and responds with, "I love you too too, Mommy".  That nails me right in the heart.

Or when he comes running to Owen and Ella, yelling their names and just wanting a hug.  So cute.  So sweet.


He is still crazy about our chickens, or any animal for that matter.  They aren't easy to catch, those fast little buggers.  But he got one and I snapped a shot during the split second that he held her.  Cuteness.  

It doesn't seem possible that he turns two in a couple of months.  It just isn't possible.

And One More Makes 23

Our goat, Zoe, became a proud mama to Little Boy Blue last Tuesday.  He was born weighing just over 9 pounds and bumped our total animal count to 23 (if you count the litter of 5 bunnies that was born the same morning).  But if you ask Owen, he will tell you we have 1023 animals.  Let us not forget our worms. They are animals to the 4 year old.

The birth of Blue has allowed me to stop pacing around the house like a nervous auntie.  The kids were waking for days with the question, "Any babies yet?" and I was tired of searching the internet for information.  I had gathered all the recommended supplies and then just waited - checking on Zoe as often as I could to look for changes.  I didn't really know what "changes" I would see, but the internet told me to check on her.  So we did.

Jason thought I was a bit strange (no big surprise) when I told him that we should check on her once in the middle of the night.  What I really meant was that HE should check on her because it sounded like a husbandly thing to do - go out in to the dark barn at 3 a.m. in the cold.

It was the second night of his 3 a.m. alarm that I heard him call my name.  I think he yelled, "There's a baby on the ground!!!" and I'm pretty sure I yelled while still asleep, "Is it alive?".  I guess I was a little nervous that something would happen and I wouldn't be there to save the day.  I'm certain that my lack of trust in the natural animal birth process goes back to my programming as a woman that birth is a medical event and not just a birth.  Don't get me started......Thankfully, our goat hasn't been fed negative birth images and was perfectly happy to birth alone in a barn.  God knew what he was doing with those barn births all along. 

Back to the story at hand.

I went running outside, just seconds behind Jason, and we were both in awe when we saw Zoe cleaning off this little, perfect goat.

Jason lost all control of the volume of his voice as he recapped what had happened in the minutes prior to me jumping out of bed.   I had to tell him to be quiet about 10 times so that he didn't disturb the goats.   It was pretty fun to see him as excited as I was, not to mention that I would no longer be crazy for telling him to get up at 3 a.m.

Jason filled me in on the details: he had entered the barn just as the goat was presenting, meaning that he saw the nose and two hooves coming first.  Thanks to my internet research, he knew that was the right position, so he dashed back to the house, grabbed the "birth kit", yelled for me to come.  We both missed the birth, but we were so thankful that Zoe had all the perfect motherly instincts kick in.   

Besides a little encouragement to find where the milk comes out, Little Blue has done very well.  Zoe is a  protective mom, but let's us handle and visit with Blue while she supervises and tolerates being milked. Everyone in our family now knows how to milk a goat, which is pretty cute.   

I think I might need to order Jason overalls for his birthday. 
 

On The Verge

This winter has passed by very quickly.

It must be that we live in a climate where we have not been buried in snow since November, or the fact that people here plant potatoes in February.  True, we are 10 days from the first official day of spring.  Yet spring is here, if not just in my mind.  

It seems that the Minnesota winters of my lifetime have poured over in to the spring months and it wasn't until May of each year that I could really wrap my head around the pleasantries of flowers and gardens and walking around without boots.   It isn't like that now on our little hobby farm in Kansas.  I like calling it a hobby farm.  It makes me feel a little giddy. 

We are on the verge of an explosion of events around these parts.  That may be a bit dramatic.  I hope nothing will explode.  But these next weeks and months will be marked by new babies (not from my uterus-thankfully), several significant outdoor house and land projects, not to mention our first attempt at a large vegetable garden.  All of these things could take a great deal of time and should have involved some planning over the winter months.  However, winter didn't really feel like winter.  Where was the down time that was supposed to happen in January and February?  I can't count how many times we could be heard last fall saying, "We can do that over the winter months".   There is a very long list of things that haven't happened.

I need a full-time nanny.  And a housekeeper.  And a chef.  And for Jason to be a stay-at-home dad.  

I really don't need any of those things.  We would have no money and likely gain a ton of weight if we had all those things.  And without money we couldn't do any projects.

All of the things that occur this spring will happen, if truly necessary, in His perfect time.  The feeling of being on the verge of something major happening is exciting and stressful.  There are very few days that I ever feel as if we are just coasting - despite our very relaxed life in the country.  I am thankful for the anticipation of events on the horizon, as long as I can keep an eternal perspective of what is really important - which is one of my greatest challenges. 

If I'm not around for one of the births on the farm, then so be it.  If we don't get the garden to really take off this year, then maybe we will next year.  If Sam skips a nap because of his new found ability to leap out of his crib, he is still really cute.  If we don't cover all the math concepts for home education that I thought we would, my children will still be great kids.   But if I can't get my computer to upload photos from my camera, well, then..... I will be just fine, I know.   

Even if we can't post photos, we will certainly keep you updated on our spring adventures.  We are on the verge of making fun memories - and hopefully I won't need to put my arm inside our birthing goat.  That would really make for an interesting spring.