Good Bye Mobile Home

The time has finally come for our mobile home of almost 5 years to leave Paradise.(It's been on Paradise since 1974) We moved about 7 weeks ago into our new home on the ranch and left the Forest Service trailer park. Our 5 year contract was coming to an end and we no longer wanted to be tied down to a job dependent housing situation. The rental on the San Fernando Rey Ranch came along toward the end of last year and we decided to go for it. This meant that we would have to deal with finding a buyer and new home for our trailer or else demolish it.
Luckily we found a nice young family who will be benefitting from all our hard work, time and love that we put into our mobile home. It's also going to Goleta! So, I suppose I could go visit from time to time if I wanted to see it :)
Anyway, the work is far from over to get the lot cleaned up once the house it gone. There are still two sheds full of stuff, junk to sift through everywhere as well as all the wood that came from the screened porch removal. We plan on reusing the fence around our new house. We also plan on using all the lumber that we were able to salvage and building a new screened porch at our new home! Who knows when all this might happen, but I feel good about reusing as much as we can.
I hope the movers will let us know when they are ready to drive off with the house... I want to get some pictures of that too! (hopefully we are not at Dinkey when this happens, kinda think we will be)
Good bye Mobile home, you were a great home!

Blueberry Picking

It has now become a summer tradition that we meet up with friends and go pick blueberries just south of Buellton at the U-pick blueberry farm. We went last Friday, the weather was warm but not too hot and the blueberries delicious as always! The boys ate their little hearts out as they tried to fill their pails and we ended up with a little over half a pail between the 3 of us :) $8 and we were on our way home. I sure love our trips to the blueberry farm.

Swim Lessons!

William and Zachary finished their first week of swim lessons today. They have 4 more classes next week as well. They are swimming at the DP pool :) and both having a blast. Luckily it's been an absolute gorgeous week, so sunny and warm, I've really wished I could be in the pool with them! William is now comfortable swimming/ gliding from the "sunken pirate ship" to the side of the pool. Head in the water, arms out in front. Zachary is following right behind him too. Today they each took a turn jumping off the side of the pool and then turning and swimming back to the wall. It's been really fun to watch them learn and have fun.  Looking forward to another week!

 

Calf sitting

I just finished a long weekend of calf sitting! My neighbors down the street have 4 (well, actually 3 now) 1 month old calves that are currently being bottle fed. They went up north for a grandparent 90th birthday and asked if I could help out with the calves. SURE! I had the morning shift. It was a tricky and dirty job to keep them all in line and on their own bottles. My feet got stepped on a lot and my clothes got poop smeared on them and the calves pushed me around a little too. But I had a great time :) It's not to often you get the chance to bottle feed a cow!
There were also 4 baby chickens to look after on top of all the other animals they have. 4 dogs, 2 cats, a couple fish and about 26 chickens. Good times living on the ranch!
I was so busy juggling the bottles and clean up on top of my own kids & our busy days, that I didn't take the time to  snap any pictures. I will try to go back over there, when it's not my responsibility to do anything, and take a few photos.
The boys thought the baby calves and tiny chickens were pretty fun. They held the baby chicks and of course I have no pictures to show for it either. We'll see if I can't fix that as well :)

Trampoline on the ranch

Since we moved and left our swing set at the trailer park (for the time being), I thought it would be fun to get the boys a trampoline! I have been watching craigslist and found one for $40. The boys and I drove down, took it all apart, fit it all in the back of the 4runner and brought it home. We set it up the next morning with the help of a neighbor, it was super easy. Then I ended up ordering a new pad for it since the one it had was pretty much trash.
The plan is to dig a hole and put it in the ground... but for now, the boys are sure enjoying it everyday. Even Jameson knows just what to do. He gets on there and starts throwing his body up and down to "jump". I will have to take some video of it :)
Trampolines are the best!

Jameson turns 1

I'm trying to catch up a little at a time :) Jameson turned one on May 9th..... it was a busy weekend and even a busier month. Billy (who just left from the local "white fire" to a not so local "branch fire") only had 4 days off in May! He is now committed to his 7th fire since the beginning of May. I have basically set up house totally solo with 3 small children under my legs. We still have SO much to take care of and I can only do so much. So enough with my ranting.

Jameson had a nice mellow birthday with our family and we invited over a few neighbors to help us eat the cake. He enjoyed his funfetti cake and didn't get as messy as I thought he would. I was able to nurse him for the entire year! This was a first for me. However, his little body has not taken well to cows milk. He just explodes after he drinks it and his butt was turning so red I couldn't bare it. So his pediatrician told me to give him goats milk! He loves it and his body is handling it much better. However, raw goats milk is EXPENSIVE! For a quart (which lasts 3 days) it costs $8! Not sure how long I need to have him drinking goats milk, but I am going with it for now.
He is breaking his 9th tooth, loves to stand and walks only short distances while holding my hands. He cruises everywhere and is really starting to explore a little to much. Loves being outside and LOVES his older brothers. He watches them very closely and they can really get him laughing. It's so fun to watch them all interact together, they are all so cute.
I also love that Jameson has sleeping through the night down like a champ. Now if I could only get him to sleep in past 6am....
Love you Jameson.