I heard from a friend, at a restaurant I worked at, that his favorite meal was small rabbit wrapped in bacon and grilled. I figured it would be fun to raise rabbits and because they're significantly cuter than chickens, Clarissa would like them as well. The plan as of now is to sell the ones we can, and eat the rest. We own 5 rabbits, 4 of which are does, and 1 is a buck. When I bought them one of the does was pregnant so I was told. I promptly researched my new hobby. Notice, purchased first, researched second. It turns out that the doe was pregnant. Tonight, when we got home, our pregnant doe was running around her cage with alfalfa in her mouth building a nest. Within 2 days we should be welcoming conejitos to our farm. I've mated the other 3 does with our buck and should see quite a few more rabbits by the end of March.
The chickens were a little harder to get. Maggie went through 2 different groups of 5. She's a bird dog, and chickens are.......... birds. We're working on training her not to eat chickens. To do this we purchased a lame rooster that is called a bantam. Think 1/4 size of a chicken. He looks exactly like a white tiny rooster, but he can't walk, run, or fly. He does cockadoodledoo, but at a quarter the decible of our last rooster, which is still infinitely louder than our first rooster, which did not cockadoodledoo at all, but which Maggie killed. The idea was to let Maggie kill the rooster while we watch, then put a healthy amount of fear into her. Problem is, Maggie knows she's not supposed to eat chicken and so won't do it infront of us. I would abandon the project all together, but it brings me tons of joy to feed my animals in the morning, move the chicken tractor, fill their water, and watch them. Not to mention farm fresh eggs are undoubtedly the way to go.
As for the trees that my brother bought us for Christmass, they're doing very well. We used KuGar compost in the planting and they seem to be handeling it well. We did have a freeze that stripped our poor Mexican lime balder than my head, but he's got green shoots sticking out now.
One of the nicest things about the Mrs. being pregnant (besides Jr) is that my car HAD to go. With no AC in Laredo's heat, and our son being born in the middle of July, it was scrap metal. So, we just bought a new car in Houston and traded in the Tiburon. The Tiburon barely made it in to the dealership. People say that all the time I'm sure. Ours BARELY made it in. From San Antonio to Houston for just under an hour, our car struggled to hit 55 mph on the highway. It picked back up and rolled into the dealership. We did tell them that the Check Engine light was on and that they would want to check on that. I guess they didn't care too much because they gave us $1900 for a car we were sure would bring in $500 and not a penny more. Now we're driving around in style in a used Infinity QX56. If you need a new used car, I highly suggest texasonlinesales.com. We got ours for 14K less than Kelly Blue Book.
As for the most exciting part of the trip to Houston, we got to see our new nephew Santiago Jose. He's beautiful just like all the rest of the Garcia-Saenz clan. He looked a little hungry compared to his older brothers, but when you take into consideration that his biggest brother was in the 98th percentile of children, that's to be expected. Not to mention that there's zero chance that baby's gonna starve. Vero knows how to feed her boys!
And what about our little guy. This week Clarissa started week 20. According to her, Jesse is the size of a cantaloupe. We had a sonogram done on Wednesday and everything looks good. It wouldn't matter to us if he had 4 arms anyway, but it's nice to see two arms and two legs anyway. Clarissa's been a champ so far. She battled through migraines for a week or so and a terrible cough for about 2 weeks. Other than that, she's had a wonderfully woe free pregnancy. I can tell that she's constantly tired, but she rarely complains. I firmly believe that she's one of, if not the single toughest women I've ever known, and has fought through it like a champ.
Needless to say, we're busy, but happy. The Lord has seen fit to bless us and we won't fail to give thanks.
