Bikini Season

Summer is fast approaching and Violet wanted in on the best selection of infant bikinis. This is what she and momma came away with from the swimwear department. It's a rather elegant two-piece. Perhaps a little too revealing in my opinion...




A co-worker of the wife is doing some photography on the side and recently offered to do a free photo shoot of the kids for her website. We got some gems...

Henry is always saying great stuff. Whenever he has to poop we try to get him to do it as independently as possible. Sometimes he will have a false alarm and will report that he couldn't go. A while back I asked him if he was able to go and he casually responded "Yeah, I did like seven big turds and two little turds..."

Yesterday, he had his first poop accident since he started going on the toilet. He claimed that he just thought he did a big fart and he was kinda preoccupied playing with his guys. For future reference, I told him that farts with lumps should always draw a red flag.

Below, Henry prepares to execute a textbook piledriver on his baby sister.

I might be biased, but I think Violet might be the cutest gal in all the land. She is starting to recognize me more and will smile and crawl toward me when I come home from work.

Here is a photo of Henry giving the photographer a tour of the house. This is custumary for Henry (You wanna see my woom?).

You get the idea, lots of really cute pictures... I have started uploading them to Flickr and there is a link to that site in my recently updated links. I suggest you check them out for fun and possibly a greater understanding of my weltanschuuang.

TRAGEDY AT THE GOAT RANCH

This is especially horrible and ironic since I was just boasting of my animal husbandry skills in my last post.

A typical herd mortality rate for an active livestock operation is 5% to 12%. As a beginning hobbyist with a small "herd", I find it difficult to try to make any correlations with the aforementioned figures. But obviously a smaller sample size will tend to skew any data set (still 50% is really bad?!). It is with a heavy heart and utmost regret that I report that we lost Turtle recently. He was the little black guy and the runt. He was kind of the loner of the trio. He was half-brother to Johnny Drama and Vince and it showed. He was always the slowest to get the food and water offerings. We have two goat houses in the pen and Turtle didn't always like to sleep with the other two. Sadley, this appeared to be his undoing as I beleive he simply died of exposure during this last cold snap.

I was confronted with a serious problem: what do you do with a dead goat in the middle of winter? Through research I discovered a recent development in sustainable livestock management: dead animal composting. I will leave it at that. My official stance on the subject of what happened to Turtle is like the gays in the military: don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue...

So, we told Henry that Turtle had to leave to be at a ranch with Jesus somewhere in Wisconsin where he may browse footloose and fancy free.

I would like to note that we have now taken to letting the goats spend the evening in the garage, where the temperature is a steady 40 degrees, when it gets really cold. It is always nice to be greeted by goats when you open the door to the garage first thing in the morning. Also, I am getting rid of the one goat house in case in case the two lack a sense of self preservation. And, as a symbolic new beginning, I am considering changing their names to Tango and Cash.

Don't hate me. I'm not a goat killer. Chupacabra I am not.

Final note: Prayers for Pat Swayze as he continues his difficult battle with cancer. If this is any indicator of his greatness, I can rarely not watch Roadhouse if the opportunity presents itself. His chemistry with Sam Elliott is mind-bending...