Outside fun

River helping me pull carrots for dinner. The one on the left is from last year, been in the ground for over a year. Not so tasty anymore. The one on the right is from our new crop. So sweet and delicious!

Baptized Babe

We baptized Iris a few weeks ago. It was a beautiful ceremony. It was Jon's, our new pastor at Trinity, first baptism of a baby here. He asked us and our congregation a series of questions about how we plan to raise and teach her. It's always so awesome to hear the people of our church, who I consider family, commit to help love, raise and instruct our babies. We don't look at this as Iris being "saved" but more as a commitment on our part to raise her as if she has been called by Christ into his service. 

Iris looked radiant, as always. She is the most amazing thing to Seth and I. She has such a sweet, happy and content spirit... already teaching me so much. 

Recession Ranch: beautified

Beautification is a process here. A very s-l-o-w one. We've been here for well over a year now and are just getting to things that have been on the to-do list since moving in. Seth is the handyman of all. In the last few weeks he has built a rather large fence (to keep our River monster caged), dug a bonfire pit, laid sod in the 2 side yards, and has found plenty of time to hunt. (I've been hearing 'It's only deer season for another few days!' for the last few weeks now...)

I know I complain quite a bit about Rec Ranch but it really is a beautiful, and quite peaceful place to live. Here are a few noteworthy pictures: fog rolling in at night and in the morning. And with now 2 glorious children who get up before the rooster crows, I see my fair share of mornings. (truly, I hate seeing the clock before 8am-it's a crime)

 

No matter the fog, come 10am it has burned completely off and reveals another cloudless sky.

Lovies

This is how River feels most of the time these days

Poor Kid

Iris almost 3 weeks!

The above picture is Iris and River, both at 1.5 wks old. Remarkable the resemblance! 

It's a...

GIRL!!!

Welcome Iris Anne! She came barreling into the world at 5:26am Wednesday March 31st after about 6 hours of labor. I'm a bit late on updating this blog but we've been very busy and very lazy since she came. Busy in the fact that Seth's parents came out when she was 1 week old to stay for the month and lazy in the fact that the week before that we did nothing but lay around with our new little girl, adjusting to a family size of 4. Such fun having a girl. I really thought she was a boy and Seth was totally convinced she was a girl. I was hoping for a girl but dared to dream, since the Hock genes are skewed, in favor of boys. And everyone is asking how River is getting along, well he is LOVING his new sister, so much so that he already gave her his cold. It's hard keeping his fingers out of her mouth, nose and eyes..he's fascinated with her. And Iris is such a sweet, mild tempered baby (so far). She loves to be held, rocked and sung to. She is a real joy.

So without further a delay here is our little precious girly. These pics were taken by our good friend Ken, who is amazingly talented, as you can see. (These were taken when she was just 4 days old so more recent ones coming soon :)

Fergie would be proud

On the way to the beach we heard the song "I'm a be" 2x on the radio and my friend Yvette and I then kept hearing him say it all day! So funny. He is a little sponge right now. I guess I should put away my Dr Dre for a while ;)

Ima be from Hock on Vimeo.

Waking up to...

...cows! In the front yard no less. Very fun. Especially when River runs through their patties and tracks them indoors. 

38 weeks! Almost there. So excited to find out what's been brewing inside for the last 9 months. I have my suspicions and Seth has his-one of us is right!

Is that German River? from Hock on Vimeo.

Baking

River gets so excited when he sees/hears the mixer come on. He knows a little treat is in store :) I think he prefers the batter over the baked good too-just like his momma!

Puppy Love

Meet our new additions!

Lupita

&

Banjo

We now have 18 chickens, 2 cats and 3 dogs. Rufus' days are numbered here on the ranch, sadly. We did find him a good home, no kids and lotsa room to run so he should be pretty happy. With his departure coming up we needed to get a replacement: a dog who can protect us from wild beasts out here, have fun with our kids but also understand his place BELOW them and be a good companion for Seth at work. We wanted to train up a puppy, not an older dog, so that we can really be sure they understand their place in our family from the very beginning. Our friends have cattle dogs/queenslands and we really like their personality so we decided to look for one and found them pretty quick. Went in to get one and came out with two. They are sooo sweet and adorable. Just like newborns, they just want to be held all the time right now-pretty sweet. So these are our new guardians. And like so many of our neighbors small animals, we are hoping they don't become coyotes next meal ;)