* * * * * Day 1--Monday, December 19th 2011 * * * * *
We departed home on Thursday, December 19th at 5:07 PM. The children had previously been fed, and after staying awake for a few hours, they all fell asleep. Although each stop for gas or refreshment was an occasion for them to wake up, they quickly went back to sleep. We drove through Iowa and then down through Missouri and Arkansas. Ginger had the misfortune of being "on-duty" for driving during both drizzle in Missouri and very thick fog in the morning hours in Arkansas. We had turned on FindMyFriends on my iPhone so that Ginger's dad could track our progress across country. About 5 minutes after each time we stopped for any reason, we received an inquiring text message from him asking WHY we had stopped :o)
* * * * * Day 2--Tuesday, December 20th 2011 * * * * *
The children woke up about 7:00 AM and we attempted to feed them McDonald's breakfast food. To their credit, they were not fans at ALL! The waking hours were made much easier because of a gift from Grandma to the kids: a dual-screen DVD player. The children watched a PBS show called Caillout for hours straight!
At about noon (after 19 hours in their carseats), the babies had had enough! They started to complain, cry, and carry on...but, as we were close to our destination of Pennington, TX, we pressed forward. Ginger's cousin Stephen and his wife Christy have a farm outside of this small town upon which they raise cattle. Although the persistent drought in Texas has necessitated the sale of a fair portion of their herd, they still had:
- several dozen cows
- three horses
- four dogs
- two goats
- one lamb
for the children to enjoy! The moment we arrived (shortly after 2:00 PM), we turned the kids loose on the farm. Pretty much the entire time we were in Texas, the temperatures were in the 50s. As we are acclimated to much colder air, the weather there was quite pleasant with only a light jacket.
Joel says hello to one of the farm dogs. We often overheard him saying to himself in a self-assuring tone: "He's a nice doggy...he won't bite..."
The cows and horses were very friendly and good with kids. Here, Joel approaches one of the cows. His cousin Emily is shown off to the left.
The Boy quickly located a stick. You can see how happy he is about seeing a horse!
When Buggy heard that there were goats, she immediately started asking to see them. Emily helped Grace gather a handful of hay to take to feed the goats.
Ella and Joel observing one of the horses.
A horse looks on as Ella examines a stick. After 21 total hours in the car, even a stick is interesting!
Ella was given a bucket to help her carry hay to the goats and the lamb. She felt very responsible doing her chores!
Joel feeds a goat. The children's cousin Meredith raises these goats to show at the county fair. We ate some non-ribbon-winning goat for dinner one night while staying on the farm :o)
Ginger has often expressed a desire to have goats on our farm once we build. Here, she, Joel, and Grace feed one of the animals
When Grace saw that Ella had a bucket, obviously she had to have one also ;o) The girls are shown here in the lamb's pen.
Joel and Gracie in the lamb's enclosure.
Emily is raising this sheep to take to show. Grace looks on attentively as Emily tells her about the lamb.
Because the lamb was still relatively young, Emily needed to keep it on fairly tight restraint while Buggy fed it grass...blade by blade. Poor impatient lamb!
Here, the girls spread grass in the lamb's feed trough.
After spending some time with the animals, we unloaded the van, went inside, and ate dinner. The children went to bed with very little preamble into their portable cribs. We chose to call them "special beds" / "sonder Better" so that the kids would react favorably to them. This proved to be a successful tactic. The adults and cousins relaxed and socialized and then we crashed in bed. The first day in Texas was absolutely wonderful!
No comments:
Post a Comment