More Kids

We had some more baby goats arrive today! It was our four year old doe, Faith. She had two boys and one girl. They are all dark brown/red. Ethan named one boy Sparrow, and Noah named the other boy Shawn. As usual, it will take us a couple of days to come up with a catchy name for the girl. (It matters with the girls because we keep them.) We did finally come up with a name for the other little girl born on Sunday. Her name is Corrie. Fits her like a glove. All the mamas are doing very good with milking, even the new one, which is a blessing in itself. Only three more mamas to go...

Posted by Kelsey

Something to think about

In Dad's sermon today he mentioned this statement:

"Many Christians would be desperately ill if their physical health was instantly in the same state as their spiritual health."

If only we would live life applying this issue. Many people go to the doctor as soon as something comes up and try to get well as soon as possible. Why, then, do we not strive to do so in our spiritual lives as well?

New Kids on the Block!

We had our first baby goats of the year today! The doe, Joy, did absolutely wonderful, even with it being her first time. I'm as proud as a new parent! She had one boy and one girl. Noah named the boy Chance, but the girl's name will take a few days to decide. We've decided that we like names with a "y" or an "ie" at the end (i.e. Cassie, Jessie, Allie, Rainy, Stormy). They seem to flow better when you're calling them in out of the field.

This picture is of Noah holding the boy (I think...)

We brought them both inside and put them in this big plastic tub with a heat lamp over them.

And this picture is of me (Kelsey) feeding the boy. He caught on a lot faster than the girl did, but they are both eating good now, which is a blessing.

Posted by Kelsey

We've Begun!

On Friday we began the first steps towards building our dairy. We re-routed our fence. We haven't decided yet if it's going to be a temporary fence or permanet, so we put it up to last. The field sure does look a lot different. The Lord blessed. Everyone pitched in to help and what we thought would take 2 days only took 1. (It helps now that everyone knows how to put up fencing too. When they put up the fencing the first time it was just Dad, Mom, Gram, and Pop.) It was a day well spent!

Posted by Kelsey

Country Fun!

This is what Southern, country kids do for fun when we don't have snow!!!
This video is of Noah disk sledding (or being pulled behing the golf cart on a disk sled). It looks a lot faster than it actually was. Trust me...this is perfectly safe....and loads of fun! (The next is of Katelynn and the last is of Elaina.)



Posted by Kelsey

Jordan's Birthday!!!

On January 20, Jordan, our dear sister, turned 21!

She has always been so sweet and loving and like a second mother to all of us.



JORDAN IS:
Joyful
Obedient
Ready for anything that comes her way
Deliberate
Always thinking of others
Natural born leader

We love you Jordan and we don't know what we would do without you. You have blessed our life so very much. You are the best big sister and the most devoted daughter. Where would we be without you? Happy 21st Birthday Jordan, with all our love...

The Twins

We snapped these picture of our twin cousins doing dishes! We babysit them Monday through Friday and they are like our little sisters. This moment was too cute to not get a picture of. They took their job very seriously. They didn't even know we took these pictures.



The picture on the hay bales with Ethan and Noah was while we were fixing up our baby goat pens. Katelynn is on the left, Elaina is on the right. The four of them are quite a group!

Splitting Wood

It has been a very cold winter for us this year. It usually gets cold for a few days and then we get a reprieve, but it has been cold and has gotten even colder this week. We have been using the fireplace more than we usually do so our wood piles are slowly diminishing. So Tuesday we decided that if we wanted to continue to have a fire every day that there was some splitting to be done. We donned our winter attire and went to the wood pile.


A couple years ago, Dad and our grandparents had bought us a gas powered log splitter. It works great (when it wants to). Tuesday was no exception. Dad had started it for us before he went to town and said that we should be fine until it ran out of gas. So we set to work. We were able to get about 1/3 of our pile done before it quit on us. After a few attempts to get it started we decided to wait for another day.

Today the temperature reached 49 degrees. It was wonderful to feel the warmth of the sun again. Pop said that he would come and take a look at our log splitter and after a little work was able to get it started. Gram had brought up her electric chainsaw so she was able to cut some of the pieces shorter so that they would fit on the splitter.

Even Katelynn (one of the twins) helped. We had her picking up the small pieces to use for starters. She did try to help Ethan carry some of the bigger pieces to Savannah, who was stacking. Elaina (the other twin) joined us later after she woke up from a 3 hour nap. She only lasted for a little while though before she said she was cold so I took her and her sister back inside.

The pile of logs was soon down to two logs, which Ethan wanted to keep as targets for when he throws his knife. We thank the Lord for blessing us with beautiful weather, time spent working together and two nice big stacks of firewood.

P.S. Dad surprised us today by bringing home a new, much needed, gas powered chainsaw! Praise the Lord!


Posted by Jordan

A Writing Desk and an Armoire!!!

For years I have wanted a writing desk, but they were all too big or way too costly. Well, now I have one.

My aunt gave this to me the day after Christmas, along with the chair. She had brought them both down from New York years ago, but no longer had a use for them, so she was wondering if anyone was interested in taking them. We went to look at them and I fell in love with the set! It's absolutely beautiful, and just the right size!

Jordan also salvaged this armoire from a shed we were cleaning out this fall. She fixed it up and it too looks wonderful in our room!