New Life on the farm

Today we awoke to find we have a new calf. Last month I had told my husband I thought we had some new calves on the way, but this one was a total surprise. It is a pretty brownish-red color, like is Grandma. Its Grandma is a red shorthorn, but its Grandpa and Momma are Angus. Not sure about the daddy. Momma is named Ms. 54 (its her ear tag number) and is very very gentle. She loves to have her ears scratched. She is a first time momma and doing a very good job. The baby has been up some but doesn't wander too far from momma. It is nursing good and momma is staying right with it. I just wish she had had it a few days ago when it was warmer. Seems like that is a trend here on the farm, to have calves on the coldest days.

The girls put a heat lamp in the chicken coop last night. They also added more hay in the rabbit hutches and the pigs house. We had several inches of ice this morning in water tanks. Just a few days ago it was 70 degrees. What happened??

I just updated the prayer list on my sidebar. It was good to remove several, as they have been answered by our Awesome God. Susie's cancer is gone, Gracie's adoption is complete and she is now at her new home in America.

On the home front, I made some real good thrift store buys this week. In the last 3 weeks, we have managed to kill 2 vacuum cleaners. I went thrift store shopping and found a canister one (I hate bags), 2 velvet dresses for the younger twins for Christmas, some shirts for Emily, a pair of insulated carhartt coveralls, a couple books, and 2 educational math computer game CD's. All for under $30. Not bad in my opinion. The math games have been a hit. Rebecca hates doing her math and this is a good fun way to do some math and she doesn't realize she is learning from it.