What a Night!

We are all exhausted, and I hope to get Andrew, David and Jonathan to bed early -- myself included. Last night was almost comical.

Before bed, I told Jonathan there were storm warnings, and he should probably place the goat kids back in with their moms, since the kids didn't have a shelter in their pen. This was the first night they were separated from their moms, so the boys could begin milking twice a day. Jonathan said he would get up if it rained. Well, by the time I went to bed about midnight (I was taking the tops off from two gallons of strawberries), they were showing a storm on the weather radar. Sure enough, at 1:30 a.m. the thunder and lightning began, so I woke Jonathan up. He went out to do the deed, and I got dressed and followed him in the car since the pens are way behind the raspberry bushes and close to 1/4 mile away. I thought the headlights would be beneficial instead of working in the dark. Jonathan had to drag one mom down to the barn, since she had a cyst on her jaw which recently opened up and was draining, so he didn't want her with the rest of the goats. By the time he did that we were both soaked.


Before I went to bed I discovered the younger boys hadn't taken the kittens down to the barn, so I brought them in the house for the night. For some reason, our cat brings them up from the barn every day, and has them stay in the front of the house. That was a huge mistake. By 2:00 a.m., Jim was really wheezing. Peter then got up to tell me we needed to move the goat kids (where was he at 1:30?!), so I sent him down to the barn with the kittens. It was thundering and lightning quite fiercely. Jim got up and could hardly breathe, so he went outside to get some air. By then David woke up and crawled in bed with me, so I thought Jim would do better in David's top bunk by the window where he could get some fresh air. Jim had just crawled up there when we heard the rain coming in upstairs, so he had to get up again to stuff blankets, etc. in the areas around our temporary door. By the time he returned, we were all able to get some sleep.


Jim and Peter left about 10:00 this morning for legislative meetings for the home school association. I hope they were able to stay awake! I guess I won't bring kittens in the house again, it is too hard on Jim.