Holidays, Baby Goats, A New Dog, and Life...

Hello Everyone and Happy 2014!

It's hard to believe we are already 14 years into the 20th century!

So...what did your holidays look like?  Were they busy or quiet?  Were you home or away?  Here's a glimpse of our Christmas holiday and the weeks surrounding it...

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Nothing starts the holiday season like getting a Christmas tree.  We went to our favorite tree farm and picked out a Leland Cypress this year.  I failed to get a pic of our tree before we cut it down, but here are some of our day.

Mist came with us and she loved it.

They have a train ride at the farm this year and it was built large enough for adults to ride in!

But alas, there were only 5 seats, so I sacrificially offered to sit out and take pictures!  ; )  Savannah, having the thrill of her life! 

Smile dear, smile!

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Every year all of us kids go Christmas shopping together.  We always enjoy our day out.  Here we are in front of a Christmas display at Lowe's!

And here we are eating out together at Red Lobster.  We usually eat at a fast food restaurant, but this year we decided to step it up a little.  We had a lot of funny moments that day and are already looking forward to next year's outing!

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The Friday before Christmas found Dad and I selling our goods at a festival for crafts and local foods. 

We had an enjoyable day and he treated me to a dinner at the Flight Deck, a nice local restaurant with lots of airplane memorabilia for it's decorations!

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Then on Saturday, Dad and Ethan brought us home a special treat from their market!

Oysters!

Dad grilled them and we ate them over saltines.  Can anyone say "Bon Appeti"!?!

Noah and I have stopped going to our market for the winter, so Noah was able to enjoy going with the guys to their market for a change!

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Before Christmas arrived, we also had our first batch of baby goats born!  Aren't they sweet?  We had a total of 13 babies in this first group. 

Getting ready to bottle-feed!

This little guy was the favorite of the bunch!  Look at those colors!

So far, so good!  Everyone has had an easy time delivering and all the babies have been really healthy!  Praise the Lord!

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On the Sunday before Christmas, our church held its annual Christmas Candlelight Service!  Here we all are, ready to head to church, dressed in our Christmas finest!

Gram and Pop were able to come and enjoy the festivities with us.

Dad, talking with the menfolk...

Savannah and I with two of our dear friends from church...aren't we matching?!?

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On Christmas Eve, we had Dad's side of the family over for dinner and gifts.  We were able to teach everyone our new favorite game...Mexican Train Dominoes!

A three generation photo...

My sweet sister and friend!

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CHRISTMAS MORNING!

We woke up on Christmas morning and started out by opening our stockings!

These are our new stockings...each year we say that we need to make/buy new stockings for ourselves, so this year, I made one for everybody for Christmas.  Everybody, that is, except the dogs, the ones on the far right.

After opening our stockings, it was time to go milk.  This was the first year that we milked all year long, straight through Christmas!  So, we had to get up and milk before opening gifts, otherwise, our poor girls would be hollering by the time we got out there!

Mom and Dad in the dairy...

Mist, ready for work!

Our milk, jugged up and ready to go!

After milking, we called our grandparents and told them we were ready to open gifts.  They always spend Christmas with us! 

Rivals....

Noah, celebrating his Clemson team shirt...

Ethan, sporting his Gamecock team shirt...

We had a lovely, enjoyable, relaxing, lazy Christmas Day.

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The following pictures are a smattering of odds and ends that have been happening...

Savannah has started her own candle making business.  They seem to be pretty popular!  Below is a picture of one of the many scents she has made!

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Mist has been doing really well.  She is still "in training", but we already don't know what we would do without her! 

She is also a great car traveler!

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Ethan got his driver's permit!  Here he is after taking the computer test...he passed!  Yeah!

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Our cute little kitties!  Left to right: Pecos, Milo and Bucket (all males).

The black one's name is Whiskers.  You'll never see him if you ever come to visit.  He is very wary of people.  Any and all.  Including us.  I had to sneak around just to get this picture of him.  He adopted us when he was only a few weeks old.  He would really like the attention we offer him, but he is so afraid of everything that he won't let you get close to him for more than a few seconds.  Oh well.  He's one more mouser for our mice!

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Ethan, enjoying his favorite game, Scotland Yard.  He loves being Mr. X!

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And our biggest news yet....we got another dog!  A Great Pyrenees Guard Dog!  We heard a loud pack of coyotes the other night on all four sides of our property.  We had heard them before, but this was the first time Mom had actually heard them like that, howling and yipping.  So they decided that it was time to start looking for another guard dog to lend a little bit more help to our other two.  We came across this one and he turned out to be perfect!  His name is Bandit and he is an adorable 6 month old puppy who loves goats and adores attention!  He really enjoys our older guard dog, Malachi.  He is such a little sweetie!  We are so thankful that the Lord made this opportunity available for us to get him! 

Malachi...

Rainy, Malachi's mother

Can't forget about Clancy, our Goldendoodle!

And Mist...

So, all in all, we had a wonderful 2013 and are thoroughly looking forward to what the Lord has in store for us in 2014!