Parentheticals

This last week we started making Paneer. We have made three batches of it already. It is a very mild cheese that doesn't melt at all, so you can fry or grill it up and use it like tofu. Our recipe is this: Heat 1 gallon of goat milk to 195 F Let it cool to 190 F Add one tbsp of vinegar at a time and stir Keep adding vinegar until the milk forms curds. The whey will be yellowish Let the curds and whey cool down drain off the whey and collect the curds in a large white napkin using a colander Let drip for about 20 minutes Salt the curd with 1 tsp salt Press with 5 lds of pressure for 10 minutes and then 10 lbs of pressure for an hour Chill the cheese overnight in the fridge Eat it fast Sara told more stories this week, and they now always end with "And Slam Slam Slam all the way home." She and Rea made up the game Slam Slam to play in the car a few weeks ago; as best we can tell from the front, it consists of asking each other, "Ready for Slam Slam?...

I decided this year, when Andrea got so excited for Christmas, that I wanted to make Easter as big a deal as Christmas for my kids.  I'm not especially into holidays, but Easter is celebrating the most important event in the history of the world, so it seemed worth some effort.  I don't know if I made it as big as Christmas, but it was a big deal in our house. I made a list of things that make Christmas so exciting: music, storybooks, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, presents, candy, fancy food, Advent countdowns.  All of those seemed doable as Easter things, except for the nativities, so I tried to do them.  Here's what worked, what went OK, and what failed dismally: Music - I did make one playlist of the Easter songs from the hymnbook and the Children's Songbook and played it a bit this week.  I know most of them, so I did pretty well at singing them for the past two weeks or so.  Rea learned several of them, and even Sara would dance around the hous...

This week was Spring Break for the schools in our area, so our Sunbeam Preschool had a week off.  We went on a field trip to Wheeler Farm instead on Tuesday.  Rea loved it.  Sara liked the animals but wouldn't get too close, except for the goats and the rabbits.  That was a nice surprise; she'd been acting scared of the goats at our house for a while, so it's good she liked them at the farm.  And she loved looking in the bunny hutch.  Then we played on the playground after lunch.  This time we wore sunscreen and only Mommy got sunburned.  That's progress!  We've been spending lots of time outside now that the weather's so nice, and trying not to get sunburned.  I need a new daily routine to get everything done. Mike is changing the theme of the game Creative Accounting, after too many people saying they didn't want to play it because they were scared of math (the game involves no math).  So the game play will be exactly the same, ...

Sara has begun telling stories. She always begins with: "One day", and then she tells about the protagonist ("a cat" etc.) then she tells what it did ("Flew up into the air" etc.), and finally she ends by laughing. She also likes to sing and dance along with her own song, and tries to write notes to "Uncle Sheila" (which probably means aunt Sheila, but may mean uncle Scott). All of our new baby goats have been sold and taken away. We had the last male goat until Monday. It was such a trouble maker. On Saturday we had him disbudded (the purchaser paid us to do it). It cost $15, and consisted of the disbudder person holding a really hot iron to the goats head until the horns would no longer grow. It was really gross. I wouldn't recommend that anyone do it themselves. Let a pro do it. On last Thursday we went over to Amy's and Dave's house and I got art for Dancing Robots. There is still one card's artwork that needs to be comp...

I came hone today to find that Clarabel had just given birth to two baby goats. They were born between five and five twenty. Alison didn't see them at five when she looked out, but when I arrived home they were just there. Having never seen goats within minutes of their birth I was surprised at how slimy they were. There are two of them, a larger black male one and a smaller black and white female one. Both fall over a lot. It is really funny to see them fall over. The Brown kid that lala had (which we are still holding for the buyers) is making himself a nuisance. He chases the chickens all over and jumps over the younger kids (frustrating Clarabel to no end). A very energetic goat.  He also tries to beat up the chickens, but the gray one and the black ones scare him away.  I accidentally called the girl goat the 'cadpig', which is one of the dogs in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Rea thinks that is it's name now, which is not something we were going for...

On last Monday we had a family night in which we went on an Easter Walk. An Easter walk is a walk where you try to find things that remind you of Christ's Atonement in specific ways (stones that remind you of the tomb, wood that reminds you of the cross, a living thing reminding you that Christ is alive still, etc). Ever since then without exception the girls think that we need to do an Easter walk every day. It has been really nice weather, so this is OK. On last Tuesday we had a big stake missionary meeting. Everyone was invited. Rea and Sara came as well, but they were surprisingly well behaved for a two hour meeting at the end of a long day. You already know of the events of Wednesday and Thursday, but on Friday Alison and I played Pandemic for the first time. It was pretty fun (I got it in the math trade at SaltCon, so I was hoping that it would be good). It is a cooperative game against the board. We won (Which Alison always likes on the first time that we play cooperativ...

Since we now have four goats, counting the kids, we decided to send Clarabelle back to the stud in hopes that she'd get pregnant this time and give us milk, and also to give us time to raise the babies.  We didn't feel too guilty having one mother and two babies on property zoned for two goats, since the babies are tiny, and we figured we could sell/slaughter the babies in a month when Clarabelle came back. Today we got a surprise text: the experienced goat breeder who owns the stud says that Clarabelle is already pregnant!  She probably only has one kid in her, which is why she looks so much smaller, and she's due sometime in the next month.  Rea is vindicated; she's been telling us Clarabelle is pregnant too for weeks. This poses a bit of a problem, as Clarabelle will be coming home and reproducing in the near future.  We are not prepared to have 5 or more goats at our home (we do try to obey the law), so we decided to take drastic measures. We have alrea...