Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[lorihadams]

So, Friday night when I milked Aliana she tried to lay down on me towards the end. She's never done that. I'm wondering if she was sore from my trainee's morning efforts. I have done the milking in the am this weekend and Chad is doing the pm milkings cause we want to get the two of them used to each other again. I am thinking we may try to see if we can gradually push back her milking times this week and first thing Monday morning Chad is going to ask his boss if he can come it at 7:30 the week I'm gone so that he can milk her at 6:30 and then just freeze the milk. We are milking at 7:30 and 7:30 now so it shouldn't be that big a deal for me to push her milking times back by an hour over the course of the week. I am just hoping that his boss will let him come in a little late the week I'm gone so we don't have to have neighbor milk her.

We did the bees yesterday and then went to the pool for a few hours and Chad went back to the gym for the first time since his accident. It took almost 2 full weeks for the would to close up fully and we had to leave the middle stitches in an extra 3 days. The pool water was an icy 91 degrees It was horrible. Like swimming in a sweaty bath. Blech.

Then we had another birthday party to go to so we came home and showered and got ready for that and as soon as we walked in the door we got a massive thunderstorm. When we got home the downspout on the garage gutter had blown off and was scattered in the back yard and it had blown a tarp all the way down to the goat pasture. The good news is that the garage door didn't leak so the adjustments that were made a while ago worked.

We watched Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl last night and called it a day. Aliana did well for Chad last night and she did pretty well for me this morning too but I milked her a little early, about 7:15 and she wasn't as full as usual but I expected that. She should be better tonight.

Did 3 loads of laundry today and got them out on the line, got to get the jeans and towels off and then I'll be done. Then I went out and tried to make myself pass out by weeding the "traditional" garden. I hate to weed, which is why I hate a plowed garden. I have been so busy running with the kids that I haven't done my duties in that garden and the weeds are taller than the corn. The problem is that the corn is ready to be picked but we can't get to it. Some of the weeds have thorns on them, I don't know what they are but they are awful, and they are taller than the corn. I did a small area and was so hot this morning that I had to stop to get water and shower. I figured that Chad could get most of it with the weed eater when he got home but it wouldn't start.

He had to go look at another hunting property up for lease. It was awesome. They want $2000 for the year but that is duck, geese, and maybe deer. They could make that back on their first guided hunt and I think they will probably do it. It looks that good. I would love to be able to deer hunt it too but I don't know what will happen.

Sounds like we may get another thunderstorm and I hope we do. I just went and closed up the barns and fed and watered everyone for the evening and Chad got the jeans off the line and put away for me while I tended to the animals.

I have a few pics I wanted to share...
here's Brahma Mama with her first two ducklings last week, she has 4 now

Here we are at the birthday party at Pump It Up-first Chad and the kids and then me

And here are the girls in the pasture

 

[lorihadams]

Monday....

today started with Aliana's broken collar My neighbor came over to milk and started but when Aliana got antsy she pulled out of her broken collar completely and K had to hold her so I could finish milking. So add that to my list. The good news is that Chad called his boss this morning and she is going to let him come in to work from 7:30 to 4:00 next week while I'm gone instead of 6:15 to 2:45 as usual. I'm gonna push back Aliana's milking time to 6:30am. I milked her at 7 tonight and she did just fine so I'll do her at 7am for the next couple days and then push it back to 6:30 by the end of the week. So, now my neighbor is off the hook and maybe Aliana will calm down.

We went to the library after I made batches of kombucha, cheese, and pancakes this morning for a puppet show that was supposed to start at 11 but the guy was a no show so they showed a movie in the conference room instead. When they got in touch with him he rescheduled for Wednesday so now we'll try again then.

Went to TSC and got 2 more bags of flock raiser for the mallards and runner babies and 4 smaller buckets cause my back just can't handle carrying 5 gallon buckets as far as I have to take them for the chicken tractor. Got Aliana's new collar, Maddie picked out pink with polka dots

Yesterday I got the yard mowed while Chad attacked the garden with the weed eater he borrowed from a friend and then a storm blew in. Today after the library and trip to TSC I came home and mowed both pastures and then picked 80% of the corn and got it shucked. It was so-so. Most of the ears were small and some weren't completely formed and of course, some had worms. The chickens are happy with the scraps and all the wormy bits though.

I broke down and bought a loaf of millet bread from the store the other day and had BLT's tonight with some of our scrambled eggs. I miss bread soooooo much and this was pretty good toasted so I may continue to buy it cause I just can't find millet flour anywhere around here.

Yesterday I made a little mistake. I confess. When I was getting the temporary clampett tractor set up for Brahma Mama and her babies for the day I opened up the isolation cage and my other brahma jumped in to get at some of their food. Well, I grabbed the babies and put them in the pen and then went back for Brahma Mama and threw her in and put the lattice on top. When I went back to return them to the isolation pen for lockdown for the night I realized I had grabbed THE WRONG BRAHMA and put her in with the babies. When I saw how red her comb was I realized I had the wrong girl. Luckily she is pretty laid back and didn't hurt the babies all day. Ridiculousness.

Then this morning my runner hen's baby was in the yard...WTH? Evidently there is a hole in the rabbit hutch and it fell through onto the ground who knows when last night or this morning sometime so I had to patch that this morning too. Saturday the guy comes to get the mallards and I can move all the runner babies into the chicken tractor until I can get my older ones sold along with the new babies. Hopefully my runner hen will hatch out those last 3 eggs this week and I can move everyone over once the mallards are gone and get the new runners into the hutch. Gonna be a fun week for hubby while I'm gone. Geesh. Off to go lock everyone up for the night.

 

[Wifezilla]

I need a nap after reading that. LOL. Sounds like one of my days.

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

and I thought I needed a nap!

 

[lorihadams]

So, I milked Aliana at 7 this morning and apparantly I have screwed up her morning poop She pooped on the milk stand TWICE and then again as I was walking her out of the milk room.

Today we are going to see the dollar movie and hang out with my BF and her DD for a bit. I'm also going to look at getting another laptop for us and let the kids use this one, I think. It is also getting a bit inconvenient cause sometimes hubby has to take the computer to work during the day to do "personal" work for his side business and that leaves us here with nothing when we need to do schoolwork or pay bills or balance the checkbook or whatever. I have an old desktop that a local computer guy is willing to take to donate to a family in need if it is in working order and he can wipe out the hard drive. He won't pay for it outright but he will give me credit towards another computer if I donate that one so I may stop by there this week.

I also have to call a different chiropractor. I got to the one on Friday and they don't take my insurance. They will give me the coupon rates if I want to continue to go there but I just can't afford $65 per visit, especially if he needs to see me once a week. The initial exam was gonna be $112 plus another $65 for any therapies he needed to do that day.

So hubby double checked and found one a little further away the next town over and they do take our insurance so I have to call them in a bit and make an appointment and then call the doctor back and get another referral. Fun stuff.

I have to type up an invoice sometime this week for the mallards for hubby's client so he can pay me for them. He has already paid me for the cost of the birds, shipping,wood shavings for the brooder, and initial 2 bags of feed. He's paid me $165- 125 for the ducks and shipping, 30 for flock raiser and 10 for shavings. He still owes me for 3 more bags of feed-$45 and something for my time invested but I don't know how much to ask for. I figure I spend about 1/2 hour every day feeding, watering, and moving them and I've had them for 2 months now. So figure about 30 hours of work total. What should I charge him for labor? He's getting 24 mallards ready to go on the pond. If I charged him $15 per duck as an adult that's $360. He is in for $210 total without labor so far.

 

[lorihadams]

So, Thursday....today we went to the pool after story time with my BF and her DD. Then the cake lady showed up and dropped her kids off at the pool so she could go make a cake delivery and left them there for like 3 hours. Seriously. This crap is getting old. I told her I would watch them while she dropped off the cake and she says that the lady kept calling and pushing the delivery time back but she also said she went home and tilled up the garden. WTH?

I finally got to go to the chiro yesterday and I am still really sore. I go back tomorrow to go over my x-rays and do a consultation. He twisted me up like a pretzel Wednesday. We had problems getting a chiro that would take our insurance so hubby got on with our insurance co and found me one that would take me yesterday and I was pretty surprised exactly how much pain I was really in once he started doing the preliminary exam. He adjusted my entire back, hips, and neck yesterday and tonight I have a date with some Biofreeze. I did the ice packs for a while off and on last night and took some Aleve today and did some laps in the pool. Still really sore but he told me to expect that cause I was so out of whack.

I milked Aliana today at 6:45 and she pooped on me 3 TIMES I warned Chad that if she was laying down when he went out to milk her in the mornings while I'm gone to watch out for her tail to go up and back and tilt the milk jar.

Gonna do the bees Saturday and then get everything ready to go to Granny's for the week. I have to pack all our swimming stuff to go up to the lake! I am excited, we'll be going to the State park up there and they have a really good beachy area that is now free so we are soooooo gonna go. I'm looking forward to it.

Chad had a meeting today and got some more corporate sponsors for the Webfoot Mafia and we have a new t-shirt design that we are gonna try out but we are seriously looking at copyrighting the slogan/design. I think it will be worth it in the long run. We are also looking into doing some interesting things with a bar code app on the smart phones to link it to some product videos and stuff. It should be interesting.

He's giving Frawg a bath right now....she is NOT a happy camper

Tomorrow I have to get all the laundry done before I go, pack everything, go to the chiro and get crickets for the critters. I think we are gonna watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang tomorrow night, I got it from the library this week. I don't know if I'm going to be able to take the laptop with me to granny's or not but I should be able to at least run to the library a couple times to check email and stuff while I'm gone. Getting busy quickly round here. I'm also going to work on planning out some of my lessons for the year too. I have to go over the SOLS and make some notes to get everything prepared. I'm thinking we'll start in September. Gonna be here before I know it.

Soccer sign ups are due by the 22nd of August and Chad wants to sign Tyler up but he is iffy about it. He loved soccer camp at church but says that he doesn't want to play on a team cause he never gets the ball.

Maddie says she wants to do dance, guitar lessons, soccer and tae kwon do at the "YCM"...aka the YMCA She's gonna be a handful. I'm thinking of letting her pick 2 to do. Does the craziness ever stop???

 

[TanksHill]

no.

 

[freemotion]

All my does pooped on the stand for a couple weeks after freshening. Can't remember when your goat freshened....was it recently?

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Your goat is pooping on the stand because you are waking her up, and she has not had time to do it yet.
See about getting her up, then doing the other chores first. Then try milking her.

 

[lorihadams]

Friday.....got the goat up first, then got everyone's feed ready and wait for it.....she still pooped on me....TWICE.

I've warned the hubby...he was not amused. He has to do this before work every morning so it is not going to be pleasant for him or her for that matter. He's grumpy in the mornings.

Today I did 3 loads of laundry...shocker. Then had to go to the chiro for my follow up exam and adjustment. I have a 10 degree curvature of my lower spine, my right hip is 1/4 inch lower than my left, and my disc between lumbar 4 and 5 (old injury) is too thin. So, another round of the rack and elecroshock therapy and my kids are thoroughly amused cause they got to watch the whole experience. We had a nice lesson on bones and they were pretty excited to see mommy's spine.

Then we went by Chad's work and visited for a bit, Chad had the kids go out into the warehouse and stack boxes and count the last shipment of DVRs for his coworker. Then I went and got lunch, made a deposit at the bank for hubby, hit the dollar tree and Petco for crickets and an exercise ball for Tyler's mice and then came home to get everyone straight for the afternoon. Chad helped water and feed everyone that needed it while I got the first 2 loads of laundry off the line and the third out of the washing machine and on the line. Then we got all the clothes put away and I got me and the kids packed up for our trip tomorrow and then made dinner. Then had to go milk and get brahma and the babies from their daytime pen to their nighttime pen.

Got a call that the guy can't come get the mallards tomorrow but is coming Sunday instead. That sucks cause now hubby has to get them all out by himself, switch the new runners into the big chicken run, put the runner hen into the isolation pen with her 2 eggs, and move brahma mama and her babies into the chicken tractor. I was gonna help him do all that after the guy came and got the mallards out. We can't rearrange anyone until the mallards are gone. Fun stuff, his Sunday just got waaaaaaaay busier. He's supposed to milk Aliana at 6:30 and then meet up with his buddies to go to the impoundment to work on planting the millet. I don't know when the client is coming for the ducks but it is gonna be a crazy day.

I'm gonna make him a list, I swear. We went over everything tonight and he has forgotten all kinds of stuff

At least I'll help him get the bees done tomorrow before we leave.