I'm cold and there's a goat in my living room.

At least that's what I was saying a couple weeks ago when I woke up to this:

It's just wrong! WRONG WRONG WRONG! Living in Texas (south central Texas) means you should never have to walk outside and see snow on the ground. Ever. But there is was, and everything was frozen - including my feet as I slogged through it to feed the animals - and my winter garden? Toast. By Thursday of that week, the kids could walk across the small pond and the big one was iced completely over as well.

Here is John taking water out to the cows - two 5 gallon buckets at a time! I can't tell you how many countless buckets of water we took out to the various animals - sometimes several times a day! I guess farmers up north have this all worked out but we just don't expect to find every source of water completely frozen up. We are still in the midst of repairing all the lines that broke at the guest house and the processing building - what a mess!

We had just gotten a little goat (Billy) and of course we couldn't leave the little guy out in the cold so he came to live in the house with us for his first week - luckily he is just the sweetest thing and can't bear to be away from us for two seconds - literally. If we walked into the other room for even a couple seconds, he would start bleating loudly until someone came back into view. We had to do school in the living room all week to keep him quiet. It was fine with us since we were all huddled around the fireplace anyway.

It was sooo cold that I had to rise the bread in front of the fireplace! Very pioneer of me don't you think? One thing I am going to miss is sitting by the fireplace reading a book while the cold wind blows outside.....aaaaand... now I'm over it. Bring on the hot weather.

Another new baby! Welcome Samuel - bull calf born on the 16th.

That night I was in bed and after John came in from tucking in the kids, he told me Ian said something strange. John says "Ian said when he was feeding the cows today, he noticed that Abigail and her mom were off by themselves and that Abigail was wet and smaller." We looked at each other and as I lept out of bed, John ran to get the lights. We rushed out to the pasture and sure enough, we had a new calf. We put Samuel and his mother in the corral, treated his umbilical cord with iodine and gave the momma some range cubes. We had a good laugh about Ian's lack of perception - Abigail was wet and smaller indeed - and a different color!