This summer, my brother and his wife came to visit. They ha e two boys, each a little older than my boys. We all had a great time. Their oldest, Walker, is very artistic. He was actually more into his own things, while my boys played with Noah. This was definately a case of city meets country. Thanks for making us a part of your summer, Chad and Allyson!
Take note that Noah and Charley look like twins! Also, Charley LOVES Chad. It was soo cute, Charley would always cuddle up to him.
So out here, baseball is a big deal. They have all different leagues and teams. They have an opening snf closing ceremonies. Coaches, team managers, uniforms, concession stands, trophies, nice fields...the works. And it is really like that because its the only sport out here. So, Colt has been in tball, then this past year he was actually on the baseball team. They did pitching machines, a huge difference from the last year of tball. So here are some pics. I'm so Proud of Colt, he is doing so good, and he's exactly where he needs to be!
P.s. the pic with the kids at the horse is literally right there next to the baseball fields... Horses watching the game! And all the little kids go feed the horses their snacks during practice.
I am just going to post pics on here in no particular order. This Blogger app is literally so basic. I can only type something, then add pics at the end of that.
Yeay. We are moving to such a cute nicer home. Well, we've been in Anza for a couple of years now and we like it. We have been living in a double wide on ten acres of weeds, basically. No garage, no porch, no nothing to make it cute or homey. And we've been fine with that. We have a great ability to just adapt to things and we have been more interested in the experience here than what things look like. It's been in the last few months that we've maybe wanted something more. So we found a super cute home on 5 acres, which for what we want, is plenty of space. It's a bigger house, ON A FOUNDATION (that means no creaky floors :-)) with a two car garage and a barn. It also has a beautiful back porch with a nice overhang that overlooks the valley. AND there is irrigation around the property where they actually have flowers and trees and grapes! It also has an awesome 3 stall barn, and an arena for riding Diamond.
So here's the deal in Anza, everybody comes here for different reasons (we won't get into the druggie reasons). Some families love the open space for quad and motorcycle racing. Some families are horse lovers, and some of the horse lovers run horse rescues. Some people don't have animals or quads, for example, our neighbor with the big beautiful brick house. He grows acres of grapes and makes his own wine. The process is amazing. So, we came here and just dug in. Within the first year of being here, we accumulated more than 30 chickens, including incubating eggs and raising baby chicks. We brought home what would be the biggest pains in our butts, two goats, on our laps in the car. We raised cattle and butchered them for beef. One of which was butchered by an Iranian right on our property who was praying to Allah with every cut. He hauled away his four quarters of young beef in a mini van. We raised a hog for meat...colt and charley loved watching the butcher come out for that one. The boys understand that God put animals on this earth for our own health. But we need to be respectful with how we raise and butcher them too. We helped our mama pig farrow a litter of piglets on the coldest night of the year in the middle of a blizzard. Note to self: Do NOT have piglets in the winter again. We also cultivated the land for a very successful 20x25 ft garden. Where I learned to pickle, can, Blanche, freeze and properly store and EAT the fruits of our labors. We tilled and planted 2 acres of hay. And for all of our animals, we built their fencing and shelters. Most of which was done in the blistering cold with storms approaching. Heaven forbid we actually take a nice day to do our outdoor chores.
So here's out conclusion: We love having land and animals, but we want to have a fresh start and do it the right way. We have this amazing ability to let things just roll off our back, and not be bothered by things. We are for sure not materialistic, we would rather have the experience of something than have nice stuff. So anyway, here, with just digging right into everything, we've realized that we do things in a jankey way. Our motto for this place really should have been, " That'll do" or "That's good for now". We also started to realize how poorly and how not right things were done around here.
So anyway, we found a new place which has given us a total morale boost. We want to do things in a better, right way. And we are looking at this next move as a fresh new start. So here's to being just a little better in everything we do...
We got a horse named Diamond. No we weren't in the market for a horse. They are high maintenance and expensive. But this lady, Rhonda, from church who totally knows horses thought that Diamond would be perfect for our family. And she really needed a new home for her. It was someone else's anyway and she wasn't able to care for her anymore. So we told Rhonda that we were very cautious about just getting a horse, we know nothing about them. Also, so far we've raised our animals for meat, and for our own good. Horses are more recreational. Anyway, Rhonda told us that if its not working out, then we can give Diamond back.
So we thought this would be a perfect time for us to see if maybe a horse is a good fit for us. So far its been just ok. I mean, Diamond is totally broke (that's horse language for totally trained and rideable). She is sweet, calm around the kids, has never shown aggression. I mean, she's exactly what anyone would want in a horse. We haven't fallen in live with her. We have barely riden her. We had to go out and learn and get all the riding stuff first. Great deals on Craigslist. Nathan has gotten used to riding her, but me and the boys haven't. I feel like since she's good with Nathan, it needs to be him leading the way when it comes to us getting on her. Anyway, here are pics
I cannot believe I haven't Blogged about baby piglets yet. Well, it was probably better to wait anyhow. When they were born, there was a lot of drama and emotion and things that just didn't go right. We were sad to lose half of mama pigs litter, but its all learning. We will do things much differently next time. Also, she had her piglets on the coldest night of the year, in the middle of a blizzard and a couple piglets died because of that. Others died because mama squished them. There was also a ton of straw in there and when we went out to check on them, mama was rooting around the straw, burying the piglets, they were suffocating under the deep layers of straw. It was our first time and her first time, in horrible cold stormy conditions. Ugh. But we have 5 sweet little guys and they have been such a joy for us!
So we had our feeder pig slaughtered a couple weeks ago. It was very cool seeing the process. Bernadino is the guy in town that comes out to do the service. And he is just a down home country dude that's been doing this all his life. He was very respectful and clean about what he was doing. He was super friendly and he even threw Hank a pig hoof! Haha. Also, the neighbor kids were over watching the whole thing. It was so stinkin country, I loved it.
