No Kiddin'...You're My Valentine!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all had as warm and lovely a day as we had here.

xoxo

Thumbelina

She is just so sweet and cute, I couldn't resist posting her picture. This little baby was born last Monday. She is about 1/3 the size of her twin brother - I think she weighs barely a pound! She's lively and vivacious though, so no worries. I do so love the little babies. New life is always such a miracle.

Princess' 1st kidding

Our little blue-eyed Princess kidded yesterday with two darling doelings! They are amazingly precocious and adorable. Of course, all baby goats are adorable...
If you would like to see how a goat is born, visit our goat blog for a pictorial of her birth. But be warned, it's not for the squeemish!

Earth Day

I had thought we would celebrate the day by finishing the work in our garden - moving the rest of this compost pile and planting the beans and lettuce. But, things don't always work out as planned. Instead, I spent the morning cleaning out goat stalls so that Princess doesn't catch us unprepared (she isn't due until May 4th, but she's enormous!) And then I spent the (too hot to work outside anyway) afternoon finishing the tidying of my sewing room so that I can get started on Jill's Prom dress. (More about that later!) Don't even ask about homeschooling! Ok, so they did both do some really nice reading aloud, found and identified a caterpillar, discoverd hummingbirds in both the front and back yards, and they helped take care of our poor goat, Dancer, who hasn't been feeling well and needed some extra love. So if it seemed that it was just an ordinary day, well, I can smile with the realization that every day is Earth Day around here!

County Fair Fun!

This was our sixth year as a family showing our animals at the Maricopa County Fair. It was a very fun and exhausting week, but well worth the effort. We took 14 goats, 5 chickens, and our 2 turkeys, and they all won ribbons!
After the goat show on Friday we all took some fun time and rode the rides. David loves this time of the fair as he can ride all the scary rides with the kids. I usually just do the tame rides with Elsa as I am really, no I mean REALLY not in to being spun, dropped, and turned upside-down!

Jesse's only entry in the goat show was his LaMancha doe, Pirouette. He bottle-raised her from a baby when her mama rejected her last spring. If you go to our goat blog you will see him feeding her on the blog banner. She won first place in her class of senior yearlings.

Here are all our goat ribbons! The biggest excitement of the day was our little Merci, who took Grand Champion Senior Doe and Grand Champion Nigerian Dwarf! Hers is the big black and gold ribbon.

Remember our lovely Tom Turkey? Well here are all the prizes he brought home!! I guess I'm not the only one who thinks he's a handsome devil! He won a blue ribbon, Champion Turkey, Class Champion, and a trophy for Champion of all other fowl. He actually won more awards than any other bird at the fair!!

I will have more about the goat show on my goat blog just as soon as I get the rest of the pictures from my mom...

We've Been Busy!

Ok, I'm a little behind, but that's because we have been so busy! Besides weeding the garden, cleaning the goat pens, and all the daily stuff, we have been having tons of fun!

Doing squirrel math:

We have a bunch of pinon pine nuts from Grammie & Grandaddy's cabin, so the mama squirrel hid them in groups of 3 and then 4 all over the living room. The little squirrels then found them and worked on multiplying and dividing by 3's and 4's. Very cute and ...yummy!

Celebrating Groundhog Day! Robin wrote a story about the groundhog, colored a picture and copied the applicable rhyme, made a wordsearch, and.....

... recycled old crayons into new multicolored crayon discs. Robin was so excited to do this after his friend Haley brought some in to Primary on Sunday. So, we didn't make Candlemas candles, but we did melt some wax and have some fun. As you can see, Robin stacked his into a cute little mushroom.

We also started milking our Nigerian Dwarf goat, Mocha. Her milk is amazingly creamy! Unfortunately, she is only making about a quart a day, so it disappears fast.

"We Love Goatmilk!"

We're Seeing Spots!!

After much waiting and anticipating, Jill's little doe Merci finally kidded with triplets! And they were certainly worth the wait! Just look at those moonspots!!! One little moonspotted doeling (standing), one awesome pinto buckling (also standing), and one darling moonspotted buckling (laying down). These babies are everything we hoped for in quality and color, maybe even more! For more pictures visit our goat blog: http://millersfairywood.blogspot.com/

New Baby Goat

Here's the first baby of the new year! Fairywood Angel Cake gave birth this evening (around 5:00 p.m.) to Fairywood Sugar Cookie, a little doeling!