We Bought a Farm: While the family is away, the farm will play!

JB, myself, and the kiddos are enjoying a much-needed family vacation in Washington DC right now. Normally I refrain from saying we aren't home until we get back, but since there are a gazillion people on our farm right now, I'm not worried about it being a target to anyone.

It was VERY hard to leave the farm while lambs and puppies were due to be born. But Arabelle's due date came up after the trip was planned, and we just felt like we needed to take this trip together.

We have a great friend, Anni, who has come to the farm for a long weekend specifically to help with Arabelle. In addition, we have a great wwoofer at the farm, Nico who has been an invaluable help. My in-laws are all-stars as always, and John's sister is also present and has been a tremendous help. And at the same time, his brother is there doing farm work. We are well taken care of!!

Here is a picture of Arabelle and the pups in the back of my van to head to the vet today.

And while the puppies are busy enough, we have sheep popping out everywhere. In the last 24 hours we have had two sets of twins born. All boys AGAIN! I believe our current count is 11 boys and 3 girls!!

Yesterday, one of our good friends, Erin, came by with her daughters to see the puppies.Erin and her family lost everything in a house fire last year. This included many of their precious pets. When this happened, they began discussing getting a new dog, and their oldest daughter, Hailey, got her heart set on one of our puppies. They will be picking the first girl of the litter. I am so blessed to be able to help rebuild their family in this way. Here's a picture of Erin in the whelping box:

Here is a picture of the eight pups and then a picture below with their sex color on their back. (This isn't really there. It was done just on the photo.) Unfortunately, our little runt passed away last night. So we have a total of eight puppies: there were four boys and four girls, but with his loss, we have four girls and three boys.

In the meantime, while all this is going on, we are enjoying touring and being together as a family in DC. It has been hard to be away from the farm, but we have so enjoyed spending quality time with our family and some dear friends. We are staying with the Connors family for a few nights and will then spend a few night with the Stebbins family. We also got to see my friend Claire and her kiddos while we were here.

Yesterday we went into DC just the six of us to tour around. It is the first time we have ever done a "big outing" without a stroller and without a single diaper. Quite a bit excursion for us!