Meet Penny!

Well, we haven't caught Isabelle Piggy but we did find a piggy that needed rescuing. She was listed as free to good home on craigslist. And this piggy NEEDED a good home. Poor thing was half starved. VERY VERY thin for a potbelly piggy. Penny is everything that Isabelle Piggy isn't. She's VERY friendly, VERY good with the kids, and she stays right with us. I hope to have Penny nice and healthy and plump within the next few weeks. Hopefully there are no underlying health conditions other than not being fed properly. The people that had her were telling us how bad it is for pigs to get fat and that they made sure that Penny didn't get fat. I think they took it to the extreme.

Pig-Tales

I mentioned the other day that we were considering letting Blondie get a piglet. We went ahead and let Blondie get a piglet Sunday night from a local breeder. Since then our world has been CHAOS, to say the least.

We were assured by the breeder that the piglet, fondly named by Blondie as Isabelle Piggy, has had a lot of human interaction and was friendly. Let's just say nothing could have been further from the truth.

We bought a harness to "harness train" the piggie. After the kids went to bed, hubby and I tried to put the harness on the piggie. Isabelle Piggy went NUTS, screaming and hollaring. This was no little cute squeal. It sounded like a woman being murdered or something. I told hubby to forget it, let's just try again in the morning as we don't need the police called!

The next morning, Monday, hubby and Bear busied themselves constructing a pen for Isabelle Piggy. It looked great! We were happy to introduce Isabelle Piggy to her new home. She sniffed around and seemed to be enjoying it, so I tell Hubby that I'm going to get the camera. As soon as I went inside, Isabelle Piggy got out from underneath the fence and took off. She wanted AWAY from us as quick as possible.

This is when the "FUN" starts.

Hubby, Blondie, and I chase the piggy through the woods, briars, poisen ivy, trying to catch our piglet. This was just a joke - no way could we catch this little piggy who was terrified of people. I go to the animal shelter and get a humane trap. We set it in the woods and wait. Nothing all night.

Tuesday. Nothing. I tell hubby at dinner that something probably got the piggy and that we should take back the trap. Right after saying this, I look out the window, and there is Isabelle Piggy, sniffing around the yard. Hubby and I run down to the woods and set the trap up in the yard. I add warm apple pie and pig food into the trap. Sit back and watch as she sniffs out the cage. But alas, she doesn't go in.

This morning - 4 AM. BARK BARK BARK! Our dogs wake me up allerting that something is going on outside. I look out the window! Something is in the cage! HOWL HOWL HOWL! It's the neighbors pitbull. UGH. I hate that dog. Out I go stumbling at 4 am in the freezing cold to release the stupid dog from the trap. The thing growls at me the whole time. I'm thinking maybe I should leave him in the cage as this is a dog I DO NOT trust. I talk to the dog and finally get enough courage and release him. I reset it and go back to bed.

7:30 AM - I get up and look out the window. Something's in the cage again! Maybe it's..... NOPE Stupid Neighbor Dog again. This time he's not growling. He's laying in the cage, content as can be, looking at me like he's laughing. I'm sure he was. I let him out again, reset it, and sprinkle more pig food.

9:00 AM - Hubby gets home and neighbor comes over - says his wife was in hysterics that we had their dog in a trap. We get the situation explained and fortunately he's got a good sense of humor and laughs it off.

Everytime it looks like the pig is about to go in, she decides not to. Since we're paying $5 a day to rent the trap, we are just going to take it back and continue feeding Isabelle Piggy and I guess she'll be a "free range" pot bellied piggy. We've got 13 acres and she's not bothering anyone so that's probably the best situation.

Dreams and Wishes

Sigh. It's so good to be debt free. Now comes the hard part. Saving and deciding what to spend our money on. We'd really like to clear out more of our woods and that's hubby's current project. We also want to become more self-sufficiant. Meaning grow our own food, have chickens for eggs, etc.

I am looking forward to getting our porch built and getting our yard fenced in. It's so hard because, of course, we want to do everything NOW. We'd also like to fence in a good bit of the woods and have a horse or 2. So much to do, so little time and money. Blondie wants to get a pig. Yes, a real live pig. She's been saving her money. At first, I thought she was nuts, but after reading a bit up on pigs, it might not be a bad idea. Did you know that pigs will eat snakes? And that the venom of the snake doesn't bother the pig? With as many snakes as we've found close to the house lately, I'm all for it! We've looked into pot belly pigs and they seem like the best idea. And NOOOO to if the pig would live in the house. NO NO NO! I do enjoy animals though and don't want to crush her dream after she saved up money. So we'll see. Hubby also wants goats, but they must wait until we have a sturdy fence. Comes spring, we may just have our own petting zoo. Hmmm... maybe we could charge admission and make money. HAHA. My dream is to have horses. It's been too long without horses and I'm craving them! Definately going to be some time for this dream since we will need a fence, saddles, hay, etc. I have someone willing to GIVE me a 5 year old horse, but no where to keep it right now. Sigh.

Hubby cleared out a bunch of the woods and is working on sawing up the wood now. Anyone need any fire wood, just stop on by and help yourself! Well, off to dream some more...

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Bear turns 2!!!!

Yes, yes, our little bear is now 2! I can't believe it! Bear's party was fun and perfect for a 2 year old. We had his favorite foods - pizza, chips and salsa, goldfish, and veggies with ranch dressing. For cake, Hubby, Blondie, and I made a cake that our friend Jennifer sent me the link for. As far as entertainment, the kids entertained themselves and we let Bear pull out his trains to play with. I think everyone had fun. Bear had a great time and got lots of stickers (he is obsessed right now!) and some great books and even a toy train!

Pumpkin Patch 2008

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday with friends at Washington Farms It was a blast like usual!

Hayride time! Here's Blondie with her friend D

Us on the hayride

Riding the pedal karts!

Going on the cow train! Blondie and Bear were eager to go!

About halfway through, Bear decided he had enough of the cowtrain

Here's Bear - he is so funny when he walks around like this! Just one hand in his pocket!

Thunderbirds!

Yesterday we went with our friends down to Atlanta to see the thunderbirds and other airplanes at the air show. We had a great time, although a few regrets today. I'm rather sunburned from staring at the sky for so long. On to the pics. Tons of them!

Forgot to Add!

You know, I posted all those pics and forgot the most important one of them with Thomas the Train!
Here it is!

Final Day - Day Out With Thomas!

Today we drove to Georgia Veterans Memorial Park to see Day Out With Thomas as a surprise for Bear's birthday. Both kids were very surprised when we pulled up and they saw Thomas the Train sitting there waiting!

Here's the family riding the Trolley from the parking lot to the train

When we got to the Day out with Thomas event, there was so much to do! Bounce Houses, Face Painting, Tattoos, Balloon Animals, Hay Maze, etc.

Here is Blondie helping Bear through the Hay Maze.

Here is Bear not wanting to leave the table that had m&m treats for the kids. Can you tell he loves chocolate?

The kids in the lego Thomas Train

Riding the Train!

The kids were a little freaked out by Sir Topham Hat, but I can't quite blame them. There was a bunch of screaming kids that wanted nothing to do with him.

After Thomas, we went and had a picnic and then went on to visit the rest of the park to see the tank exhibits. You will notice that Bear is no longer wearing the nifty pants that we had gotten from Magical Hope Boutique. After the picnic, Blondie and Bear were playing in a play area. Bear all of a sudden comes running up going "Owwwww.... Shoe Bite! Shoe Bite! OWWW!". I was trying to read through the lines at what he was saying. I figured out that he was getting bit in his shoes. I took off his shoes and there were FIRE ANTS all over his feet and up into his pants. We pulled his pants off real quick and bushed the ants off. I went looking for the ant pile. It was a rather large pile and there was a definate Bear shoeprint in the middle. OUCH! He did get bit quite a few times, but he'll be okay.

After this, we headed for home and got home just before 7!

Day 2 - Warm Springs / Florence Marina

On our second Day of the trip, we headed out early in the morning to The Little White House. On the way, we stopped at FDR's favorite picnic spot. The maps are in the car so I can't remember what it was called, but it was GORGEOUS!

There is a statue of FDR that we took pictures with

Here's a funny moment. We had walked around the picnic spot for a while and let the dogs briefly off the leash to stretch their legs and then Ella saw the statue! She barked and growled like crazy and Hubby and I couldn't help but crack up!!!

From here we went on to The Little White House in Warm Springs, GA. There were so many neat things in the museum and we took a good while to look through at everything. I wasn't able to take pictures in the museum or in the little white house due to the preservation of the items. Bear laughed at the old car. Blondie thoroughly enjoyed everything and learned so much about history. Even Hubby and I were learning. Seems like FDR did a ton of things to help Georgia including to help get electricity brought to the rural areas of the state.

We also went to the Warm Springs Pool and toured that. The pool was drained and is only open 1 weekend out of the year. However, they do have a little table full of water that you can feel the natural spring. It's always 88 degrees!

Next we went to Providence Canyon. So gorgeous! We had a lovely picnic lunch by the canyon.

From here we went on to our campsite at Florence Marina. It was a nice park, but I don't think we'd go back to camp again. The gnats and mosquitos were terrible despite bathing in bug repelant. Blondie enjoyed it though as she found a 7 and a 9 year old to play with. We roasted hot dogs and made smores in the evening. Bear enjoyed his first taste of a smore!