2012 -2013 Farm

Hey, I'm back! I have been gone way to long to ask if you have missed me!! A LOT has happened since the last time I posted anything about our midwestern farm. I suppose I should start with the animals.

 Chickens.
Umm, I personally am NOT a fan of any bird. However, as animals they are healthy and well, slightly stressed due to the current housing of our new billy goat. More on that in a few paragraphs. Since last year we have completely replaced our old chickens. With our new chickens we started with two roosters and thirty-three hens. We currently have one rooster and twenty-eight hens. The GREAT rooster was killed in action while defending our hens, and our girly rooster (our hooster). The other hens died for unknown reasons, we think a coyote got a few and we don't know about the rest.

We are still planning on raising three hundred meat birds like we did last year. Hopefully I can get a few pictures of them when the first hundred arrive. That should be all that has happened to the chickens, they are pretty low key animals for the most part.


    Goats.
We are swimming in goat chores for the moment. This last fall we had a disgusting billy goat come "visit" our three nanny goats. Which now almost six months later (goats germination period is only five months long) resulted in seven baby goats. The oldest of those seven are three weeks old. Operation exhaustion is officially underway. We also have Donte, our little billy goat. OUR billy goat, not the one that was our visitor. He is a trip! He lives on the non-chicken side of our chicken coop, and the chickens don't appreciate that. Needless to say we are building a different place to call home. He will miss the chickens, he thinks he is one of their family...

   Cats.
We have a double digit number of cats. I am not even sure what numbers make up the two digits anymore. However they are healthy and happy for the most part.. I mean they are cats, I don't know the definition of happiness to a cat.

  Ruth. (the dog)
She is always happy with a pinecone a foot away from her. She is also very forgiving when we forget about her occasionally. She is probably the brightest ray of light on our farm at the moment, it is raining and she is jumping up to get the water pouring out of the drains; she is pretty content. :)

People.
My parents are doing well! They are approaching twenty four years of marriage and enjoy working together on our hobby farm. The kids that are left at home is me and my older sister. She is almost seventeen and I am almost fourteen. Our eldest sister is living in Utah and is loving her job and her independence! Our brother is serving a two year mission in Australia speaking mandarin Chinese. It is amazing how things work out!!! We are continually grateful for our blessings that we have enjoyed immensely, and even the trials we have endured!

Thanks for making it to the end of this long post!! Hopefully I can remember to write soon!

Donte and flat Stanley, they WERE best buds!

Clyde, the first baby. He is also the biggest!

Bronson. Our goat world would be incomplete without him. (Clyde and Bronson are twin brothers.

2 out of the 3 triplet girls. Claudia, Patience and Hope. (They are all completely white!)

Chester and Camille were the last two born out of all the babies! 

Their markings are also the cutest!

7th Grade...

I am glad I only get to do 7th grade once. It is an awkward time in a persons life. In my point of view. I have always liked being different than everyone else, and I've excepted the fact that I could simply not get the most out of life if I was constantly trying to be like everyone else. I've tried... it just doesn't work.

My mom and I went out to take a couple of pictures yesterday to try out a new photography idea that I had. Mom was the photographer and I must say she did a pretty good job!!(:

 I promise we took more than three.
These are just my favorite.

Beautiful Heartbreak

This is amazing! I hope you take a couple minutes to watch this.

Snow

Well this winter has been a LOT different than past winters in the Mid-West. Usually it snows in early November, and doesn't melt until mid-March, IF we are lucky. Sometimes it snows on Halloween.

This year, the "first snow" was on December 1st, which I was SUPER happy about it because in my little brain November is for leaves and December is for snow. That "first snow" only stayed for about 12 hours at our house the worst part was....you could still see the grass. I very much dislike it when it snows and you can still see the remnants of fall. Anyway, about half way through December we were having gorgeous weather, 50 degree weather in winter time, Yes Please! So I wasn't very sad on missing out on a white Christmas...it is good to shake up the norm once and a while. Here we are in January thinking we are going strait to Springtime, and well, let's just say that I feel silly for thinking that! Here are some pictures of our recent scenery.

So according to my Dad got 3 inches of snow and 5 inches of blow!(:

Happy Weekend!!!

Over the years: Emily and Danni

So I have been looking through a lot of older pictures that we have on our computer, and looking at the newer pictures and have come to a conclusion. I am going to post about Emily and I over the years to see how much different we look in 2006-2012 so here you go. Fair warning, a couple of the pictures that I am posting were taken on the iPod Touch so they aren't the best quality.

Side Note: Our sister Takara was in college when we were in China, that is why we don't have very many pictures of her with us, )':

Yep, the computer wouldn't let me open it, so I re-took it with the iPod...2006

2007 in Downtown Xuzhou, China

Left to right: Me, Takara, Emily 2008

2009 in China

Me 2010 Lets just say I am SOO thankful my teeth grew in straiter!

Emily 2010 China

February 2011 New Beginnings for church

2012 taken today

How time goes by so incredibly fast is beyond me. I am just glad I still have my sisters today to help keep me and the rest of our family going.

With Love,
Danni

The Blue Sky(:

Well, before this post makes any sense whatsoever, let me tell a little story.

A couple, four years ago we moved to China. Yes I did type that right, China. We moved there so that we could help my dad's company add on another branch to their business. Well China, is great. There were a lot of amazing experiences we had there. There was just a couple thousand things we missed about the good ol' U.S.A. One thing among the thousand was the sky. It sounds kind of silly because it is one of those things that we take for granted, at least we did, before we moved to the land of Gray skies.

Long story short we came back during the summer times and soaked in that blue sky as much as we possibly could. So when we moved back home, we just couldn't get enough of it.

So, when I got more and more into Photography, I took a LOT  (And I mean a LOT), of blue sky/ sunset pictures.

My favorite.

We went to Missouri for Christmas to visit our friends, I had plenty of time to take pictures of the blue sky we saw on the way back. They aren't the best pictures...because I was in a moving vehicle, but the sky was just so cool...it was hard to resist. 

P.S. I will post some sunset pictures soon

Nauvoo!!!

Posting posting 1,2,3... Just kidding! I just don't like to start all my posts with "Hi, ya'!" Getting off subject.

The Youth in my church (at least in my area) went to a place named Nauvoo, So I thought I would share some of the pictures with you... Just for fun!! If you want to understand what I believe better you can go HERE! Anyway what was I doing??? Oh yeah pictures, thats right!

Couldn't resist the Sunset!! Thoughts?

We got a little bored... it is a 5 hour drive.

We camped At the State park... Didn't want to drive hours in the morning (asking for grumpy teenagers then)

We Had a little too much fun...but it was worth it!

FAVORITE!! My friend Bria and I we were at the blacksmiths shop!

Bria, Kristen and I..Like I said tooooooo much fun!

The Reason we went....More on that in the distant future. You can find more about it  on mormon.org!

P.S. I didn't take that picture of the Nauvoo Temple, I am not that good!!