Newborn calves and other such stuff.

Like I said in the last post...I'm way behind. Sorry. Chaos seems to have gotten the better of us, despite my best attempts. But...we have had some REALLY good times! We threw a Christmas party at our house and had several people over to enjoy a meal, some games and decorating Christmas cookies. I was so proud of how nice the house looked!

Being so squeaky clean made it real easy to just pick up and leave to Wisconsin on Sunday night when we decided we'd like to see snow. We packed a couple day's worth of clothes and got out of dodge. While we were there it snowed real good the first day and then on the way home we had to stop and get a room because it was snowing so furiously in Missouri. Awesomeness! My camera was MIA (the Nikon is DEAD again, but neverfear...my Christmas present was a P100, so we'll be back in business soon!) so I don't have any pix from our trip. My mom took lots, though and those are on Facebook.

Actual Christmas Day was rather bland in our neck of the woods. We got up late and almost missed going to Dallas to pass out lunches and blankets to the homeless, but we made it. I would suggest to anyone trying that at least once...it will truly change your whole perspective! I love it and so does GraceAnne. Even Rhiya had an amazing time last year. This year she doesn't get here until tonight....in about 10 minutes....so we let the kids open 2 presents each when we got home yesterday and then we had an awesome ham dinner with some friends. Today we woke up to this:

Can my little man catch a break? I was chanting to myself over and over and over again, "I will not be angry." Notice it's the top...since the bottom pocket is blocked by the stinking plastic catheter. I called the surgeon's cell phone and he has no clue who Corbin is. Doesn't remember us from Adam. We were told to go to Children's, so up to Dallas we went. Thank God our friends watched the girls so Allan could go with me. We were so stunned we were literally silent the whole way up. Let me assure you, I rarely have NOTHING to say, so that was...strange. When we got there they told us it looked like a skin infection and gave him benedryl. I asked for a referral to the opthamologist and we left. No one wanted to listen to me tell about my son's history; after all, how could a lowly stay-at-home-mom know what's wrong with her child? Surely the Dr would know better. Too bad the benedryl did nothing. *sigh* Oh yeah..."I will NOT be angry."

So in the interest of saving the day we came home and got the girls and decided to go ahead and take them shopping as we had promised. They each got $20 and wanted to get something. I also had to pick up my camera from Best Buy, so we loaded up. But first we stopped by to see our new baby!!!! Clarabelle had her calf last Sunday so we dropped by to get some pictures this morning. Clarabelle wouldn't let us get too close, and I took these with the Kodak so they're not very good, but GraceAnne says "Holly is the cutest cow on EARTH!" and I must agree with her.

Momma never went too far...Allan tried to walk around to see if he could get close, but she's not having it just yet. In about a month she'll let us get closer.

There she is...#3 in our herd! The next baby is due in March. If it's a heifer we'll keep her and those 4 will be our herd. If it's a bull, we'll steer him and eat him in about 18 months. Since longhorns produce a new calf about every 11 months, we should be having babies Nov 2011 and Feb 2012. The new girls will not have their own calves until they're about 3 years old. By then hopefully we'll have our stuff straight and be able to handle that kind of volume. Processing 4 animals per year is enough meat for our family, plus about 3k in income. That's a pretty big deal when most of your expenses are cut by lifestyle.

On with the day...evidently everyone else on earth had the same idea we did and we waited in line at Best Buy for about an hour. During that stay, Corbin wouldn't stop trying to dive and smack the woman's purse in front of us and Violet kept climbing on shelving. Allan had taken GraceAnne to Borders to spend her money, so this fun was all mine. And then I found a FLEA on my son. Yes...a FLEA. How did that get there? I will never know. My head STILL itches from the thought of it. But we survived and I'm the proud owner of a mid-range camera. I'm really hoping it takes great shots. I'll let you know soon since we're doing our Christmas tomorrow morning.

We made it home and poor Violet pooped her pants. I announced to Allan that she was sick and thus started the evening olympics. She's had 3 baths and is now wearing a "diaper" and has puked on everything that resides downstairs. She can't keep down water or pedialyte so I'm keeping an eye on her to be sure I don't need to run her to the hospital. Allan is at the airport picking up Rhiya right this very minute and all the kids are finally sleeping, so I'm enjoying a quiet moment for once today. It's days like today that really make me scratch my head. I mean, we are SO incredibly Blessed...we have each other and the 4 most amazing children and we're moving very quickly toward an even more amazing life than the one we have but it somehow always seems to crap out all at once. I find myself holding my breath waiting at times I should be praying. I suppose I'll have to explore that and work on it.

Praying you all had a wonderful Christmas and a great weekend. Love and miss you all!