Monthly Archives: July 2010

On Their Clock, Not Ours

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Daisy’s due date was yesterday so of course on the days leading up to it, we were checking on her practically every five minutes. :D Yesterday, Mom and Mikah left with the truck to get it serviced, leaving Naomi and I home. I’m surprised we didn’t pop, we were so excited. What colors would her babies be? When would she birth? How many kids did she have in that gigantic stomach?

Well, after a whole day of checking on her several times each hour and going away with, “Just ten more minutes. Then she’ll start having contractions,” we were half-way through milking when…

…she started having contractions! For real!

Naomi and I were still home alone but, with my phone, we called up Mom and Baba. Both were super excited (not to mention Mikah, who’s gasp I heard even through the phone!) and anxious to get home. We finished milking in a hurry and tried to make Daisy comfortable. She didn’t lay down once.

Baba arrived home just before the first kid slipped out. He and Naomi (mostly Naomi) cradled the baby in their hands as it (sorry, no hints on its gender yet :P ) slid out. You should have heard Baba’s voice as he said, “It’s a…boy.” He really wants girls. :lol: We clustered around the boy, wiping goop off his mouth and making sure he was okay. All of a sudden, Naomi yelped,

“Another one’s coming!”

Naomi barely got to Daisy in time to catch the second kid. One mistake we’ll never make again.

This kid worried us because it wouldn’t breathe for the longest (not really, but in the rush of the moment, yes) time. And then it took a breath, and another, and another, and lived! Baba carried it over to the straw pile where the boy was and peeked at it.

“It’s a GIRL!”

Very jubilant, indeed. ;)

Both kids are doing great. The boy looks so much like Cosmo, except without the white band around his dad’s belly. The girl looks like a mix between her mother and her grandmother, Belle, who we had to put down.

Piper’s Buckling

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Piper’s little buckling was having problems. He wasn’t able to go to the bathroom, so his belly was swollen, which meant he wouldn’t walk since his legs bumped his belly and that would hurt. :( We put him down on Saturday.

Piper’s doeling.

Piper’s little girl is doing really well. She’s frolicking around on the hills with Pegs’ boy, nursing Piper’s udder evenly, taking long naps in the sun, and trying to make friends with Cosmo, Gingham, and other big goats. We haven’t named her yet, but we’re thinking along the lines of Joy, Hope, or Spark. :) Joy because she gives us a ton of laughter. Hope because she is the first baby goat to survive this year and she’s given us hope that there will be others. Spark because she’s so bubbly and bouncy.

Binks

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Pegs has a son. Binks, named after Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks. He has flopped over ears just like Jar Jar. :D He was born on Saturday at about 1:00 PM. Congratulations, Pegs!

Facts:

  • Grandma and Grandpa arrived here from their motel just as she was starting her contractions. Pegs chose a cool place in the woods to give birth. We all trekked up there with cameras slung over shoulders to view the kidding. :D
  • She started contractions at 12:10 PM. The whole birth took an hour. Way to go, Pegs!
  • Binks is doing great and has made great friends with Piper’s little girl (yet unnamed).
  • So far, Pegs has only birthed a single kid per year.
  • Pegs gave birth on the 17th, two days before her due date. :)

3 births down, 3 to go!

The Fastest Hour

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The Oceano Sand Dunes.

A HumVee.

A guide dedicated to making his charges scream.

=

The Fastest Hour of my life. Period.

So Auntie decided to make this summer in California different than all the others. Way different. She decided to take us on a ride on the Oceano Sand Dunes. It was really freaky fun in a really not-fun sort of way.

Mikah loved it (and though he would tell you the opposite, we girls definitely heard some yelps from his seat on some of the larger dunes). Naomi, surprising all, enjoyed it so much she would have gone on it again. Auntie loved it (and let everyone know that by screaming the whole hour). Grandpa got a headache but liked it. Grandma had her eyes closed the entire time and her hand clamped around Auntie’s ankle (Auntie was in the jump seat, above everyone else). I…was almost sick and had pretty shaky knees at the end, but loved how my stomach jumped on the almost-vertical slopes and how the HumVee lifted into the air a couple times. :D Thanks, Auntie!

I still can’t believe that ride was a whole hour.

Beach Volleyball

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To pick up from where I left off in the previous post, we all climbed into the truck and Grandpa drove us to Aunt Peggy’s and Uncle Jim’s house. And this year, I wasn’t sick! :D We spent the rest of the evening eating dinner and chatting. Aunt Peggy has several photo albums of family with pictures that date back to the late 1800s! And then Auntie discovered a small orange envelope with old, old, old pictures in it. And that unleashed over an hour’s worth of discussing who was who and what was happening and what those people in that photograph were eating. (Nuts, maybe?) It was pretty cool, though! :D Uncle Jim is a photographer and Auntie ordered copies of almost all the pictures. :lol: She and Grandpa are really into family history.

The next morning, Aunt Peggy gave Naomi and I a craft to do: Making pretty fly-swatters out of a flip-flop, a rod, and buttons, ribbons, flowers, etc. :)

At about 12:45 we left to meet our cousins at a nearby beach. We kids hadn’t seem them for over five years. We had a TON of fun playing volleyball! No one was very good at it so there was a lot of giggles. :P We played 3 games of grown-ups vs. kids. We kids won 2 out of 3 times. WHOOHOO! And that last time we let them win. :P

After that we all congregated at Aunt Peggy’s and Uncle Jim’s house for popcorn and games. We played Hand and Foot, which none of us kids had ever heard of before. We’re hooked now!

And so ended a super fun time in Southern California.

Our Darling Cousins

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Though we’re back in Oregon now, this post is about our visit to Southern California to visit our uncle, aunt, and cousins. :)

We left Grandma’s house early morning on the 9th. Before getting on the road, though, we had to drive to Grandpa’s trailer place to load up a couple trailers. Nearly every trip we take, we tow trailers to Grandpa’s (many) dealerships! :razz: We were supposed to arrive at our cousins’ house at about 10 o’clock so we could swim with them before their nap. But we ran a bit late. Instead of swimming with Cole (3 years old) and Braydon (2 years old) directly, we ate lunch, got sunburned, and lounged around the pool for a while. Then we got to meet them for the first time in a year. :D We first saw Cole in his dad’s, Jeremy’s, flip-flops. ;) He could hardly walk, they were so big! Then we saw Sara, our aunt, and Braydon. Braydon had just woken up and he started crying as we all piled in through their front door. Enough said?

We had a photo shoot scheduled in about an hour and a half, so we said goodbye within 20 minutes and left to check into our hotel. The photographer was going to meet us at a park about an hour south of their house. Well, we barely made it! Showering, brushing teeth, brushing hair, gingerly slipping into your clothes because your shoulders got burned, and other necessary things took most of our spare time. But we made it to the park on time.

And so the photo shoot commenced. An hour of trying to encourage still-cranky Braydon to smile at the camera and quit running away. The photographer was really nice, though. :)

We were just a little away from LA at that point, so after the pictures, we went out to eat. Braydon was cheering up and everyone was happy!

After dinner, we went out separate ways: Jeremy and his family to their house and Grandpa, Grandma, Auntie, and us kids to the hotel room. Everyone had a good sleep…

The next day we bundled all our belongings into the truck so we could leave for the coast after spending half a day with Jeremy, Sara, Cole, and Braydon. We went swimming again, but this time with an enlarged party! We kids tried to pull Jeremy underwater, but…UGH. :P He won.

Then we all went back to their house to have lunch. After Braydon woke up from his nap, we got ice cream, went to a nearby park, laughed our heads off at Braydon laughing his head off (to be explained) and had a ton of fun.

Now, combine a boy willing to roll down grassy slopes with a little boy who’s never seen that before. What do you get? Braydon laughing his head off. Mikah would roll down the hill, all stretched out, and even in mid-whine, Braydon would start laughing! It was the funniest thing. Ever.

Then we exchanged hugs and left the park in our separate vehicles. Jeremy, Sara, Cole, and Braydon went back to their house and Grandpa drove all of us to…the coast. But that’s the next post. :P

First Kids of the Season

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Piper had kids — a doeling and a buckling! It all started last night, when Piper refused to eat at milking time. Mom stayed outside with her, and Piper went into labor. Unfortunately, Piper kept falling asleep. :roll: Around midnight, Mom decided to go inside and get some rest. When she came outside in the morning, there were two little babies in the birthing stall!

At first Piper didn’t want anything to do with the babies. When they tried to nurse, she bucked and ran away (typical Piper for you). So Mom stepped in. She grabbed Piper, tied her up, velcroed the hobble in place, and let the babies do their thing. They rushed in and started nursing. Piper’s maternal instincts kicked in and within a couple minutes, Mom could let Piper loose and Piper would let her babies nurse.

The little doeling has inherited Pegs’ weird ear! Apparently that trait skipped a generation. :D

Everything’s wonderful on the home front. After all this sadness with the animals, it sure is great to call Mom and have some good news! :D

Pegs is due in less than a week (the 19th) and Daisy is due a couple days after that (the 22nd). Buttercup gave 3 1/2 cups at both milkings a couple days ago. She’s at 3 cups per milking right now.

P.S. To see the pictures in the gallery better, just click on them. Some of the pictures are cut off to keep all the pictures square.

Buttercup

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I got a phone call from Mom last night. Buttercup went into labor yesterday. She was 3 days early. The baby, a little girl with all dark colors and a white patch on her forehead, was stillborn. :( Everything was fast and easy and Buttercup was wonderful, but she was calling for her baby. :cry:

Mom milked Buttercup last night, several hours after she gave birth, and got a couple cups. It was bright yellow with cholostrum for the baby. Buttercup inherited her mom’s long hair, so Mom trimmed it at her back legs to make for easy milking. She got right on the milking stand and Mom milked her with the hobble and everything. This morning, however, Buttercup had to be wrestled on to the stand. I’m thinking she was so tired out last night that she just gave in. Oh, and it probably felt good to be relieved of that milk.

We’re all really sad. :( Please pray that the rest of the goats will give birth to healthy kids! Pegs is due July 19th and Daisy is due July 22nd. Pegs is lagging behind the herd and isn’t very interested in food so Mom is keeping an eye on her. She shouldn’t give birth for a good 1 and a half weeks, so we’re hoping everything’s all right.

Buttercup was butting heads with Daisy last night, so we think she’s recovered.

Thank you for your prayers!

Iron Panther

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We visited Grandpa’s office on Monday! He runs a trailer company called Iron Panther and was shipping out a load of trailers to one of his dealers. We wanted to come on a day where there was a lot of hustle and bustle, so this was perfect!

Happy Independence Day!

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Guess what we did for the 4th of July? We went to a water park about 10 minutes away from Grandma’s house!

It was totally awesome. The line to the parking lot started at 8 o’clock. So we tried to go to bed early the night before so we could get up early the following morning. FAIL. So, yeah, we were pretty tired. But Grandpa, Auntie, Naomi, Mikah, and I dragged ourselves to the car and drove out to the water park. Grandma stayed home to pack the food. There were probably around 15 cars in front of us and the time was 8:22 AM. :D

At 9:00 the gates to the parking lot opened. We parked, hopped out of the truck, grabbed our chairs, bags, and cameras and ran up to the park gates. Since we had printed our ticket a couple nights before, we didn’t have to buy our tickets. YAY!

Anyway, moving on, we waited…and waited…in the hot sun…for over an hour. We only had two lawn chairs, so we took turns relaxing (in the hot sun :razz: ). We talked. After about an hour, the group of people behind us was massive. PHEW am I glad we had come that early! After another half hour or so, the gates to the park opened. They checked our ClicknPrint tickets and then sent us on our way. After walking a ways, the park people had set up a little tent and were checking peoples’ bags for alcohol, radios, and “flotation devices.” :D  

And now I’ll fast forward a bit. We kids sampled almost all the rides (all except for the super freaky scary ones!) and my favorites were: Banzai, a tall curvy tunnel that shoots you out into the water at the end. I rode that one 8 times. Vortex Shaft, one of the rides in a mining set-up. It was pitch black in there, except for brief segments of light. I rode that one 3 times — twice by myself in a solo tube and once with Grandpa, in a double tube. Vertigo Tunnel, the second ride in the mining set-up. It was shorter than the Vortex Shaft and less fun. I rode that one twice — once by myself and once with Naomi in a double tube. :) So those were my favorites.

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After a small dinner (we had a big lunch) we made our way over to the stadium and listened to a band until it got dark. Then…the fireworks. :D We haven’t seen fireworks for over 5 years, so this was super cool. :D

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Then we drove home, set off a couple fireworks on our street, and sank into bed, exhausted. :D

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