Light the Night Walk - BEAUTIFUL!

After about 2 months of fundraising for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society we finally went on the "Light the Night" walk. Team Blue Skies met at the Gardeschwartz Jewish Community Center along with probably several hundred other participants. Donned our Tshirts, received lit balloons, listened to music, herd several speakers talk about their battles with a blood cancer, watched the students of Baila, Baila dance studio
dance and chatted!!!!

Then we walked.

This is our HONORED team member wearing her survivor shirt and trying to light her survivor balloon. I can say - I walked for her - because I'm so grateful that she is fighting and surviving this battle. She is my little hero. It brings tears to my eyes because I am a selfish person. I don't want to loose my little girl (or any of my kids for that matter) but I know that this battle is a hard one and I wanted to do a little something to make the battle a little light for other families who are facing this diagnosis with one of their loved ones.

And despite all the fun, this seemed to be the highlight of the evening - The BATMOBILE!!!! I heard a rumor that this is the REAL Batmobile. And my kids were so excited!!!!!!!

If you want to donate to the walk - there is still time. LLS is still accepting donations for Light the Night until January 31, 2010. You may visit out team website or contact me for donation information - and to all of you who donated - THANK YOU!!!! Team Blue Skies raised nearly $1500.00....YOU all are awesome and I know many families will be blessed by your generosity!

3 More of Storm's Daughters

This week I was able to get pictures of 3 more of Storm's daughters as they were going to State Fair and were all clipped and show ready. These are his 3 daughters owned by Camino Allegre (two more does there are due this week!) This one is Camino Allegre Rogue - a Chocolate colored doe with white and some tan on her legs and belly. She is out of Camino Allegre Wendy

This lovely little girl is Camino Allegre Star who is one of twin does out of Camino Allegre Tinker Belle.

This isn't the best picture but this doe is by far the best out of the triplets (she looks like she could be a twin to our doe CBF CS Paint Th'Sky With Stars. They are both blue eyed black and white does. Her name is Camino Allegre Storm. Storm is a gorgeous doe with lots of capacity, dairy character and length of body. Nice strait topline and legs. Storm did a good job on his does and we are thrilled to hear that Storm took 2nd behind Hippity Hooves NK Wendy at the State Fair Youth show! All these does go back to our Willow's first daughter CBF Serendipidy's Laikla. Laikla has definitely laid the ground work for a nice herd for Camino Allegre and we are proud of her and the Sedillo family for ALL of their hard work over the past few years showing and breeding.

They are selling Tinker Belle, Wendy and one of the triplets (not sure if it is Rogue or Star) but if you are interested in a nice show doe out of good milk lines one of these does might work for you. Please contact me to put you in touch with Camino Allegre if you are interested in one of these lovely does.

Rain, Rain.....

Living in NM we don't usually get a huge amount of rain every year. Going into Sept. we were still below normal for the year. So, I usually don't get real excited if the weather forcast says it's going to rain - here, that usually means we get enough to make dust stick to cars. My goats have been chanting "rain, rain go away come again - NEVER" this week as we have gotten a lot - really, we might have hit normal. Here are the babies peeking out of the hut to see if the rain has stopped.

And the adults, standing under the lean-to checking out the puddles.....which there are a lot!!!!! They do not like getting their princess hooves wet you know!

Some of the rest of us LOVE it when it rains here. If we don't get any more rain tonight or tomorrow (it is in the forcast) this will all be dry by tomorrow probably.

I see that starting Sat we should get sunshine again. I, for one, will be sad to see the rain go but I know my goaties will be so happy when it dries up.

Medical Update

Today was a whirlwind trip to the hospital for a whole slew of tests. WE made it!!!!
Our first appt was in Peds Onc. for labs and port access - we were 5 min late due to weather beyond our control and that made us almost late for appt 2 - EchoCardiogram in the Children's Hospital, thankfully that test went on time and was fairly quick which made us on time for Appt 3 - Pulmonary Function Test - that was interesting and at one point the machine wouldn't work for the test, so we moved to another machine and it wouldn't work either, then they had to call someone else in to troubleshoot the machines. After about a 40 minute wait they got both machines working and were able to complete the 4th breathing test. Just in time to run downstairs for her CT scan. WE were done by 1pm. I think that was the fastest we've ever been through the hospital for all her tests. We weren't sure we'd make it home before 5 but we did! We were on the way to my Aunt's to pick up the other 2 kids and were just behind a big accident (Dodge Stratus' don't win in fights with Hummers) and got delayed. Thank you a ton Auntie J for taking care of the kiddos today!!!! Sure made it a much easier day.
We will have results of all of Alyssa's medical stuff on Sept 28th. when we meet with her Peds Onc. Dr.

Thank you!

I was just left a comment by Naimhe at AllThingsGoat.com so I visited their site - TOO COOL girls!!!! I love your site and am excited that CBF Nigerians has a new friend on the internet.
Thanks!
Also wanted to do a few more Thank yous for those who donated to our LLS Fundraiser walk - WE MADE IT!!!!! Thanks to donations from G & G, Jaramillo's, Stricklands, Schwirtz', Thomsen's, and K. Partington we hit the $1000 goal we had set when we started this adventure. We are not going to turn down other donations of course so if anyone else wants to donate - LLS would love to have the donations! For those of you who hadn't followed the story, LLS was an organization that really helped us out as we worked through Alyssa's battle with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. This Thursday she has follow up tests and then we will get results on Sept 28th.
All I can say is Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who were so generous and supportive of us as we went through Chemo and Radiation treatments, for all the prayers, donations, meals etc. I felt almost guilty asking for support on this LLS walk but reminded myself - we aren't raising funds for ourselves, we are raising funds to help the hundreds of thousands of families who will face this rather nasty diagnosis of cancer, who will weep tears of fear because a loved one is facing the fight, I don't know where we will be in this battle two weeks from now - I feel as though we are balancing on the razor's edge. Not a day goes by that I ask if we will be back in the battle or if we are one step closer to being considered survivors. No matter what - this battle would be harder to fight if it weren't for great organizations such as LLS, Children's Cancer Fund of NM, and many others who we've featured on this blog. AND all the individual friends and family members who have rallied around us to walk us through this, pray us through this and love us through this. We thank you and LLS Thanks you for all of your generous donations to this walk!!!!

Road Trip!

So, when Alyssa was done with Chemo and Radiation we told he we'd go somewhere and do something so this Labor Day we decided to go to Madrid, NM. I hadn't been there in about 11 years and Alyssa likes places like that! On the way, we decided to stop at Tinker Town Museum in Cedar Crest, NM on the way. Tinker Town was definitely a hit.

This Museum is chock full of wonderful collectibles, miniatures - animated and non- animated, memoriabilia and other goodies! I don't think we saw everything there is to see but we sure had a good time. This is a tiny wishing well - the wheel does turn.

Tinker Town is owned by Carla Ward who I used to ride with at North Valley Farm back in my hunter-jumper days - seeing Carla was GREAT! Brought back a lot of memories. This Museum has also expanded a ton since I visited here last (I think Alyssa was like 2 or 3) and it was neat to see old favorites as well as a lot of new fun stuff. My favorite was the room with all the circus stuff in it!

We were all serenaded by the automated Jug Band and by Otto the one man automated band.

and you can't forget about all the walls that were created using bottles - this could seriously be designated a "green" museum!!!!!

Next time I'll put the pictures up from Madrid but not tonight! too much work to do to get ready for the Fiber show (see http://FiberPhanatic.blogspot.com for lots of Fiber goodness)

2009 CAE test results - All Negative!

For the 5th year running CBFNigerians is posting that all our adult breeding stock is CAE Negative. I called WADDL today to pay for my tests and they said my results were in - we are
all negative. So Storm, Joie, Tirzah, and Miss Priss were the only goats currently over 6 months of age that got tested. I still need to test Kokoro, Stars, and Coral to make sure they are - since they are all out of CAE neg. mom's I have no doubts that they are fine. We are really starting to get excited about breeding season now. I also learned that my new digital scale for milk testing is in and calibrated and I can begin Milk Testing other herds. NOW, I need to see if I can afford to 305 day test my herd next year - I sure hope I can! It would be so exciting to be able to begin to get AR designations on my doe herd. I also am waiting on pins and needles in hopes that our hay comes in before the rain from the Hurrican off of Baja comes in.......I was hoping today but didn't get the call - I hope he calls tomorrow morning so we can get our hay done before it rains. Oh, and tomorrow is our 16th Anniversary - WOW!!!! What an incredible 16 years we've had - I won't even begin but seriously - WOW!!!!
Well, off I go to get dinner fixed.