Home sick

We're hanging out at home today. Riley woke up grumpy this morning, and after nursing, proceeded to projectile vomit all over Kelly...then I took him while Kelly was getting cleaned up and he threw up all over the couch (and Kelly again b/c he happened to sit down next to us. oops.) Then after I'd changed our clothes, he threw up again all over me and the bathroom-clothing change #3. Poor guy. Its been a couple hours since he threw up last, and he even nursed since then so I'm hoping this feeding stays down a little better. He's been sleeping in my arms most of the morning. I figure cuddling is probably about the best thing I can do for him right now. I'm hoping he feels better by tomorrow.

So hey, perfect time to update the blog, right?! Lots of stuff going on...

First things first. Riley is 7 months old!! So, of course, our attempts at 7 month pictures. These get harder to do every month!

"Mom, do we have to do this?"

(the sign says he is 7 months old...you just can't see it very well.

"Give me this sign, I want to eat it!!"

"I'm outta here. Hey, what's over there??"

"Hey mom, what's up?"

I cannot believe that my little baby boy is 7 months old already. I have no idea where the last 7 months went. I'm so proud of him in so many ways. He's such a fun baby and while I still don't feel like I've quite got the juggling of mom/wife/farm/work down yet...I think we're making progress and I wouldn't trade being a mom for anything!

As for the rest of our lives...its fall! Yep, that means harvest! So much for seeing my husband much! Hopefully he'll start running beans today-though, as is typical of our life, something's broken on the combine (hydraulic line?) so there has to be some mechanical work done first. Hopefully it will be a fairly quick fix so that they can get some beans run before the rain that is forecasted for tomorrow!!! Its been such a weird fall around here...we skipped right over October weather and went straight to the cold of November. Which is a bummer because I love fall and I feel like we sort of missed it! The leaves are changing now, which is gorgeous of course. That's one thing our area is known for, the beauty of the fall leaves amongst the hills. And I have to say that it is pretty beautiful. Sometimes I have to step back and remind myself not to just take it all for granted. Sort of like life I guess...its easy to take the blessings you have for granted and sometimes you need to step back and take a good look at your life to realize how good you have it.

So what else is going on with us? Well, we're building! In fact as I sit here, I can hear all sorts of machinery running and work going on outside. We're building two barns to house dry cows in the winter and heifers in the spring and fall (maybe ocassionally in the summer, but they're usually on pasture then). 2 or 3 years ago we built 2 feed pads so that we could have a better, "non-muddy" area to keep the dry cows in the winter. Well, like all grand plans, it didn't work out quite as well as we'd envisioned. Since it was still exposed to the elements, while it was definitely better than just having them out on grass (which results in hip-high mud, torn up pasture, torn up feeders and deep tractor tire ruts from hauling feed to them everyday), it still got fairly muddy and was still pretty labor intensive. So we are now building a barn on each feed pad. The sides will be open (or at least 3 sides, I can't remember exactly) so there will be plenty of airflow, but they'll have concrete floors and a roof over top of each-keeping out the elements and therefore keeping things cleaner, keeping the cattle cleaner and warmer, and keeping the feed dry. Altogether a good thing! Oh, and all of this SHOULD, hopefully, make things a little less labor-intensive and result in more family time for us this winter!! That is one of the things I'm the most excited about. So here's a sort of "before" picture:

This was the first winter we had the feed pads-when they were all nice and pretty :) This was a drive thru between the two feed pads, where we could dump the feed out the side of the TMR for each group of cows. See the cows eating? Yummy stuff!

This was just a few weeks ago. The feed pads after the fence has all been taken down.

Today they are just moving dirt, it'll probably be a while before there's any real exciting progress. But I'll try to take pictures as we go!!

Oh, I almost forgot about the grain bin! Grain bin is going up as we speak too! I have a picture of that, but its still on my camera. Should be up completely within a couple weeks and then we'll have grain storage on our own farm, yay! It is also going to completely dwarf the original barns we have back there. Wait till you see the pictures :)

So, like I said, lots of exciting stuff going on!

Ok, time to eat some lunch. The boy is sleeping again...and hasn't thrown up in a few hours, so YAY! :) Hope everyone's having a great week!!