Happy 2022!
We are thrilled to welcome a new year and are loving how this year has started for us. Things are moving right along with us here and we continue to love life, the farm, homeschool and making plans for another great year here in East Tennessee.
We started the year with a big-bang and hosted a rad fireworks show. It was probably the best yet.
We all did resolutions but Nico threw his paper away after sharing them. His were good and honest as usual. In 2022, he wants to become a better reader, get a shark, build more lego sets and get a pet. Sierra and Scott both want to buy a home and explore East Tennessee along with a few other things.
New Ranch Addition- Everyone, please make welcome, Violet Tilford to the Drunken Sailor Ranch. Eric went to Athens again to buy more hay from a local Dairy Farmer and he offered us a drop calf (which we discovered are hard to come by). We accepted and were expecting her around the 20th. We ended up getting one much sooner and picked her up last Saturday. She was three days old. We were going to butcher her in a year or so but have decided to keep her to breed with Ferdinand (when she is much older) and we will use her offspring to butcher since they will be 75% meat breed cows/steers. She is 50% Angus and 50% Holstein and Ferdinand is 100% Hereford. As usual, Missy thinks she is the mother. Maybelle has taken to her very well and is allowing her to nurse which was our prayer because we did not want to bottle feed her. She is doing great and is starting to play with Jack. She is just precious and I'm smitten. Petunia is due to calf any day and we are back on calf watch again. We are soon to have three little ones running around the cow nursery in the next week or less.
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| Jack is growing like a weed and loves to play with Missy. |
Ranching- Let me tell you, it is so much less fun to do our chores and all of our work when it is 17 degrees or even 28 or 38 degrees. If I could wish for a constant 64 degrees, I'm not sure how I would contain my glee.
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| The barn was 16 degrees on this morning. |
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| We disbudded Jack and it went great! Eric did a fantastic job. He sure is strong and heavy now though! |
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| Our vet gave us lidocaine injections for each side and a banamine injection to help with pain management and that is the only way we will do this- ever again. We have done it both ways and prefer this method. |
Christmas- Despite missing our family over Christmas, we had the most relaxing, chill day. It was a lot of fun and the kids had an amazing time. They love their gifts and we thank all of their Grandparents and Aunt Leslie and Uncle Brian and everyone else who thought of them with phone calls, FaceTime, cards, gifts and messages. Christmas Day is also Tristans birthday and he had an awesome day with that as well. We sang to him and he got to open all of his birthday gifts from people but we will have a little party for him later this month and take him out to his birthday dinner. He is now 13. Excuse me while I wipe away my tears. He gets to stay up later than the "little" kids now and is loving that. Here is some of our Christmas.
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| I love this little Cricut Easy Press that Eric got me. It's so handy for my crafts. |
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| Eric made this for The Casner Family for when they buy their own place here in Tennessee. He also made one for Ivy and Emery for each of their rooms and they can decorate them how they want. |
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| Emery Lou Hoo.... |
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| Christmas Day charcuterie.... It was so delicious. |
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| Santa Came! He had a little gift for each of the kids. The twins and Ivy LOVED him. Nolan loves him some Santa. |
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| From the Flannery Family 💜💛💓 Love them all so much. |
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| The day after Christmas, Nolan painted and assembled the wooden car from Leslie & Brian. He loves it and displayed it on his bookshelf with no prompting from us. |
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| Auntie Kelsey and Uncle Martin sent Tristan a rad beyblade arena set. I have no clue about beyblades but Tristan was thrilled. |
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| Two days after Christmas, Nico had completed the lego set from Aunt Sierra and Uncle Scott. He did a fantastic job and followed all directions exactly. Now he wants a yellow Jeep as his first vehicle. |
Snow- We have had several little dustings. They started a few days after Christmas which was super weird since it was in the 70's the day after Christmas. Having a Winter has been nice, albeit extremely cold all of the sudden. But, we will gladly take it!
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| Eric and Gramps have this joke where they call one another Sweetie because sometimes Eric will call my dad from my phone and my dad will answer "Hi Sweetie"... So, the sweetie joke started. Eric wrote on Gramps' car after the snow a few days ago. |
With the snow and Winter, we have a bunch of Bald Eagles in the area. I mean A LOT. Golden Eagles are supposed to be here during winter as well. I am not sure if we have seen any of them but we have definitely seen several Bald Eagles. It's incredible. They are so big and majestic. A few days ago, Eric and I and a few of the boys were headed to pick up feed and about 500 yards from our property was a Bald Eagle eating a cat in the middle of our road. I think it was its own kill, not road kill as it didn't have a mark on it other than where the Eagle was eating. As we drove up, he flew away and landed on a tree nearby. We turned around to make sure it wasn't our cat (it wasn't, thank God) and I moved the little guy out of the road. I snapped a picture of the Bald Eagle just watching us from the tree. Now, it is really hard to see the Eagle in this photo but it was closer than it appears.
Gramps- He made it home in the middle of the night last Tuesday. He had quite a haul of meat and was as happy as can be to be off of the road. The kids were all so happy to see him. This was a long trip for him- six weeks away- and I think he is happy to be home. He also gets his truck back in the next 10 days. The mechanic has had it since the end of July and while waiting on a new transmission for it.
School- Emery started public school last week on Wednesday. She attends the closest, local elementary school where Lily & Nico would have gone if we hadn't decided to homeschool. She was there one (not so great) day and then immediately had two snow days. She went back refreshed and open-minded on Monday and had a much better day. She started riding the bus today and it picks her up and drops her off right at the top of our driveway. Prior to starting public school and on the snow days, we had her in the classroom with us and we focused almost one whole day on extra Math. We went ahead and worked on some multiplication together as a group. It was definitely just a refresher for Tristan but was really good for Lily and Emery. Nico has the least experience with it so he was super excited to participate. We are almost done with our Maturation and Sexual Reproduction course and the kids learned a lot. It was kind of weird for me to explain reproduction to them so plainly and just so real but I am glad they learned the technical side of it from a trusted adult in a small setting. Eric finished Marine Biology and starts Space Science on Thursday.
Weather- Despite how cold it has been, we are adjusting and the kids are still playing outside. Santa brought them a freestanding basketball hoop as a family gift. We gave our old one away when we moved so we needed a new one. It was a killer Black Friday deal for Santa. The twins got some beefy tricycles that are supposed to grow with them and Ivy got a new scooter so there is a lot to do right in our own driveway.
Random- Scott and Sierra took all of the older kids to the Knoxville Mall last week before Sierra started her new job this week. They all had such a good time. They found a walk-in globe made of lights and Scott took some pictures. Tristan got to try virtual reality and it was hysterical to watch (thank you, Scott for recording it). Everyone behaved really well and came home alive and happy.
The three toddlers have been taking baths together in my big tub and we love its because we think it's helping them bond. Harlan is definitely more particular when it comes to playing with other kids so it's super important for him to get the bonding time in with both Ivy and Emery and any other family or kiddo that visits.
I think Oscar has picked Nolan as his human (when I am not around). He actually let Harlan snuggle him too but we missed the photo of that one.
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| It's blurry because Oscar saw me coming but I had been watching for some time before he noticed. |
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| Here he is watching over the kids in the bathtub. |
Emery is quite the artist and has been a drawing fool since Christmas. We bought her a sketch set with graphite pencils and some other stuff and her parents bought her a huge kit of art supplies. She is a true talent. She is currently directing a movie with Lily as the star and I'll post it as soon as they've completed it. I watched what they have so far and it's actually quite impressive.
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| This is just one of 100's of pictures she has drawn. She is seriously talented. |
Dinner Menus- We are still sticking with our menu and it feels more important than ever that we do so with all of the people that are in the house now. Sierra cooks one night a week and Gramps will get back to it when he is settled in more and grocery shops.
I had mentioned that Scott pressure washed our lower driveway, big, white retaining wall and the small retaining wall by the flower beds. It had been so long since we really used our pressure washer and it was a huge job. We ended up needing to buy a new hose as our old one blew out about 5 feet from the completion of the project. He finished it and it looks amazing.
Another BIG thing--- Last but certainly not least, we have a couple more new additions to our family and Ranch.... Meet Lola and Stitch. They will be coming to us from Georgia on Friday from the McKaskle family. They are heartbroken to have to ask us to care for them but circumstances being what they are, we were glad to accept. They live on property in North Georgia with no fences (by choice) and picked the country life for their forever home. Well, recently, their neighbor passed away and a new neighbor moved in and needless to say the dogs can no longer roam free. They don't want them chained up nor do they want anything to happen to them since they love them so much so they thought they'd send me an innocent little picture of the dogs. Lol. With this solution, they can come visit them and still be involved in their lives.
That about pluses us up on dogs again as well as cows and all of the other critters.
We are thrilled we get to live this amazing life and we often can't believe it is real for us.
Continue to stay in touch and keep us posted on your lives as well.
Lots of love to you all!
