And the New Baby is A

BOY!!


We've named him Jesse which means 'Jehovah Exists!'


We got to see him yawn, his heart beat and watch him wiggle around and move his hands!!


The ultrasound tec was very helpful and talkative and told us what she was looking at the whole time which is really nice and helpful as it's so easy to get lost when she's moving her ultrasound wand around. Everything looks great and he is about 1lb 3 oz already! She did not change my due date which is nice and I believe the 1st time we've kept the same due date after an ultrasound. She also gave us a picture that she dubbed "Dad's proof" which is just that!! I still can hardly believe Papa was right again.. he tells me what we are having weeks into the pregnancy and he's RIGHT every time!! It's crazy!! Maybe next time I'll believe him :) This time I had no idea what it was so I'm just glad we did find out.

When the ultrasound was mostly done the tec sent me to the bathroom and while I was gone she asked Papa how old our kids were. She knew we had 4 already from our talking. So Papa told her that our oldest is 6, and so forth.. she stammered for a minute then said to him, "But you look so NORMAL!!" We both got a real kick out of that. There were two Mennonite ladies, one who had baby pictures and one who was waiting for her ultrasound when we left.. so we think that's what she meant.. that we weren't Mennonites. :)


E has really thought this was a girl and even prayed at night.. 'Thank you for the new baby sister.' Surprisingly she was not upset that the baby was a boy. Just very matter of fact about the whole thing. And only last night she prayed "Thank you for Jesse!" I just asked her what was the baby's name and she said 'Jesse' so I asked her if it was a boy or a girl and she said "GIRL." So maybe she has not come as far as I thought! All the kids like the name which is good. L was quite serious that we should name it George if it was a boy :) Papa told him flat out one night that WE ARE NOT NAMING A BABY GEORGE!! Maybe a dog or something. L just laughed and said something about him naming his boy George!! EEK!


After the ultrasound we did some stuff in the 'city'. We walked thru our local second hand store and found a VHS of Beauty and the Beast for Grandma F's house for $4 and a really neat wooden picture frame with 2 large ovals on the top and 12 little hearts on the bottom for $5!! I've always wanted one like that! We got our backs put in (1st time in 12 years I'd been that Chiropractor and 4 years since I'd been at all! ) as I'd thrown mine out horrible the week before and Papa's shoulder is still bothering him. We always like to walk after an appointment so we headed out for a walk and an hour later and a quick stop for coffee and a square we made it back to the car and went to the local bulk grocery store and got several boxes of bulk stuff for our 'short' time when Papa will be going to school. We got a boxes of apples, oranges, potatoes, 2 kinds of pasta, (12, 900mg bags in each) a 1 gallon bucket of minced garlic, (nasty smelling up my whole house!) and a flat of large tomato sauce tins, (as we just ran out of our homemade stuff) and a few other things. At the grocery store we also saw a friend and got to show off the pictures of Jesse :)

By then it was 5 o'clock and we took ourselves out to our favorite restaurant and had a wonderful supper and named our newest little Griggs. Strangely enough this is the 1st time we have gone in with 2 names (1 of each) and come out with another name.. not on the list. It's taken me a little getting used too! I had stuffed mushrooms and Papa had mussels for our appys and Papa had lobster and I had a seafood platter as our meals!! We both had Cesar salad and a twice baked potato with our meals and shared a slice of ice cream pie for dessert!! Yummo!! All in all it was a wonderful day and it reminded me a bit of our 10 year trip. Walking, shopping and eating without the kids. They would have loved it but it wouldn't have been the same besides we did have one with us.. and he was very good the whole time!! :)

Cool Toys!!

The boys got these remote control cars for Christmas. They go on the walls and floors and ceilings (but not ours because they are too bumpy) They had a great time driving them around. In the top pic L is driving and the car is under the chair J is on. In the bottom pic J is driving and the car is on the wall!!

R's Smiles!!

Lovely isn't she?? R will be 2 in March and has always had a BEAM for a smile.

Yes she is on the toilet. She was SO impressed with herself I just had to take a picture!! She is such a little doll!!

Chalk Pictures

The boys love to draw on the chalk board. The top one is L's and the bottom is J's.

Breaking the house.

We have a sort of odd tradition around Christmas time. On Christmas Eve we make a Gingerbread house together. Normally from a kit. This year we had a house and a tree. Then on New Years Eve we SMASH the house!! It's tons of fun and whatever is left over goes in a bowl and stays out for a week then gets thrown away. I'm sorry the pictures are late and backwards!! If you want to see them in order start at the bottom. Papa, J, L, E and Brianna (in the bright pink) admiring their smashing success!

E taking a whack at it.

L smashing it with his fist!

J trying to imitate Papa last year and smash it with one blow of his open hand.. didn't work. That icing is serious glue!!

Papa's Eye

This was taken a few days after the air canister exploded in his face in November. When I took the picture he couldn't open his eye at all and it's really not a great picture. If you look close you can see that his eye is all gummed up and there is a red area around his eye and down his face a bit. The first day that was all dark brown with embedded sand!! It took several days of showers for it to completely go away. The whites of his eye were full of blood and you could easily see sand embedded in it. He was in a lot of pain until it cleared out. Tears are amazing. Every morning there would be trails of crud down his nose.. were the tears had cleaned the sand out of his eye while he slept. During the day he was constantly wiping crud off. God made our bodies absolutely magnificently!! It was amazing to see his eye heal itself!! He was back to work the next day and his vision was perfect in less then a week!
The band aid on his thumb was a cut from pig butchering when he cut the outside of his knuckle almost to the bone!! Nasty!! It took a while to heal but it finally did.

Bunkbeds in the Kids room.

The darker set we've had for almost a full year and the boys were sleeping in them. Now the boys sleep on tops and girls on bottoms. R is on the pink sheet and that's her bed. It works great as she can't fall out!! The boys are on their Christmas Slide from G&B and can climb from the top of the slide to the top bunk! E is watching them from the middle of the room.

Brutus.

Well Brutus the Bull as he's been dubbed by Papa has a real soft spot... for our sweet mix. The night we got him Papa went out to milk and Brutus almost ate out of Papa's hand. Bindy of course did and she still visits the spot where Papa dumped the sweet mix that day!! Here in this 1st picture he's out of the pen on his 1st day here. Maggie and Bindy are SHOCKED!!

Here he is still out. See the wire across his chest? That's the fence and he's on the WRONG SIDE!

He has turned out to be VERY well fence trained and hasn't even thought about repeating his 1st days performance.

Another BULL story...

Well we did it again. Changed out minds again.. and hopefully it won't come back to bite us later this fall. We wanted to breed our Holstein cow Maggie to a Guernsey by AI-ing her. Which is a great way (we've been told) to get the breed you want and not have to deal with a dairy bull (which are reported to have more temper then beef bulls.) Well we can't say we didn't try because we did try for over a month to just get a hold of and talk to a AI-er and we never actually connected.

Then Papa, who has been mulling this over, came up with a great idea. Maybe. His thought was instead of breeding Maggie to a Guernsey just breed her beef (better calf for eating) and buy a Guernsey heifer calf. Raise it up ourselves and ta da! No messing with AI-ing (which has proved very frustrating and possibly quite pricey.) and praying for a heifer and having to do something with the bull calf if we didn't get our heifer. That and the fact that we spent the month we wanted to breed her trying to find out information and if she's not bred soon we'll have a winter calf and we DID NOT want a winter calf. As it is it will be Oct, Nov before she calves which is already a bit late. At this point it's better late then never.

All that to tell you we have yet another animal, thankfully borrowed not bought on our small 5 acres.

So Monday I took a good look at my calender and counted out days and heats and told Papa. "Better get him soon or we'll miss it again!" So Papa took J and L with him Tuesday and went to talk to our wonderful neighbor Jim about his bull. Jim is done with the bull and doesn't mind sharing so today (Wednesday) at lunch time Chip starts to bark and sure enough there is Jim backing his horse trailer down our driveway. Well Papa was going to come on his lunch break and help Jim with the bull but Jim was early so I called Papa and told him then went out to help Jim. After a 'where am I going chat?' Jim backed his trailer right to where it needed to go and his mirrors were only once in jeopardy!

As he backed the trailer in I was 'helping' and the bull put his nose out one of the tiny windows of the trailer and BLEW!! I was instantly intimidated. I'm NOT a bull person.. I'm barely a milk cow person. I much prefer animals that are smaller and less intimating.Really that's me in a nut shell. So a 2000 lb Bull is really pushing limits for me.

When the trailer was in place and the electric fence down and Bindy and Maggie were standing there ready to greet their new pen mate Jim handed me a whip (the 1st I have EVER seen him use.) and told me to send Chip away. EEK. Because the bull might chase the dog and you don't want that! As Chip loves to sit by my feet whenever I stop I sent him away promptly. He was very hurt and went about 20 feet off and felt sorry for himself. I sternly told my self it was better him then ME! Jim told me 'the bull should go into the pen but just in case' EEK EEK!!
Jim opened the outside door and then went inside to open the front compartment where the bull was. "Here he comes!" was a warning to me just before 2000lbs of Red Angus BULL came stumbling out of the trailer. Thankfully he never even LOOKED at me!! He got caught on the electric wire as he crossed it, shook it off like a pro and went to sniff the 'girls.'

I had the electric fence up before you could say 'red Angus bull' and got Jim's attention to tell him I was going to go turn it on. He thought this was a great idea and off I went. By the time I had the fence on Jim had pulled out and couldn't even stop for a coffee as his cows were still in the corral and he wanted to let them out. So I took one more look at this new animal and noting he was still in went inside to call Papa and tell him he could stay at work and have a nice quiet lunch. Well Jim pulled out of sight about the same time Papa got to the phone and so it was only me who saw a funny little thing that spelt TROUBLE clear as anything.

I was telling Papa how 'very smooth it all went' when, out of the corner of my eye I see something unexpected. Honestly if I was new at this whole farming thing or if I'd looked away 1 second earlier or if I'd never seen a electric fence do that before I probably would not even have thought about it again. But as SOON as I saw it I knew. Just a little jump in the wire.. like it came alive for 1 second just to jump, then stayed still, in it's insulator, still tight, just a little jump. I took one LONG look out the window and changed my tone!!

I'm ashamed to say I BEGGED!! "PLEASE COME HOME RIGHT NOW!" I don't think I shouted but I know my voice had a hitch or two in it. For those of you who don't know what it means when a wire jumps like that. THE BULL WAS OUT!! Bindy and Maggie seemed as shocked as I was. He just sort of walked over or under or something and was OUT. He didn't even break the wire! Pretty talented really. And before you think, as I must admit I did, what were we doing putting a 2000lb bull into electric fence if he was NOT trained to it. We weren't. Jim's cows are all electric fence trained, very well trained and so is this bull. He just simply didn't see it and being used to having 1/4 sections to run on he didn't even consider that he might have had less then an acre here. Just a moment to explain to you the SIZE of this sucker. Maggie's back is about as high as my nose. I'm 5,5 (they measured me at my last Doc. visit) So lets say she's about 5 feet tall, give or take. This bull is taller then Maggie, not by much ( he is a red Angus), but taller and instead of being skinny and bony like Holsteins are he is PURE MUSCLE!! Maggie's skinny little self weighs about 800lbs. This guy has muscles on muscles and has to close to my estimate of 2000lbs. Literal weight.(Papa always disagrees with me on weights so I'm not going to ask him. 1500 just seems TOO SMALL) This does NOT fit into my nut shell. My nut shell pretty much stops dead at 1000lbs.

Papa calmly tells me he'll come when he can but he has to finish something first. Oh and "make sure he stays off the driveway!" Right. Now if you take our 5 acres of place and measure acres from the road to the back the bull is about on acre #2. Back is good.. Back is FENCED. Front is HORRIBLE... Front is OPEN! When I hung up a minute later I really wasn't at all sure what I'd do if the bull went to the front. Maybe panic and try and chase it with the travelall... if I could get the beast of a truck to start??? Thankfully he was a good little bull (or a better big bull. He was out after all.) and went BACK. Unfortunately he got bored rather fast and went visiting. Thankfully the neighbors both work and unless they go to the back of their piece they'll never know they had a bull time visitor. He took his time wandering here and there and so did Papa. I did have to brave the outdoors and the bull several time to see where he'd gone too and to turn off the fencer. I didn't realize until later that the wire had not broken and he couldn't have gotten back in anyway. That was my big hope.. that he'd just walk back in!

Almost an hour later the bull finally stopped at the hay bale and started munching on the outside. It was lunch time for the children by then so I set J up as a 'watch the bull' helper and went and made then a snack lunch they could eat while watching a movie. Just in case I had to go do 'something' with the bull. I still don't know what I would have done.. gotten a big stick maybe?

The movie was just starting when Papa finally drove up. He'd been working on something simple and as so often happens it turned out to be less then simple and the driver was in a hurry and blah. He came inside for a bull update and then ordered me to make some strips of tin foil and went out and took the wire off the posts on almost a 1/4 of the fence and tried to herd the bull in. Well the bull didn't herd well and Papa came back and grabbed a rake (We both wished for Jim's whip) and finally got him in. Then Papa quickly put the fence back up and the strips of tin foil on the wire 'to remind him where the fence is' and turned the fence on. That's when we found his weakness. The bulls I mean :) I was watching out the window and I think if that bull had turned any faster without moving along with it he'd have fallen right over. He was inspecting this new fence from a distance when it happened and his inspection was suddenly over!

Papa had grabbed a bucket of our 'sweet mix' we feed the cow (it's not grain) and rattled the bucket. The bull is a bucket baby!! Papa poured the treat over a nice clean patch of snow and the 3 of them licked it up like kids do ice cream. Bindy of course made a real pig of herself and spent 3 times the time the other two did.. getting ever last bit of molasses off the snow.
When I checked the bull an hour ago he was laying nicely in front of the hay bale with Maggie. Thankfully, other then a quick sniff, he has not paid the slightest attention to Bindy. Which is just as it should be and renews our hope for a calf this spring. Maggie on the other hand has to breath out when he breaths in so that she can breath at all (slight exaggeration but not far off.). Perfect!!

Papa says he's a nice enough bull in that you can work with him and be in his pen and he doesn't loose it. But I put my foot down and informed him that neither I or the boys will be feeding the pigs or chickens or getting the eggs until the bull is GONE. We have to walk into his/their pen to do these chores and it will not be happening. He laughed and called me a chicken but I'm sticking too it. I'd rather be a chicken then have a run in with a bull.. any bull. I think I made my point as Papa fed the pigs today :)

Cluck clucking and proud of it!! :)

Papa's Schooling.

Well it's official. Papa will be starting his 1st year of school for his apprenticeship starting March 29th. First year runs for 6 weeks. He'll be taking the car (good on gas) to 'the city' every morning and coming home every afternoon 5 days a week. It's about a 50 minute drive to the college. He has book work type stuff in the mornings and actual mechanical stuff in the afternoon. One of his bosses thinks he will be bored out of his mind the entire schooling time. Not just this this 6 weeks but ALL 4 six week programs he has to do to finish his apprenticeship. Papa's 2nd 6 weeks (for his 2nd year) of school is right after the 1st years. So it will be 12 weeks total that he'll be in school and we will be without a paycheck. Eek!! So far his schooling has cost us about $550.00 and we are expecting to cost us about $1,500.00 total with with books and everything. Fuel is extra! Thankfully he will be able to receive UI for 10 of the 12 weeks and we have been saving up for spring things like chicks and feed and other costs. Our fuel bill will go UP but it hopefully will not be too bad as city prices are often MUCH better then our small town prices. Papa's bosses have also told him that if he gets more then a certain % they will pay for all his schooling costs which is wonderful!! His last day of school is the 18th of June and our new baby is due on the 22nd of June :) Thankfully the last 3 babies have been 10 days late so if this one follows suit he/she should be born the 2nd of July. Or around there. Who knows with babies :) One really nice thing about his schooling (besides the fact that he will be half done!!) is that he'll have Saturdays off and should be home by 6ish every night. That will work perfectly for our spring farming and clearing up the rest of the trees that we've fallen and will fall again this spring as we can work 30 to 60 minutes, or more, each evening and get a LOT done. By then it will be light enough too!!

Longer Days and Shorter Nights :)

The days are getting noticeably longer now. We now have light until after 5 pm. In the heart of winter it would get dark before 4pm and light around 6:30ish am. Now we have light til almost 5:20pm. I'm not sure what time it gets light in the mornings as I'm well tucked into my nice warm bed and really don't care too much. I do know it is still dark at 4;30am as I was up then last night and it was dark. I've already taken advantage of the extra light to send the boys outside more and more as we have some nice weather. They have been playing 'pirates' on a lump of snow which covers some old boards that serves as their 'boat.' They have TONS of adventures sailing here and there and looking for treasure. As they get older they can spend more time out of doors then they could before as they can come inside when they are cold and 'warm up' and I don't have to worry about them so much. They also bring firewood to the porch and soon I will have them running up and down the driveway again running off some of that energy that little boys seem to never run out of. For myself the longer days mean more time to remember that we have a farm and to get my brain ready for spring and the total lack of ice, snow and cold weather. One thing about living this far north that unless you go to a gym there really isn't any way to get exercise with out equipment during the winter.. the days are too short or too cold, or it's much too icy. So we end up living inside during the winter and outside in the summer. We don't get green grass here until the end of May and often it's only days between snow and ice and green grass and mud. Days between sleds and bikes. By May it'll be dark around 10pm and light as early as 4:30am. Boy am I looking forward to that!! But this is nice too and I always have some inside projects to be done. I better get going and get some more finished as I've only got 3 months til May and spring work and baby piglets :)