Snow!

So, this past weekend we had a snow storm. It started snowing around 3:30 Friday afternoon and didn't stop until after midnight. We had already planned on going to my mom's house to eat dinner that night. So we went and before we ate we went looking for the baby goats and took snow pictures.

This is in the pasture with the goats looking towards the cow's pasture.



After dinner we stayed and watched a movie and it kept snowing. This is looking out the front door to my mom's side walk.



When we got home we took a picture of the front yard from the driveway.



When we woke up in the morning we took a picture of the back yard from our bedroom window.



When we got home the night before the next door neighbors had been making a snowman, so we took a picture of it the next morning too.



That day we went to my mom's house and Shawn made a snowman. We had lost most of our snow to melting by then, but she still has plenty. We had only gotten 7 inches, but she had gotten 8 1/2 inches.



This is a side view showing the little hat the snowman had on it.



So, we no longer have any snow, but there are still small patches on the ground at my parents house.

More Baby Goats

So, it's that time of year. The goat population has exploded on the Gunter farm. There were four baby goats born one weekend that got really cold and only one of them survived. Then the following week five more babies were born, two sets of twins and one single baby. Then that weekend an animal attacked one of the babies and killed it and another baby has disappeared. The next day two more were born. So as of now, there are six babies.


This is the poor baby that didn't survive the animal attack. This was the only picture that I had of a baby with Shawn. It was cold and Shawn ended up borrowing a flannel jacket I had left at the house in case I needed it.


This was one of a set of twins. They were so cute and tiny and were shivering.



There is an old john boat that my dad has in the field. The babies have decided it is a good place to hide from us. They all eventually ended up under there to huddle for warmth.



Before relocating to the boat, these two babies were hiding under the disc implement for my dad's old tractor. He had a tarp laying across it and it kept the wind off of them.



This was taken during the snow storm. These two babies had some how gotten under on old shed out in the pasture that is only about 6 inches off the ground. I had to just set the camera down and hope they got in the picture. They are facing the other way so you can't see the head.



All in all, there has been a lot of activity at my parent's farm.

Updates

I haven't written a post in sooo long. There hasn't been anything very newsworthy happening and I have been kinda lazy. Then the only big piece of news we had in the fall was just depressing. I will add pictures later when I am at home.

First of all, there was another baby cow born in the fall. It is a very healthy baby boy. And, for a change, it was all red rather than red with white splotches on its face. I can't even remember if the last round of baby goats had been born before my last post, but 4 more have been born, although one died after about two months or so. We aren't sure what happened, but my dad and my brother found it one day when they noticed it wasn't hanging around the other goats.

Secondly, we lost our cat in October. I had been planning on writing a post about it at the time, but every time I thought about it I would get too emotional and not even attempt it. Our cat was an outdoor cat that liked to spend time inside with us, but loved being outside even more. So, one day we noticed that she hadn't come up to eat that morning and looked for her that night when we got home from work. We found her pretty badly injured in our yard. It seemed that she had been hit by a car. After the fact we found out that my father-in-law actually saw it happen, but didn't know that it was our cat. Anyway, we took her to the emergency vet and had to have her put to sleep. We couldn't afford for them to do anything to try to save her and she seemed hurt badly enough that to save her would take a lot. She had completely broken all her bones in one leg and seemed to be bleeding internally. It was a very horrible decision for us to make, but she was in a lot of pain. Even though it has been a while I am still getting teary eyed just writing about it. We plan on getting another cat in a few years, but not for a while. We can't afford the up front vet costs to properly care for a cat and will be better able to handle all of that in a few years. Meanwhile, all the neighborhood cats are sorry for the loss because that means we no longer have food on our porch for them to come steal. I will probably write a separate post about our cat eventually, but as I am a sensitive emotional mess, I won't do that for a while yet.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were pretty uneventful. We saw almost all of our family and had a good time. There was a round of all the people we were related to getting the nasty croupy cold (including each of us). Then, right before Christmas, Shawn's entire family had a nasty stomach bug. Thankfully we didn't catch that. Shawn's birthday was uneventful, just the way he likes it. He doesn't like the idea of getting older, so he would rather not really celebrate. His parents took us out to eat, and since it was New Year's Eve, we went back to their house to watch fireworks being shot off by Whitney's friends.

I did actually make another baby blanket. That makes 6 in about 14 months time. The thing is that I know about twice that many people that have had babies in that time period. I also just found out that one of my friends is expecting their second baby, another friend is expecting her first baby, and I am still trying (ugh!).

Speaking of that frustration, it has been eight and a half months and I am starting to wonder if there is a problem. I know that I should not jump to that conclusion because it took my mom 2 years to get pregnant the first time and a year to get pregnant the second time, and I know other people that tried for just as long or longer. However, when it is you trying to get pregnant, it seems as though it is never going to happen. So when I got my period last month (on Christmas, not the present I was looking for) I broke down and cried for about ten minutes. It was very disheartening.

This whole frustration over trying is probably another reason I haven't posted anything recently. Almost every else's blog that I read is about their newest baby, so I just feel like mine is nothing great to read for anyone. There are only so many cow and goat pictures I can show before people get tired of them. I would just like to have some better news to spread to the world than baby animals being born and cat deaths. So, for now, I will probably continue to post only sporadically.

Zoo and Riverwalk

Sunday afternoon we went to the zoo with our friends George and Shanna. George had gotten free visitor's passes from someone he knew that has a membership. It was drizzling for a while, but after we went into the ARC (aquarium and reptile complex) it didn't rain anymore. It took long enough that we didn't really get to see all the animals because by the time we got back near the front of the zoo a lot of them had already gone inside.

This is the new baby flamingo. He just kinda stood around trying not to fall over.



This was one of the koalas. They were both sound asleep.



This was the baby giraffe. He was running around looking funny.



This was one of the big Galapagos tortoises. He came up to the fence and just stared at everyone for a while.



This is one of the meerkats. It was very cute and kept running around from place to place. This was when I had the camera, so there were tons of pitures of meerkats. I sorta have a thing for them.



This is the gorillas. They all tend to sit with their backs to the glass so you just get a good view of their back. The other one was sitting right next to the glass kinda lounging on his side. He has been in that same place the last couple of times I have been there.



Back at the end of June we went to the Riverwalk in Cayce and West Columbia. It was hot and we were both soaked by the time we left. For those of you not from around here, the Riverwalk is a park that is essentially a trail next to the Congaree River. There are trees along some of it (mostly in Cayce) and the trail goes under all the birdges going across to Columbia.

This is a mural under the Blossom St bridge.




This is a tree that was hanging out over the water. Here Shawn is with the tree.



Here I am with the tree.



Here is a picture of the river, and the rocks.



Here is a picture of the Gervias St bridge. In my opinion it is the coolest. It has the old timey light fixtures on it that have been restored.

New additions and such

There have been some new additions to the Gunter farm. Almost three weeks ago two new babies were born. Then this past week more new babies were born.

These were the first babies, both boys. This was the day after they were born.



These are the newest babies when they were about 4 days old.



This is a new gladiolus that started blooming this week.



This is the newest stray cat that has taken to eating our cat's food. She seems very friendly, even wanting to come inside. This is Jonathan holding her.



The baby recently got a new accessory, a high chair.



Then Shawn thought it would be a good idea to give him ice cream (he is not going to be doing that when we have kids, I can tell you that).



And the newest change for Junior is his lack of hair on the back of his head. It is kinda funny since the rest of his hair is so long.

Holiday Weekend

My dad has sold off many of our goats, including the billy goat (mainly because he was very mean to all the other goats). A few weeks later he went and bought a new billy goat. It is still pretty young and the other goats are treating him like he doesn't exist, or won't let him eat when they are around. Hopefully when he gets bigger he will become more confident and they will accept him as part of their herd. This is the new billy.



When I came to the fence to take his picture one of our other goats came to see if I was giving out food. They always expect to be fed when they see someone outside the house.



Then we had some tomato peels to feed the cows. They are pretty funny to watch coming to the fence because you can get them to run. If you have never seen a cow run, it is pretty funny. I have a video I'll try to upload on here of the first one that came running up.



This is the cow running at us.



This week we went to see Shawn's parents. While we were there I took more pictures of the baby. He just turned 4 months old and is fascinated with his feet. He also rolls over and pushes up off the ground (but still can't crawl). He can sit up for a few seconds, but still hasn't mastered that skill yet.



He gets in his walker and pushes around some (mostly going backwards). Shawn took his feet and started moving them to play with him in the walker.

Miscelaneous

We have had a couple wildlife experiences lately. One morning there was turtle outside next to the steps. The cat didn't really know what to make of it. She would sniff it and when her nose would touch it she would jump away. Then she would start sniffing it again.



Then on our way to his parents house we passed a snake crossing the road. We stopped because Shawn has never met a snake he didn't want to at least get a closer look at, much less touch. So he held the snakes tail and let him crawl away. It is the coolest looking snake I have seen in a while.



Then, we have been awaiting our pastor's retirement. Pastor Fowler has been at our church for just shy of 39 years. Other than when I was in college I have never had another pastor. Then I have had Mrs. Fowler as a Sunday school teacher since I graduated from high school. She has always been a wonderful friend to our family and thought of Shawn and I as her other children. So I wanted to at least make something for her, if not for the pastor also. So I made a shawl for her and a bookmark for him. Then the Friday before their last Sunday we had them over for dinner. They were here for over two hours just talking and eating. It was a great time of fun and fellowship.



This is us with Mrs. Fowler after church the next to last Sunday they were there. I am laughing because the pastor was behind my mom (who was taking the picture) making faces and sticking bunny ears up to the camera.



This is a picture of the pastor on his last Sunday. We didn't get the best picture, but there was a photographer there from the newspaper so we got a copy of the paper for the article and pictures. Then on the church newsletter there were some more pictures.



As I said, he has been at our church for a long time. Since before my parents had even gotten married. He knows both Shawn and I, and our families, and knew our grandparents. Him leaving our church was very hard because he and his wife felt like a part of our families. I hated to see them go, but he certainly deserves to have a nice retirement. We will sorely miss him and anticipate what the future holds for the church.