Quick Updates on All Fronts!

Babies are here, babies are here! We have had fourteen goats kid in the last fourteen days. Three of them last night! One of our first-timers, Frio was looking very close. Grace wanted to keep a particularly close eye on her as Frio is one of our precious "Texas River" line descended from our wonderful buck Brazos. Brazos was flown down here from Lynnhaven in New York. We were so excited to see the changes that he would bring to our herd! Sadly Brazos never lived to see even his first daughters or River, the son that we kept to replace him. (See this blog post.) Frio is from River and Yo-Yo, a doe that we bought from Lucky*Star. We absolutely love Yo-Yo and have been anxiously awaiting her daughter's first kidding so we could get an idea of what she would look like all grown up and in milk.

But I digress.

Frio was looking close so Grace and a few of her sisters were making regular trips to the pasture. On one such trip they noticed that Sophie, an Alpine who hadn't even looked close was pushing! They helped her deliver the first kid and were turning around to hand the baby to one of their younger siblings to bring to the house when what to their wondering eyes did appear...but another newborn baby, this time with no ears! Clearly a LaMancha had kidded, but whom? They quickly scanned the pasture and saw Llano (another River girl) twenty feet away pushing out baby number two. Apparently Llano believes in kidding on the move, she had dropped one baby, walked a distance away, was having the second. Good thing there were not four babies in there as Llano's mother and grandmother have been known to give us of there would have been babies scattered all over that field! Frio decided she preferred the spotlight and waited until she could have all the attention to herself. She gave us a sweet, all white baby girl.

The new dairy building is coming along very well. Gene, the contractor (and dear friend, "Grandpa" to our children) says we will be in it by the end of this week. Then the fun of building out the old milk parlor into the new cheese room begins!

Some of the children have changed jobs. Most notably Sara (17) has been moved from the kitchen to caring for animals and herd health. Emma (two weeks shy of 13) has been moved to the kitchen. She has been having a good time rearranging and decorating the kitchen and will be doing her first major grocery shopping trip with me this morning.

Today is Cowboy, Grace's horse's fourth birthday. She was there the day he was born and has brought him through the terrible twos to the point of being ridden. She tells me it is always a work in progress but I think she is pretty proud of him. I am pretty proud of her.

Flylady-wise. Update...Morning routines are in place. When done (which is most of the time) there is a noticeable difference. Evening routines have taken longer to become solid. We are working on it. Getting dressed down to shoes is going well. The sink being shined? Still working on that. It seems we can never get on top of dishes here. I guess that is to be expected with fourteen people and no dishwasher? Regardless we must gain control in this area. Decluttering continues to go well--even the books are being considered and that is huge for our home where there are multiple bookshelves in every single room of the house save the bathrooms.

And that is the news for the day...