Cow Update March 9/13

Just a quick note to tell you that Maggie is slowly bagging up and is looking like she will calve in the next month or so. Papa and I have tenitive plans to buy a dairy steer when her calf is born and raise the two together. Two is very little more work then one and the way we've been going through beef we are gonna need two! Besides that we will skip a year with beef if we do not and we are enjoying it too much to go without it unless absolutly nessasary.  

Isabel was checked recently and found to be open, in other words not bred. So we are once again watching for heats and hope to try AI-ing her again soon. This time to a brown Swiss bull! On the 13th of March she will have been milking for a full year. She started at about 8 gallons a day and is now down to about 5 gallons a day! That is really good! She is in good shape for a Holstein as well and seems to be able to blance her wieght loss and her milk production really well. Some cows give all their weight to their milk production or produce less milk and keep some wieght. Isabel seems able to do both. Other then Papa's sweet mix at milking time and a salt block she is just getting hay!  Maggie on the other hand looks bullish she is so fat!

      Maybe I will wander out there with my Ipad soon and take a picture of them for you. They are bonding and sometimes we see them licking each other for hours.

      I wonder if Isabel will make a pain of herself while Maggie's calving the way Maggie  did when Isabel calved a year ago? I hope we are around to see the birth! Maggie's last calf, Meatloaf (who is living with the neighbours herd at the moment and will be beef this fall) was born about 6 o'clock in the morning and I just caught the tail end, punny!, of the birth through the window. He was born in November 2 years ago now on the same day we butchered Billy the steer who was Bindy's second last calf. It was an interesting day that's for sure!

If you want to read some fun stories about cows click on the word cows or calves on the side panel and you'll get a bunch! Happy reading!

Forgetful Friday :) March 9th/13

My kids have been sick with a stomach bug the last several days. I have to say I'd rather have sick BIG kids then sick LITTLE kids.

Big kids throw up INTO the bucket!

Little kids throw up where ever they happen to be: bed, couch, you name it.

Big kids dump and rinse their puke bucket.

Littles play in their puke until you remove them from the mess and clean it up.

Big kids can tell you what they feel like eating, and often keep it down.

Little kids eat whatever and then puke.

Big kids will sit and watch a whole movie and remember that they are sick and should rest at the end of the movie.

Littles watch a movie, start playing, wear them selves totally out and do more harm then good to their healing bodies.

Bigs complain about how sick they are.

Littles mostly just look sick. Very little verbal whining. (Mine anyway)

Bigs understand why a little water at a time is good for you when your sick...as opposed to drinking a whole cup full and throwing it right back up.

Littles fall asleep anywhere when sick, I just took a sleeping G out of her high chair and transferred her to her bed, super cute!

So things to remember and things to forget today.

L is a sympathy puker, anyone pukes and L turns his head away and leaves the room. Just like me. Papa is the puke cleaner upper around here.

Once when E was much smaller and had the runs she pooped out of her pull up and made a mess on the living room rug. She and L had been playing together and he saw her mess and made an even bigger one of his own. Thank goodness for steam cleaners! The funniest thing about that story is that my uncle R was over with his son and he thought it was the funniest thing ever and went out side and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Camera blahs.

We got our camera back from the camera doctor last week. After a frustrating couple of days we finally called the company that should have called us several days before, according to our Internet tracking system and sure enough they'd had it for a couple of days already. Small town businesses sometimes leave a lot wanting! It didn't have a phone number on the package but really how hard is it to type a name into the yellow pages and wait the 2.2 seconds until our phone number comes up. We are the only Griggs in town! Papa made sure they got and wrote down our number in their contacts book so hopefully when the camera gets sent back again this time we'll get it when it arrives in town.

Yes it has to be sent back. The zoom works fantastic (why we sent it off in the first place) but now it refuses to admit there is a memory card in it or store photos at all. Not much use as a camera with actually storing a picture. I can take them but they just don't exist. Are we happy? NO! Did we call and talk to them, yes and they tried but can't do anything over the phone. So will we have a camera for a certain 4 year olds 5th birthday...NO! I'll use my iPad and my mom is bringing her camera so it won't be a total loss, but it just goes to show...all our planning ( the gap between J's birthday and R's birthday has the biggest gap in birthdays until after J3's birthday in July! ) and it still doesn't always work the way we have planned. Makes me wonder what God has in store for us to learn from this. I wonder if we'll ever know :) I just hope we get it back before L's birthday in April.

So I'm very sorry to have to tell you we will all just have to put up with the iPads picture quality until our camera is once again home to stay. Hopefully sooner rather then later...till then squint a little when you look at the pictures...lol...and have a fantastic day!

Quilts Update :)

Well this is what I've been up too lately!! Sewing all these strips into sets of 3. There are 33 sets of 3 which means 99 strips total! They are each different! Some have the same 3 fabric's but the order they are in is different. Now I iron these and then cut them into squares. I'm following this video...Here! and making each of my girls a blanket cover or quilt. I bought some wool blankets from my mom for E and R's quilts and bought some cotton in fill for G's. I was actually only going to make them for E and R as G still has lots of blankets but my wonderful sister R pointed out that I had enough fabric to make G one too.. so I'm going to. One will have a purple back, another a pink back and the 3rd back will be yellow :), all flannel backs. The diamonds will be a dark purple... and I have it washed, but need to iron and cut it up yet. 

Sorry the picture is so blurry. I'm still taking pictures with the ipad. The colors are a bit off too.. 

sigh! I went to take these pictures with our camera, freshly back from the camera doctors, only to find out the camera now refuses to admit there is a memory card in it.. and therefore will NOT save any pictures. Grrr... 

Anyway I will keep you updated on my progress :) I'm also working on a crocheted baby blanket for Baby S which keeps my hands busy while my feet are up :) 

Camera!

Yay! We finally received an email yesterday from Canon and our camera is on its way home! Can't wait to have a camera again! I've missed it more then I thought I would. It should be home just in time for a little girl's 5th birthday! I'm already making up a list of things to take pictures of.

G's wacky hair do's.
Tucker- looking really nice right now and loves to pose on snow piles etc.
J playing the keyboard.
Maggie in her largeness.

Oh and the list goes on! :)

Oh and yesterday I heard and then saw an eagle on the top of the neighbours spruce tree :)

Window Frames, Walls done!!! :)

 The two front windows!! Frames and walls are DONE!! This will be the kitchen/dining room. The kitchen window is the one Midnight the cat is inspecting. Yesterday the cat was quite a intense inspection agent. He sniffed the whole thing over, climbed all over it and tested several new napping spots. Today Papa will stuff insulation on the tops of the bales and around the window frames. He's also building a ramp for easier access to the house for us and the stucco supplies. 

This is what I did yesterday.. well on the house :).. it's metal lathe that will hold the shape of the corners and allow us to have the nice rounded corners straw bale houses are known for. It also allows us to stucco over the wood. Every stick of wood that will be stuccoed will have metal lathe on it. It's a LONG process. Sewing through bales with a bale needle and tying the ends of the lathe to each other through the bale.  This side is finished. 

This side is in process. I tie the strings to the outside of the lathe before I staple the lathe up to the pole and then 'sew' them through the bales to the inside and tie them off on this side of the lathe keeping it tight so the lathe retains the shape of the corner. 

Some ends will be a two person job. Like this one below. It takes two people working one on each side to get a hole like that filled and properly rounded. These doorways will eventually go from the bedrooms/bathroom/ to the hallway. 

By the time we are done with the lathe we'll be ready to stucco which makes working with this poky, sharp, rough lathe 100% worth it :) Every section of lathe makes stuccoing easier!! 

Funny Faces :) Drama Fun.

These two had to do a Drama activity where you only use your face to communicate  It was fun actually and they needed each pick a face and have their picture taken. L is going for angry and E is going for surprised. 

J's Puppet Show.

For Movement and Drama this term J had to do a puppet show, either Little Red Riding Hood or The 3 Little Pigs.. he choose The 3 Little Pigs and did a fantastic job with it. 

The first little pig and his house of straw.

The second little pig and his house of sticks.

The 3rd little pig and his house of brick.

The wolf talking to the first little pig. 

House one and two blown over, all the little pigs in the brick house and the wolf climbing up on the house to go down the chimney.  

Nutrition AKA FOOD FUN!!!

E and L's groupings of breakfast, lunch and supper using the Canada food guide 

They also had to fill in a chart with which foods they used and put them in the right heading... Grains, protein  etc. 

Rock Candy :)

Kids and I attempted to make rock candy again this year, grade two science, and it didn't really work.. it worked better then last year but not super well. At least this year we got crystals :)