I bet none of yall ever had this conversation...

..with your teenager!

Teenager: "I'm going to bed as soon as I am done with supper." (6:30pm)
Me: NO WAY! You'll get up too early.
T: Oh please Mama, I am so tired!
Me: Seriously, stay up until 8 at least because I don't feel good and I'd like to sleep at least until 5 in the morning if possible. (He might get up before 5, and he might not, but I didnt want to risk it.)
T: I CAN'T! OH please, don't do this to me. I have to go to bed NOW!
Me: OK, I'll compromise. You can go to bed at 7:45.
T: ***Wails softly...** I can't do it!!! That is just way too late to stay up!
Dad says in his deep sickly voice: You can do it.

LOL

Erinn and I got her goat clipped. He looks HILARIOUS! Like a skinny little poodle puppy. She took a picture and will probably post it on her blog tomorrow.
I got the hardest part done on Mooky's goat - his head and neck. Mooky couldn't help me much because he felt really sick, so we stopped at that point since I wasn't feeling so great either. Tomorrow we'll put him on the milk stand and finish him off. At least the weather is supposed to be nice again!
Kris has the most terrible chest congestion, and is very sick. Praying that he doesn't have to start on antibiotics...

It's a beautiful day!

The weather is perfect and we SHOULD be out there clipping the two wethers for the upcoming show... but it is too big of a job for Erinn to do alone, and I haven't summoned up the strength yet to go help her. Mooky and Kris both feel worse, so they can't help either.

Rio wouldn't cooperate, but I got pictures of Velvet and Maggie this morning.

Here's Maggie:

Here's Velvet:

She might have twins after all. She is looking a lot bigger than just a week ago.

P.S. I was just kidding, ALEX!

Puffs Plus with Vicks

Good for the nose. :)

It is so extremely rare for Kris and I to be sick at the same time... in fact, I am not sure that it has EVER happened before. BUT, thankfully neither one of us has a fever so it's not as bad as it could be. Just seems to be severe cedar allergies. The cedar pollen is pretty high right now, and the wind is strong today. Going outside produces (worse) headache and miseries. Erinn is feeling great, at least for now. I am watching her ride Thunder through the window. No, she's not riding him through the window. I am watching through the window! She took the bit off the bridle and put the hackamore on. He behaved very well after a few rebellious hops. He wasn't sure what to think of this new thing on his head, but ended up being extremely responsive to it.

Mooky is feeling better but still coughing. He went to bed at 7:30 last night and got up at 4 this morning when he heard me making coffee. However, I was not feeling great so by the time he got out of the bathroom I had turned the kitchen light off and laid back down. Since it was dark he went back to bed and slept until 7! YIPPEE! LOL. He just so rarely sleeps "late" like that. I know that isn't LATE to certain a certain cousin whose name starts with an A.

Maggie is looking huger (is that a word?) by the minute! She is so miserable. I know how she feels since both of our kids were over 10 pounds at birth, but maybe I don't know how she feels since I only had one baby at a time!

I haven't been grocery shopping since December 24!!!!!!!
That is a MAJOR accomplishment in my life. Truth to tell, Mum picked up $40 worth of groceries for me on December 29, and Kris got that much again earlier this week. BUT, if I had gone it would have been more like $100 plus extra gas money so I am very pleased.
Of course, now some of the pantry supplies are dwindling and need to be built back up, but it was still a big savings to stay home. I'm trying to hold out until next Tuesday before I go again.

Mooky gave me a gift card for Christmas that he said is for me to buy any kind of washcloths and kitchen towels that I want. Hooray! I am ALWAYS running short so I can't wait to get some new ones.

Next week will be busy because of kidding and 4-H activities. The yearly county livestock show requires at least 3 trips to town. (30 miles each way.) Hopefully we will be feeling better by then.

I didn't even lock up Mad Cow or Almond last night so I wouldn't have to milk this morning. Truthfully, I would have locked Almond up so I could milk Dana, but it was really cold and he was snuggled up right in between Dana and Velvet and looked so warm... his nose was already runny and if I had put him in the kid pen he wouldn't have had anyone to snuggle with. Even if I had put one of the wethers, or one of the younger does in with him they would not have let him snuggle so it would have been pointless.

LONG WEEKEND

Kris had 5 days off work, but as usual he worked hard anyway!

HANGING THE LIGHT FIXTURE THAT M&D GAVE US.

DISPATCHED A BUNCH OF ANNOYING ROOSTERS,
WHICH RESULTED IN LOTS OF CHICKEN SOUP.

TOOK THE KIDS TO THE ARENA TO HUNT FOR TREASURE
WITH MOOKY'S METAL DETECTOR.




REPAIRED OLD INCUBATOR SO WE CAN GET A HEAD START ON HATCHING CHICKS.

RIGGED UP A BURN BARREL AND RAKED UP A BUNCH OF SMALL BRANCHES TO BE BURNED. PICKED UP TRASH, AND VARIOUS THINGS THAT WERE LYING AROUND WHERE THEY SHOULDN'T BE.

DID SOME REWIRING UNDER HOUSE

PACKAGED ALL THE BROILERS FOR THE FREEZER


AND FIFTY SEVEN OTHER THINGS THAT I CANT THINK OF RIGHT NOW... ;)

Don't read this if...

...hearing about breeding and birthing is TMI! (Too much information.)

It's 8:00 and for some reason I am not as tired as I usually am by this time, so I thought I would post my gingerbread recipe on the gluten for punishment blog.
But first, I had to say that I found my '07 calendar! YIPPEE! "No one" knows how it got there, but it was in the pantry. Weird. Oh well, I am just glad to have it.
I went to Fiasco's Super Duper Handy Due Date Calculator and typed in the breeding dates and Erinn wrote the due dates down on the 2008 calendar for me. She did this for me last year and really enjoyed it, so I think we have a new (although strange) tradition. :o) She looks forward to kidding season as much as I do.
Here's what we've got:
Jan 8 - BELLE (sold a while back, with the agreement that we get one doe kid back.)
Jan 10 - MAGGIE (our oldest doe; for one reason or another we have never kept a doe kid from her, and now we NEED to before it's too late. She's an excellent milker. Looks big enough to have triplets.)
Jan 14 - RIO (this will be her second kidding here, and last time she just had a single doe kid. Hoping for twins this time, but it looks more like just one again.)
Jan 15 or 21 - Oatie (Karen's goat) Dana's daughter, but still much loved by us, and we are anxiously awaiting babies for their sake.)
Jan 17 - Velvet (Second freshener - can't tell if she's having one or two.)
May 6 - DANA (still nursing one twin, and supplying us with half a gallon a day.)
May 7 - DIAMOND (HOPING she'll come back in heat but it's already been over 3 weeks. Darn. I really wanted her bred to a Boer, not a Nubian. So, she was the first of two accidental breedings.)
Open - Valley (yippee she came back in heat after the accidental breeding to her uncle.)

We've got two doe kids reserved for Teresa and two for ourselves but I suppose we shouldn't be counting our chicks before they are hatched. (Or, our doe kids before they are born!)
But, while I'm at it, I'll just say that it would sure be nice to have a couple extra to sell! LOL So, between Maggie, Rio, and Velvet we need 6 doe kids. Ha.
What would be BEST though, is to not lose any does during kidding this year. Kidding Season '06 was extremely rough. Our worst ever, despite my best efforts and not something I care to repeat!

What do I do now?

I've got 8 quarts of lovely broth...er soup. HELP! We don't even eat soup much because Kris doesn't really like it. I used to make chicken and dumplings, but I can't find a GF recipe for it that we like. There is way too much chicken and veggies in those jars to call it broth! LOL I guess that as far as problems go, this is a good one to have. It would be kinda boring to eat as is. But, what to add to it?

Maybe yall should all come over and eat a big huge giant pot of chicken soup!

A bad problem is when someone loses (hopefully didn't throw away) your 2007 calendar and now you don't know when any of the does are due! I have got to find that calendar! They are all due in January pretty much, but I really need exact dates in order to be able to watch closely for problems.

Check out Erinn's blog. She's got a new post!
How are you feeling Alex and Mum? Did anyone else there get sick? I hope we haven't spread it all over Texas. Mooky is getting sick. His cough is very dry sounding, unlike Erinn's, but it causes severe pain in his chest. Sore throat too.
Kris and I both feel fine, and Erinn is lots better but the pneumonia-sounding cough is lingering.

Comments

I am having a hard time getting the page to load when I click on a comment, so although I have read them (in my inbox), it takes forever or it's impossible to reply to one!
So, I will just say to Michelle: closets, drawers, and cabinets? WOW! I'm impressed. I haven't even finished with ONE ROOM yet! Started the tree house yet?
And to Teresa: Trust me, you don't WANT me to come clean off your desk! What was not in that picture was the box full of stuff that came off the desk and still doesn't have a home of it's own. :o) I hope you are feeling at least somewhat better?

Erinn took this pic by standing behind

Alex and reaching over her head to put

the camera upside down in front of her face. ;o)

Friday: Alex and Erinn were feeling sick, and so we cancelled our plans to send Alex home with GB and Loy who were going right through Hico Saturday.
Instead, Mum surprised us by coming to get Alex that very evening. Not only that, but she stopped in Fredericksburg and got groceries for us, thereby saving us a dreaded trip to town. (THANKS MUM!) She and Gabby spent the night and left the next morning at 7:30.

Saturday: butchered 15 more of the broilers. They are starting to put on fat now, so I got that done none too soon. Got almost NO WORK DONE in the bedroom.

Diamond in the wagon.

Sunday: Kris "caught" (with a .22) the 4 rogue roosters that have been terrorizing the hens, and producing all sorts of genetically inferior offspring. Also, he "caught" one of the Danish Brown Leghorns that is way beyond laying age. So, I had 5 chickens to butcher. They were tough to do compared to the broilers! Smaller, for one thing. So, I put them all immediately into my large cheese pot and cooked them with onions, celery, and carrots for about 5 hours. Delicious broth for future recipes.

We went to the arena and the school in Harper and messed around trying to figure out how the settings work on the metal detector works... but since someone lost the manual we did not figure it out.
Got a little work done in the black hole - the second corner is finished! Two to go.... *sigh* ...will I ever finish this project?

Deuteronomy 32:3
I will proclaim the name of the LORD.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

Mooky and Erinn in our living room.

Aunt Loy making peach tea.

Mooky playing Swap.