It was hot!

It was a hot one today.  I decided to take the kiddos to see Jeremiah's soccer game.  I can't say I saw much of the game.  There were bleachers.  Enough said :-)  After the game we ran to the store.  I seriously felt like I had wilted.  The baby cried all the way home.  And then some.  Got him to bed, everyone fed and I am taking a breather before I hit the hay myself.  Here are some of the pictures I took while there.

I think I need to save these in a higher resolution as they became blurry after I made them larger.  Oh well.  Jed hanging out under the bleachers.

This little guy was getting very sleepy.  He fell asleep for a few minutes.  But I am sure that feeling like your melting does not lend to staying asleep.

Jonah hanging out at the bleachers.

For a few minutes Jonah decided to take off his shirt.  Not sure what made him change his mind, but the shirt went back on.

Even though it was close to 7PM the sun was just blazing!

Everyone had pink cheeks.

Even this guy.

Despite how hot it was Flannery still found it difficult to stay still.

And Jed too!

This guy wasn't feeling too well this afternoon.  I do hope he is ok.  Tomorrow is his last day of speech therapy with Miss Bonnie.  I would hate for him to have to miss it.  He even made her a big chocolate chip cookie that he decorated. And he colored her a thank you card.  I am hoping to remember to bring my camera to take a picture of Jed and Miss Bonnie.

Wee!

Oh, look!!!  She sitteth still!!!!

Lounging.  Taking a break from running all over the bleachers.  Actually I wouldn't let them run around, goodness knows we don't need any more broken bones.  Moira had to get another cast put on today as her other one was cutting into her arm.  I am so ready for her to be cast free.  Next week they have runners camp and then the following week she gets it taken off.  I know she can't wait.

Off to bed for me, I hear it calling my name....

Bunny troubles

As you have heard, we had some bunny guests.  We had lots of wonderful adventures with them.  They were a lot of fun to  hang out with.  For the most part they were well behaved.  A bit dare devilish at times, but polite and well behaved.  That was....until there was cake in the house.  Oh, yes, these bunnies have a weakness.  They were very, very fond of cake.  Birthday cake to be exact.  You see Emma's birthday is in the beginning of April and Saoirse's birthday is at the end.  I was trying to get the bunnies to Emma for her birthday, but that didn't happen.  And she may be very well pleased that I did not after she sees just what her bunnies were up to while hanging out here.  We really didn't think the bunnies would be too interested in joining our family birthday party.  I didn't ask them, and now I do suppose I should have, but the thought didn't cross my mind.  The evening was great, lots of food, cake and presents.  Dinner is usually late around here, but this night especially so as Jeremiah had to be gone part of the evening.  So we did a quick clean up and headed to bed.  As you know we are trying to save some change by doing things like turning out lights that are not in use.  It was pretty dark in here as we were getting ready for bed.  I heard some noise.  Odd noises.  Do we have a mouse in our house I wondered?  Kind of a scritch and scratch, little whispers of sorts, some snorteling.  I decided to investigate.  And this is what I came across:

What in the world?  Are those bunny ears I see?  And why is the left over birthday cake unwrapped?

Yikes!!!  Naughty bunnies!!!  Caught red, or I should say forked, handed....er eared.  Who knew that bunnies loved cake so much.  Next time I'll remember that.  And Emma, make sure you watch out for those pesky bunnies.  They might eat you out of house and home!  :-)

Our kiddos as babies

Isabella

Moira

Flannery

Saoirse (we got our first digital camera when she was 4 months old, and we haven't scanned any newborn pictures of her into our picture folders)

Jedidiah

Jonah

Aubrey

Bunnies in the Park Part 2

After a few trips down the slide the bunnies looked across the park and saw the swings.  Ooohhh!  Off they hopped for some more fun.  Since they are small they were all able to fit on one swing.

Are you ready for some swinging fun?

Weeeeeee, look at the ears flapping in the breeze.  The closest they will get to flying.  They really enjoyed themselves.

While swinging they happened to see a squirrel skitter up a tree. They wanted to give tree climbing a try.  I tried to explain that that would be a wee bit difficult. With no arms, legs....you know, a bit difficult.  But non the less they wanted to give it a try.  They were quite ingenious by climbing up on top of each other to get higher up the tree.  But that's as far as they got.  Hey, at least they gave it a good try :-)

It's hard to tell here, but these bunnies are on a hill.  And a good hill is good for rolling down!!  Oh, what a blast they had.  When they would get to the bottom they would be all dizzy.  Up and down, up and down.  I was getting tired just watching them.  Unfortunately they 'collided' with another park patron.  A young boy, not looking where he was going....

Yikes!!  Bunnies watch out!!!  Oh, no, are you guys ok?

Thankfully they were fine.  The young boy apologized profusely.  Here he is giving one of the bunnies a hug.  Ummm, little boy, I think you have the bunny upside down.  Poor little bunny, if it's not one thing it's another.  By this time it was time to go home.  The bunnies fell asleep on the way home as they were so worn out from their adventurous day.

Pictures that were "stuck" on my camera

Now that we have a card reader I can upload my pictures, as evidenced by my clean closet :-)  I thought I would post a whole bunch of them.  Some are from hanging out back, some from the soccer tournament, and some other random ones.  I pushed the publish button before I was ready to.  I'll be back later to put some captions to the pictutres.

Jonah and a beloved chicken.  This boy seriously loves chickens!  He gets very upset if he can't catch one to carry it around with him.

I think he was actually talking to the chicken.  She does look attentive, as much as a chicken could.

Don't they look like they were made for each other :-)  ha, ha!  That chicken was just content to hang out with him.

Now the chicken realized that she has other plans.  I am sure this chicken has a name, but the girls aren't around for me to ask.

This is an old picture.  This was Moira's splint.  As a matter of fact this was the following day of her break.  She has since gotten a red cast and now is currently sporting a pink, water-proof cast.

Daddy and Jonah hanging out at the soccer fields.  This was the first day of the tournament, and it was cold!  The next day it was hot!

When I saw this picture I called Flannery over to ask her what she was doing? She doesn't know.  I asked her if she wanted to keep playing soccer as every picture we have of her playing she looks so very serious.  She looked at me like I had ten heads and exclaimed, "Of course I do!!  I love soccer!!"  Um, ok, if you say so, it just doesn't look like you do :-)

Sorry that a lot of these are blurry.  It's hard to tell when they are in their thumbnail state if they are clear or not.  Here's Isabella playing, or warming up.  Jeremiah took most of the action shots, so I'm not sure what she's up to at the time.

Check out Isabella's hair.  A bunch of her team mates sprayed their hair orange to match their jerseys.  Very silly.

What do the other kiddos do while their siblings are playing a soccer game?  Well they find an empty field, there is usually at least one, and they run around on it.  Maybe kick a ball around, or play some other game.

Close up of Jonah and a soccer ball.  Yes, very exciting, I know.

More hanging out.

Hmmmm, Jonah dear, the ball goes in the net, not your foot.  He needed a bit of help to get out of this situation.

Aubrey was either hanging out in the Ergo baby carrier or hanging out under some shade.  Those fold out chairs have come a long way!  This was a life saver.  Although, thankfully, it wasn't anywhere near as hot as last years tournament.

Some backyard time.  These are the new chicks we got a while back.  Look how big they are now!  No sweet balls of fluff anymore.

Dentistry at it's finest.  At some point, and I don't know HOW, so don't ask...but at some point the girls found out that the chickens are very, very interested in teeth and will peck at them.  So here is Moira trying to demonstrate this for me.  I told her I didn't want to see....being germphobic and all.

Although the saying isn't true, I do know why it came about:  Goats will eat anything.  Contrary to popular belief goats will not eat anything and everything.  They are however very much stuck in a baby like state, in that they check out everything by mouthing it.  Much like Aubrey these days!  When I go to hang up laundry they will be there to nibble on the clothing pins, clothes, the laundry basket, you name it.  Here one of the babies was checking out Moira's hair.  Again, this is an older picture, because this baby goat is off living on another farm.

Yes, more blurriness, but I really loved the movement of this picture.  It just yelled, "BOYS" to me.  Go, go, go!

This is usually how you will see Jonah or Jed dressed up these days.  They are really into capes and they have me fasion them out of a dish towel and a hair tie.

Just trying some different angles on some ordinary items.  Diapers.

Our beloved 'egg pail', you know the one that is supposed to be in the back laundry room.  Yes, we were successful for a while to keep the buckets where they belonged, but I see some training sessions of sorts needing to be implimented in our girls' future.  But at this time the pail was where it was supposed to be, while outside.  The goats and chickens, will go after the eggs (yes chickens are carnavores) so we put a hook high up on one of the fence posts to put the egg and scrap pails while the girls finished up any outside chores that needed to be done.

A play pail hanging out on my laundry post.  Not sure what it was doing there.  Stranger things have been found before, and after a while you stop asking :-)

Playing with my timer.

This was too funny.  Flannery asked to hold 'Squishy'.  Jeremiah and I were in the room with her just chatting.  Flannery has the inability to remain still.  So I took notice when the chair wasn't moving, and found this!!  Both of them fast asleep!!  How cute.

It's nice to know we have such brave men in the house for protection :-)  Ya gotta love the footwear. (They are the lining of winter boots.)

No one will be able to stand up to this powerful force.

Nor this one, that is if you don't die of cuteness overload first.

An organized closet

We started our purging process in the kids bedrooms, and have slowly made our way out to the main rooms.  We didn't get much done last week due to the girls testing.  I started back up yesterday.  I wish the rest of my house looked this organized!  Ha, ha.  We had done our monthly shopping just days before and the girls put everything away. Unfortunately they hadn't put things where I normally keep them.  So I took everything out of the closet, put everything where it needed to go and labeled the shelves.  It looks soooooo tidy.  And sooooo organized (which is not like me at all).  I had to take a picture to share.  Now, hopefully the girls will take the time to read the labels before putting anything back.

Lots to write about!

Yes, I've been missing in action :-)  Busy, busy.  I have to tell you all about meeting up with some good friends, the pool, our goat drama and how my juicing feast went.  But I'm not sure where to start.  I also need to put up another bunny adventure.  I think I will save the meeting up with friends until I have a chance to upload the pictures from my camera.  And the bunnies need a post of their own.  Let's start with the pool!  My sister is going to be soooo bummed she missed this!

At some point Jeremiah told Isabella that he would take everyone to this one pool.  That time came this past weekend.  We tried going to a much more local pool, but it was closed for repairs.  So we went to one that was half indoor and half outdoor.  Isabella spent all her time at the diving board.  The boys and I spent all our time in the very *large* kiddie pool (the depth ranged from 10" to 18", perfect!).  And the other girls and Jeremiah spent their time in the 'indoor' pool which was much deeper than the kiddie pool.  He spent a lot of that time teaching them to swim.  At some point he came over to the kiddie pool.  He was concerned about all the honey bees buzzing around.  They seemed to be interested in the water that was on the concrete....at my feet.  I voted for not killing them as honey bees are seemingly headed for the endangered species list.  But he didn't want anyone stung.  He managed to kill one.  But that left a whole lot more left :-)  There wasn't a ton, but quite a few.  The kids didn't even seem to notice them, which was fine by me, no one freaking out.  So a while later Jonah got out of the pool and started walking towards me.  He bent down and picked some treasure up.  He then came running to me, all smiles, and yelling, "wook, mommy, wook eet!!!"  Translation:  "Look, mommy, look it!!!"  Then he holds up his treasure to my face.  I notice this treasure was moving!  He had grabbed a hold of a honey bee, and it's back end was facing me!  Yikes.  "Jonah, drop it!  It's a bee!"  He flings it off, and that thing was mad!!!  It was loudly buzzing and swirling all around, it finally gained it's senses and flew off.  Phew, for a moment there I thought it might sting him.  Jonah was a bit freaked out after that.  Ha, ha.  I was very surprised he hadn't been stung by the way he was holding it.  Either way it all ended well.

My juice feasting has ended.  It did help, ever so very slowly.  But by day six, although the pain in my ear was gone, there was still swelling, as my ear was still all stuffed up.  Not to mention the day before my cough went from bad to worse.  Not a good sign.  I was growing very weary of it all.  We were meeting friends at the park that morning at 11AM.  The herbal store opened at 10AM.  So I made sure to be there right when it opened.  I had gone there earlier in the week to see if they even had anything that could help. Someone showed me a product for allergies.  So I ran in to grab said product.  But before I purchased it I decided to ask the woman there if she thought this would be the right product (I'm all for second opinions) and described my symptoms.  Right away she said, this sounds more like a yeast problem.  She believes that most allergies are yeast problems, not hay fever, or seasonal allergies or the like.  I agree, which is why we need to do GAPS.  So she shows me this yeast detox, it was only a three day supply.  She told me I should notice a difference in 24 hours.  I bought the yeast detox and the allergy stuff (just in case).  I took the pills as soon as I got in the van.  Forty-five minutes later I had to yawn, which made my ears pop.  Nothing new as that had been happening all week.  But all week, when my ears popped they would close back up in 30 seconds (no joke).  So I was trying to enjoy my 30 seconds of opened ears.  Well 30 seconds turned to one minute, that turned to 3 minutes, to 30 minutes, to 3 hours....to 3 days now!!!  I also felt this pressure lifting off my sinuses and chest.  My cough significantly improved, all within those first couple of hours!!!  Amazing.  The cough still has not gone away all together.  She said if I had a bad problem I might have to take another 3 day course.  All I can say is I am very thankful for the reprieve of all the yuck I had going on.  I have an appointment with our holistic practitioner in mid June.  I am hoping to start to get a handle on these allergies.  And we should be set up to go back on GAPS come July.  I think I will have everyone do the intro diet, along with everyone taking the yeast pills, plus I am looking into a parasite cleanse.  It would be nice to get everyone 'cleaned' out.  With a healing diet and lots of probiotics I am hoping to see some big changes in everyone.

Speaking of parasites it looks like they are doing a number on some of our goats.  With all dis-ease you need to look at the root cause and any contributing factors.  This weekend we learned a lot!  We have one dwarf goat that has just never seemed healthy.  Her coat is always wiry.  And she has been lethargic a few times.  Plus under her eyelids are very pale ( a sign of anemia from worms).  Goats are notorious for worms.  And a lot of the worms are becoming resistant to the current dewormers.  I had the goats on an herbal dewormer, but fell behind in it.  (Bad me!)  Now both of our milking does has mastitis.  Not a good thing.  Thankfully we have caught it at the beginning.  We did chose to give them antibiotics.  Which means I will need to blast them with good bacteria.  There is a natural remedy we saw on our beloved goat site, but we decided to go conventional this time around.  Not to mention one of the milking goats is losing hair in two spots.  They are small spots.  But knowing that Isabella had ringworm, it is possible she got it from the goat.  Obviously our goats are not well.  Well we know of one contributing factor for that, and this weekend found a second contributing factor.  The first is barn maintenance.  Unfortunately even with putting the time into figuring out a decent plan for our barn, you can't possibly know all that will happen once it's built.  Well, drainage is a big problem.  We moved a huge felled tree that was seemingly blocking some of the drainage, but that didn't fix the problem.  We will now have to shovel off a ton of glop and put down cement to keep the area dry.  We will be putting up the feed bins so that the goats are not eating off the ground.  Jeremiah visited a new feed store in which the owner was well versed in goats.  He said if the goats eat off the ground just once, they have worms.  Yeah....well our goats have worms :-O  Ha!  Jeremiah was there to buy a huge round bale of hay.  One issue is our goats haven't had the proper roughage that they need.  This will help.  He also talked to the guy about the feed we were giving our goats.  He basically said we were killing them slowly!!!  Yeah, well that explains why they all seem to not be doing well.  So the solution?

1. We bought them a bunch of hay, like 1,000 pounds of it, yes that says, one thousand!
2. We bought them the proper feed.
3. We have a plan (that needs working on I'm sure) to improve the barn yard
4. I just got done doing the three days of antibiotics for our two milkers and plan on giving the whole herd a medicated dewormer.  I made a large order from Molly's Herbals for the herbal dewormer, and immunity tincture, and an herbal supplemnt.  There are two herbal blends used for the dewormer.  One with wormword, and one without.  The protocol is to use the wormword blend for three days in week one, then weeks 2-7 to use a one day dose of the second herbal blend.  But knowing how sickly the goats are I plan on doing a protocol of week one, 5 days of the wormwood blend, weeks 2-4 a three day dose of the second blend.  Then repeat for the next two months.  Then I will switch to the normal protocol. 
5.  Start giving the goats a daily dose of good bacteria and the herbal supplement.
6.  Give all the goats the recommended dosage of the immunity tincture for the first 5 days of the next three months.
7.  Make a concerted effort to find my homeopathy cell salt blend.  I don't know where it is.  It may have fallen behind the fridge.  I know I had it when I was pregnant, but can't seem to locate it now.  But give that to them, in their water on a daily basis.

I also plan on doing this for our chickens as well.  They have not been laying as much as they should be.  Although, that might just be a case of them laying in places we haven't figured out, and that one goat in particular likes to eat them as well.  Even so, they can get worms as well, so it won't hurt to try to get them as healthy as possible.

Phew!  I think that is enough for now.  This next week or so will be spent trying to get the place in order.  I plan on spending an evening or two somewhere with WiFi to get more organized.  I want to really spend the summer concentrating on training the children in chores, cooking and good behavior.  Even though I want to have started yesterday :-)  I know I need to take this slowly.  But with no school, I feel lost!  Ha, ha!  Once I get everything written down I'll share here my plans.  If for no other reason than accountability AND so I don't lose any of it!