Hi everyone! How are you doing? No, I haven't forgotten about this blog. I've put off posting because I want pictures and I lost my camera card, or when I get online the kids immediately need help, or because I just haven't felt well. Mostly, it's because I haven't felt well. We have a big surprise, I am pregnant with #5! We are pretty excited about it. Right now I am 13 weeks along, due January 2. Michael is praying for a brother. Rachel wants a sister. Taylor and Lindsey don't really care. Michael's primary teacher had to ask me if we were expecting because in class he was praying for a brother. For his sake, I hope it's a boy.
In other news, our 4 lambs increased to 11 lambs and a ewe, but we have since lost 3 of the lambs. We are currently at 8 lambs and 1 ewe. The last lamb to pass away was really hard on Taylor. He hadn't been looking very good so she was taking extra care of him. She was out feeding him a bottle when he died, with her holding him. It was very sad and she is still sad. I hate seeing her so sad. The other lambs seem to be doing fine, though. They are growing by leaps and bounds. Soon we will build a corral type place for them so that they can graze on some of the grass we have growing around here. I've heard sheep make pretty good lawn mowers.
Taylor has been fairly active in 4-H the last couple of weeks. I can't remember if I mentioned or not, but we signed her up to do scrapbooking and sewing. The sewing part I can help her with, the scrapbooking, not so much. Luckily she has some good leaders and others to help her out. I have to admit, the pages that she has done so far look pretty good to me. She is really enjoying it, though, and that is what is important. For sewing she is going to make a skirt. She picked out a cute, simple pattern and I think the fabric she chose will look really nice. Sewing is a skill that I have been very grateful for over the years.
Our garden is all planted. We ended up buying more plants than normal this year since I was unmotivated to start them myself. We have tomatoes, bell peppers, anahiem peppers, jalapeno peppers, swiss chard, pickling cucumbers, dill, stevia, carrots, spinach, lettuce, radishes, peas, potatoes, red onions, corn, watermelon, and yellow squash. Typing that out, it sure looks like a lot. We also planted strawberries. Two raspberry plants survived this year, and we have a couple of gooseberry bushes. Up in our orchard we have apples, pears, and plums. Hopefully this summer and fall we will be able to do a bunch of canning so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labors through the winter. The fence around the garden is about half way up. I think we might need a few more pallets. The rock will take a little longer, but when it gets finished it is going to look sooooo cool!
I almost forgot to mention our chickens. We had someone offer us a bunch of chicks for free. We took 200 and found homes for almost all of them, I think we kept about 20, then we got another 20. Not all of them have made it, but we still have around 30 chicks in addition to our 20ish meat birds and our 5 laying hens. Of those 30 we will have to see how many are hens and how many are roosters. We will most likely eat the roosters. I'm not sure how many hens we really need, but some of them look like the kind that lay colored eggs, so that would be cool!
I will have to get outside and take some pictures, then find a way to get them on the computer so that I can show you all what we've been up to. Hopefully I will get feeling better soon and feel more like blogging.
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