Spring is just around the corner around here, and I am getting excited!!!!! I've been over winter for about well....3 months now, so warmer weather and longer days are definitely welcome in my book! 
We are still in "calving" season over here but it has slowed down a lot! We have only been getting about 8-12 calves a day now and we have about 150 cows who need to calve yet. So it's slowing down, but it's still chuggin'. 
Let's see, what's been new around here: 
1. Paul got a haircut yesterday! (hasn't had one in three months......) That was fun. Eugene's wife cuts hair out of her house, and we were able to go there after work and she did a wonderful job! Hopefully it won't take us three months to make another appointment!!! 
2. Baby is healthy and growing daily!!!! Morning sickness is officially gone and food is now my friend again :) I will probably go to the doctor again soon to get some blood work done, but thats it for now. Still no scheduled ultrasound yet, but when we get one, I can't wait to share the pictures!!!!!! I'm pretty sure we won't find out the gender of the little tiny human...but I change my mind alot.....it's a no-go right now. I should start a questionnaire! What did you do? What do you think I should do?  :)
3. Last weekend we dog-sat for the cutest little dog, his name is Monty. He's pretty great. Slightly naughty, but that may attribute to his cuteness. I'll post a picture below. 
4. Paul got me TICKET TO RIDE!!!!!!! For those of you who know what this is, it's pretty much the best board game ever!!!! We played it all the time with some of our best friends back home (We miss you!!), and missed it sooooo much!!!!! Now we  finally have a small bit of entertainment here at our house. So our past weekend was filled with Pizza Hut, Monty, popcorn, cow plops (nobake cookies), and Ticket to Ride. It was pretty great :)  You see, you can only play this train game, as well call it, while eating junk food, It's an unwritten rule. I'm foreseeing a similar weekend ahead. Perhaps we'll step it up and invite some friends to play with us! :) 
5. This week monday we got the BEST PACKAGE EVER from my madre, papa, and grandma! (And Nick and Katie threw in a special something too! STARBUCKS!!!) This package contained my favorite food in the whole world: Shape Macaroni and Cheese!!!!!! I thought perhaps as I got older I would outgrow my love for the childish food...but alas....absence has made the heart grow fonder, and my love for it has increased :)  Needless to say, I have eaten it everyday since the package arrived, and now need to figure out how to ration out the rest of the boxes!!! Not only was my favorite food in the package, but my favorite candy was as well, Droopies!!!! I don't know if thats how you spell it, but thats what I call them. (It's the little double salted black dutch licorice...some of you may be vomiting in your mouth... but I know others of you are jealous....) And of course, it also contained my favorite cookies, Stroopwafels!!!! A couple of preggo shirts and vitamins, notes from home, some good ole' pizza sauce, starbucks giftcard, coffee candies, and some great Team Cd's made for the Best package ever. :) Thank You so much!!!! 
6. Hmm...what else, oh did you know that EVERYONE IS HAVING A BABY!?!?!?!!? At least that is what is seems like. You all need to stop it and wait a bit so that some can be born when we get back!!!!!! :) No, I'm just kidding. I am so happy that our little baby has and will have so many cousins, second cousins, and friends to play with, and I am very excited for ALL of you!!!! Congrats Congrats Congrats Congrats!!!!  God has truly blessed each one of you! You know who you are, and I'll wait to post it on here, until I know it's ok to share with the world!!

Ok, that turned into quite the rambling session...lo siento. I get a bit excited when it comes to things I love!!!
Love you and miss you all! God Bless! 

Hello all! I decided to finally put up some pictures of a few of the calves on the farm, so check them out under the Diary of a Dairy! I realize that I'm officially FAILING at the 365project....whoopsies, I don't think I've updated that since middle of June....so I'll try and be more diligent and put some on the blog. Who knows maybe I'll rekindle my love for the 365 project and start it again later...we'll see. I've actually been sick for the past few days and have been unable to perform my duties as calf rearer...I feel like I'm failing my babies :( so sorry kids, I'll be back soon! But at least it gives me the time to put up some pictures and maybe a video if I get around to it!n I'm also heading to the doctor today for some baby checkups and to get my little flu bug under control so that should be exciting and hopefully very informative! We would appreciate your prayers for this appointment to go well! 

A couple of weeks ago Paul built a new garden area behind our garage, which is pronounced "gairidge" here and it looks really great! The only thing planted in it now are some sugar peas!!!!! Which I am super excited about!!!! Later in the spring we'll plant some green beans and other yummies there. We officially have 3 small garden areas now, I think we'll be all set :) Oh yes, and we got some hail too here the other day! I thought I'd put up a picture just because I had one. 

So if you are wondering what I actually "do" here is a little example of me feeing one pen of calves. 

Whew! Well, I survived my first week of calving and am now halfway through the second week!!!! 
For those of you, like myself, who don't know much about farming, let me explain a bit about calving, for the non-farmer person to understand. Basically, all the cows that we have on the farm here (about 770) all get bred at the same time (which is usually around the first of October and takes about 6 weeks to breed them all). This means that all the cows get preggo and we have all the little baby cows within about 6 weeks of each other! Basically, things get pretty hectic. The cows are separated by age (I think) in different herds so usually the heifers (which is cow that hasn't had a calf yet) will calve first as they were bred first and so on and so forth. So Paul and all the other farm workers are running around like crazy picking up calves, bringing the mommy in to get milked, making sure all the cows are healthy, milking the cows that have already calved, helping cows deliver if they are having trouble, moving fences, fixing and moving irrigation, treating sick cows......and the list goes on and on. 

My job is a bit different. I get to take care of all the babies! It has definitely been a learning experience to say the least. Right now we have about 130 calves on the farm. Today we had about 24 come in! Thankfully, (seriously an answer to prayer) Trish has been helping me out at nights because all the new calves are brought in to the calf sheds at night. Most have had a good feeding from the mom's, but it's still important to make sure they get that yummy first colostrum feeding right away. We have to teach them how to drink out of our little feeders, which is a pretty difficult task seeing as our feeders are nothing like udders, so the help if very much appreciated. Steph, the farm manager here, did the calf rearing last year, so she is very knowledgable and very experienced with calfs. She helps me out ALOT!  I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of all these little buggars, but still am very very very grateful for the extra help. 
I have a pretty sweet "milk-mobile" that I drive around with the milk on the back of it. We just got this car back yesterday after being in the shop, and before that everything was in buckets, which meant a lot of lifting and a lot of driving around warming up milk in buckets of hot water, picking up different milk., going back and forth......it was  a pain (literally). BUT now that the milk-mobile is here, it should make things ALOT easier! It already has gone way smoother......other than the fact that the milk warmer broke last night (my first time using it) and the thermostat decided that it didn't know when to stop being hot, and chose to burn all of my yummy first colostrum. So I had a giant drum full of burnt milk....which really just looked liked cottage cheese. It was....d.i.s.g.u.s.t.i.n.g. Oh and the smell......I won't even go there. But lets just say that this "stuff" was so thick I could barely get the milk warmer out of it! Oh and the warmer burnt up as well, probably not the best thing to happen, but looking back now, it's kindof funny. Let's just hope that doesn't happen again! 


Well I think I'll end it here, I really will try to post some pictures of the little babies, especially while I still think their cute, a few hundred more....and we'll see what I think about calves....

P.S. this past week was so many people's birthdays! So Happy Birthday to my nephew Lance!!!!! WOO HOO you are 6, you now have to use TWO hands to show people how old you are!!!!!!  to my nephew Payton who is now 4!!!!!!!!!! (who thinks kids grow up way to fast??? Me!!!!) and To my wonderful Mama! who is 39!!!!!!! just kidding, but she looks it :-)  I hope you all had wonderful birthdays! I wish I could have been there to celebrate with you all and eat lots of cake! Next year!!!! Oh and Happy Anniversary coming up to Nick and Katie!!!! Love you all!