first day of school 2012

Finn's 1st day of 2nd grade

This was a day or two later, but too cute not to post

Burgundy's first day of her last year of preschool (possibly Kindergarten - that's a long story)

 

Alpacas!!

Suzie opens her gigantic trailer to reveal…Cuteness!!

And here they are.  The newest resident of Thistle Dew Farm.  Dee, Daisy, Chanelle, Steve (Leroy) and Vegas.  No we didn’t get to name any of them – although the boys’ names have changed.

I obviously already have a million and three pictures of them.  I’ll try not to include them all on this one post.

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This is a funny story I have to share and hope my husband won’t mind too much if I do.  If you know him, you know he is a thinker.  Not a detail is left to chance.  So here we are fencing in a rougher bit of the property to have a compost lane of sorts (life in the shat lane?  poop row?…)  Anyway, he is swiftly slinging fence into place, and, when needed, doing flying leaps over the roll of downed fencing like an Olympic hurdler.  We just set the fence post today, so this poop row has to be temporarily cut across the middle of the yard instead of all the way across  - so the cement can set before we hook to the fence post.  I ask (repeatedly) shouldn’t we put a gate leading to this, honey?  No, because it will have a gate once it goes to the fence post.  But shouldn’t we put one in now? temporarily?  Nope.  Okie dokie.

Hmm, but then how do you get out once you extend the fence the whole way?  Scale the cliff and try not to fall in the ditch :)

The “dew dew” bucket.

And lastly for now, the best egg collector we have on the payroll.

As promised, barn raising & mummies

do you know what this is?  if you guessed a mummified muskrat, then go get yourself a lollipop, because you are absolutely correct!

Remember when Brandon blew in on a breeze of improved chi?  Well he stayed a couple nights and boy was he a big help!  We’ve got a barn to raise (modify) after-all!  We only wish he would live here  and be our full-time ranch hand.

So, onto more mummies.  That's right, more.  You thought one person can only have so much luck, right?  Well, after the muskrat discovery we discovered a cat (actually a few cats).  Cody thinks this is all pretty gross but I think it is fascinating.  So do the kids.  Seriously, how often do you find a mummified animal?  Increasingly more often around these parts.  (PS those aren’t leaves in its eye sockets, trust me.  They don’t come out – insert dry heave here…)

This picture makes me laugh.  Brandon took it.  To him it looked like I was kind of holding it like, “here, kitty, kitty.  Nice Kitty!”  Also Brandon can make the exact face the cat is making in this picture.  It’s uncanny.

PS don’t you like my outfit?  I am nothing if not fashionable at all times.  It’s always been my downfall in life.  Fashion first.  Yep, that’s me.

Look what else we found in the barn (shed). This is an electric fence charger.  Someone could get the wrong kind of idea about the previous owners, what with the voltage box and mummies in the shed.  We found a bucket of oxidizer in there and Cody was afraid it would have some human remains in there. 

 

Our first load of hay.

Look at these boys working hard.  We are so lucky we had so much help to get this stuff done!

Hey look, I got a cowboy hat!

We figured we better say some prayers and burn some sage.  That way we don’t have to call our farm, “the Cave of Trapped Souls” Farm. 
So we got fencing around the garden, fenced in a corner, divided the shed into two sides with separate entrances, and lots of other things I’m forgetting that we did.  And all this to get ready for…