A baby in the house......

Heidi fell in love with her 4-H leader's bottle goats the other day and begged to bring one home. Oh my, they really were so cute! So Heidi built a small pen,with Taylor's help, in our backyard. Today I bought the necessary milk and nipples at D&B and a bale of straw, so this evening we picked up our "baby" and Heidi became the proud owner of a bottle fed Nubian goat. He will need fed three times a day and tonight he is sleeping in the house in a dog kennel! You seriously can't imagine anything cuter than a new baby goat.......

Piggies!

Reagan chose to do a 4H swine project this year and after spending the last 2 days hurriedly trying to finish their pen (nothing like an eminent deadline to light the fire) we picked up his pigs at the allotted time of 11:30 this morning. There is a pig shortage around here and to get a pig for fair you needed to have reserved them two months ago! A friend of mine didn't reserve and today she ended up spending 150 dollars for a pig that weighed only 37 pounds. That's craziness! Last time we lived here 6 years ago, pigs cost between 60-75 dollars. Ideally they should weigh 60-75 lbs at weigh in. But I digress. So Reagan was very happy that the Flying Pig Farm had good sized pigs for him and Leif happily jumped in and said the other (spare) pig is his. But Boy Howdy do they stink!!! Their manure seriously. smells. bad. I wonder if we will learn to deal with their smell or if this will be our one and only year doing pigs. Luckily, Reagan doesn't seem to be phased by their smell so far. His sniffer must not be as sensitive as mine. Here's some pictures of Spot and Blacky. By the way, I built most of the fence myself! I pounded fence posts in with out any helpers around except Leif, wired up ranch panels, reinforced the gate, screwed a wood panel up to block wind and devised a pathetic but sufficient wire latch. I have to say, it was so fun! I want my own set of lineman's pliers for Christmas! Those piggies have now been in there 8 hours with no escapes so far and have started eating. Yay!

Stuffed peppers-- my favorite!

The other night we had a yummy hodge podge type dinner full of lots of vegetables: baked asparagus, sautéed mushrooms, oven roasted potatoes, and stuffed peppers with homemade salsa on top. I do different variations of this but that night our stuffed peppers had a filling of hamburger and onion cooked and spiced, then chopped tomatoes, spinach, and cheddar cheese stirred in. After baking for a half hour, top with salsa and Joel put the asparagus and mushrooms on too.

Tractor fun

Joel brought one of Grandpa Bishop's antique John Deere tractors home to get it back in running order. The little boys love sitting on it and pretending to drive. Though now that it's working, they don't have to pretend anymore!

Fresh beef-- it's what's for dinner!

We joined some friends for an evening of butchering a beef. The beef carcass had been hanging for a week when we arrived. By the time we left that night it was cut into numerous steaks and roasts and ground into pounds and pounds of hamburger. We grilled the freshest hamburgers ever for dinner that night!

Easter Weekend

Easter at Grandma and Grandpa Bishop's included fun with cousins, a birthday celebration for Grandma Clayton and good times all around!