The Cone Of Shame

So some time last week during the middle of the night one of our dogs got attacked by something.  Nobody knows what it was that attacked her but all we know is she has an "ouie" on her tail.  And we thought it would just heal by itself.  But nope, it wasn't getting any better it was actually getting worse.  Of course her constant licking the wound didn't help at all.  So we had to take her to the vet.  In case you didn't know vet visits can be rather expensive! (Ouch!)

She just came back from seeing the vet and now she got the "CONE OF SHAME" to keep her from licking the wound so it could heal. Wahaha 

Yup, she's got the cone of shame.

Put it on your blog

My oldest kid saw the beautiful sky outside and said "mom, take pictures and put them on your blog."  So here it is for everyone to enjoy!

My oldest kid likes to read my blog.  She thinks I'm funny. (Yay I have a fan and she thinks I'm funny!)

The Project

This is one of the projects that we worked on over the weekend.  We replaced the roof of a big section of the barn.  So now it won't leak all over the barn when it rains.  It was a lot of work!
After my husband took down all the old sheet metal from the roof, we decided it would take us quite a few days to finish the rest of the work installing the new roof and pearlings.  So we cheated and hired someone to finish the job.  Those guys finished it in about 7 hours when it would have taken us probably at least 3-4 days if we did it ourselves.

 Taking down the old roof

Yeah, we rented a scissor lift to do the job

Almost done taking down all the old roof

This section of the barn is finished

 Before (not the best Before picture but you 

can kind of see the old wood looked kind of 

dark and old, they were all rotted out and the 

sheet metal roof was all rusty and there were holes 

everywhere.

 After (new pearlings and new roof)    

                                           

 It was really cold that morning we started the project.  

There was frost on the ground.

"Keep the change! You filthy animal"

I know, I know this is the 3rd pig post already.  But I just want you guys to see the pigs "in action".  In my earlier post I mentioned how all pigs care about is food, right?  Oh they KNOW when chow time is, they know!  So this video is to prove that I was right about pigs.  I guess I don't blame the pigs for acting that way towards food.  I am kind of the same way when it comes to food (well, minus the drool).  I just get so excited when I see it.  Meal time is my favorite time of the day!  Pigs might be filthy animal but they are actually quite interesting to watch.

We feed the pigs food scraps AND pig feed.  The food 

scraps you see in this video is orange peels, egg shells, 

and onion peels.  They ate every single bit of that food scrap.

When you have pigs, there's no wasted food!

I guess animals in general are pretty interesting to watch.  One of our dogs LOVES chasing our cats.  This dog is on a mission, seriously!  Despite our constant effort to stop him from taunting the cats, he just would not quit!

Does anyone have any idea or advice on how to handle this situation with the dog?

This dog is relentless when it comes to taunting
these cats.  Poor cats!

The Christmas edition

We don't have a Christmas tree this year because our current house is way too small for a Christmas tree and our Christmas tree is in storage somewhere anyway anyhow.

We have a small pile of Christmas presents on the floor and that's about it.  We don't do big Christmas presents and spend hundreds and thousands of dollars anyway.  We just want to make sure the kids remember the reason for Christmas is not all the fancy lights and presents but it is about Jesus and his humble birth.  We like to keep things simple.  Simple is good!  Plus I noticed the more toys and material things you give to your kids the more ungrateful and entitled they are.  I ain't judging anyone, I'm not saying you can't spend hundreds of dollars buying expensive Christmas presents.  All I'm saying is we don't do that, that's all!

Consider this our "Christmas tree"

So we got our kids BB guns for Christmas this year.  They were sooo excited!  As soon as we were done with breakfast they wanted to go outside to shoot their new BB guns.

The kids had so much fun shooting their BB guns.  They didn't shoot their eye out!

Even the little one wanted to try it out

Oh I'm so proud!  They hit the....um...paper!  At least they're hitting something, right?

What do you do on a nice fine Christmas day in Texas when it's 80 degrees outside?

Well, of course, you go down to the river and play!

Down by the river

Playing at the beach

We even found some crane footprint at the beach

Front porch sittin'

I love this picture so much!  This is my husband and one of our kids taking a break from working on the property and eating breakfast on the porch.

We had a never-ending list of projects to do when we first moved out here (now the list is not never-ending, it's ever growing).

The pig escaped

So one of the pigs got out of the pig pen last night.  I admit we don't know ANYTHING about pigs.  We spent about a total of probably 1 1/2 to 2 hours trying to catch the pig and chasing it around.  Man, that was exhausting!  Despite being fat and having short legs, these suckers can actually run!  We sure got a good workout out of this.  We tried luring it with food.  That didn't work.  We tried putting a rope around her neck, that didn't work.  We tried a few other things and it didn't work.  Finally we were able to corner and trap it in the cow chute and eventually got it back into the pig pen. 

This whole experience was actually quite funny.  I wish I would have recorded it but I was a little bit busy catching a pig and recording this whole incident was not on my mind at that moment!  But if you could picture the show Simple Life with Paris Hilton chasing after the pigs...ya that was us!

After doing some research, we learned that pigs at this age eat about 4-5 lbs of food A DAY!  That's a lot of food.  I can't even eat that much at an all-you-can-eat buffet during my prime years.  (and those of you who know me know I can eat!)

cow chute

The sucker was trapped in the cow chute and she was 

awaiting there until we figured out how to get her from 

the chute to the pig pen

The next day, the same pig escaped again! 2 more times!  Luckily we are pros in catching pigs at this point.  Instead of spending 2 hours catching it it only took us about 20 minutes each time to catch it and put it back into the pig pen.  And we fixed all the holes so it wouldn't escape again!

Pigs, from our experience, are pretty low maintenance, except when they get out of the pen!  But honestly you just need to keep them fed and watered, and make sure they have enough shades (pigs don't sweat so they need shades to keep them cool) and that's it!  Pigs eat just about ANYTHING.  Any food scraps, really.  We have given them banana peels, even egg shells.  I'm gonna try giving them jalapeños next and see how they like it.  Who knows, maybe they like spicy food, right?

The 3 little pigs

We just got some pigs.  3 of them!  I believe they are only about 3 or 4 months, but they already weight like 140 lbs each.  I didn't realize pigs are so...pigs.  They are pigs!  Now I totally understand why we call slobs (human) pigs.  Pigs are nasty!  But thinking about all the bacon we're going to get, I can totally get past the fact that pigs are filthy animals.

Bacon!  Bacon!  Bacon!  Did I already mention bacon?!

Living out in the country

This is the reason why we love being out in the country.  It's the peace and quiet, and tranquility that we get for living out here.

At night

Sun rise

Our own little "park"/picnic area/backyard

Oh deer

So a couple weeks ago I was driving home at night with one of my kids.  I was probably about 1/4 of a mile from our home, then out of nowhere came a deer!  Well, while I don't believe grandma got run over by a reindeer, I sure got run over by a deer that night!  That was the first time in my whole entire life that I ever got hit by a deer.  I didn't know what to do and I kind of panicked, so I just kept driving, I didn't even stop.  If I had any redneck blood in me I probably would have gone back to "finish the job" and brought home some deer sausage...but I didn't. My car suffered relatively minor damages but it still required some repair done to it.

Poor little Bambi or Feline.  I just assume at this point that 

the deer survived the incident and she lives happily ever after...
maybe just with a broken leg or ribs or something

Chickens

When we first moved out here we inherited 7 chickens from the people that lived here previously.

We had 3 roosters and 4 egg-laying hens.  

The hens were laying some pretty good size eggs.

But one day, the "alpha" rooster attacked my baby.  

She got a total of 10 chicken "bites", of which one of 

them required 2 stitches. Did you know, there's only 

2 reported cases of "chicken bites" a year in the U.S. 

and my child is one of the 2 cases?!

And then one day, one of the chickens disappeared.  Then gradually, they all disappeared.  We believed they were either eaten by coyotes, raccoons, or possums.  Karma?  I think yes!