Due Date: 2/20/12

Some exciting news!  Amy and I are expecting our second child, a baby boy, with a due date of Feb. 20, 2012.  We have just entered the third trimester and Amy is doing well.

The exciting part about baby #2 is that Ayla is very fascinated, curious and excited for the arrival of her baby brother.  Almost daily she asks Amy if, "Mommy's baby can come out now?"  It is pretty cute to see her start to love on her baby dolls and be their mommy.  For instance, she takes her milk cup and feeds it to her baby.

Exciting times at the Edge!  :)

Wait...there's an inside to the house?!

April 2011

I have spent so much time on the blog discussing the outside of our acreage, but hardly any space has been devoted to this.  This must change.

As you can see in this April picture, our house has two levels.  The bottom level has two bedrooms and the top level has three.  We currently use the bottom two bedrooms but when the kids can do the stairs they will go upstairs. 

The girls working hard!

Adjacent to the master bedroom is an office space.  Today, Amy finally got her quilting bug again and we set her up in the office.  Ayla has a vanity from her great grandmother that is in the office (for now).  We also have a desk in there.  We are all excited to have a workspace in the office.  I took a picture of the girls working hard at their respective workspaces.  Amy is quilting and Ayla is coloring.  This room might be the most modern of all our rooms as it constitutes the latest addition to the home and has electrical outlets on each wall.  Two bedrooms upstairs have zero!

Painted by Daddy 11/25/11

Lastly, I have included a picture of a framed painting on Ayla's vanity.  You can't see it in the above picture but it is there.  I just painted it yesterday while Ayla and I were having some fun and I decided to frame it.  Probably a little selfish but for some reason I was proud of it and she liked it, so we went with it! 

The Donkeys

In the first of my return posts, I need to inform you all about a significant addition to our alpaca herd.  Donkeys.

In fact, we added two donkeys.  This story is quite a doozy.  :)

Where we live, when the moon comes out it is not uncommon to hear coyotes in the distance.  Way distant, but audible nonetheless.  Our two alpacas, Buzz and Phantom, are wimps and run when anyone or anything gets near them.  Although we have a great fence around them, the reality of hungry coyotes getting in the fence did exist, but the likelihood was small.

Upon further research we learned that donkeys are coyote-killers.  Females especially.  A female donkey will protect her "children" which could be anyone she has imprinted on (ie. alpacas).  Our search for a female miniature donkey was on!  Craigslist produced a hit right a way, but the owner insisted she be sold with her best pal, who is a gelded male.  Of course, Amy convinced me real quick the importance of having them both.

So we welcomed Minnie and Buck into the fold and they have been with us over two months.  In the picture with Ayla you see Buck, who is mostly gray.  Minnie is much more photogenic as she is white with brown spots.  I don't have a great picture of her, so Buck will have to do. 

Minnie is definitely the "alpha" between the two.  She is no-nonsense, pushy and a little rude.  She has no qualms putting anyone in their place, except for me of course.  The alpacas especially dread her and she will nudge them away from food she wants.  Buck is more gentle and is OK with Ayla on his back.  He makes more noise though.  If I were to walk outside right now, he would great me with an angelic "hee-haw" and wonder why I don't come feed him and say hello.

Either way, they add a lot to our little plot, even if they are mostly around for security purposes!  :)

Return to the Edge!

I guess people liked my blog.

People have been bugging me to start blogging again...so I'll give the people what they want.

Why did I stop?  As a teacher, it was easy to get lost in blogging over the summertime but between working a summer job and the school year starting up at the end of July, I simply didn't make time for blogging.

Finally I got another reminder about the Edge and I thought perhaps the time is right again now that the school year is churning and I have more time than I did before. 

But....what do I write about?!  I had ideas galore in the summer, especially during the discovery period of living out here on the Edge.  I think the blog was my comfort tool, it was my security blanket for living out here.  If you read my initial post, when I share my inner-most fears of living out here, and compare those thoughts with my current feelings, they would not relate.  Truth is, I have figured it out and things are OK out here.

I will share some new happenings here in coming posts, including some new additions (teaser alert!) I hope to eventually gain some trust in my readership again.  Thanks!