Thanks Mom for your extreme vote of confidence. I can tell you are behind me all the way.

I have puzzled over what order to talk about all of my fabulous fleeced friends with you, but really haven't come up with a plan. (Don't worry I didn't hurt myself with all of that thinking.) I really don't have a favorite but there are days that some are more entertaining than others.

So...totally almost at random...


Number 126

MICKEY

Ahhhh The Queen!

Mickey is our oldest girl in number of years on earth but one of the youngest we have on our farm in spunk and attitude.

You are probably wondering why

1. I prefaced her name with a number- 126?
2. I call her The Queen - much like someone would call the president (whose name I cannot bring myself to utter) Mr. President.
3. We sometimes even call her Susan

Number 126

When Jeff, the kids and I moved to our new home I was seriously concerned how I would ever be able to tell all of these camels apart. My goodness they all looked the same. It took me less than a week of 'getting to know them' (scooping poop, feeding etc.) to figure out who they all were and how they fit in.

Mickey was a standout- she had a number tag in her ear...icky. Animals aren't numbers especially on my farm. The first thing I did once I figured out who everybody was, was to get that darn thing out of her ear. All it took was scissors. I saved the tag to remind me who she was when I moved in. It hurts me to even look at it.

The Queen

She is ALL that.

Mickey may be just a skinny little thing but man don't get in her way...or the way of her family. First in line for grain is always Mickey. Hay too, she is first. One more interesting thing about my girl Mickey is that she holds her head up high. We aren't sure if this is because she used to have really long fleece on her head or just really good posture but holy cow she always has her nose in the air.

Susan?

Okay we have reasons why we call her Susan- she reminds my husband, my Mom and I of my ex-sister in law. Not in a bad way at all, Susan is a very nice person with incredible posture and taste for the finer things.

So there you go Mickey!!

Here is the best stealthy picture I could find of her- skinny girl going under the fence!

Okay so I will go and take a couple of head shots!

My gift to you is, no not hand knit alpaca sweaters or socks. Starting tomorrow and going through Christmas it is...

We pulled the boat out of the water today for the winter. Having docked it at our friends the Nutts of Warm Valley Orchard, the boat was used heavily...by sea otters! Man they must have thought they won the lottery. You can see just where the otters decided to spend the afternoon sunning themselves and eating crabs...you know...on my boat! It was kinda too bad we never ran into them I bet they were CUTE.

On the way home from West Sound Marina where the boat will get winterized before it spends the season on the farm we stopped by the West Sound Dock for the seasonal stop of the Alaskan fishing boat. What a smooth operation run by a really nice family. We bought a bunch of super fresh fish and prawns to last us quite a while. You WILL want to check out their web site! TrollerPoint.com You can think of us enjoying all that halibut!

Yesterday was a picture perfect fall day. We warmed up to about 68 degrees and the sun was shining. Sounds like a great day for a run, most days do to me anyway.

As I was running around Mountain Lake in Moran State Park I got to thinking about the donkey girls. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Why don't they smile more? They look like their heads are really weighing them down.
• Why are they always hungry? They seem to have a little extra around the middle they could live off of.
• They don't hurry...ever...one speed and one speed only.

• How can they poop so much? Two donkeys can make as much poop as all of the alpaca combined in a day. Who knew?
• What do they do all day? When the alpaca are standing around they chew their cud. Donkeys don't have a cud. Maybe gum is in order.
• Why don't they he-haw more? It is one of the best sounds in the world.
  

I had this vision (don't worry it was only a vision no voices or anything) of making a really cool cria and mom matching game. No such luck. By the time I was able to find the pictures and sort them all out, re-size them etc. I knew you were never going to play a matching game on my blog. Enjoy the pictures if you want to play a game well find one somewhere else.

We were so lucky to have four beautiful cria this year. We had two girls and two boys.

Our new dishwasher came today! Did you know that you need to hire someone to put it in? I am not doing THAT. Okay so I am counting my lucky stars that I have myself a new dishwasher...what I really wanted was a Stihl weed-wacker but...Anyway a girl can dream.

I actually thought I could just sweet talk the delivery guy to install it. NOT. Apparently they don't do that. Who knew? Something about having to hard wire or something.

Well you have seen me take the spurs off a rooster, what should be scary about a little electricity and plumbing? Thank you YouTube!

The dishwasher is in- thank you very much. It does have a little leak on the hot water line that I will fix tomorrow with a plumbers tape. I just don't seem to have any around.

I would come put yours in but well you can't afford me! The hourly rate would break you.