Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Big news in small town Bailey!  The lambs have arrived!!!  Leave it to The Royal Ranch to have a day like yesterday.  The night before I had started to get very nervous about the new arrivals, and to the complaints of my family I spent the evening raking out the barn and laying down a fresh layer of straw that we had just that day pilfered from our friends.  Thanks Tina and Kevin, obviously you saved our butts!  Esther was still ravenously eating so I thought we still had plenty of time, but I woke up early very antsy to finish getting the corral panels in place that my back could not handle.

We were expecting company yesterday, my sister and her family from the city, and my parents.  I was so in hopes that my nieces would get to see the babies on one hand, but not quite ready for the babies to be here on the other hand.  So anyway, Bella and I head up to do the chores on foot and Tom is headed up in his truck to get the extra corral panels and the other necessary supplies to finish up the "birthing" area when I look up in the barn and I see a tiny little body struggling to get up off of the ground!  Out of the corner of my eye I see Rosie happily running behind Tom's truck towards the barn and I just started screaming at the top of my lungs!  "Husband!  There's a lamb!  Get Rosie!  There's a lamb!"  Well, of course over the roar of his very loud truck he couldn't hear me, but the rest of the neighborhood could!  Which is how the phone started ringing a few hours later I'm assuming....
Like a good girl, Rosie came running right back (I just didn't want the dogs to scare Esther) and ran back inside when she saw how upset I was, and Isabella and I took off for the barn at a run that I have not managed since field day 1980!  Tom finally heard my screaming and said "What do you want me to bring?"  It only took me a millisecond to think-the camera!!!

Although we are a tad bit disappointed to have missed the births by mere minutes, and I do mean minutes, our lambs are the most beautiful lambs ever born on the face of the planet!  We were blessed to have one of each, a  ram and a ewe.  Since Isabella has been my sidekick in this sheep thing, Esther is not at all afraid of her and she has been able to help me the entire time, which earned her the right to name the ewe.  She chose to name her Snowball; when I mentioned that I liked Princess and that she sure acts like one Bella informed me that her name is Princess Snowball.  As for the ram, I told the boys that they would have to battle it out and Nathan and I like "Crash" and then Thomas said he might veto that one and I said fine, "Veto" it is.  So, my guess is that Tom will end up deciding between Crash and Veto.  What do you all think?
As you can imagine the morning was a little crazy with the unexpected, but expected arrivals.  While Isabella and I kept the sheep calm, Tom finished building the pen around us so that the llamas would give Esther and the babies some much needed space.  Poor Paco, the father, got on the outside with the llamas, but I figure that is just as well.  We finally headed back to the house after making sure everyone had something to eat and drink and hit the showers to prepare for our company. 

The great thing about living on a ranch is that no one really cares if your house is a mess, because you always have something to distract them from the house itself.  We had tons of good food, great company and of course the babies to show off, so I don't think anyone noticed that my hair was still soaking wet or that my house was a mess.  And, as you can see, my nieces from the city got to experience something that they will probably never forget; they got to pet a lamb that was only five hours old!  That was right before it peed all over their Mom-oops!  Sorry sis!