Nine amazing years

Nine years ago, at 1:50am, my life became quite a bit more full. That was the moment I officially became a mother, and it has been a whirlwind of excitement, joy, fun, frustration, and blessing ever since. Caleb has now entered his last year in single digit numbers. It is very hard for me to believe. These years have gone so fast.

We enjoyed his choice of breakfast casserole earlier (my only requirement was that breakfast contain eggs...we have so many!!) and a banana muffin (for which I must post the recipe...it is delicious & no added sugar!) For lunch, he has requested steak, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Can we say "country boy"??? And for dinner, spaghetti pie. Both Caleb and Meagan just love that dish. It's a little time consuming, so I rarely make it, except for special occasions. When I do make it, I make 2 so that we can eat it again sometime without added work. And lastly, he picked out spice cake and cookies 'n cream ice cream. We all get a little spoiled on someone's birthday!

He is currently out playing Heroscape with Don and Meagan. He wants to take a long walk on the pasture today. We also have friends coming over after lunch sometime, which I don't think he knows about yet, so that will be fun. And, of course, he will be playing some Nintendo. All in all, it'll be a quiet but enjoyable day. His #1 request was to NOT DO ANY ROOFING WORK! We were happy to oblige...mostly because it is now FINISHED! Whoo hoo! That took so incredibly long. Don was determined to finish yesterday and did so as the temperatures were dropping fast.

A little goat update: Benjamin and Buckwheat seem to be completely healed. And it may be my imagination, but they both seem really attached to me after I spent so much time with them working their bellies. It's funny. I really tried to learn what I needed to know before we brought them home, but it is so hard to anticipate what you'll be faced with. For instance, I had read that oil was a good thing to give them for bloat (as a commenter on my previous post suggested). What I didn't know (and she explained) was that you have to use a syringe to force it down their throats. They don't willingly take anything by mouth when they are sick like that. So, since they wouldn't take anything, I didn't know what to do. Now I know. I wish there wasn't such a huge learning curve in farming, but there is. So much is trial and error. And even when you learn hints and tips from others, it really takes DOING IT to figure out exactly what you need to know and how to implement it. But, we ARE learning and before long, we'll know.

Another thing that I learned was to avoid milk replacer. I took the advice of my neighbor and put them on replacer (gradually switching over from cow's milk). She had never used it, but thought it must be better for goats than cow's milk. Well, it wasn't until they got sick that I started to research milk replacer. Wow. The stuff is avoided like the plague by most goat owners. It causes lots of health problems in goats. So, now I know. I put them back on cow's milk and took the replacer that we hadn't used back to the store. Lesson learned. I'm just sad that the goats had to suffer for my ignorance. One incredible source for goat info I found was Fias Co Farm. They are so generous with their information. I spent hours reading it all. (Hours that I don't have to spare, by the way!!) Anyway, the goats are all better and we are learning lots as we go.