Welcome to Adulthood!

We used the deformed cupcakes to celebrate Emily's 18th birthday.  It was fun to have almost the whole family together for her special day.

Abby, Megan, DJ, Uncle David, Lily, Grandma K

David, Lily, Grandma, Aunt Nancy, Heather

DJ, Uncle David, Lily, Grandma

 

Rabbit ears never get old, do they?

Birthday girl Emily, Grandpa, Uncle Devon

Megan and DJ were inseparable the entire weekend

 

I love this picture!

Megan, Aunt Nancy, Heather

 

I love this one, too!

Animal Farm

In addition to the plants and trees, Grandpa and Grandma and the uncles have animals!

GOATS:

Molly and Maggie - the mama goat and her daughter

 

Grandma loves the goats.

 

The family uses only goat milk now.

(Except Uncle Devon, who still buys his cow milk.  We tried the goat milk but made a trip to town to buy cow milk for our stay.  Perhaps goat milk is an acquired taste...)

 

Mama goat had three bucklings: Bruno, Jackson, Rex.

 

They also purchased a breeding male:  Apollo

The bucklings LOVE Grandma!

Actually, they seemed to love anyone who would come near their cage. 

(I think they were hoping we had brought food!)

 

 

CHICKENS:

 

They have a rooster and a bunch of chickens, too. 

They lay enough eggs for the whole family to eat LOTS of egg dishes!

 

One baby hatched right before we got there.

David shared this photo of the baby 10 days later. 

 

No other eggs seem to want to hatch.

 

PIGS:

 

It rained while we were there and the poor pregnant pig had nowhere dry to lay.

Grandpa and Uncle David repaired her roof so her babies could be born in a dry spot.

Grandma saves fruit rinds and other food scraps to share with Lulu.

 

Lulu knows she is going to get treats! 

Grandma showed Megan how to feed the pig without losing fingers.





 

This week Lulu gave birth to ELEVEN baby piglets!

 

I am SO glad I only had one at a time!!!

Isn't he cute?

 

Uncle Devon said the piglets are extremely cute and walk around making pig noises.  I wish we could have seen them!

 

DOGS:

Tank loves Uncle David!

 

Tank and Shadow run all over the property but are especially fond of the shady spots under the trees.

Sometimes they even share the shady spots with Grandma.

 

There are three other little dogs:  Leo, Tucker and Missy.  However, they wouldn't stand or sit still long enough to get a picture.

Progress Is A Lot of Work

For the Fourth of July we visited Grandpa and Grandma K on the family farm.  In just a few months they have made tremendous progress.

ORCHARD:

The natural brush in the background was everywhere.

They cleared it all to plant the orchard.  What used to look like this....

Now looks like this....

 

And this....

The tubing protects the trees from the native animals, who strip the bark and kill the trees.

The colored tags tell them how often to water each particular tree. 

Some are daily; others are every 2 or 3 days.

GRAPES AND BERRIES:

Berry patch

Looking good!

Electric fence keeps the native animals from eating tender plants and fruit.

Grapes

I see some!

 

VEGETABLE GARDEN:

Grandpa has a huge garden.

Sweet corn, feed corn, all kinds of beans, onions, potatoes, peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.

Uncle David showing off their progress.

Grandma and Heather supervising Grandpa's work

Squirrel Fun

Several years ago we went to visit my brother David.  There are lots of squirrels in his neighborhood.  My girls were fascinated by them!

Nancy buys huge bags of peanuts at Costco and puts one on each fence post every day.  The girls were thrilled to help deposit the peanuts.  They knew the squirrels would come soon afterwards.

The squirrels are pretty tame.  They let David feed them peanuts. 

One even came close to Emily.

David's grandkids and my girls decided to remove the shells for squirrels.

Megan tried to hand the squirrel the peanut.

Heather had better luck when we put the peanuts in her palm.

Feeding the squirrels, or "tree rats" as David calls them, is one of their favorite memories of this vacation.  David often teases the girls about the squirrels missing them.  (The squirrels got a whole lot more peanuts than usual while we were there.  Ha Ha)

David often sends us packages, and lately he has been drawing squirrels somewhere on the box.  The girls are almost as excited for the drawings as they are for the contents of the boxes!  Below are the two most recent squirrel drawings.

What fun it is to have this "inside joke" with Uncle David!

Son of a Gun

David with DJ and Princess Lily

My older brother David lives in Colorado, as well. His pride and joy are his two grandchildren, DJ (Donovan, Jr.) and Lily, usually referred to as Princess Lily. We had so much fun with them when we were in Colorado last summer. DJ is so smart and loved to hang out with us.

Lily loves anything pink or anything with Disney Princesses on it (hence, her nickname). We went to Cold Stone Creamery one night. I asked Lily what kind of ice cream she was going to get. She said, "Uh, PINK!" Of course. I should have known!

David and his wife Nancy have three Rotweiller dogs that are spoiled rotten. They are like children to David and Nancy. In fact, David refers to his dog Spawn as DJ's Uncle Spawn. He has DJ convinced that Spawn is truly his dad's brother. It was pretty funny to listen to them.

In fact, the girls were highly amused by just about everything their Uncle David said. His wife Nancy is affectionately referred to as "The Redhead." My girls found that hysterically funny for some reason. The dogs failed to bark when we came home from Uncle Devon's late one night. The next morning David chastized them, telling them they were a "sorry excuse for guard dogs." It was like they knew what they had done wrong because after that they barked any time we entered a room. David called Megan "chickie" the whole time we were there. One day Heather shared a story with Uncle David. Instead of saying, "Wow, that's pretty neat," David said, "Well, son of a gun!" Heather laughed for months over that phrase. And Emily is convinced that Uncle David is a worse tease than their grandfather....and that takes some doing!

Nancy and David