Oh Possum!

The house is all awake and a tizzy tonight from this:

This thing had snuck up to the house looking for tasty snacks. The outside puppies were doing their job and trying to get at it and kept barking at it - which they never bark - and we kept going out to see what was wrong. The first time the goat had jumped over to the duck yard but the second and third times we didn't see anything. The fourth time we saw Mr. Kitty (the stray that won't let us touch it) walking circles around this and this fella. Yeah. Eww.

Now, all 4 dogs are up and antsy, the kids are both up (because 1 was already up and I think she woke him up), my mom woke up with the in and outting and barking and rooster crowing.. And there are 2 roosters in the garage who think it's waking time. *sigh*

*My* method was to shoot it, but C said to just scare it off. He said gun shots at 4 am near town were *bad*. He never lets me have any fun. Unfortunately, I think it's come back (since the puppies are barking again)  and we're going to have to trap it and do something with it. I have no idea what you do with them after you trap them though.

An Ayslum!

Today has been absolutely insane! The highlights:

•  The Girl was systematically peeling her finger and toenails off at bedtime.  After telling her she "didn't have permission to do that", she stopped and fell almost instantly asleep. Huh??
• The Boy threw a FIT. Epic fit because the bread loaf (that HE tore previously) was not straight. He cried, screamed, stomped, yelled, and carried on until I took a knife to the same piece of bread and made the end straight. Same piece, same bread only smaller and straight suddenly became edible and perfectly fine. Huh??
• We found out and have fully grasped JUST how young the newest addition to the farm is. The newest little guy was "supposed" to be 8 ish weeks old and fully weaned and eating solid food great. He's maybe 6, not eating hard food well, and LOVE goat milk. We named him Adams. He's so cute though! It makes me so mad the irresponsible things people do because they're lazy. The people who gave him to us said they were going out of town that night, it's obvious they were just done with puppies. I feel really badly for the people who have no idea what to do with the other 11 puppies that these dumbasses gave out. 
• The Boy has a fairly important to get his eyes dilated tomorrow. He is horrified, compliments of his sister. So I've been trying to convince him he's gonna be a good boy, that it doesn't hurt, and it's really no big deal. Plus, if he's super good, he may get a prize and what would he want? He wants "5 pounds of ice cream."  Ok. I can probably work with that. It's actually really important we get him to cooperate with this appointment because of the previous findings of his eye socket/congenital defect issue. So. A large vat of ice cream to get what we need done. Heck yeah. I think I can do that.
• I ordered 12 guinea eggs. 12. TWELVE. Somehow, we have 32 in the incubator. This is after 2 broke. So there were 34. I ordered 12. How did 34 get here?? I STILL haven't figured that out! I double checked everything and I only ordered 12.  I so do not want even a 50% hatch rate with that many. I was aiming for like.. 4 guineas total. EEK! 

 He's so Fluffy!

Unwrapping and settling of the Guinea eggs.

House, Holiday, and a Puppy!

It's been very busy here for the last month since I've posted last. Since Timmy found his perfect new home we accidentally stumbled into a new puppy.

We hadn't been planning on a new puppy right now. But. Joking around it was said - repeatedly - wouldn't it be great if we found a puppy just like Bear because he's such an ideal dog for us right now? Well, I was on Craiglist and saw this guy and got information about him and stopped by where he was. We were going to think about it for a while UNTIL the guy said he was going to take him to Henryetta the next day to euthanize him. WHAT? Yep. They couldn't find anyone to take him, so they were just going to put him down and he wasn't even 3 months old. He's got a great temperament, he's fairly calm most of the time, he's easy to train, but they were just done with him. Awesome rescue shelter. So we took him home.

Well. We get him home and settle and he's doing really well with the house training and all. 4 or 5 days into him being here, he stops eating and gets very lethargic. I get worried and take him into our vet, thinking he's got a virus or needs a different food or something benign. Nope. He's got Parvo. The vet is fantastic and spends 45 minutes with us explaining our options from as simple as sending us home with antibiotics and hoping for the best and bringing him back if he gets super bad and we can't stand it. Putting him down because we don't want to spend the money on him. And letting them keep him in vet hospital with an IV and medications and seeing if they can keep him alive. They gave him about a 50% chance of living with the in hospital option since he is a Rottweiler/Great Pyrenees mix (Rottweilers apparently get parvo worse than some other breeds?).

We went ahead and opted to leave him in vet care. After several days, the vet called and said he was looking MUCH better and we could come get him! Since then, the little guy has only gotten bigger. He still hasn't regained all his weight from when he originally got sick, but we're working on plumping him back up. The little guy has more energy than before - but since he has Parvo when we got him, that only makes since.

Rupert, the Parvo Puppy

To go along with the theme of "Unplanned Events", we are in the process of buying a new house too! It's taking longer than we had hopped, but the house is exactly what we had been looking for. It's just a little bit outside of town, but not so far you can't easily get to stores, coffee, gas, emergency care, etc. It's got 2 acres and is unplatted so we can have whatever we want on it - goats, dogs, chickens (*shudder*), buildings - whatever without anyone complaining. The plan is to have my mom move out there with us too. The house is plenty big enough and with the land we're going to build her a little building of her own.  The nice thing with the building is that once she no longer needs it, it will be available for an extra office space for C, an apartment type thing should one of the kids need it later like a step before they are ready to *move out* to learn how to be on their own, we could always rent it too. Options are always nice. Unfortunately, the paper work is dragggggging out.

We had hoped to be moved before Christmas, but since it's the 10th of December it's not looking like that will happen. Also, the Realtor came by to get something initialed because the Sellers are stingy fools and had the tenacity to ask if the Sellers could "rent" the house for a week or 2 after closing to move. Umm. NO. That would move this show past New Years and. No. C opened his mouth before his brain caught up and agreed way too eagerly, but the Sellers have made NO concessions whatsoever to us and I am simply NOT that generous. He did correctly that in a very appropriate and kind way, but cheap hookers not making a single concession to us then dare ask that?

Anyhow, Christmas is coming soon and in the car after swim lessons #2 was chatting about how we had gone to Bass Pro yesterday and we saw Santa. He HATES Santa and I asked him why. He explained that Santa wasn't real. I asked him to explain why he thought that Santa wasn't real. He backtracked and tried to explain that the Bass Pro Santa wasn't real. I *think* the Boy knows that Santa isn't actually real, but was smart enough to keep him big trap shut for his sister. Plus, we've had the chat about how if you don't believe you don't receive. This applies to Fairies, Santa, Easter Bunny.. Any and all mystical creatures. It could also be that I gave him the master of all stink eyes when he started to say that he didn't think Santa was real. The Girl thinks Santa is very much real. Though The Girl believes whatever I tell her and is denser than a fruitcake. But if she believes in Santa Clause at 8 still, *I* am not spoiling it for her and I will not let her 6 year old brother either. He may be a little more cautious about things than she is.

Best Santa Picture EVER

We did take a picture with Santa. It took them 4 tries and 5 minutes to get this *Good* picture. Yes. This IS the good one. I don't have a single picture of The Boy sitting with Santa or near him really. He's always several feet away. Ahhh well.