Tonight I'm gunna party like it's 2009!

Oh yeah, tonight is the annual Christmas tree burning party! We are getting the chili ready, taking down the decorations, and cleaning up!

Speaking of parties, I wanted to share the pictures from my girls parties before Tim's party gets here. Maddie turned 4 on December 8th and we had a princess fairy party.

I've always had Molly and Maddie's parties together because their birthdays are only a week apart, but this year they each got their own day and they both had a blast

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I made Maddie this little fairy costume for her party, and Aunt Rae decorated the giant cupcake.

Molly wanted a flower party so I made her this little flower tree, but no costume.....no, apparently 8 year olds don't wear flower costumes. Bummer.

This is the cutest picture of Molly and her Uncle Adam! Look at those little best friends! Rae made Molly a giant cupcake too. Isn't she awesome? She used to work in a bakery, she rocks.

Before I go I want to thank you all for making this blog such a fun place to be! You make it so much fun! Thanks for all of the encouragement, prayers, friendship, and love you have given my family in this last year. I wish you all a happy and healthy 2010!

Love,
Samantha

Christmas on The Caffee Farm

Christmas was wonderful! The kids were so happy, and surprised, to find their goats, and a dog that they didn't expect, in the pen on Christmas morning!

Let me go back a little bit and tell you the story from the beginning....The kids each asked for a goat for Christmas a couple of months back. The plan was to get three fainting goats from a neighboring farm (the one that Zoe came from) on Christmas day. Then in the spring we were going to try to get  Zoe a husband....

Our plan changed about two weeks before Christmas when we found a group of five pygmy goats (two of them could be pregnant!) and a male Great Pyrenees for a good price on craigslist, but we didn't tell the kids! The family we bought the group from were having a tough time feeding them so we had to get them right away and keep them hidden for 10 days!!! Do you know how hard it is to hide five goats and a dog from these three kids that practically live outside?? It was pretty tricky. Luckily we built our goat pen down the hill past the chicken pen, so it's not visible from the house at all, and our neighbors have goats too so we wouldn't have to explain any noises either.....Ben and I came up with all kinds of creative excuses as to why we were disappearing for 45 minutes a couple of times everyday to feed the animals, and for why they couldn't go down to the chicken pen.....it was a long and busy 10 days! (Now ya see why I didn't have much time to write! Ben and I were secretly farming in our spare time! LOL!)

On Christmas morning we let the kids open their other gifts and then Ben suggested that we go down to the goat pen to make sure everything was in order before the goats came. You should have seen their little faces when all of those goats and the dog ran to the fence to greet them! Molly was just beside herself!

I have a couple of short videos of Christmas morning just after we came down from the house that are pretty cute. The first one was just after we had come into the gate and the kids were trying to be sort of quiet and still to see if the goats would come up to them. At first I wasn't going to upload this one because it was sort of boring but then I watched it again and kinda cracked up because of something I said to Molly, so I decided to share it anyhow. Maybe you will see the humor in it too, if nothing else you may get a kick out of my accent which seems extra thick when I have a cold. Enjoy.

This video was cute too, the kids were so excited. Molly asked Ben if the boy goat was the one with the mohawk.

And so another season of our lives has begun, we are adjusting to having more (and different) animals on our little farm and learning a new rhythm that keeps us all happy.....The kids are loving every minute of it! Molly has especially taken to our new rhythm, feeding time is her favorite.

Our mornings are especially different these days, the kids have a lot more morning chores to do now than they used to. After we get up they get a load of wood into the house while I tend to the dying fire, and then Maddie and I start on breakfast while Molly and Tim get all of the animals fed. You know it's funny... my kids haven't always been big breakfast eaters, but now! It takes them around 30-45 minutes to do their morning chores and when they sit down to eat breakfast after all that, they are as hungry as three little hostages!

It may take us a few more days to get our schedule worked out just right but we may as well not get too used to it, because soon we may have baby goats to take care of.....and then there will be the twice a day milking...

Molly has been studying up on how to be a goat midwife and how to milk goats. She is so excited! One night we stayed up until two in the morning watching You Tube videos about milking goats and she was pleasantly surprised to find that children are among the best goat milkers because of the size of their hands. Getting goats that may have babies soon was one of the best parts for Molly!

(Note the perfectly coordinated outfit)

Maddie is still a little unsure about all of this. She loves the goats, but from a distance, she would rather just watch than be right in the middle of them like Tim and Molly. She only wants to pet them when she is holding mama's hand right now, but I'm sure she will warm up to them soon. She absolutely adores Ralph (the dog) even though he is twice her size (but just a baby at 10 months old), she says that he "tects" (protects) her. It's so cute the way they have bonded with Ralph so quickly.

Tim Loves the hard work like daddy does, if Ben is on the tractor or working outside you can bet Tim is one step behind him with his little work gloves on! He likes to fill the feeder with hay and carry the heavy stuff for the girls when it's feeding time. He also likes this awesome climbing tree in the goat pen! When we cleared this piece of land off about a year ago Ben left this funky tree standing for that very reason.

So there is our Christmas story! I'm sure this won't be the last story you have to see from the Caffee Farm though, no-sir-re, I'm sure there will be enough of those to fill a book by the end of 2010! 

Introducing...

 We had a wonderful Christmas, but the next day I started to feel a little under the weather....so I will be back tomorrow to properly introduce our new babies and tell you all about our Christmas on the Caffee farm!

Merry Christmas!

We are about to head out to all of our Christmas Eve celebrations, but I just couldn't go without first wishing you all (my online family) a very merry Christmas! I have wanted so badly to be here this week and share all of our doings but my kids read everything I write here (to keep my stories straight I guess!) and we are having to stay so secretive! Oh I can't wait for Christmas morning! Boy am I going to have a lot to tell after Christmas!

 I wish you all, my dear friends, a wonderful Christmas filled with love!  

Love,

Ben, Samantha, Molly, Timothy, and Madeline

 Zoe and Ralph the dogs; Kitty the cat; Tommy the turtle; the chickens; and our five unnamed until after Christmas, goats (hint)

Looky here!

I've found a new gadget for blogger! It's on the side bar down on the right, right above all of my lovely followers. It's called "recent comments", isn't that cool? Now when you comment, if you have a blog, it puts your link right there on the side bar so that people can visit you!

Grace Livingston Hill anyone?

I have read several of these free online books in the last couple of weeks and I just had to share! I'm able to read these on my phone anywhere I go! Now what can make a gal happier than a Grace Livingston Hill novel while waiting in line at Target? I have read so many of her novels over the years and after every single one I have felt so inspired in my walk with God. Her stories are just beautiful! I've just recently read a couple of her Aunt's novels too, and let me tell ya, Isabella Alden doesn't dissapoint either! Anyone else have a good source for online books?

Our little Zoe

This is our little Zoe! She's a Great Pyrenees that's about three months old, and even though she is really big she's just a baby. Sometimes we call her our little polar bear, she is so stinkin cute and she has the sweetest personality.

She LOVES the kids so much! She is so playful and loving, I can tell that she's going to like growing up with them.

She was moving around so much while I was trying to get a good picture of her that they turned out all blurry. You wouldn't believe how much she has grown just since she came home! I think she probably weighs more than Maddie already!

We got Zoe from a neighboring farm where her mother and father work taking care of chickens, goats, turkeys, peacocks, emu's, and even the cats. I think she is the perfect addition to our little growing farm! The chickens like her, kitty's still not so sure, and when our goats come home in a couple of weeks I'm sure they will like her too. I know that she will take good care of them for us. You know, now that I think about it, I haven't told you about our goats have I? Well then I will just tell you now. The Caffee children have each asked for a goat for Christmas! They are so excited too! Molly even asked her Nana to buy her some goat food for her birthday on Wednesday! LOL! I love that girl, and she loves to be my little farmer girl. She has plans of pigs, sheep, and peacocks too. I can't wait for Christmas morning! It's going to be so much fun!!!

I need to be studying up on goat's milk recipes....

Now for the homemade laundry detergent, dishwasher powder, and hand soap....

**Disclaimer: The laundry detergent recipe I found was on the Duggar Family website, and while I hear they are very nice Christian people, I don't want to give the impression that I know anything about them (we don't have cable TV so I don't watch their show). I'm also going to give links in this post to other websites that I found while researching homemade cleaners. I always try not to give links that lead to sites with offensive language or advertisements. Because most of my time on the computer happens with my children around I assume most of you are the same way, so I wanted it to be clear that I only looked at the recipe links that came up in my Google search, I didn't comb these sites for kid friendly material...so be careful! And sorry I'm such a freak-show for even writing this but I just wanted to remind everyone that you have to be careful everywhere you go online...I'm done now. LOL!

If you are trying to squeeze every last penny, like us, you are going to love this post! A couple of months ago I came upon THIS laundry soap recipe online and I decided to try it. I mentioned that I was planning to try it out at church the following Wednesday night and all of the other mamas got excited and wanted to do it too. So the next Wednesday night we brought all of the supplies we needed, and when we left church we were each carrying a five gallon bucket full of detergent! It was a very good lesson for our Keepers at Home girl's class with a bonus for us mamas! After using this stuff for over two months I can honestly say that I can't tell the difference in my clothes at all from expensive $15 a box stuff. I've talked to some of the other mamas and they say the same thing. Since I have a HE washer I get over 600 loads of clothes out of only one $2 batch of detergent. I think that's about as cheap as it gets! At first I worried that the clothes would smell kinda funky, but they really have a nice, clean, but not overly perfumed smell. Edited to add: I did do one small thing different from the instructions after we mixed up the first batch of detergent, I added the grated soap just a little at a time to the hot water and it dissolved much easier than adding it all at once and I had no lumps in my finished product. I also give my bottle a good shake before I use it everyday.

For my fabric softener I just diluted my regular Downy 1 part downy with 3 parts water and use it the same way I always have and the clothes smell the same. I have seen an improvement too, they don't have that sticky film that they used to have with the full strength stuff. You know what I'm talking about? It's like the towels and napkins don't soak up water as well when you use regular strength Downy, but now they smell nice without the film, and that's really nice. I also use vinegar instead of fabric softener for any loads that may be stinky (like work clothes) because vinegar kills the germs that cause the stink and softens clothes.

So after that little experiment I tried the homemade dishwasher powder that I found HERE. I looked at a lot of other recipes, but decided on this one because I had almost everything on-hand. I did add 1/2 cup of salt to the mix because on a lot of sites I read that the salt helps to sort of scrub the dishes (and I'm pretty bad about not rinsing them off first, because I don't get the point of washing dishes before I put them in the dishwasher, so I need all of the scrubbing power I can get). It worked great!

My next project will be liquid hand soap and liquid shower soap. I found pretty easy instructions for it HERE. From what I have read most places it looks like you can get about a 1/2 gallon of liquid soap out of 1 bar of soap. Some people even use the slivers of leftover soap left in the shower to make hand soap, now that's awesome! Kinda makes you feel like your getting something for nothing. I thought if the body wash works out I will try to add some moisturizer to it too. I should add that I did try one of the hand soap recipes that included borax but that was a big mistake, my hands did not like that recipe at all! Soap and water is all you should need. Don't put borax in any soaps that will have to touch your skin, it's a pretty heavy duty cleaner and shouldn't be used on skin ever. Lesson learned.

So for the last few weeks I've been thinking about all of the expensive things that we think we have to buy that we could make for lots less, and wondering if there are more things that I could do to save money....It really adds up when you think about it all. We already do a lot of money saving things like making our own bread, using cloth napkins, using real cups and plates, we buy 1/2 of a cow once a year from a local farmer (it's cheaper and the meat is so much better), we grow our own food in the Summer and put away for Winter, we have fresh eggs from our chickens, and we heat our home with our wood burning stove...Please share your ideas! What are some ways that you have cut the cost of living? And if you have a recipe to add please share it in the comments section! We would love to give it a try! I also found THIS SITE in my research, I'm going to try a few of these things too. Hope you have learned something today!

Homeschool Planner!

Finally! I have the Homeschool Planer uploaded!! You can read all about the planner HERE. I will have it on the Adoption website too sometime tonight after church. I'm offering the planner for adoption donations (you can give any amount, there are no set donations).

  

I feel like it has been a while since I have updated everyone on the adoption process, but....not much has happened really. We are still in the homestudy part of the process and basically just waiting on God to provide the money for us to move forward. It's a little discouraging at times and I have a feeling that it will probably get worse before it gets better. It looks like it will cost us about $30,000. We have a few fund raisers planned, but I think I'm going to need to plan lots more! I've been trying my best to come up with creative ideas...I think my next move will be to open another Etsy shop and sell a few handmade things a month. Besides that, all of the interviews have went really well. I was so afraid of them! Our social worker is just as sweet as she can be though so she put me right at ease. I know that God has a plan in all of this, and I know that we aren't the first family to walk this long hard road...that is very comforting. If any of you have an idea for a fundraiser please let me know! And if you like the planner please tell your friends, every little donation counts!

Pretty Pot Pie

 This is the "butterfly chicken pot pie" test-run for Madeline's birthday on Tuesday. My little princess approves...

She needed special, pretty food for her birthday....you know cause what princess would eat just normal old pot pie on her 4 year old birthday....I love how butterflies can make her happy....

My crazy kids and their lizard obsession.

I should start by saying that Fall in Alabama is prime lizard catching season. It's warm so the lizards are still out, but it's cool enough that they are pretty slow so that the kids can catch them, and that's good news to the Caffee children. You see the Caffee children will get up and get all of their school work done early (without complaints) just to get outside to catch lizards (and whatever else that they may come across). These crazy kids have caught up to 34 lizards in one day, they affectionately refer to that day (often) as "The day we caught THIRTY FOUR lizards". LOL!

They head out early with a five gallon bucket and start their day. They each have their own job during lizard catching season too- I'm tellin ya, these kids are serious, you would think they were getting paid $5 a lizard by the way they act. LOL! Tim is the lizard finder, Molly said he is the best "finder"; Molly is the actual lizard catcher, because she is the fastest; and Maddie is the lizard holder, think, nursery worker. (What with the hard-core lizard catching and the five gallon bucket, I think this post deserves to be filed under the "Confessions of a Hillbilly category".)

I asked Molly "You only catch the green lizards right?" and she replied, very seriously and emphasising with her hand on each word, "We will catch any kind of lizard... as long as it's not poisonous".

They also catch the occasional frog (above) or turtle too, but lizards are their favorite.

On one fine lizard catching day, I was happily working in my loft and talking on the phone to a friend, when Molly ran up the stairs screaming and laughing with a lizard hanging off of her nose! She said that Tim stuck the lizard on her nose while it's mouth was open. Silly boy. Well I grabbed the camera, took a few good pictures for her future husband, and promptly told her that she was on her own getting that lizard off of her nose. LOL! Mama don't do lizards. She eventually pried it off and let it go along with the rest of the the day's catch, feeling that it had been tortured enough for one day, and lived to continue her lizard catching career the very next day. So there is our lizard story...I hope you enjoyed it as much as these crazy kids did!

Next up, my new bag! I'm going to get Molly to take pictures of me wearing it today, this should be fun!