The Griggs Cousins :)

Papa's folks came up for a few days this month and brought with them Papa's niece!! It was wonderful to see them!! I took almost no pictures and this is the best of the ones I did take. Sorry.. I really should have taken more!! Cousin M stayed one night with us and slept in the kids room with them! 6 kids to a room!! They were all so tired they didn't hardly move and slept like logs!! Papa enjoyed reading one of our new books to them before they went to bed. We went out for supper and ice cream, spent hours at the park riding bikes and running and playing. We fed the sheep and watched a movie, drew pictures,  we ate really well as Papa cooked all weekend :) All in all we had a BLAST!! Thanks for the great visit Grampa and Gramma Griggs and Cousin M!

Face to Face!!

Baby J loves animals and the outdoors. He loves to stand by the window and watch the cow or the pigs or chickens or the cat, whatever he can see.  He gets MAD if the other kids go outside without him and will come and get me and drag me to the door when they go out or he'll walk to the edge of the rug then to me, back and forth, until I get the hint!! Because we regularly have a cow in our front yard he mostly plays on the trampoline. It is TRULY AMAZING how FAR a little cow poop goes when a toddler gets into it!!  Papa snapped this picture the other day. Maggie wasn't too sure what this little thing was and Baby J REALLY wanted to pet her!! I think she licked him at one point but I don't think he actually touched her, but he really wanted to!! 

FINALLY!! The Last of the Piglets Have Arrived!!

I think I was just as impatient as she was!! This morning when I went out to check on her she had made a great big nest in the same place the other two sows had farrowed in and she did not get up when I went in the pen. Not normal for her but there were no piglets yet!! So I smiled to myself and went back a few hours later.. and there they were!! 7 cute little baby piglets with their ears all smashed back on to the tops of their heads!! 

She had actually birthed 8 but one was born dead. I have no idea why but they've all had a dead one this year. I know it is quite common for them to loose several in the litter, for example my brother recently told us his gilt had had 15 piglets and was raising 11. His other gilt had farrowed 13??, I think?, and was also raising 11. ** I guess I should clarify a little bit.. My brothers pigs are large white pigs and are bred to have larger litters then our Berkshires :) As a breed the Berkshires never have more then 12 and 8 is pretty average. We like it that way :) Actually I shouldn't say she only had 8, that's as many as she had when I last saw her. I think she was finished but what do I know! When Papa gets home we'll head out and have another look. Our pigs have gotten a bit more used to me hanging around lately but they truly LOVE Papa :) She did have a runt, a small orange one like the last one, but it's only 3/4 sized to the rest not half like the gilts runt. I think it will do quite well! You can see the runt in the pictures... it is the one on the far left. ** Update.. she did only have the 8, Papa and I had a good look just a few minutes ago and all is well. More pictures soon!! 

While I had the camera with me I snapped this one of the older piglets sun bathing by the waterer while several hens get a drink! 

Growing up!!

The 1st batch of piglets are a couple weeks old now and the second batch is a week old.  (The 3rd and final batch was born this morning.. but that is another story.) They are getting quite big and it always amazes me how very fast they grow. They are quite tame and very curious!! This morning I had one chewing on my shoe laces! Of course his mama had to see what they taste like too.. nothing like having a 300lb pig chew happily on your shoe laces!! They no longer hide away all day under the straw bales but often are seen running here and there at high speeds and play fighting. They lounge in the sunshine and root up stray eatables. The pester their mothers until she gives in and lays down for them to nurse or a few can even nurse while she's standing up!!

The little runt with a litter mate of the same color!! The 1st few days they looked PINK!! Or salmon colored!! AWWWW!!!!

Papa had just fed the mama pigs and the little piglets are just starting to get interested in 'real' food..so they all had to come running to see what it was! 

The biggest piglet is from the 1st batch.. 6 days older then the other two. The black and white one is a normal sized piglet and the orange one is the little runt who is surviving very nicely now at a week and 2 days old! These pictures where taken when the little two were about 6 days old. 

Piglets #2 :)

Two of our 3 sows have farrowed (given birth) in the last 10 days or so :) The 1st sow had 8 piglets but one was  born dead and then another one was just gone the next day, so she is raising 6. The little gilt had 6 and one has died so is raising 5.. but one of hers is TINY and we're not sure if it will live.This is the only picture of it the day I took all these pictures but I'll keep trying. She is half the size of the rest of the litter. 

It's really an unfair picture as there isn't another piglet there to see the comparison. 

This is a fun picture as the piglet in the front is 6 days younger the one behind. 

WILBUR!!! Ever time I see a little piglet running with his ears back I think of the movie Charlotte's Web and Wilbur.

Having fun chewing on each others ears.

YES!! I am CUTE!! 

There are a few that are orange, white and black :) My favorites!! 

And here is poor sow #3... still very heavy with her unborn piglets. She's made several nests large and small, and one day she'll be ready and farrow.. I think she's as impatient as I am. I've been checking her several times a day and she comes to greet me at the fence every time. When she doesn't come to the fence, I know I'll have to sneak in and see her brand new piglets :) 

Here is a little movie of the piglets play fighting. They are between less then 12 hours old!! 

Piglets :)

It's a bit blurry but you can see the colors.. I never did get a better picture of this batch in the 1st week. 

She made a little nest under some plastic and had them half under a large straw bale to keep them warm. 

Our first sow to farrow surprised us with orange, white and black piglets :) Super CUTE!! I believe she had 8, 1 was born dead and 1 died of unknown causes.. leaving her with 6. Great Job Mama Pig :)

Feeding The Lamb :)

The boys went out in the rain last night to feed Gala supper!! I had to take a picture they looked so cute in Papa and I's big jackets and hats :) They both had their sheep bottles tucked up into the sleeve of the jackets!! 

Project 'Get 'er Done'

Some days I think we're crazy for building a straw bale house.. other days I KNOW WE ARE!!! You might remember that last fall when we started the bale walls we had to finish up in rather a hurry as the weather turned rather nasty and cold and we NEEDED to heat the trailer with the wood stove in the entrance. So we slapped the last few bales into place and said we'd fix it later.. well Later arrived recently...  Here are some before pictures just so you can see the difference! 

This wall was the worst! The top 3 levels of bales are leaning VERY badly!! And above the front door they leaned so bad they FELL OUT twice this winter!! Thankfully Papa was home both times!! 

See at the top of the wall where the flakes are not level with the bales?? Oh and you can see, right behind the gray filling cabinet, is where the pole is..but I'll talk about that more later. 

I see this picture and I instantly think.. WHAT A MESS!!! The tools in the corner, that orange thing is the cream separator, paper garbage to burn etc etc. It looks a bit better now but not much.. most of this mess needs a home.. and until we get more house built it won't have a home.. just a spot to stay out of the way until it is needed again. Such is life :) 

The the board at the top of the wall?? That was one thing we had to cover with straw!! 

You can see that the bales are not all flush to the wall sand that there are holes here and there where the straw was not filled in all the way. It looks really rough  and shoddy. We took almost everything out of the room, opened the doors and windows and weed wacked the walls with a weed wacker. It made a LOT of dust and thankfully we had blocked the door and window to the trailer with blankets so the trailer did not get too dusty.  After the weed wacker did it's job Papa and I fixed the bales so they were flush, fixed holes, and tied up metal lathe to cover the two poles in the middle. We also covered the top board above the window side and pinned it up with screws and lathe. 

The weed wacker. While Papa was weed wacking I took the plastic off the outside and pulled all the staples out of the wood in the 1st step to getting the outside done. The kids took the plastic and pulled the staples out of it so we could reuse the plastic again. 

 Here is what it looks like now. 

You can see in this picture above the area where the pipes go into the wall where the pole is. We stuffed more straw in there so the wall will be even. The other side wall pole was MUCH worse and we ended up tying lathe onto the whole of the area to keep the straw in, to cover the pole, and make the wall smooth.

The windows are ready to plaster. There is a nice curve from the outside edge of the bale to the window sill. Papa did a great job of getting them all the same!

Ok it's a little hard to see the hard work we did to the walls after weed wacking... I guess I'd better take a few close up pictures. IF you look close you can see the stitching on the metal lathe that holds it to the bales. This is done with a bale needle that Papa made..

 

 The notches in the end hold the twine and then you push it through a bale and the twine goes through the bale :) Papa and I stitched the lathe on with one of us on the outside and the other on the inside. We felt a little like the mice in Cinderella. Papa was on the outside and he tied them off tight so that there wouldn't be any bulges and the lathe would stay in place.

At the end of the day we'd gotten the inside pretty much ready to plaster. We still need to ready the outside and week wack it before we can plaster anything as we will need to use the bale needle on the outside as well. The straw bale walls sit on a 4X4 board and the lathe has to cover this 4X4 as well.. we did not have a tool for cutting large pieces of lathe easily so we did not get that done on this day. Papa needs to cut the lathe into strips and then it is just a matter of stapling it to the 4x4's. Easy :) and can be done the day we plaster. After we got everything done Papa took the air hose to the bales and BLEW out the whole addition with it!! DUST FLEW!! Then he took the shop vac and vacuumed up what was left. He managed to get it quite clean.. a LOT cleaner then I thought he would which was a HUGE blessing to me. The trailer had a pretty good layer of dust as well but not nearly what the addition did. 

Oh and I wanted to mention that E, our little asthmatic, did not have a reaction to the dust!! YAY!! 

A Spectacular Anniversary!!

Many of you may know that Papa and I have been married for 12 years this fall. What many people do not know is that this August 12th Papa and I have known each other for 15 years. Which, this year,  works out to half of my life.

Papa and I in 1996!

 So this August 12 is a SPECTACULAR Anniversary for Papa and I!! On August 12th 1996 Papa officially asked me if he could court me :) He'd already talked to my father and gotten permission and I said YES!!! We had known each other for about 2 weeks :)  I found out later it was also Papa's fathers birthday so HAPPY BIRTHDAY PA!!!! :) I had big plans to write out the story of how we met, we get asked that a lot as we are from 2 different countries, but I simply do not have time right now.. though I still plan on doing it. We courted for 3 years and got married the fall after I graduated from high school :) Yup that made me 18 and Papa was 21!! 

Papa and I in 1999 at one of our receptions :) The reception was in Wa. State :) This is our favorite wedding picture!! 

We recently spent an hour in the park where we got married :) So we bowed to tradition and took pictures. The camera was on a timer and this really is the best one!! LOL. Baby J's head is hidden in most of them. We got married under this tree in the beautiful part half way between his folks house and my folks house!! 

Gala!!

She is cute isn't she?? At a month old we're still bottle feeding her. Chip likes her and she's doing really well with just hanging out on the yard when she's out of her pen. Though I have to admit I'm having a really hard time getting a 'good' picture of her as she NEVER HOLDS STILL!! Which doesn't bode well.. or maybe it does?

SUN!!! :)

We've finally got some sunshine the last week and a half or so. The farmers are all haying like crazy hoping to get as much of it done before the rain starts to fall again. I heard somewhere that we had 37 days of rain before this sunny patch so they have good reason to worry!!

Baby J made life easy for me as he did not like to walk on the cement!! Great way to keep him close to me and out of the crowd of older and rougher kids!! 

After my kids got used to the new park they really loved the 'umbrella' fountain that you can see in this picture. Even L had a great time.. normally my 'a don't want to get wet' sulker he was soaking and totally enjoyed it!! 

The sun sure is fun! We've been out in almost everyday, all day since it came out!! One day we went to the spray park and Papa met us there for a bit on his lunch hour! The city completely redid the spray park and I have to admit it's much more child friendly then the last one. Though it is considerably smaller. At first it doesn't look like much but the different water sprays are all on timers and the kids get a real kick out of which spray will come up next!!

Little Helpers!

Papa was home for a sort of 'free day' the other day so I got him to take our bedroom apart so I could clean it. We don't use a bed frame, instead we have 3 mattresses stacked up and I can't move them so he got too. The girls got a kick out of jumping on, airing out!, our feather bed and the boys got to bring it back inside after a couple of hours of sun shone on it. Ahhhh.. so nice to have a refreshed bed!! 

Baby J Fun Stuff!!

The older children love to play with Baby J and then take pictures or movies of him 'being cute.' So I thought I'd share some of them :)

Spaghetti anyone??

I'm SO cute!!! 

What do you mean I CAN'T sit on her??! She weighs 2 pounds MORE then him!! TWO!!! 

Dress up the baby is a fun game if you can get him to hold still long enough!!

Or maybe let the girls dress him up!! He's often walking around in a large cape and loving it!! 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE walking around beating two balloons together and yelling! The kids say 'he's drumming and singing Momma!! '

Reading a book. Well he was reading it until I took the picture!!