A weekend of friends and ...llamas!

Wow. What a weekend.

A girlfriend of mine, TK, flew up from California (to cheer on her brother who was running in the Portland Marathon) and was able to come out to the farm for a visit. I was so excited to see her, meet her boyfriend, Jeff, and see her brother, Brett, again. They were kind enough to bring some glorious Oregon fall sunshine with them as a gift. Sunshine, as you may know, always makes me very happy.

Since my son Aidan continues to become extremely tall, we always think it's great fun to measure our guests against my growing boy:

TK's pouty face is because the last time she hung out with Aidan, he only came up to her shoulder. Time flies...

Of course we had to visit with Pete and Reggie, the goats. And since I'm not one to pass up good help, I asked Brett to help me give the goat boys their de-worming medicine. Not knowing what he was getting into, of course he said yes:

Clearly, from the look on his face, he didn't hate it. Pete and Reggie actually made him laugh. A lot.

Here's TK, politely asking Pete to let her back into the goat house:

He said no.

Eventually, TK pulled out Pete and Reggie's leashes and then they knew it was time for their walk:

They get very excited when it's time to go for a walk:

Intrigued by the tales of Roopert the rooster chasing away all male "intruders" to his coop, Brett just had to test his luck by letting Roop out of the chicken run. Brave man:

But Roopert was on his best behavior on this day and decided attacking the guests wasn't the best plan. Still, you can bet, none of the guests took their eyes off him while he was strutting his pretty self around...

It was a fun afternoon - I've missed you, TK. ♥

"So what about the llamas?" You may be asking. Well. A llama breeder contacted me about some rescue llamas she has needing a winter home. On Sunday, Jim, Aidan and I drove out to this llama farm to acquaint ourselves a bit.

We were overwhelmed, to say the least. This person has over eighty (80!) llamas on her farm. These were among the first faces to greet us when we got there:

Not having been around llamas much, Aidan was uncertain how to respond to this greeting:

Llamas, by nature, can be more than a little stand-offish. Since Aidan wasn't pursuing or trying to touch them, this made them feel comfortable approaching him on their terms:

Here are the three, sweet rescue girls:

Aidan amazes me. He's pretty much a natural at everything he does:

How can this face not make you smile?:

I learned so many things about llamas on Sunday. One of them is that they are incredible *watchers*:

They also really enjoy posing on hills:

This is funny, isn't it? This little wool fluff is actually intentional, but I didn't get the whole story. Something about the judges requiring this in the ring or something:

This was a frequent occurrence. The face sniff, though very sweet, is initially quite unnerving:

Then it was time to go home. We ate gummi bears almost the whole way:

I think this was pretty close to the perfect weekend.