Camping on the Back 40

Friday was a long day for me, but we ended it well.  Within a short time of arriving at home, Josh, the kids and I were piling blankets and sleeping bags into the truck.  We grabbed the tent, a few flashlights and headed out into the back of the field, behind the lake.  The kids were going crazy and it was really intense.  I'm not really sure how to descibe it, but there were three kids, and the two of us adults and the kids were up past their bedtime and we were all crammed into a single tent that was so packed with soft stuff that you couldn't hardly fall on anything hard.  The kids had a blast and we finally got them quieted down and to sleep.  Neither Josh nor I slept very well.  it may have had something to do with the fact that the kids were sleeping all over us.  I took several elbows to the face in the middle of the night - I also had to wake up several times to cover Ginger up who is still in that baby phase were she doesn't cover herself.

Morning came very early and we did a bit of quick fishing (fruitless for some reason) then kindled a small fire within about 100 ft of the back door of the house.  We had a whole bag of marshmallows, and while we did feed a few to the cows, I was nevertheless surprised when the entire bag was used!  Wow.  That's a lot of sugar.

Josh and I decided to get serious with the goats and set up a full on operation.  We sheared, dewormed, deloused, clipped hooves, and even tattooed in one case.  The goats had gotten into some NASTY Texas cockleburrs and they were all over in their fleeces.  It really sucked handpicking them out.  We got a lot of them out, but we'll still have to do some more with them if we want to keep their value up.  It turned into a long day of goat wrestling and Josh and I were hot, sweaty, stinky, itchy and tired, but we did get 4 of the 6 goats done.  

Josh seemed to have had a good time although I think the kids may have worn him down a bit on Friday while I was gone.  He was a soldier though - even though he had an injured wrist from a minibike accident.  By the way, the minibike is now out of comission - I broke the chain on it today while I was riding it with Ginger.  :(