Another Day

Today was fairly normal. I worked on figuring out what we are going to do for our first official year of homeschooling. Tirzah will be in Kindergarten and I am hoping to tag Azariah along with her for Pre-K. Then this afternoon we went to Clifton to see some of our friends new baby goats.

Before we went to our friends house we stopped at Murdoch's, a ranch supply store. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw Grandma and Grandpa's car. I figured they were at Murdoch's getting something, so we went in the store to find them and also buy a tarp. As we looked we saw baby chicks and found the tarps I needed. Tirzah then saw the toy section and asked me if she could look at the toys and I said no. She then said "I know why mommy, because people are more important than toys, so we need to try and find Grandma and Grandpa."

I was so happy with her. We have talked to her multiple times about her love for things over her love for people, so it is always a precious gem when one of the children brings the point home on their own. We did meet up with Grandma and Grandpa in the parking lot. They had actually gone to McDonald's to get some lunch, that is why we didn't find them in the store.

We then went to our friends house. She is the lady who sold me my goats, her Nigerian Dwarf Goat had three kids yesterday so we went and saw them. They were very cute and of course Tirzah wanted to take them all home. I then tattooed the ears of all four goats. Green ink is still on my hands and Zebadiah's legs. Zeb loves the goats also. Tirzah and Azariah played with her youngest boy, John, and they had a blast. Tirzah said John would get a toad and through it in the pond and say "Bye, bye." I guess Azariah and Tirzah thought that was really funny. He also took a goose egg and threw it.

I am still waiting for Mocha to kid. She will have at least two kids and possibly three. I am in prayer that it would be very soon because we are going on a trip next week and would like the kids to be a week old or so before we leave. I will post pictures when they arrive.

Tractors, Goats, Water, and Rubberizer

What a beautiful day it was today. I started early with milking the goats. Then some time with the Lord and then back out to the goats. I decided to trim the goats hooves. While I was trimming Sugar and Mocha's hooves, my mom was using the little tractor to stop the water from the field from flooding our driveway. Well, as she was doing this the front tractor tires sank into the mud. She tried to get out, but she was stuck. Azariah and Tirzah were riding on the tractor with her and all of a sudden Azariah started crying hysterically. He is hard to understand even when he isn't crying so it is harder to understand him when he is crying. Therefore, she had to get him calmed down to figure out what he was crying about.

Azariah: "The tractor is stuck..." This said through tears and sniffs.
Gramgee: "Azariah it is O.K. we will get it out with the backhoe."
Azariah: "Oh, O.K." and he was fine. I think he actually was excited about getting to use the Backhoe. But that would have to wait till later, Gramgee had to get to work.

Notice the front wheels stuck deep in the mud

I finished trimming the does hooves and then I went to my bucks. One is very friendly. He was bottle fed as a baby and will come up to you and try to kiss you in his own special way. I trimmed his hooves first. He did a good job of standing still for me. Then came my other buck, Minco. He does not like to be caught and even with the grain to lure him, I missed his collar twice and then he didn't fall for the grain trick again. So, here I am running around the pen trying to catch a silly goat. Tirzah comes out and asks if they can paint. I said yes, as long as they didn't make a mess. (Yea, what mom believes that two pre-schoolers left to themselves with tube paint won't make a mess.) It at least allowed me to finish catching the silly goat and trimming his hooves. After about 10 minutes I finally catch Minco when he went into the goat house. He did well when I trimmed his hooves also.

Then I went into the house. Let us just say, it wasn't a huge mess, but when your daughter comes out before you get inside and says that Azariah is a super hero, you know something must be up. Azariah is in the bathroom leaving black hand prints on everything, including daddies toothbrush. He has black paint all over his face. But what is he doing? Is he trying to clean up the mess? No, he is trying to put toothpaste on his toothbrush to brush his teeth. The mirror is slimed with black paint, the front of the clothes washer has hand prints all over it and the toilet also has hand prints. Overall they did a good job at containing the mess.

Azariah as a Superhero

Gramgee finally gets home in late afternoon and it is time to rescue the tractor. She gets the backhoe and I go out to see how I can help. After some manuvering we finally have the tractor free. I rinsed the mud off the tractor and then sat down outside to read for a little while before milking and supper time. I milked my goat and then went in to get supper going.

Rescuing the Tractor with the Backhoe

As I started to put the ingredients in a small food processor for a marinade for the meat, my daughter comes running in saying, "Azariah can't get the water shut off." I knew they were in the barn and the faucet in the barn does not have a drain under it so I run out to the barn to shut it off. However, it wasn't the faucet by the door, it is the one where all the hay is. If you don't know, wet hay means moldy hay, which means bad hay. So I get it shut off and then take a broom to sweep out the water along with my children. We got that cleaned up and I saw Azariah had a spray bottle of Armour shine for cars. I informed him to put it back and he was not to get anything out of that stall. (One of the stalls in the barn is a storage place for car stuff that came from my dad's car lot when he downsized). The children came back to the house with me to put their hoes away, and then the ran back out to play.

So I start putting the ingredients together once again for my meat. And it wasn't very long before I hear crying from my son and my daughter comes bursting through the door saying, "Azariah sprayed some stuff in his eye." When I see Azariah he has brown all over his face and is holding his eye with an equally brown hand. I sit him on the sink to start cleaning some of it off and send Tirzah out to the barn to find what he sprayed in his eye. She arrives back with a can of stuff to rubberize your undercarriage with. It says "If contact with eyes, flush with water for fifteen minutes and consult your Physician." So I then sent Tirzah to find Gramgee and I had her call poison control. While she doing that I have Azariah in the shower and am spraying water in his eyes. Have you ever tried to spray water in a crying/screamming three year olds eyes, while he is fighting to get away. He was naked, so rather slippery. It was not fun, but kind of comical. Gramgee comes in with the phone and asks does his eye still hurt? How do you get a straight answer out of a screaming three year old who wants you to stop anyway. It took a little while, but he did say his eye didn't hurt anymore. So the lady at poision control says that should be good. Well, I gave Azariah a shower after that and realized then that the orange marker on his leg from two days ago was not from a Crayola marker, but from a Sharpie marker, so he has some kind of patroleum based product on his face and orange Sharpie marker on his legs.

Azariah with the remains of Rubberizer on his face

Finally I get back to dinner and am able to get it put together. Instead of getting dinner ready by the time Gil got home, I was only 1/4 of the way through with dinner preparations.

Later when I was talking to Tirzah, I asked her, "Tirzah what was Azariah trying to spray with the can?"
She answered "He was trying to spray me." I was not able to contain my laugher as I thought of my son holding up the spray can trying to push it down and having it aimed at himself instead of his sister. Just another day of the joy of children. Thank you Lord for your goodness to us.

Mud, Keys and Flowers...

Zebadiah, loves going outside. He will go out every chance he has and find any water that he can. So this morning when I let him out to roam, he found the mud puddle in the driveway. You know how a suction can be created and your shoes suck off your feet. Well, I was watching him and he looked stuck in the mud. Later I went out and sure enough his shoe was stuck in the mud puddle. He had also tried the delicacy of mud. Tirzah and Azariah joined in the fun as well. The little mud puddle wasn't good enough, so they took their little hoes and rakes that Gramgee bought them and made their own ditches and filled them up with water. They were soaked and muddy. Tirzah put on her swim suit, but later when I checked on Azariah he was naked from the waist down. I did laundry today, and after the mud baths I have about as much laundry now as I did before I did the laundry.

This afternoon the Lord was so gracious and allowed me to find my car keys. I figured they were in the garage, but if you could see all the stuff in the garage you would understand why it would be hard to find them. Once I found them I came in and Tirzah, Azariah and I prayed and thanked God for allowing us to find them. What a gracious God we serve.

After we put the goats in this evening, I wanted Tirzah to find the other hoe and rake. She found them at the far end of our little goat field. While she was their she yelled at me and said something I couldn't understand. Then she yelled again, I couldn't understand her and then a final time, which I couldn't understand either. When she arrived back at the garage she had the rake, hoe and a handful of flowers.

"Mommy, I found the tools, I saw some ducks and look at these pretty flowers. They smell really good. Smell them mommy."

These are the flowers she picked. I am so grateful to the Lord that she looks and admires the Lord's creation. May we all stop and smell the flowers.

The saga of the lost keys... And One Night with the King

Well, yesterday I described my son taking the car keys out to the tractor to try and start it. Well, at the time, I had the thought, I should probably go get the keys so he doesn't do somethig with them. However, Azariah has been doing well at remembering what he did with things... at least he had been doing well.

He lost the keys! Yep, he can tell me what he did after the red tractor, which was to go to the blue tractor, he can even tell me he went in the garage to try and start the four-wheeler with the keys after that, but he has brain fog after that. Three-year-olds aren't the best rememberers. We have looked everywhere and I pray that the Lord would be gracious and allow us to find them soon.

Gil and I also started watching and only he finished watching One Night with the King. It is based on the story of Esther in the Bible. But I don't really know that I can even say "based" on it, because it only uses the same names as the characters in the Bible. I was tired and bored with it so we went to bed instead of finishing it and then Gil finished it today. The story of Esther is such an amazing display of God's sovereign hand at work in His people, that it can't get any better than what the Bible records. As often happens, the film writers seemed to be afraid that the biblical story wasn't exciting enough, and attempted to make it more exciting, but at the expense of accuracy, believability, and in the end, excitement also. The hollywood version compared to the biblical acount became silly and dull in comparison, and also lacks the wonderful hand of God. What did I expect it to be like? About like it was, but there is always the hope that it would be different. When you try to mesh Western Twenty-First century culture and world-view into a film about a culture and world-view so radically different from our own it will never be accurate, and seldom very good. I reference The Nativity Story as well. It had much more merrit than One Night with the King, but the way they portrayed the culture at the time of Christ's birth was woefully wrong with a notable example of the modern feminist mindset given to Mary.

Oh yea, one more thing, if you want to mess up a chicken concoction, just add some canned peas to the mix, it is bound to make it worse than it would have been.

Wet pants?

It rained a lot last night and everything is wet, including the seat cushion for the tractor. Well our three-year-old grabbed the car keys and headed for the tractor. (He knows it takes a key to start the tractor, who cares if it is a car key or not, it's still a key.) Anyway, he climbs up on the tractor and places his hand on the wet soggy tractor seat cushion. After realizing he probably didn't want to sit on that side of it, he flips it over and discovers that side it wet also. Have you ever heard about the fact that putting your hands in water can make you go to the bathroom? After determining the seat cushion was wet and getting his hands all wet he then proceeded to pull down his pants and go potty off the side of the tractor. We have worked with him on when and where to eliminate, but at three, if you have to go, you have to go. He then abandoned the tractor for some other three-year-old activity. At least he didn't come in with wet pants either from the tractor seat cushion or going potty in his pants.

C is for Creator

Uncle John and Zebadiah

What a wonderful day of serving the Lord. We were able to attend church and enjoy fellowship with other believers. Gil and I had the priviledge of teaching children's church. Today's lesson was about how our Great God created all things. The application for the children was to get them to think about God when they see creation. Since most people oohh and aahh over the created things instead of thinking about the One who created it. It went well and we have some very bright children in children church. My prayer is that the Lord would use us to impart a passion to Glorify God with their lives.

After church we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon. Gil's bother, John, came home with us and he played with the children. They were able to talk him into getting on the trampoline with them. It was fun to watch the three of them jump. Then they got him to swing them for a long time. Azariah found a golf club and decided that it was his fishing pole and that he was catching fish with it. Oh, the joy of children.


This morning, Azariah wanted his vitamins. He also wanted to give Tirzah her vitamins but she was still asleep. He went ahead and place one of the vitamins in between her lips.

Afternoon with Papa

Papa closes up the Car lot at 3:00 PM on Saturday's, so what did he do today? Did he go golfing? No, he came home and played with his kids.



Some missionaries are staying with Papa this weekend. They have a little girl who is Tirzah's age and a little boy who is 2. Tirzah and Alisa have been playing with goats, mainly Fructose, pretty much non stop all day yesterday and today. Azariah also get's in the play.

What else happened today?

The local Christian radio station is having their share-a-thon this weekend, so I took the kids with the little girl to the radio station. The kids liked the food, I liked the books and DVD's I was able to pick up for free. O.K., I did give to the station, so in one sense I helped pay for them. But it was really good. I had a chance to talk with some old friend who are looking to be foster parents and eventually adopt through it. It was really neat to talk with them. In fact, they haven't even been certified and they already received a call to take 3 siblings all under 5. I was encouraged by their desire to be foster parents.

I have been reminded how great out God is today. He has done so much for myself as well as others, and the way He works through circumstance is amazing! All praise and glory go to my great God and Savior!

Just like my daddy...

Azariah loves to be like his daddy. He thinks it is wonderful that his daddy uses backhoes, loaders, bulldozer, and excavators. On this day he was crying about something so daddy asked him to carry in his hard hat to distract him, well it worked and he decided to put on daddy's work hat and be like his daddy. God is so gracious to give us moments like this in the stresses of life.

Resurrection Sunday!

Car contemplations from a five year old

Tirzah: "Mommy, do blind people drive?"
Mommy: "No, they don't."
Tirzah: Sigh from the back seat...
Tirzah: "If someone wanted to hurt someone else would they drive blind?"
Mommy: "Probably not, there are a lot of easier ways to hurt someone with a car than to drive blind."

This was the conversation as we drove to get Daddy's paycheck. I feel she was satisfied that she would not have to worry about getting hit by a blind driver... I didn't mention the other possiblities...

Also, don't combine a three year old, a kite and a trampoline together. It takes awhile to get the kite free, it's worse then being stuck in a tree.

What, oh what to blog about?

Well, my friend Aimee told me I should start a blog, so that is what I am doing. I guess the first thing I will explain is the name of my blog. Last December, I acquired 3 Nigerian Dwarf Goats, for the purpose of getting goat milk from them. So as I went to register my herd with the American Goat Society I needed a name. I came across Proverbs 27:26 & 27 which says:

Proverbs 27:26-27
The lambs will be for your clothing,
And the goats will bring the price of a field,
And there will be goats' milk enough for your food,
For the food of your household,
And sustenance for your maidens.
NAS

So I decided to look up the words for Milk and Goat in the Strong's concordance and they were "Chalab" pronounced (khaw-lawb') which is milk and "Ez" pronounced (aze) which is goat. Thus the name of my Goat herd and now my blog.Exciting things that we did today were to tatoo Fructoses ears. Fructose is a baby goat and tatooing the ears is necessary in order to register them. So now she has CEZ, which is my herd tattoo, in her right ear and X1 in her right ear. The X stands for the year and 1 means she was the first kid born to my herd this year. We are looking forward to Mocha one of my other does kidding in the next couple of weeks. She may even have two kids in her, but we will have to wait and see. So now I have green tattoo ink all over my fingers and pants, and Fructose didn't get out of the experience any better than me. She is now a kid with green ears and green spots on her neck. The picture at the top is Fructose.


After that, I decided to vaccinate my does so I get the needle and the vile of vaccine. My three year old son starts crying "no, no, no...". This did not help with my own nerveousness of giving the goats their vaccine for the first time without any help. What fun. I was able to get all three of the goats vaccinated that needed it.

Well, that's about it for my first blog because it is 9:06 PM and I get up at 5:18 AM to milk my goat. Why 5:18 AM you ask. It is because the two snooze alarms end at 5:18 AM. At least I get to see my husband off to work by getting up and then it gives me time to spend with my Great God and Savior before the wee little ones get up.