I am not meant to co-exist with the animals

My three big kids love spending time with Dad, but most of their life, they've lived with Dad being in school, working, working/traveling, serving in different church callings, etc. Thankfully, over the years, the time they spend with GR has always been "enough" to fill their little cups until the next opportunity. I've decided Alexander has a crack in his cup, because over the last month or so, he's been seriously missing his dad. And it not like GR's gone all that much. No more so than before. But GR will leave for work and, Alex will break down, late in the afternoon before the kids are home from school, a weepy boy will find me in the kitchen needing extra hugs because he misses his dad. So I've been looking for opportunities for Alex and GR to spend a little more time together, and I told GR that he needed to do the same.

Tuesday morning got off to a really hectic start. It was one of those extremely full days where we hit the ground running and never stopped until you head hit the pillow 16 hours later. GR needed a ride to work and since he works in the general direction of "the Farm," I decided we had enough time to spend a couple hours there after dropping GR off. Over the last couple of days, Alex has been asking to visit the farm and the goats. We'd gone on the 14th for a playgroup activity, and had a great time playing! GR offered to go with us and just go in late, and ultimately decided to take the entire day off given all we had planned for the day. It was so nice! The weather was cool and wet, so the farm was not crowded at all ... I kept telling GR that when we'd come with playgroup, there were 80% more people there!

Alex LOVES to feed the goats, and has no fear when it comes to feeding them. Because there were no crowds, and there was someone to stay with Anna in the stroller, I decided to take Alex IN the petting pen to feed the goats, rather than feed them through the fence.

Never.again.Never.

Within seconds, hungry goats with poor table manners had covered my white pants in mud and other mud like substances :), nibbled my shirt and used my waist as a stepping stool, bringing me eyeball to eyeball with more than one goat! I guess it was good and bad that they quickly deduced who held the food. Good, because they totally left Alex alone. Bad, because this city girl really doesn't enjoy being mauled by livestock (are goats even considered livestock? ahh they are).

My only recourse was to throw my handful of feed across the pen, raise my hands to surrender, grab Alex and quickly back out of the pen! From now on we will be feeding the goats through the fence.





I love how Alex feeds double handed!


Aren't the ducklings adorable! There were ten of them, and you could tell they and mama were totally use to having hundreds of kids surrounding them. Alex could get as close as he wanted and they didn't mind a bit.


We tried to ride a pony, but Alex didn't want anything to do with it ... maybe next time when he's technically old enough to ride the pony (gotta be 3, not 2 and 22 months). We also visiting with two Elders logging community service hours. They spend Tuesday and Friday mornings at the Farm (ETA: we later found out that these too Elders serve in Bishop Topher's ward - one of GR's former roommates!). Alex got to be nose to nose with a mama jersey cow, and her calf, we got to listen to some wonderful stories told by a Native American Folklorist in the teepee, and of course we sat on a tractor and surveyed the land.

The Farm has made lots of wonderful new additions, with many more scheduled in the near future. I'm looking forward to taking the big kids back this summer with a big roll of quarters, so we can keep feeding the goats through the fence.