S's First Scream Fest.. I Mean BATH!!!

I love the expressions on his face!! I'm not going to say much about these photo's the pictures and the title pretty much say it all. I will say that it was probably the fastest bath any of my children have EVER had. He hated almost the whole thing!! 

These two are amazing pictures.. J must have taken them very fast in the 25 seconds that he was not screaming. 

 This picture is much more realistic!! 

We had to have a pretty serious snuggle afterwards to calm down.

I'm hoping this is not an every bath occurrence.

Samuel Is Here :)

My wonderful Dr. Nicole, S and I,and Papa about 45 minutes after he was born. It was a quick labor and delivery and we were all relieved that it was over and that Dr. Nicole made it there on time. She RAN in and arrived soaking wet from the rain. Other then a couple of things; he had a LOT of water in there with him and soaked the entire room, he was born face up, and he was a bit limp at birth, but still pink and crying, and had to be assessed for a bit, everything went super well and fast. 

The proud Papa holding S for the first time!! 

The afternoon after he was born I woke up to find my whole family staring at me. They'd come in to my hospital room while I was asleep, S asleep on my chest. S slept through the whole visit and the kids loved on him the whole time. 

J walked into my room and said.. I'm the oldest I get to hold him first :) 

He was the least impressed about the new baby during the pregnancy, and even then not unhappy just sort of vague, so I was very pleased to hear him ohh and ahh over S right from the start. 

Tickled PINK!! That is the only way to describe the kids reaction to their new brother. 

E and S. 

G petting him. E is so proud of him!! 

R looking serious. He weighs almost a 3rd of what she does which made it a bit hard for her to hold him. J3 was waiting for his turn.

Kissing that little forehead! 

J3 loved him and was so pleased he got to hold him! 

G kissing him.

G loved him, kissing him and petting his head, until we tried to get her to hold him...
NOPE NO WAY!! I love how S looks so peaceful and G is the one that looks like shes going to cry..

normally it's the baby who is unhappy and the older kid looks pleased. 

The Griggs Family... numbering NINE!!! Thanks Crystal for taking the pictures!! 

My flowers from Papa and the girls flowers they picked for me. 

Samuel is named after my cousin Blair Owen, B&B on here :), and Papa's childhood friend Brett Quinn. He's a beautiful baby, peaceful, eats like a champ (I call him my little Barricoda!! for his latch!), sleeps solid and rarely makes a fuss. He has the Griggs baby nose and Papa's ears. His toes are short and stubby and his fingers long and slim. He was born with large bruise on the top of his head which is slowly going away. My labor with him was from 5:30pm to his arrival at 7:45pm. The fastest labor I've had yet. 45 minutes shorter then E's. He was 8 days over due and was born a day before his father did 36 years earlier. He shares a birth month with Papa but is the only Griggs kid born in June. Keeping up the tradition :) Each of our children, so far, have their own birth month! 

We are both doing fantastic! His bruise is going away nicely and I'm feeling almost 100%!! I'm still resting lots, and will continue to rest lots until Papa goes back to work next week, but physically I'm amazed at how fast I felt pretty much back to normal already. So much different then G's birth 19 months ago which took several months to recover from. I'm pretty sure that the 5 week herbal formula and the red raspberry leaf tea have been very beneficial to a fast birth and healing! If #8 is in Gods plans I will be taking both of them again :) 

Daisy's Kittens.

Cute aren't they?? There are 3 females, the little gray one in the back right is the male. 

They are living in this trough in the house for now where we can feed them and keep them safe from the dogs. Daisy is very skinny and we don't think she has enough milk for them as she keeps bring them to us. She is leaving them in the trough which is great. 

BIG PIGS!

Taking a break from the heat of the day. 

Just for reference... that pig laying on the right? She's probably around 250 lbs. 

That pig with her butt to us?? That's Little Girl.. she's OH about 500 lbs.

And that last pig? That's BIG Momma.. and she's oh about 600++ lbs... 

Big Momma and Little girl are our breeding stock.. purebred Berkshires. They'll be having piglets mid August along with a new breeder; known so far as 'the gilt' who is only half Berkshire. 

Rye In The Pig Pen.

Beautiful isn't it??

Remember this??   Yup that is the same pig pen :) Just taken from a bit different angle. 

It is amazing what a month can do :) 

This is the same general area but facing slightly to the left. It is not doing quite as well as it had pigs in it a bit longer then the first pen and it was their winter pen but it is coming along nicely. 

Ham & Bacon. A Continuing Piglet Story.

Well these two little guys got moved out of my house a couple of weeks ago now and are happily living in the chick barn. Ham is still bigger and dumber then Bacon :) He was downing 2 six oz bottles of milk 3 times a day instead of drinking out of the feed bucket like Bacon until we skipped a couple of feeds and he had to learn to fend for himself!! Bacon figure out that feed bucket super fast :) 

I just realized I should have had a kid in there for size comparison, but I didn't so you'll have to believe me when I tell you they are doing really well and getting quite a nice size for being 6 weeks old. Bacon is still very much the runt but he'll catch up eventually. I believe the plan is to give them a few more weeks in the barn and then move them out on to grass in electric netting. They are still very tame and love to suck on the kids clothes/shoes and anything else they can reach. 

House Update :) June 2013

It's been slower going then we'd hoped but we are slowly getting the walls ready for stucco. 

We've been working on getting the straw walls ready to stucco. Here is our bedroom wall at the back of the house. Almost ready to stucco!! 

Looking down the house. The walls on the right are ready to stucco. The wall on the left needs that board along the top insulated and lathed before stuccoing. I should have taken a picture of the front wall.. you can sort of see it here at the far end. It needs to be finished/sealed yet on the top but the rest of it is finished. 

Part of our new 'to us' cupboards for the house. There is a lot of them and I can't wait to be able to use them :) 

Papa weed whacking the outside of the house. Weed whacking gets the loose straw off the walls and helps the stucco to stick better. It also helps you to find holes that will need lathe to make the wall straight.. there is one such hole on the right side of the picture in the middle before the window.

The finished outside corner. Before you could see the pole inside the wall and now you can't :) 

Flowers of Love.

The kids have been bringing me flowers every day. It started with dried leftover seed heads from last fall and then went to dandelions and clover and now we are seeing quite a verity.  Here is a bunch of wild roses they brought in last week. I love this time of year with all the green and flowers!! 

Early Morning Visitors Part 2. Unwanted Visitors.

The unwanted visitors, there is something dead type, are a pair of ravens that attacked the chicks their first morning out on grass. Papa and I woke up to 10 dead chicks in the pen, chicks everywhere; under the porch, in the bushes, everywhere, and Tucker laying beside the trampoline watching the ravens eat the dead chicks. Yeah it turns out Tucker has to be loose to be 'on duty' for ravens anyway. He does fine with coyotes while tied or crated, but apparently must be loose to bark at ravens. He does chase them off, we've seen him, but not while tied... strange mutt. 

Papa and the kids and I spent 45 minutes rounding up chicks, found 4 more that had been squished in the panic, and got them all back in the pen and fed. Over the next few days we lost several, I think 4 or 5, more... probably from too much stress. It's a terrible way to wake up on a beautiful Sunday morning. 

We had to re-plan our day as we'd planned on going to church and out for lunch and then to a car show that afternoon. We'd already told the kids we were going to the car show so Papa packed up the kids and took them to see the old cars and I grabbed my book and went out to sit on the lawn.. and it was good that I did. Those brave ravens came back again and again and again!! I moved myself around the yard and that kept them from landing. 

We've had troubles with ravens before but not in several years. We found that if we tied a black garbage bag on to a movable fence post and moved it around in the pen when we did chores the ravens wouldn't land. We also move our chicks every day or every second day and the ravens really don't like change so they will not attack. 

We've never ever had raven troubles the first night the chicks are out until now.

So we made this guy known as Scare Steve. He's a scare crow but he looks like and is tall like our friend Steve and the kids named him :) Tucker DID NOT like him and barked for ages until Papa brought Tucker into the chick pen and 'introduced' them. 

So far, it's been 10 days now, we are keeping the ravens away with a couple of proactive activities. We are moving the scare Steve every couple of days, we are moving the feeders/waterers/ wheelbarrow in the pen every feeding or almost every feeding.. so two or three times a day! We are spending a LOT of time outside which they don't like and we are hunting them. Well Papa is :) We are still having raven scares every day. In fact the kids and I moved the chicks across the driveway today into a new pen and within an hour the ravens were checking them out. The scare Steve is not yet in the new pen but it will be tonight. The kids are outside doing P.E. and that should throw the ravens off until Papa can get the scare Steve and the feed trailer into the pen. I'm also seriously wondering if I should get a couple of Papa's old shirts and change scare Steve's shirt every day or two. Papa and I also sleep with our window cracked so we can hear the chicks in the middle of the night. 

 Papa figures the chicks would dress out about 3 lbs right now so it shouldn't be too long before they are too big for the ravens but until then we will be doing everything in our power to keep them safe. The ravens will not go after my laying hens so at least we know there is a size where the chicks should be safe. 

Early Morning Visitors. Part 1!

There are two kinds of early morning visitors when you live on a farm. The painful 'there is something dead' kind and the 'oh look aren't they beautiful kind.' This last week on the farm we've had both kinds of visitors.

These two beautiful does showed up as Papa was finishing up chores one morning. He came into our room and pointed them out to me :) The kids were all asleep so I took some quick shots. They stayed for almost 20 minutes until the dogs noticed them and Tucker chased them off. He vibrates when he gets that excited :) 

The unwanted kind of visitors will be coming in a post soon.. 

I was going post them together but the beauty of the deer shouldn't be sullied with the horror of the other.