I found my goats!!

Ok this is just too cute. Really. How do you not just sit around and laugh.

Just how funny would it be if we had that reaction. I shudder to think of me this past weekend if we as humans did that.  

Things that make you go.... hmmmmm

So I spent some time today researching goats.  Ok that sentence in and of itself cracks me up... good grief.  I don't know if anyone out there knows anything about goats and if you do please know that I openly admit I don't know anything about goats.  Three Billy Goats Gruff is a story I remember from first grade, I have seen goats, while driving down the road but couldn't tell you the difference between a milking goat and a meat goat.  Goats are goats?  Right?  However I do plan on having goats this spring.  

I have been thinking a lot about livestock.  Here is my goal... enough goats to keep my milk guzzling kids content, chickens... lots of chickens.  You can't be a chicken herder with only a small flock.  I want lots of them.  We started talking about pigs and hogs.  If we ever got one for a pet I would name him Wilbur.  Charlotte's Web is the total extent of my farming experience.  Of course I would  name him Wilbur.  The ones that we raised for the sole purpose of making italian sausage out of ( italian sausage & bratwurst are my favorite foods hands down) those guys would have names like; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Bacon, Sausage, and Frank... as in Frankfurter.  

Zoe is at the vet overnight tonight.  We had to have her "fixed".  She was broken all week.  We are learning about "season" and "heat" it's been fun.  So much fun that we decided that we would teach our children the miracle of birth out at the farm and not in our living room.  So say a little prayer for Zoe tonight, we are missing her.  We also learned why she was having issues pooing outside.  Apparently her previous owner kept her in concrete kennels with her K9's.  She said that Zoe may have never actually been on grass before.  Wow, that would have been good information to know.  But it's going to be wierd tonight sleeping without her next to me and her head on my butt.  She is the ONLY dog we have ever allowed to sleep with us.  She is rotten and we have only had her a week.  I am not sure how her or Valley are going to be farm dogs.  Right now Valley is curled up next to her Daddy on the couch.  

So we are spending and exciting Monday night wrapping up 2008.  Ande is working on business books and shutting down the year, Alex is in TN at an Xtreme Youth conference, Adam & Julia are playing the Wii and me well... I am just thinking that in just a couple of days 2009 will be here and my whole life is going to look different.  My eye is still twitching from the stress of the weekend... I am really thinking I need to just call it a night.  But first I want to read about rabbits.

Lord, your sense of humor is overwhelming.  Of all the woman to pick for this new life... you just love me enough to stretch me again and again.  Thank you Father.  My heart is filled with love just for you.  Always here, always protected and going ahead.  Your faithfullness leaves me in awe.  Thank you for your healing touch.  Thank you for being my defender so that I don't have to defend myself any longer.  Bless you Father, Savior & Comforter.

Farm Renovations... Day One

The Farm circa 1983

So today is truly day 1 in Operation Farm Renovation.  Let me pre-empt this blog by letting you in on a few secrets.  #1 I am deathly afraid of rats & mice.  #2 I am also afraid of snakes...  like mortally afraid.  Like heart stopping afraid.  

So we head out to the farm today to clean out the remains of a few years of no one living in the house.  You must keep in mind that when my inlaws moved from the farm to town they just sort of left.  They left food in the fridge, the freezer and the deep freeze.  There are still clothes in the closets and dressers, magazines and books on the tables.  Pots on the stove, baking pans in the over and clean dishes in the sink.  

Notice the cute sunflower curtains.  The upper cabinents on the right in this picture are full of dishes. My wonderful mother in law has the best collection of dishes I have ever seen.  That is one thing that I will never lack for is dishes.

So I decide to tackle the master bedroom.  There are still clothes on the shelves and in the dressers.  My goal is to get out the clothes and to pack up what I believe my mother in law is going to want to keep or at least go through.  I have contractor bags - I am ready to go.  Found an old boom box and some really cool cassette tapes to listen to.  So as I am jamming out to the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack I go in.  I begin to pull sweaters from the shelves in the room and all of a sudden I realize there are holes in them and that there is fuzzy stuff everywhere.  

Being so brave and full of courage, I go out on the front porch to call in the reinforcements.  "JULIA!!!" So Julia comes in and hold the bag open for me as I dump the clothes in the bags.  She is reminding me to breathe.  Apparently I had not been doing that.  We get the shelves emptied and head to the dresser.  I am petrified that I am going to open a drawer and something is going to jump out at me.  Bear in mind I was a little girl in Florida and I have opened my  dresser drawer to have palmetto bugs fly at my head... I am panting with anxiety.  I am scared to death to open the drawer.  So I open it and nothing.  Can you just see me?  The sigh of relief.  I am thinking the worst of it is over.

Moving to the next dresser I can't get the drawer open.  I happen to hear my father in law in the house and ask him if he can open the drawer for me.  He is heartbroken to be going through all of this stuff.  I feel so dadgum guilty about going through their drawers and their things.  He comes in and shows Julia the mother load drawer of her grandmothers jewelry.  Then opens the drawer.  I am so glad that I couldn't open the drawer.  We didn't find anything alive... but there had been an entire village of them at one point.  I should have taken pictures but I was too busy hyperventilating on the front porch. 

Ande has now joined in on the fun and is having the time of his life.  Leaving Grandpa and Julia in the bedroom I ask Ande to grab the cast iron tea kettle from the heater closet.  I had wanted to grab it earlier but I could see that fuzz stuff next to it and I just can't tell you how petrified I am.  So he courageously reaches in and grabs the tea kettle and pulls it out for me.  Opens the lid, closes the lid and we proceed to talk about something else.  About that time Adam, my middle child, the curious one... again opens the lid to the tea kettle, "Eww, dead rats.  I think they are decayed."  I scream and run out the front door off the porch and into the front yard.  I am bent over trying not to throw up on my shoes.  Ande meanwhile is laughing.  

By this time I am not wanting to reach out and touch anything.  Being quick on my feet and so witty I say, "Lunchtime!".  Nothing like food to change the atmosphere and give me a chance to get out of the house for a while.  After lunch I took my time walking Zoe around the property and spent some time taking pictures of Ande and his Dad working on the water reservoir.  If you are interested in seeing more pictures check here.

After a while Ande convinced me that we needed to get back into the house and try to make some headway.  We started on the back porch room and were able to make some progress back there together.  Grandpa came in and was looking through stuff.  He never really "got rid" of anything but he was really good at point out stuff and knowing where the good stuff is.  Like the brand new stock pot still in plastic, and the large crock that says Grantham on it that their neighbor's son in Florida made for them 25 years ago.  There are cookbooks, oh and canned pork sausage from when Pa Tabor was alive... Ande and I have been married for 15 years... Pa had gone on before I ever came on the scene.  There is bear in the deep freeze but we haven't gotten to the point that we can get to it yet.  Grandpa says it's been in there for about 10 years.  

Ande found some of his scout memoriabilia and the boys had a blast checking that out.  We also found the dealer slip off of his keys to his 91 GT.  We also found some really great old photos of the last 30 years of life out there.  I am going to begin to scan them in to add to our story but it won't be tonight.  

We are just thankful for God's provision... and for being a God of generations.  How humbling it is to know.  God is awesome, all knowing and He loves me enough to go ahead years to make a way for us today.  

For now though I am going to take a hint from Zoe...

Merry Christmas & Farms...

Brush Creek - I am standing on the bridge facing just right of the barn.  Ande, his Dad & the boys are in the field.

Well, we spent Christmas Eve with the outlaws and Christmas Day with the inlaws.  All in all a peaceful experience.  Now it's on to 2009 and all that entails for our family.  We did head out to the farm yesterday.  Just thought I would share some pictures so that you could get some idea of what we are looking at.  We will be heading back out there tomorrow to do some work inside the house, so expect more pictures again then.

These are the overgrown boxwoods that will have to be trimmed way back blocking the view of the house from the bottom of the steps coming up from the field.

This is the bedroom side of the house coming from the barn.  That front porch enclosure will be removed to make more room for rocking chairs.  

The barn... full of fun stuff to explore.  There are a bunch of chicken coops on the lower level that we will start using in the spring.  We will also probably adapt some of them for rabbits.

Up behind the barn is the steep part of the land.  This is eventually where we would like to build our permanent home Lord willing.

My beautiful mother in law with the kids and I down by the bridge.  There have been some heavy rains lately that have started washing out the road.  A lot of work will need to be done on that as well.  But this is the only picture in which you can see the house in relation to the barn.  To the far right just out of the frame is the majority of the flat land. 

I just had to make it through Christmas and we have... so now it's on the the adventure of a lifetime.  Swiss Family Robinson meets the Clampitts.

Puppies, poo and perfume

Zoe, just as Julia would have her.  Draped in a cute hankerchief, toddler bed blanket cuddling her little stuff animal.  Puppies are so much fun.  Really they are.  I love this pup, I promise you that I must love her.

I didn't have the best day today.  It was one of those days where you call your husband and say, "I need you, today."  Ande came home about 3 to help me finish out the afternoon and evening.  We hung here for a couple of hours and then decided we were going to head to Lowe's, maybe grab a cup of coffee and hang at the book store.  So we head out about 5:30 run to Lowe's, go across town the the book store, run by Subway to bring home subs we get home about 8.

We came home to this...

Yeah, remember the vomit story? This is so much more than that!!!  Zoe didn't like hanging in the bathroom while we were gone.  Not only did she poo, she proceeded to paw paint with it all over the bathroom.  Needless to say, I will have to go to Walmart against my better judgement on Christmas Eve to buy new toothbrushes.  

It took us close to an hour to clean it up.  I stood at the sink washing poo off of a ton of stuff.  My favorite mascara, my hair products.  I told Ande it was horrible to go in and see the stuff covered.  I mean, yeah, you can see the Redken products that I use for my hair, but I make it last FOREVER.  I take such good care of it because I know it may not come again soon.  There was just such a blatant disregard for what I treasure.  I cleaned some of the stuff, some of it was empty and I just threw away, and that rug??  Yeah, it could have been washed...but it's heading to the landfill.  

God keeps giving me these correlations... He washes me again and again.  He has cleaned up behind me so many times.  He has tried to protect me and in my nearsightedness I just made a huge mess thinking that there was no way out.  Some things he restores, some things he throws away, and some things he reminds me that I just don't need anymore.  Today I just long to lay my head on his lap, to pant in exhaustion and to allow him to love me in only the way that he can.  Sometimes, when you think you just can't do anything else... that you can't take one more step God will show you another pile of poo that needs your attention... because you can spray all of the perfume that you want to, poo stinks until you get rid of it.  There is no covering it up.

Hebrews 10:22-23 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

God, thank you for your faithfulness.  For Jesus, your ultimate clean up committee.  For the Holy Spirit... oh Lord, I long for you.  In Jesus Name.