All of these guys had been bought originally from the Bergers. These are very well known llama people in the Midwest. I have the opportunity to bring these guys home and love them up. There are 5 females and 1 gelding. They all have great conformation, great heavy wool and great size! I am so incredibly excited about the whole herd. They should be here in late July.

Hmm, well.. Nothing new.. absolutely nada.

We have had our home-study done since May 5th. We have been having issues with the Agency that we are working with however. We sent all of our documents and they seemed to have misplaced several pages that we had to resend. Thank God, I made copies. Then they claimed our Home-study professional misplaced some of his documents… He resent them and they claimed he did not. I called them today and had them LOOK at the documents while I was on the phone. They looked closely and walla, they found one that they said was missing. They feel the FBI clearance document is not as explanatory as they want. They now want the social worker, that is working with us to send a statement explaining how to read the FBI clearance document. Grrr. It never ends. It seems to me that they are stalling. Come on… Like how different is our FBI clearance from all the others? I was curious and had the documents faxed to me at work. There seems to be nothing unusual. In fact it looked entirely boring.. Nothing on it to make us looks in the least bit bad. it just says we are good people. 3 lines.. grrrrrrr. So, here we are- still not able to adopt a child because the agency is not satisfied with this one stupid document.  The man I called today about it, said he just wants to make sure we are covered if we have an interstate adoption. I tell this to the social worker and he tells me he has done 1000’s of adoptions and in his entire career he has never seen this much bullshit.

What to do… Maybe move on. I will give it one week.

We all had thought we would be live or “active” by now..  By this, I mean- in adoption terms: all of paperwork would be neatly filed away, home study turned in and the profile on us would be sent off to birth mothers to see if they would like to choose us to raise her child. We did our part. However, once all of the papers were received in the adoption agency in Missouri, some pieces from my envelope and a some pieces from the Iowa Adoption Investigator’s envelope were missing.

I can not see how this happened and after talking to the social worker who sent his stuff to the agency, he asked me to double check because he has been doing this for years and does not miss a beat. I have been trying to contact the agency and can not get the woman or her assistant who is managing our case to call us back.  It has been a long week of NO movement whatsoever.  We have not sent them any money yet, so I am wondering if they just do not want our business. Maybe we should take our home study and go somewhere else.

Yes, this is discouraging.. I am sure it will be worse when we are “active” and waiting.

Today, May 12th 2010, is the “Day in the Life” Photography day for Iowa.

I am not sure, but I think it is worldwide.

All day, it has been entirely too rainy to get any good shots, so I felt powerless. Then, about 20 minutes ago, I glimpsed out the window a perfect shot! Xoe helped me out and ran out in the backyard for this one..

Yes, we are dealing with flash flooding. The creek down the hill is over flowing- for sure!

Jinx has not been updating her blog, that is what has been happening.  Perhaps, you should yell at her.

Beyond that, Wind ranch has been pretty wild.  We have been busy with work and play. I have a been working alot because we are about to launch a new release of the banking software I design. It has been crazy at work. When at home, we have had soccer practices Monday through Thursday and games on both Saturdays and Sundays! Then just for some fun, we through in a barbecue every other week and have tons of people over. << I will insert some photos of the fun we have been having with BBQs.>> The soccer player BBQs are most fun, because the kids terrorize the baby goats and poor old Sunny gets more attention that an old mare can tolerate. At this last one, the 10 yr old girls found mud and we had to hose them off before the family’s went home. HA, the parents must love us!  Girl Scouts has 4 meetings next week. 4! And we have one more soccer tournament this month and 3 more next, not to mention soccer tryouts for next season. This should be fun. Matt (“Croy”) is going to go to Minneapolis for more coach training soon too.  We are having a great time out here at Wind Ranch.

We went to Pella Tulip Time last weekend. Check out the photos!

I am going to plan the garden here soon. Any suggestions? I just planted 3 new silver maples and the deer have not gotten to them yet! I am thrilled. They killed the apple trees from last year.

We have some news. Just call us pregnant. Well, not really.. But we are expecting. Nooo, not a baby goat, horse or llama. While we were in WI, we had revisited the idea of adoption again. We both came to the same conclusion. This little family is not yet complete. Over the last 2 months we have been filing paperwork, getting fingerprinted and we have paid massive amounts of money to many different people in effort to adopt our next child. Until we know who we are adopting- we are calling this new family member “Three”, “Tres” or “Tre”.. If you hear mention of 3 in the following posts, you’ll know who we are referring too.
Soo, my friends and fam, stay tuned for more info on our most amazing of all family endeavors.

I swear that “the forces that be” knew that this was the week that I get my bonus.. This is one of the first times in my life that I qualify for a hefty bonus and expensive issues happen at our house.
First, the septic decided to make us miserable. Yeah, it was Monday when I got that bonus. Tuesday, the septic spills over into our entry bathroom. Wednesday, the septic shit sucker truck comes and hauls away a load. I scrub and seal floors that were pooed on. Thursday, the septic shit sucker truck returns with plans to replace our pump.   He opens the septic tanks and finds them full again, he rethinks and pulls out the plans from the county for our septic and guesses that our water run off (which is immense this year) is causing issues in our laterals. I ask him how much and he guesses that after they fix the pump, if they can get to it with the rising water table, and all of the shit sucking trips maybe 1200  bucks or more. Thursday, I find out that the total bill for my shoulder surgery is in the thousands (why do I pay for health ins again??). Friday, I wait for the septic truck to come and haul away more.. I need a shower. I need to wash clothes.. I am afraid to flush the toilets.. And the male llama has decided that he wants to crawl under our post and rail fences.. I spent a couple hours trying rope around the bottom parameter of the corral fencing to keep the sucker in. I’m waiting for the husband to go to the lumberyard and get wood so we can add a 4th row of rail for the llamas. We will have to add it tonight, cause I can not catch the llama to put him in with the goats.
We have a family vacation planned for this next week. Should we leave when we have this run off and the septic problem, hoping that the huge drift that remains above the laterals does not cause more issues?? and a rogue llama?? What if we come back and find the basement flooded with poo and Cheese missing? Grrrroan.

I am going to call this. It’s Country Living 7, Jinx 0. I am getting my arse kicked.

Last night I waltzed in the door, after visiting my favorite hair dresser for a few hours around 10:30. I was alarmed to find the toilet had backed up in the front toilet room! I called for help, woke the husband. We spent 2- 3 hours futzing with the toilet and to no avail the solution was not in sight. I even drove around town looking for a store open, to buy a snake.. Found one at Walmart around midnight. O M G the people you find at Walmart at this time.. wowza.

Today, the septic gods came and removed the lid.. found out that our little septic tank was brimming. The pump was dead. They hauled off one big load (shit load) of excrement and planned on returning tomorrow to haul a 2nd load and clean the septic out as well as replace the pump.  There goes my bonus $ (down the shitter)..

Let me start from the beginning.. Tonight I sat down at my pc and logged into Facebook and saw my friend Mel had done another stupid quiz about pet peeves. I thought what the hell and started taking the quiz too. (I am a sucker for idiocy) I started up the pet peeves quiz and wrote in Whining in the little search box… and low and behold a photo of XOE came up.. I jumped up and ran and got the family, dragged them in here and we all had a good laugh..
I was stumped. Who put her face on the word whining, and where did he get the pic? So I googled “whining” in the Google images Yahoo! Images and MSNs Live search and all of these sites came up with Xoe’s image! you know where they got it? From the etling.com server (that does exist any more) back in 2004. That is when it surfaced on the first website, listed below. I am sure there is more out there..

Crazy huh? I grab other folks photos and use them in my blogs etc.. I just never fathomed I would see X on the Atlanta Falcons site, let alone Babble or ClusterStock.com.
Here are a few of the sites I found with Xoe on them..

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/whining.htm
http://life.atlantafalcons.com/index.php?showtopic=3841779
http://www.mepreport.com/category/websites/
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/how-about-a-little-congris-to-go-with-that-whine/
http://janeheller.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/03/like_cc_i_lack_feel.html
http://www.priorfatgirl.com/2008/11/full-force-rant-not-for-faint-of-heart.html
http://vnboards.ign.com/ac_friends/b5258/110273322/p1/?9
http://www.psystudent.nl/web/lijfstijl/57-mind/136-ik-weet-niet-wat-ik-wil
http://forums.mammothmountain.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2054&start=45
http://www.larkinsway.info/archive/2004_11_01_archive.html
http://www.vividblurry.com/2004/07/
http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/pocemon/scholarship_believers_independently.html
http://gamma.sitelutions.com/~toucans/sbc/secret/whiner.html
http://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2008/10/1/625774/fantasy-week-in-review-wee
http://www.campussqueeze.com/post/People-You-Hate–New-Years-Edition.aspx
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/tags/whining/default.aspx
http://dessertyears.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/camp-no-whining-after-extended-kryptonite-exposure/
http://www.gamestv.org/event/8781-masuj-dzika-vs-punkd/
http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/8/stop-whining-about-high-gas-prices-it-s-more-affordable-now-than-in-1960s
http://aire.blogstest.arlingtonva.us/cfl_lighting/

I will attach some more pics of Xoe in that series and a photo of Xoe now..

We have babies! Today while we were at work, our goats decided to multiply! We have 2 little guys. We have not sexed them yet.. Check them out.