Against Nature

We just spent Friday and Saturday out on our property trying to build our new goat barn. We were able to get the foundation, floor, and walls put together. Home Depot didn't have in stock the metal roofing we needed so we won't be able to complete the job till the rest of our order comes in. We did, however, get a healthy start on it. Would you believe I forgot my camera? So I have no pictures at this time. We will be heading back out there tomorrow so I will bring it with me.

While there we had some not so kind weather to work with. The usual for around here. Mike says it really reminds him of Iraq. The temperatures averaged around 100 and the wind blew till we were all covered from head to foot with sand. We even had sandy boogers (I finally got the spelling right!!!). Two days with no shower, same clothes, standing nearly constant outside in 100 degree temps, and covered in sand. We were so glad to get in last night and get cleaned up to go to church tomorrow.

We did move the camper out onto the property to keep the baby in. Mike rented a generator since there is not power out there yet, and that kept the necessities going. The A/C and refrigerator were the most important. Of course having the convenience of a potty was also nice for the kids.

I think I've mentioned before that I sleep terribly for the first few nights I camp in a new spot. Out on our new property was no different. The generator and the A/c normaly make so much noise I think I would have gotten by with a decent nights sleep if they had stayed on. However, we were having a little trouble keeping the generator going and about 1:00AM it stopped. At that time it was cool enough that we didn't need it, so Mike opened up a few windows instead. Around 3:00AM the coyotes started up again, their howls sounding like the high pitched "yips" of Pomeranian dogs. When the coyotes got started all the dogs in the neighborhood joined them. Then somebody decided to make a drag run down the street, stopping at a house somewhere. Most of the streets here are straight and flat, really they are tempting to cut out on and see how fast you can get going, but do you have to do that so early in the morning? At this point I figured that I would just stay awake, cast my eyes to the east and watch the sun rise. I watched and watched. Seemed like it was dawn for forever and yet the sun was never coming up. Just before it did rise I fell back to sleep.

We are having to build with some obstacles of nature in mind. The first one being the winds there. While in New Hampshire you have to build keeping the snow load in mind, here you must always keep in mind the wind load. The fella who will be installing the 5ft. chain link fence all around our property told us that one year they had 95mph sustained winds come through that area. Our direct neighbor had installed one of those cheap metal sheds for storage. The wind picked it up and sat it down in the neighbors yard but not before taking out the shared chain link fence in the mean time. I said to myself when he was telling this story "oh, no". As he spoke to us there say, still in package (so he had no idea) our cheap metal shed, yet to be built. We'll be taking extra precautions with it to keep it on the ground. Again he said that the winds were bad enough that they tore the roof off of it, then picked the whole thing up and turned it over. His stories went on and on about the damage that wind can do out there.

The next battle against nature has more to do with the farm animals than anything else. Those coyotes are gonna be a real problem with mostly our chickens but our goats too. They would love to chew on leg of goat. Really the best protection for them would be to get a llama. Llamas take on goats as their babies and will protect them to death. The coyotes would mess with an animal that big. Also llamas don't eat much at all, and they provide hair/wool that I could spin. I'm not sure how much they run around here though. Otherwise we are going to have to do some fence burying. We were told that electric fencing doesn't work here mostly because the air is too dry and the wires cannot conduct the electricty, otherwise this would be our choice of trying to keep bad critters out and good ones in.

While we were building there several people stopped by to say hi and chat. First of all the fencing guy. He was working on someone else's fence behind us and decided to come have a chat. He was so nice and went out of his way to install and temporary water faucet so we could get fresh water. Chaparral's water was voted the third best tasting water in the country (and El Paso is trying to get it too). Then another fella stopped by praising the fact that a husband wife team were working together to build. He said he and his wife built their house together, he seemed like a real nice guy also.

The next one needs a whole new paragraph to explain since it is so interesting the way it came about. The next person who stopped was a lady that Mike has met before but I never have. This lady also became aquaintances with the Mitchell's. Here's how Mike initially met her. After my delivery with Katie I stayed in the hospital for a couple of days. One day the doctor came in and said I saw a bunch of kids down in the lobby, those aren't yours are they? For some reason I remember Mike not being able to come at that moment but sometime later, so I knew they weren't mine. However Mike did come during the time that family was still in the lobby. Which of them spoke up first I'm not sure, but there is always a kindred spirit when large families spot one another, especially when both are Christian, since we are a minority. So this is how Mike met this family. I have no idea what their last name is. However the wife's first name is not easy to forget, it's Muffy. I guess Becky Mitchell had been keeping in touch with Muffy and letting them know that we were moving out to Chaparral, which also happens to be where Muffy's family lives. So when Muffy happened to drive by and saw the 12 passenger van the idea popped into her head that it could be us.

She hopped out and asked us if we were the Perry's. I was able to get aquainted with her and find out where she lives. They also have goats, chicken, and 7 children, and her husband is military. So the Lord has provided a source of fellowship for us there in Chaparral, NM.

Also our friends the Salzman's, they were courious to see where we lived. So while out on a "date" (they have six children), they decided to drive by the area and stopped in for a chat.

Then a Mexican couple who are neighbors on a road next to ours stopped by. Their motives were much more than neighborly though. I guess she sells home decor products and wanted to know if I would need anything like that. Her husband seemed to be pushing the products more than she. They were, however, a very nice couple.

So we've been welcomed to the neighborhood already, even by the coyotes who serenaded us on Friday night.

One more thing I wanted to add was that the entire land is loaded with goat's head thorns. The children have already become used to them and I found Mikey twice walking barefoot. The thorns have popped all of the children's bike tires. We will now be looking into purchasing the all rubber tubes for their tires. At $15 a tube, times two tubes for each bike, times five bikes, that could get expesive. We'll have to buy them a little at a time maybe. We will also have to keep the floor vacuumed a lot since those things come in on your shoes and deposit themselves in the carpet. Little Katie will be crawling around soon and I'd hate to see her get them in her hands. I'm enclosing a link to view particulars about goats head thorns if you are curious enough.

This is a good site for a description and pictures of it. http://www.goatheads.com/goatheads.html

Denise

Teaching them Young

Katie is on the way to sitting up. She kept herself entertained with a catalog for Blair which sells womens clothing. I got a kick out of some of the pictures of her and thought I'd share them. See the pictures of her here http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/baabaamilker/my_photos

I almost always title the photo album and the blog that goes with it the same. So when you get to where my albums are just look for the album that has the blog title.

Denise

Preparation to Move

Most folks would think of preparing to move by packing boxes and such. I guess for me that is what I'm thinking of right now, but not Mike. He begins his preparing to move by building. We are hoping to get some goats when we get to our new place. I guess you can kind of say we are pretty excited and anxious to get them. So Mike built in a day and a half the milk stand for our goats. You can see pictures of it here http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/baabaamilker/my_photos

His next building project is much bigger and should be taking place this weekend, that is if he can make it (ha, ha). His new job is making him pretty tired right now. The bigger job will be to build the house for the goats and the chickens. The temps have been in the high 90's right now and there is no shade anywhere on our property, so it isn't really going to be much fun for him to build it, but he is excited about it. He plans on taking the camper out there and using it for shade, and the fridge inside of it to keep cold water. I'll try and remember to take pictures (usually isn't a problem for me).

Denise

Wisdom Teeth

Well I made it through all right. So far as I can tell everything went ok. It really didn't take long, but then again, how can I judge that since they did put me out with a drug that causes temporary amnesia. I had the operation at about 9:30 this morning and it is now about 2:20 in the afternoon. I'm getting to be a little sore in the teeth and jaw area, but otherwise I'm really not experiencing any pain. I'm so glad. I had myself set up for the worst of it.
Anyway here are the four that they took out. Normally they are not allowed to give them to you by law. She made an exception for me since as the patient I did make a specific request for them. I did it more because Becky just lost her two front teeth, and she was interested in seeing what mine looked like.
In the picture to the left you can the offensive tooth. This is the one that has been causing me pain for a few years. First it started off as being painful only when I ate something really sweet, then just before I gave birth to Leah it would cause me a lot of pain when I went to drink something. After I had Leah the pain went away, but not before a rotten piece of it had broken off. About four days before I went in to have these removed another section of this tooth had broken off. The problem with this is that this particular tooth was not growing down but out toward the cheek. So everytime it broke off it kept getting sharper and my cheek had to grow a callus for it. Now looking at it I can see just how bad it really was, and no wonder it was giving me head and neck aches.
Well I just wanted to share these pictures with you. For those of you who prayed for me, I appreciate it, and looks like the Lord took good care of me.

Denise

Facing The Facts

I've had to face the facts, and come to the realization that based upon our circumstances right now I'm not going to be able to write the blogs the way that I want to. It looks as though we are going to be moving to Chaparral New Mexico around the first of June, and on the 18th of May I'm having all four of my wisdom teeth taken out. So between the two upcoming events I doubt I'll be able to do much blogging, certainly not the way I had planned concerning the short vacation we took. So I'm going to do my best to sum up the vacation and put the rest of the pictures into one album labeled "Vacation" for you all to see.
Fishing-we did a lot of fishing while we were on our vacation. We tried Lake Leon, Lake Hubbard, and even the small pond at the RV park we stayed at, but all we caught were little bitty things. Finaly when we decided to fish in the pond at the RV park we kept what we caught and cooked them up anyway. On our last day that we could fish there we decided to try a place that we went to when I was a kid, and we have heard that there has been some good fishing out there. It's park of Lake Leon but it's at a place called LaMancha. It's like a small zoo there with peacocks, bison, ostrich, etc. They have a boat dock there that sticks fairly far out into the water, and it can house up to six boats. Most of the time nobody uses it as a boat dock, but it is used as a fishing dock. I've heard it's about 35 ft. deep there so you only need to drop your line, you don't need to cast. You do have to pay $2 each to fish there though, which isn't bad so long as you do catch something.
So we went to the boat dock to give it a try. Mike is determined to catch him a southern fish that outweighs the one I caught when I was 12. I caught a 26lb. catfish at the spillway of the dam that year. While there I spent most of my time making sure Leah didn't fall in since she is so clumsy and at an age that she isn't afraid of much. The rest of the kids did alright and spent a good deal of time fishing. Mikey spent more time reeling in and casting again till he busted his bobber than fishing. We hadn't caught anything worth keeping when we decided to pack it up and head back to the camper. Mike was banking on coming back again at night while the kids and I slept. He would be taking Pawpaw (Loyd) with him. As we were packing up the van to leave, we heard quite a commotion going on down by the dock, and when I heard Debbie screaming and crying at the same time and yelling Mikey's name the picture of what had just happened was as clear as day in my mind. Thankfully there were a couple of other young fellas down there fishing, and they fished out Mikey too. Mikey wasn't in the least bit phased by it all, in fact he felt mighty proud of himself and showed how he was paddling to stay up. This is a time when you aren't sure if you should be mad at them or just thankful that you didn't loose them.
On the same topic a couple of days later Mikey came in asking for a piece of toilet paper to get a buger out of his nose, shortly there after I noticed it was bleeding. I figured he must have just been too rough with himself. Later on that day I saw his nose was running so I went to wipe it, at which time he protested with crying saying that it hurt. After a closer examination I saw that he has pushed a rock up inside of his nose. Mike had to break off all of the tines but one on a plastic fork to dig the rock out of hiw nose. Both Mike and I had a good laugh over that one.
After leaving Ranger we headed up to Amarillo to visit my brother, while visiting we stayed in the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The place where you hook up your camper is actually located at the bottom of the canyon, which I've heard is about a 1000 ft. deep in some places. This is recorded as being the last battle grounds with the indians. While staying there we met many friendly widlife. There were the turkeys who came around every morning, you could hear the toms calling to their hens, and they would get quite close to you. Then there were the dear, though we never saw any bucks, there seem to be plenty of does. There is a picture of Mike and dear to show just how close they would let you get to them. Then at night, or I should say early morning, the Coyotes decided to act as alarm clocks. I never thought a coyotes would sound like a little fluff ball pomeranian puppy, but they did. We enjoyed our stay there.
On our way back home we only had one incident that was interesting. It ocurred on I-70 near Roswell, NM. The story as Mike heard it from an eyewitness goes as follows. A small car driving at approx. 120mph was driving on the wrong side of the road, into oncoming traffic. The car was headed straight for a Walmart 18 wheeler. When the Walmart truck tried to change lanes to avoid hitting the little car, the little car also changed lanes, still aiming for the Walmart truck. The Walmart truck tried to veer off of the road to the left, all the while the little car was still honed in on the truck. The Walmart truck ended up on the opposite side of the highway in the barditch, but not before having a head on collision with the little car. I'm not good at math but the little car going 120mph and the truck going 70-75mph equals death. The truck driver thankfully walked away from it all. The car on the other hand was so totaled if it wasn't for the headlight still attached you would have never know what it was. There were engine and car parts strewn all across the road, and the firefighters had to do a thorough search for body parts just off of the right side of the highway. Even after the ambulance left with "the body" the firefighters were checking the dunes over for more parts. The best anyone can figure was that it was a suicide. Thank God we were not a 1/2 hour earlier, we too could have been a part of that.
Well that's the sum of our vacation. Hope you enjoy seeing all of the pictures that go with it.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/baabaamilker/my_photos

Denise

P.S. That night when Mike went back fishing he returned to the camper at 3:00AM with 63 good size fish to clean, we still have some in the freezer. One other note I wanted to add was that the house I wrote about in my blog is not the house we are moving into. I hope that I can take pictures and write more about our new house soon.

Rain and Thunderstorms

When we left El Paso on Friday April 28th heading for Ranger we had the typical El Paso weather. Sunny, hot, and windy. As we got closer to the center of the state things began to change drastically. At one point when we were driving we were dodging all of the thunderstorms but you could see them as they surrounded us on three sides. In my photo album you will find a picture of a bright cloud surounded by darker ones. In real life it was a fasicnating sight to see the dark clouds part and show this bright yellow cloud.
We hit Abilene, which is about an hour from my home town, and decided to grab some dinner. Once we got inside the thunderstorms we were managing to stay one step ahead of caught up to us. It was pouring outside. Normally rain is not that big of a deal, and I may even consider it a trouble from time to time, but after living in El Paso for 7 months and never seeing more than a dribble here and there, it was nice to see rain again.
In fact we got our fill of seeing rain because the whole time we were in Ranger (my home town) we had a thunderstorm every night but one. We did enjoy the rain. The only trouble we had with it was that Debbie, Becky, and Faith's shoes were tearing apart so they all had holes through which the wetness entered. In that part of Texas the soils have a lot of clay, again the opposite of here, which is a lot of sand. So the combination of clay soil and water sure did make their socks a mess.
We didn't see the end of rain until the day we left Amarillo. We spent 7 days in Ranger, and left on that 7th day to Amarillo to see my brother, where we spent two days. When we arrived in Amarillo it was pouring. It was so nice for them because they had been very dry, and had previously had a lot of grass fires. The first place that we drove up to was the desk at Palo Duro State Park, and the park rangers were outside taking pictures of the rainbow, they had such big smiles on their faces since they had only been getting the rain that day.
While Mike was making arrangements for our camping spot I got out my camera and tripod and took a few pictures of the rainbow(s) myself. You can visit them in my photo album, I will include a link at the end of this blog.
I think next time I will post a blog about the fishing that we did, which occurred just as often as the rain we got in Ranger. So keep a look out for an email to read the next blog.

Denise

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/baabaamilker/my_photos

Visit with Family

We took off on a last minute vacation to visit with my family, that is what's left of them, in Ranger TX. We were gone from Friday April 28 I believe, until Sunday May 7th. I've look forward to the visit for several years now. I think, since most of my family is now deceased, that I'm more attached to the town itself. After visiting in Ranger we went up to visit my brother in Amarillo whom I haven't seen in over ten years now. It was all so nice, and I have lots of pictures to share with you all. I decided since I have so many topics to write about that I would do one blog at a time focused on a certain subject. That subject will be covered and will not necessarily be in the order that they occured. So be sure to check back next time to read about "Rain and Thunderstorms".

Denise