A day we will never forget

Exactly one year ago, our house was flooded and we were rescued by boat.  Ever since then our lives have not been the same, and we have been displaced.  We still think about this experience and are still counting our blessings.

Today is the anniversary of our little "tragedy".  And coincidentally we are pouring concrete for the foundation of the new house that we're building at our new place.

Below are some pictures of the progress we're making with the building of our new home.

They finished putting in all the plumbing earlier this week.

Water well guys were out there yesterday to drill the well.

Concrete trucks after concrete trucks coming to pour concrete this morning.

Concrete boom is so cool to watch.

Concrete guy doing their thing.

Now smoothing out the concrete and making it look all nice and smooth.

We know how to work, and we know how to play

We had some pretty nice weather last weekend.  So we went out to our property to do some work.  Let me tell you, our kids are not always the most behaved.  Life is not always rainbow and unicorns. The kids sometimes whine and fight.  They don't always enjoy doing chores.  But...but yesterday, we all went out to the property and worked.  They actually did a good job and it's one of those little moments where your world seemed perfect!  (well, at least for that short moment anyway :))

And on the side note, we have finally named our little calf... scroll down and find out what we named her.

It was a beautiful day to be outside enjoying the nice weather and cow-watching.

Riding the four-wheeler around and picking up sticks.

Mowing the lawn.

Weed whacking

A friend of ours suggested naming our baby girl Rainbow because she's a blessing after the flood.  We can't think of a better fitting name for her.  And we shall name her Rainbow!  Rainbow is such a cute little calf.

Baby time

We JUST went to check on the cows...and as we were hoping, there was a calf running around right next to Blackpearl!  By now, we can kind of tell when the cows are very close to giving birth...not only is their "back side" kind of swollen, Blackpearl's udder was getting full, the milk was coming in already.  So we have been going to check on her everyday for the past few days and today I guess little baby girl decided she was ready to meet the world!  And yes, it's a girl!  We actually wanted a little heifer so this is perfect!  She's a little cutie.  I'm glad she doesn't look like her dad, Dexter!

So this time around, Blackpearl is wayyyyy over-protective of her calf.  We think it has something to do with the fact that she loss her baby about the same time last year.  Her baby was just a few weeks old when it died during the flood.  So this time around maybe she's worried that she would lose her baby again so she is being extra protective.  We shook the bucket full of cattle cubes and usually she would be the first one to run to us.  But today was different, she wasn't there for her treat and at that point we kind of knew she probably had her baby.  

It appears to us that she was probably just born this morning.

Look at how cute she is!  We have yet to name her.

I promise, just one more picture...just can't get enough of that cuteness!

Anniversary

I can't believe it's been almost a year since we got flooded and displaced.  At the end of last May, our home and small farm were flooded and we have been without a home and living in temporary places since then.  As mentioned in my previous posts, after thinking about it we could not bring ourselves to go back to live on our old property due to the emotional trauma that we had experienced during the flood.  We still love that property A LOT and still wish we could move back but we just couldn't do it.  With that said, we finally purchased another piece of land in the same general area.  And this time it's high and dry!  It's a beautiful piece of property and we will gradually start our farm back up again.

This is our new property, it's still full of trees, tall grass and brushes, and vegetation.

We started clearing the land yesterday.  And no, we are not doing all the clearing ourselves.  Our small tractor would probably take forever to do the job so we hired it out.

This track hoe is a beast!  It's actually quite fun to watch it work.  It pulls all these big trees from out of the ground like it's nothing.

The land clearing guys came early yesterday and started working on clearing the land.  They were making great progress.

Future home site

Future site for the pond.  The reason of having a pond is two-fold.  1. Naturally there are some low spots on this property where water pools up when it rains.  So by digging a pond we would have a place for the water to run off to naturally.  And 2. We are planning on stocking the pond with fish, which then will provide us with some fun family fishing and some fish to eat.  I see some good ole' Fish Fry in the near future!