A Birthday, A Buck, & Snow

Yesterday we celebrated my son’s birthday. My baby boy is now 12 years old! Where does the time go?

Yesterday evening Quentin & Quentin Jr. took Madison to buy a Nigerian buck for our little goat herd. She chose a small, gentle 18 month old with no horns and named him Buddy. There were plenty of baby bucks to choose from, but she is still busy bottle feeding Pippi. Buddy has already had babies so he already knows how to do his job. We are hoping for goat milk this summer! I wonder if we will like it right away or if we will have to learn to like it? 🙂 Here’s Buddy.

Buddy is on the right.

Lilac, Willow, & Buddy

While everybody else was gone to get Buddy, McKenzie and I did outdoor chores and some sledding. We still have snow and ice from Wednesday, and we got more snow this morning.

McKenzie sledding through the field. Our home in the background.

Almost landed in the goat shelter.

Trees still iced over!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

:)Vicki

 

 

Ice Storm

We had a nice Christmas. I hope you all did too! Our Christmas was nice and sunny, and we spent most of our day outdoors. Today is a different story. There was a nice covering of snow around 3 this morning. Then around 7 it started to ice. The ice is very pretty; I just hope our power doesn’t go out!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

We have been busy making Christmas goodies this morning. So far we have made sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes. We are also making fudge later and puppy chow. We will surely get our sugar fix!

Sunday before last we visited my sister at her house to exchange gifts. Here is a picture of our kids together. They don’t see each other often enough!

Friday night we went to the Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theatre in Wytheville. Quentin’s parents came too. They came home with us afterwards, and we exchanged gifts Saturday morning.  This is a picture of my girls with their grandmother at the dinner theatre.

We will have finger foods tonight while my kids open their gifts from my other sister. We are making ham, veggies, and banana pudding for our Christmas dinner tomorrow. We haven’t decided if we want to go to Quentin’s aunt’s house tomorrow to visit with family. We are thinking we will stay home and rest.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

:)Vicki

Thursday

We have finished school and done our outdoor chores. Yogurt is incubating in the Crockpot and everything seems so peaceful. Today was our last day of school, and we are now on Christmas break. We are going to the movies tomorrow for a treat. I am looking forward to spending some fun time with my kids for the next two weeks.

It is 46º here today. It has warmed up quite a bit from yesterday’s 39º. We will miss the warm days that we have been having. Last week we got strawberry beds weeded, and Quentin pruned the grapevine. I made my first grapevine wreath and look forward to making more each time the grapevine is pruned. We harvested the radishes last week that had been growing in our fall garden. We sauteed them in butter and sprinkled them with garlic salt. It took the spicy/woody taste out of them, and they were very good.

First try at making a grapevine wreath

Mixed Radishes

Cooked in butter

We started making homemade gifts today for family and friends. These are M&M cookie mixes in a jar. I think they turned out cute. Madison made molasses cookies today. They turned out great even though she had to substitute honey for the molasses because our molasses had gone bad.

M&M cookie mix

Honey? Cookies 🙂

Our chickens have started laying for us again. We had been buying eggs from the store, but they are not as good as our eggs. We are getting 6-9 eggs a day.

Fresh Eggs

Pippi is doing well. She is eating great and we can tell she is much heavier. She follows Madison around everywhere. We heard from the lady that we want to get our Nigerian buck from. She said two of her does should kid any day now. We are hoping to have goat’s milk from Lilac and Willow by next fall.

Pippi loves her bottle

Pippi

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

:)Vicki

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Decorations

I can’t believe Christmas is just 20 days away! It is especially hard to believe since we have had such wonderful weather.  We are all decorated and just enjoying the season! School is still moving along. We are working to get halfway through all our subjects before we break for Christmas. That will probably be around the 17th. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the Christmas season!

Madison and McKenzie’s Christmas Tree

Quentin Jr.’s Christmas Tree

 

 

Dough Ornaments

Hi, I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!  Our temps were in the 60s here today. We are really enjoying the sunshine!

We headed out early this morning to go thrift shopping and found a lot of neat things. We want to start repurposing old chairs into other things, and we found an old chair. I can’t wait to see what we come up with and share it with you. 🙂 Some ideas we have found online are swings, plant stands, pet food bowl stands, and benches.

It is really starting to feel like Christmas around here. Our Christmas decorations are out and Christmas music is playing. December is such a fun month! Yesterday we baked some dough ornaments, and today Madison decorated them. They were so easy-just mix together 4 cups of  flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 1/2 cups of warm water. We rolled ours out to about 1/2 an inch and cut them with cookie cutters. Then baked them at 300º for 2 hours.

I am linking up to:

New Goat Pippi

 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week!

:)Vicki

Trying to Get a Christmas Picture

 

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was 62º here yesterday. The windows were open and the heat turned off.  We spent a nice, peaceful day at home eating, watching the parade and dog show, decorating our Christmas tree, and even playing outdoors!

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Chicken Butchering, Dollywood, & School

It is cold here this morning! I went out at 6:30 to let the chickens out, and the ground was nice and crunchy with frost. I was considering trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep when I got back inside, but the cold had me wide awake!

Friday morning we loaded our chickens up and headed over to the Dawson’s for butchering. It was funny to hear crowing coming from the trunk.  I didn’t do the killing or dunking part but learned to pluck, clean, and singe the hair off. Then they were put into ice water to chill. It really was not that bad over all.

The chickens were placed in these cones until they were all bled out.

Then they were dunked in the water a few times before we plucked them. The feathers came off easily.

We cleaned them out on this table outside.

Donna’s pastor’s wife showed us how to singe the little hairs off using brown paper bags.

Saturday morning the power went out at 4:30 and finally came back on around 6:45. We got up and got ready then headed to Dollywood. The park was all decorated up and the lights were beautiful!It was their opening day for their Christmas season. Boy, was it packed!  It was sunny and in the 70s so that was nice. We rode some rides then stood in line for The Polar Express in 4D for an hour and a half. It was definitely worth the wait. Quentin rode the Wild Eagle while we waited for him at the church and listened to Christmas music. It was another long wait for the Wild Eagle. Then we watched their Christmas on Ice show and fought the crowds out of the park. Thankfully we had eaten Subway on the way in and stopped at Shoney’s on the way home so we didn’t have to fight the crowd for food.

Quentin waiting in line for the Polar Express with Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph that he won.

Monday morning we jumped right back into our school week. We were starting to get burned out and really needed the break from last week!