La Familia Rosales

One of Grandpas nannies had babies last night… of course she just had to have her little dumplings on the coldest night we have seen so far this winter. Travis and I had decided to run them all into the small goat pen just in case one of them dropped but we were already too late…or just in time depending on how you look at it?!?! We found the nannie I call ”Spot” with a cold shivery baby at her feet. He looked pretty healthy other than being cold. When I stuck him in my jacket I noticed his ears were folded which usually only happens in multiple births. So I looked around and quickly found another very cold baby billy. The second one was in pretty bad shape. We got them all moved in the barn. Mom and the first little billy were doing pretty good, but the puney baby just couldn’t get on his feet at all he had gotten to cold and his surger dropped. We ended up taking him to the house to get him warmed up and fed… He did perk up overnight and this afternoon we were able to take him back out and reunite him with his momma and brother. It was a very happy reunion for all of them! I went out to check on them a couple of hours ago and they are all three doing good. The weak one is still having some trouble with muscle control in his legs but he is walking and nursing and trying very hard to keep up with his brother. All good signs! Unfortunately this afternoon Isabel and I found a third baby that I had missed in the dark. Of course she didn’t make it in such extreme temperatures. I felt pretty sad that she was left out in the cold like that. Hard lesson learned, I will start taking a spot light from now on. We should have more babies soon. We have at least two more mommas  ready to kid out. I hope we have more multiples but I hope they have them in the day and not in the dark, and some more girls would be nice! The boys don’t have names yet. We will keep you posted though! Here are some pictures we took this evening. I don’t care what species, babies are a gift and I think God intended for us to enjoy His handy work! ENJOY!

While we were at Roswell for Thanksgiving my Aunt Peggy mentioned that she had watched the TLC  TV Show “17 and Counting” (that is the show about the Dugger family now has 18 kids)… Anyway the particular episode she watched was all about how they do certain things, like pack for a trip, sort laundry….. ect. ect. One of the the things that they talked about was that they make their own laundry soap. So the other day I got to thinking about how much laundry we ALWAYS have, and how much laundry soap we go through, and how expensive laundry soap can be, and what a pain in the rear it is when we run out and are between pay periods. So I got on the net and found this recipe, here is the link to it…

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/09/making-your-own-laundry-detergent-a-detailed-visual-guide/

I did make a batch of our own homemade laundry soap, we have been using it for about a week. So far we have had no problems with it at all. I did some searching of what people have said about making and using homemade laundry soap. I found that a lot of people had trouble finding some of the ingredients and had to use whatever was available in their area. I personally was not able to find the Arm and Hammer Wash Soda, other people have had the same problem and suggested using purex instead. I was able to find purex for about the same cost as washing soda. The bar  of soap that I chose to use is an old laundry bar called Zote,  I remember my granny talking about using Zote back in the day when she owned a washateria. I used about half of the bar for my batch. (the zote bar I found was two or three times the size of a regular bar) So far we have had great luck with the laundry soap, it smells good and it works as well as the Tide that I prefer to use but never buy because it cost $14-$25 bucks a bottle. The only thing that I did do different (but it probably is not necessary) was I happened to have a refill bottle of fabreeze, I poured about 1/2 cup into the mix before I poured it into containers.  Oh… and the other thing I did different was storage. I am refilling an old laundry soap container, and used a couple of old gallon juice containers to store the extra mix in. It does get a little gloopy, they say you can just pour it in your wash that way but I would rather shake it up before pouring it, and you can’t do that with a five gallon bucket like they say to use in the link above.

So the question is, will I continue to make my own laundry soap or will I go back to store bought???

As long as this continues to work well for our family andcleans our clothes well, I will continue to make my own. It was easy to make, only took about 20 minutes. The ingredients were only about $7.00, and  with the exception of the 98 cent Zote bar I have enough stuff to make many more batches. The batch we cooked made a little more than 3 gallons and we use a cup a load, which is more than the concentrated stuff you get in the store now days but what we made will last us about a month.  We do good to get 2 weeks out of what we normally get in the store.

So if you decide to make your own let me know what you think about it…