Saturday, March 7, 2009

Frankie and Chris working hols!

During the half term holiday in February, we had another visit from Frankie and Chris, as I had said it the last post. They arrived the day after we took delivery of our alpacas! As always it was so lovely to spend time with them, however this was strictly a working holiday. We are now seeing the end results getting closer, but with many hours yet of painting, staining etc. to be done. Frankie and Chris’s task was to stain the whole ceiling of the big kitchen. This will eventually be a perfect meet and greet area in the hot summer months, with a huge jug of sangria, or even with a warming mug of hot chocolate in front of the log burner in the cooler evenings, mmm I’m digressing!

Frankie with Arthur

And with Blue

Well it did n’t quite go to plan when we realised that Frankie could not handle being on the scaffolding!  Suprisingly it was making her feel a little dizzy and sick.  So she was relegated to painting and weeding (in the sunshine, I might add) whilst poor Chris and I soldiered on, grrr it was a tough job too!

Sleepy Carlos


Chris still found time for the wii!


The day before Frankie and Chris went back to England, Alan’s auntie and uncle came out to see us. We were both excited to have them here with us for a few days, before Alan and I went to England.  We had planned to visit the British Alpaca Futurity near Birmingham. Mark and Louise had very kindly agreed to baby sit all of our four legged animals for us. On the Saturday when they arrived the weather was beautiful, so we had a lovely family barbeque. The sangria flowed, and the food was great, well done Alan. The dogs, surprise surprise were on their very best behaviour!

Mark and Louise with the alpacas


Louise has a hug from Arthur, whether she wants to or not!

To top our day off, during the evening we heard a car horn outside the house and shouts of 'Hola, hola'. A young man with three little boys were walking through our main gate. They tried to talk to me…………. no I couldn’t really understand, although I got the gist of the conversation. I only had to look at the beautiful stray dog, that I would only call The New Girl' (so not to get too attached), to see immediately that they were her owners. Frankie, Chris, Mark, Louise and Alan were on the top terrace and watching, as I let 'New Girl' out to see them. Everyone was smiling and clapping when she ran and immediately lay at the feet of the children, before jumping all over them, and then jumping up to me too. It was a lovely moment! The man even wanted to pay us for looking after her. Although I must admit to having a huge lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. It was lovely to see her happy and with owners that obviously loved her! 

I think Frankie and Chris went home quite exhausted although they did have fantastic weather whist they were here. Shame they did not have much time off to enjoy it!

Friday, March 6, 2009

A Great Day!

February 14th was a very special day for us. I wanted to explain about the dreadful BVD tragedies we had all faced here with our alpacas, and then hopefully draw a line under it as I knew our alpacas were being delivered on this day. I kept it quiet as I did not want Frankie and Chris know. They were paying us a visit for a working holiday. Frankie’s face was a picture as we drove up the last bit of the track with the paddocks on the right and there they were looking all gorgeous! Frankie clapped and squealed, what a great day!

We rather kept it a low key affair, but had a lovely day with Nigel and Ginny when they brought the girls up. We had lunch together and spent time with the alpacas. They all settled in just great. We are of course nervous and keeping a very close eye on them, they seem very happy. Probably as they have some lovely grass and weeds here at the moment and they have settled in just fine.

Cassandra, it's so lovely to have her back

Cassandra's cria, Rafa
Lily
Bermuda