Just a little Paintin'

This is what I have been painting in the kids' room. It will eventually be just the boys' room so that is the reason for the "boy" colors =)

The camera doesn't show the true colors real well but you can still see what it looks like!

I am very very pleased with the way it turned out!

I took several days to complete it but it was worth it! The rest of the room is not done though, so whenever it is I'll try to post about it! I won't be doing this on any of the other walls but I have some fun things to do anyway!

Titus thought he wanted his picture taken too. And even though Z isn't looking at the camera he was saying "cheese!" the whole time =)

A day at the Zoo

That is Konnor by the giant tortoises. He wanted his picture taken EVERYWHERE!

And Lillie got this new little notebook for her birthday from her Aunt Nattie and she wanted to draw all the animals that we saw. So she would plunk right down and draw them as best she could. It was pretty cute!

And we actually got to see the hippos! We were all pretty excited about that. We don't usually see them for some reason.

There is everyone looking at the hippos. We went with Krista and her three kids (the newest one being just a couple of weeks old!) Plus Konnor and Kimalee came along!

Konnor confiscated my camera so he kept telling me to pose. Here I am with Titus and then holding Caden's hand.

And Konnor tried to get a few self portraits in. He was trying to get a picture with a mini wart hog statue.


All the boys by the tiger statue.

Another of Konnor's pictures. The sleeping Tiger.

And this is how Lillie rode a lot of the day. She was having some leg problems today =) Haha! She fell asleep last night with both legs hanging up over her bed safety rail. And apparently she spent most if not all the night that way. This morning it took an hour or two for her to even really be able to stand up and walk. I was a little worried actually but they weren't black or blue or anything. But throughout today she has still complained that they hurt. I guess they are just sore.
And Kimalee actually liked pulling the wagon! Which was a bonus because it would get heavy pulling Lillie in it! But little Kimalee didn't seem to mind at all!If I asked her if she was tired of pulling it she would say it was getting heavy but then she just kept pulling it! It was a HUGE help!

And posing again for Konnor. This time by his favorite- the giraffe. We actually got there just in time for him to go up on the tall platform and feed the giraffes. It was pretty cool to go up there and see the giraffes face to face like that! They are quite the amazing animal!

I really love going to the zoo with the kids and seeing all the animals and learning about new ones. Or learning new facts about animals I already knew about. Such as: tigers are the biggest cat. I thought lions were bigger than tigers but I guess I was wrong!

And I really like the amphibian and reptile building. Looking in each glass container and trying to find the animal that belongs in there. And then seeing the snakes (behind glass of course) and all the different kinds there are. There was one in there that I don't remember ever looking at before that was so cool and weird. If I remember right it was a viper. But it's head was like a triangle and then it has this big fat body and the colors were almost like leaves all over it. It was pretty neat. Can't say that I would like to encounter it out in the yard somewhere but behind the glass it is interesting. And the anaconda! It is so HUGE! It is just amazing! Okay, wow, that is enough about snakes...

So we had a good time and it was a great day for it!

Zethan's Baby Talk

I thought it might be fun to put a little video on here of Z talking. I know all parents think their kid has the cutest little voice, and I am no exception =)

Cousins

We visited their cousin Reuben last week, We hadn't seen him for awhile and boy had he grown!!
Titus and Zethan thought he was pretty neat and kept wanting to hold him. But Lillie "didn't want her picture taken".


But Titus would hold him for awhile and then his arm would slowly go lower and lower and he would say How Heavy He Was. It was fun to see him and his mama Mallory again! They just moved into a new house and now they have lots of room! It was so fun to see!

And Reuben is just the cutest little boy! Can't wait for the cousins to spend lots more time together!

Swimming!

We took the kids swimming for Lillie's birthday! They loved it! That is Lillie in the hot tub. It was a pretty big hot tub so they thought it was fun to swim in it.

I wouldn't let Zethan get in it except for his feet because it was so hot. But one time he decided to try and go in by himself and fell right into the water, but I was there to catch him. And then when Titus got in once, he had that life jacket on but he was first on the little seat that goes around the edge and he didn't realize that the middle was open so he stepped right off the seat and you should have seen the look on his face. He was petrified! I thought he was shocked at the heat but then after he got back to safety he said something about not knowing it was deep. It was pretty funny.

And Lillie really did have fun but unfortunately she was getting sick and I didn't know it, so that is why she wasn't out swimming and playing as much as I thought she would. After not being there very long she said she was ready to go. Then she fell asleep on the way home and when we got home she felt too warm so I took her temperature and sure enough, she had a fever. Poor little girl, getting sick on her birthday. So she stayed home from school yesterday but last night and today she not had a fever and is doing just fine. Maybe a few little sniffles.

And that little Zethan giggled and giggled in the water. He's too young to be out there on his own but as long as we were holding him or he was getting a piggy back ride, he was a happy camper.

It was pretty cute watching him ride around on Daddy's back. Matt would swim under the water and you would just see Zethan zooming along the surface. He thought it was great!

There is Lillie again, waiting for the rest of us to be done swimming.

And you would have never seen Titus out in the middle of the pool by himself with a grin on his face last year. But he finally grew out of being terrified of floating out by himself. He would swim across the pool, climb out the ladder, go around back to the steps, get in and swim across to the ladder, over and over.


Zethan all wrapped up and ready to go.

Six Years

Six years ago today Lillie joined our family...


Today Miss Lillie turns 6 years old. She is just so excited about her birthday! She is the last one in her afternoon Kindergarten class to turn 6, so she is very glad to finally be as old as the rest of her classmates =)
And she picked out her shirt to wear a few weeks ago! A green shirt so she would avoid getting pinched on her birthday =)

Mommy and daughter! I am so proud of my Lillie girl. She is just learning so much and is a wonderful addition to our family! I can't believe that six years ago today we were just beginner parents-not knowing what was to lie ahead of us! We can hardly even imagine life before our Lillie came into our world!

Her Daddy brought her home donuts this morning after his Bible study and when she woke up Titus gave her a present . Later we are taking her and the boys swimming. And we bought her a new swimsuit and another swimming toy that we will give her before we leave. So far we have kept it a surprise what we are doing! I know she is going to be super duper excited!
And then Sunday for lunch, we will celebrate at her Grandma's house with some friends! She is one lucky lady=)

At the hospital when she was born, the nurses thought we should name her Patricia in honor of St. Patty's Day =) But we stuck with Lillie and I think her name fits her just right!

Lillie Anne Veer- we love so much and look forward to what all the Lord has in store for your life! Have a very Happy Birthday, girlie!

Update

We had another calf born today. This time though the mama had it all on her own. No help from us! Matt was gone and it was just me, so I am very thankful there were no problems. So that makes the four calves. They are all doing well!

The one that we got as a replacement is still working on bonding with the momma. The cow is getting better at not trying to kick the calf and letting it nurse as long as we have her in a head gate. But otherwise, she doesn't let it nurse. And we got this calf from a small dairy. When the cows at a dairy have calves, it is really just so they produce milk. But if the calf stayed on the cow then it would get all the milk instead of the cow being milked so we can have milk. So that is where we got it from.

We still have four more heifers to have calves so hopefully those births will all go well too!

No photography please

I came out to get some pictures of mama and baby.


She immediately went to guard her calf.


I guess she didn't want the paparazzi getting any shots =)

Calf Number Three

Next adventure started Tuesday morning.

(Just a picture of a couple of the heifers)

We could tell that there were several very close but one that was fairly imminent. Matt wanted to get her separated first thing so there wouldn't be any calf stealing going on =) He got her in the barn but we could tell she didn't really want to be there. This mama was one that Matt had pegged as a little bit stand-offish =) So she was in the barn and safe and the others were looking fine. We really wanted to get a replacement calf put on the mama that lost hers. Matt went up to a livestock sale to get a calf and left me in charge. Oh boy. Around noon I needed to take Lillie to school. When I got home I noticed that there was a heifer in the pen where the bull is kept. I first thought that one had escaped from the barn but I didn't see any hole in the walls or anywhere that she would have gotten out. But when I went to the barn, the mama in labor had sure enough broke through a poorly hung door. The door had just kind of swung back in place though so I couldn't tell from outside that she had gotten through it. So I opened it back up and tried to corral her into the open door. Well, she was having none of it and it is extremely difficult to get a cow to go where you want it to by yourself, when that place you want it to go, it does NOT want to go to. So I was running all around in the MUDDY mucky pen trying to get it in the barn. I was wearing Matt's mud boots because I had yet to get myself some. They were a mile too big and one got sucked off in the mud and I ended up running around in the muck with my sock on! Lovely.

(This is a picture of the Bull and of course Matt in the background)

She never did go in the barn for me so I didn't want to leave her with the bull so I opened the gate for her to go back in with the other heifers. Well miss heifer #86 (they have ear tags) decided to chase this heifer in labor all around and push her and shove her into the corner and everywhere else. For some reason she was not being nice. And I knew that wouldn't be good for her to have her calf with that #86 bothering and pestering her. So once again, I am out there trying to get a cow to go somewhere she doesn't want to go. All the other heifers (6 of them) would follow me into the other pen. But the one in labor and the one bothering her were being very stubborn. I finally got #86 away from her and tried steering her into the other pen. I would jump this way and that way trying to keep her going where I wanted. I'm sure if someone had been watching they would have thought I looked ridiculous! But eventually she got back around me. I was ready to give up and at least get the other 6 away from the one in labor when #86 decided to follow along with the crowd and I got all 7 of them penned up away from the mama in labor. Then finally Matt got home and through a series of events, we both eventually got her back into the barn because she seemed to be having trouble pushing this baby out. So Matt and I got her in the head gate so she couldn't escape and we helped her get her baby out. This time it was much harder getting that baby out than the other one Matt helped out. We had to tie something to the calf's legs that were out and then PULL! It was pretty neat being there helping pull a calf. And that one figured out how to nurse very quickly! A big blessing! And again a big calf weighing in at 90 pounds!

But as I said, Matt went to get a replacement calf, but came home empty handed. So now today, Wednesday he will go pick one up from a dairy that saw our "Replacement Calf Wanted" ad on craigslist. It was born the same day as the one we lost, so hopefully not too much time has passed to get it bonded with the heifer that lost her calf. I'm sure it will be another adventure.

(This is the heifer that lost her baby.)

And of course, today again I am in charge of watching the heifers and if one seems to be about ready to push a calf out, I have to get the others out of the pen so they won't bother her. Next time when they all calf, they should be able to go out the pasture and without any assistance from us, have their calves just fine. But since this is all their first calves, we felt it best to have them all up here in the pens close by. Hopefully today goes well and none of them will need assistance!

Calf Number two

To pick up the story from Saturday afternoon.... That evening at 11:00 we had another heifer have her calf. A little heifer calf. This time Matt had been home and was watching her and knew it was coming. He didn't want to take any chances so he helped the calf out by just pulling on the legs as the mama had the contractions. Calves are supposed to be born with born front legs out first. So far, that has been the case with ours. So that calf was born healthy but then the heifer that lost her calf tried to come and claim this calf as her own. So the real mama and her were pushing and shoving each other around and kind of knocking the calf over to try and claim it as their own. Eventually Matt got the mama who lost her calf away from the newest calf. He put the newest calf and its mama into the barn so they would have their own space. But the calf didn't seem to be able to nurse right away, or the mama wouldn't let it or something. Maybe because there was so much commotion when it was born. So Matt had to use the drencher to feel it the first colostrum and then he had to feed it a couple more times. He tried to work with it to get it sucking on the mama but it wasn't going well. He was up most of that night.
Then Monday morning he went out there and there it was just sucking away from the mama! We were very thankful for that! So they are doing really well now and are out of the barn in a pen by themselves. We didn't want the very first heifer, who lost her calf, to cause any more problems. Matt weighed this calf and it also weighed 85 pounds!

Ramblings on Our Newest Adventure

This was written Saturday late afternoon or evening: (And there will be more updates coming soon) Sorry this is so much rambling. I wasn't sure if I would even post it but hey, this is a blog about our life and farm and this is what is going on right now=)

We have 9 first calf heifers that are all supposed to be having calves any day now. A heifer is a girl "cow" that has not ever had a calf. A first calf heifer is, a girl cow that is pregnant with her first calf. Make sense? Okay, good =) Anyway, you have to watch first calf heifers more closely than seasoned mama cows who have had several, because their deliveries may be more difficult with things not ever having been stretched out like that before. They should be bred to a bull that should produce low birth weight calves, to help make calving their first easier. So we have nine of these lovely ladies that we have been watching for the past several weeks, just waiting to see any signs that their labor is imminent. In fact, this past week, I have gone nowhere except taking Lillie to school and going to church on Wednesday evening. (Though not necessarily because of the cows-anyone noticed gas prices lately?) And Lillie has been asking me, "Why do you always have to check on the cows?" Because I am constantly going out there. I would really like to be out there for the delivery! One of them has seemed to be ready to have her calf for the past week or even two weeks. But she just kept taking her merry time. So, from Monday-Friday this week I have been out there watching them and Matt even gets up during the night to go check on them. And today, seeing no more progress this morning we thought we were in the clear for awhile, I took the kids to eat lunch at d'Veers and then we headed to my little brothers' basketball game. We were gone 3 hours. Three hours. That's it. And wouldn't you know, in that 3 hour time span, the heifer that we have been watching the closest, had her calf. I knew almost right away when I drove in the driveway. I could see some white stuff out in their pen and I was sure I had never noticed anything white in the hay pile before. So I carried each of the boys up to their beds, because they fell asleep on the way home from the ball game. Then I rushed out there to see a newborn calf, seemingly just born, lying behind its mother. The calf didn't really look like he was breathing well or even much at all, so I stirred the mom enough to get her to get up and start licking the calf. And I could see that the birth sac was still over the calf's face so I got that off of it so it would not suffocate (although, it may have already done too much damage because I don't know how long the calf and mama had been lying there before I got home). But it still didn't look quite right to me, how little he was moving and breathing. I called the vet and they said give it about 30 minutes to let the cow and calf bond and see if anything is happening then call back if I needed to. In that time, I realized that the calf had not been breathing and was most certainly not going to make it. I got Matt's sister on the phone to go get him from their house where he was working on his new pickup (no cell phone reception and he couldn't hear the house phone). When he got home, I was so upset that we had lost our calf and especially that I hadn't been home to help it but he wanted to go out there to it right away. We got out there and he rubbed his finger in the calf's nose and pushed around on him a little to try and get it to start sniffing and breathing some. And it seemed to work! The calf was miraculously breathing again. And it even was softly mooing to his mama and the mama would answer him back. We were very excited. But then he just would not get up or even lift his head up. We called a friend who has done this kind of thing much longer than we have to come help us. We tried to force feed it but it did not work and the poor little calf ended up not making it. I am sad for it's mama too. We are all so sad around here this evening. Lillie and Titus were so excited about the newborn calf and they got to see it but then were so confused why it had to die. We didn't have much to tell them. But we do have some speculations. We think that the mama just had too hard of a time pushing the baby out. Remember at the beginning I said that a heifer's first calf should have a low birth weight. That means around 50 pounds. Well, we weighed this little guy and he weighed 85 pounds!! So we are assuming that this particular mama cow was a week or two past her due date and the calf just got too big. And since we weren't home watching, we didn't know that she was having trouble. If they take too long once they are in active labor, the chances of survival for the calf are very low. But all the signs were there a couple of weeks ago for her to be having the calf and it just didn't progress far enough. And this was our first calf as well. Since this is the first time we have ever had a "herd", we are definitely still learning. And sad that we lost our first one. We are hoping and praying the other mamas will have an easier go of it. And we will be watching much closer from now on.