My oldest daughter Beth is old enough this year to be in the regular 4-H at the fair. She choose to do a pygmy goat. The picture below is the first picture of when we brought her home. And the picture also explains why there is a $100 goat pen out back with the little "darling" in it. Molly a.k.a."goat pest" decided that the fun thing to do would be standing and jumping in and out of her water bucket.

The fair is a month away and we have been 3x's a day walking the goat (which gets some pretty weird looks from people driving their cars) It seems to be working. She knows when we bring out the leash that it is time to work and I don't make her work very long. Just trying to get her leash trained. Hoping that all the work would let Sammi know that maybe animals is not the way to go for 4-H, she has happily told me that she wants to do rabbits. Thankfully that will be in 3 years, gives me time to save up the money. Sammi is a Cloverbud and is going to build a cow girl and horse out of terracotta pots. We are also making a killing jar for insects and then doing a display of things that we have found in nature.

I am using Ohio Virtual Academy for our homeschooling curriculum this year. Beth is excited about getting to do some of the work on the computer. In the meantime I am trying to get Sammi's IEP updated so that the school will know where to place her.

Suzy is improving with her speech though expressive language is still a problem. We have enjoyed going to our library's reading program this summer. Last week they got to talk about the civil war and what kind of food and medicine was used during that time. The girls were all excited to tell me that if we have bug bites and don't have any medicine for it we can use Mint toothpaste because that is the equivalent to what they used during the civil war. So when we go grocery shopping next month they want to look for that kind of toothpaste to see if it works.