my fairy, tree climbing girl

Ansley found these fairy wings in the garage (not sure why they were there) and put them on while she rode her scooter around and climbed trees. Too cute to not take a picture of.

 And this is after I told her to smile for the picture...maybe we should just keep it candid.

And this was after I said 'just smile like something is funny.' A little better.

kiddos

backtracking a bit...

Can you tell which pumpkin is Ansley's?

 A Storm-trooper, a Jedi, a cheetah (with a pink bow) and a little bumblebee

ladybugs

This is kind of old news now, but a few weeks back there was this ladybug invasion. I would walk outside and have a dozen ladybugs land on me. So I decided to check out the zoom on my camera and see how much detail I could capture with my camera. Not bad.

eggs

Last post on our chickens..but I had to share a picture of our beautiful eggs. We might not have to even dye eggs for Easter with these colorful eggs!

new camera

My wonderful hubby got me a new camera for my birthday and I would like to say that I have been taking pictures like crazy now. But with all that is going on during my days I can't seem to find the time to practice and fiddle around with all the buttons and modes and aperture settings...I'm so overwhelmed by it. I even have another lens that I haven't even tried out yet. One day I will find some time to learn and know what aperture and things like f/5.6 mean. But for now I will make the professional photographers cringe (not that any read my blog) while I post pictures of our every day life. Some out of focus, some in really bad light and some where the flash just washes out everyone and everything.

This particular photo was on our "hike" that the kids and I took for PE when the leaves started changing and the weather was just perfect. I was experimenting with the manual focus. Some other random photos to come!

happy heart

One important lesson we try to teach our kids is obedience...a hard one we as adults are learning too. We have this little saying we use which I got from a book called Wise Words for Moms by Ginger Plowman. "Obey all the way, right away and with a happy heart." Since girls can have such strong/powerful emotions we use the "obey with a happy heart" with Lainey quite a bit. So she found this heart "lei" we got in Hawaii and she calls it her happy heart. Now every heart she sees is called a happy heart. Let's just hope it will sink in one day.

big girl

I love this picture! Lainey was so proud that she could pick up and hold Brody all by herself. She is growing like crazy these days and I see my baby turning into a big girl. 

no training wheels

Ansley has mastered riding her bike this week with no training wheels. I noticed she could ride the boys scooter around and balance perfectly on it. Then I thought to myself, that's the same thing as balancing on a bicycle right? So off the training wheels came and a day later she was all on her own. Such a big girl!

surfer boy

You can take the boy away from Hawaii but you can't take the Hawaii out of the boy. Surfing on the slide in the backyard (yes, I realize is not very safe)...while flashing a shaka!

Chickens - Part 3

Don't worry. My blog will not turn into the chicken blog. This will be my last post on chickens...well maybe one more when they lay their first eggs. We're eagerly awaiting that. But here is our crew...pecking around the yard eating the bugs and clover, their two favorite treats.

 This is Tiger. She is the chicken with nine lives. I nursed her back to health after an attack from a raccoon. I think at times we thought she was a goner but she pulled through and has joined the rest of the brood.

 At times she still thinks she is human and will hop up on our lap (if we're outside) and snuggle a bit. Weird I know. This is Tiger on my lap. No, she is not dead she is sleeping.

 This is Ansley holding the chicks when they were smaller. She asks if we can hatch more because she LOVED these baby chicks and would hold them any chance she could get. Besides Tiger, they're not so easy to hold any more.

 But if you have food they will come up and eat out of your hand. They are funny creatures. I definitely have loved the experience of having them and that my kids have had the experience too. The learning never stops.

 This is Wolf our rooster which has a new home now. He thought it was okay to crow anytime of the day, and quite loudly, so I was nervous our neighbors would start complaining. Now he has a nice home out in the country where he can crow all he wants.

new addition

Meet Brody...our new baby (girl) kitten. We thought she was a boy when we first got her which is why the name is a bit boyish. But since we haven't taken her to a vet yet we are still not certain she is a girl, so Brody it is. 

You see I have this problem when it comes to small, defenseless, weak animals. I feel the need to take them home....especially when they are 'free' and so teeny-tiny. Thankfully I have a chill husband who doesn't mind and I have 4 kids who absolutely LOVE the new addition to our family. And Bella, our other cat, is adjusting.

This Ansley girl is just like me as a little kid. She loves any and every animal that will let her pick it up. Let's just say Brody does not get neglected. I snapped a picture of her snuggling with Brody and than thought the lighting was really good in the room and decided to snap a few more of the other munchkin's...

1st day of school

I meant to post this Monday when we started school but here we are...my 5th grader, 2nd grader, and PreK/K grader. I love these kids to pieces!!

 And for PE we decided to take advantage of the 90+ degree weather and do a little slip-n-sliding. And of course our snow sleds are perfect boogie boards to slide even faster with.

 Lainey prefers the 'water not squirting her in her face' activities. A bucket of water is quite entertaining...add a little soap and she is one happy girl!

Chickens - Part 2

So to update on our chickens...last time I posted about them they were still in our house and we were in the process of building them a coop in our backyard to keep them in. We have so many chicken stories to tell and for some reason I haven't taken any pictures of our chickies all grown up now. I will save that for another post..for now I will talk about building our chicken coop.

Like most things, I search the internet for some inexpensive way to build/make/create something and find these great ideas to which I then turn to my super handy husband and say "Isn't this neat? Can you make it for me?" And like a great husband he always agrees. And can I say he is amazingly handy. 

So my "great" idea was to make a chicken coop out of pallets which most businesses are trying to give away for free (I won't even go into all the other projects I want to make using pallets as well). The whole point of keeping the chickens was to raise them and collect their "free" eggs...not to spend hundreds of dollars on a chicken coop and make it the most expensive eggs we have ever eaten. So Jason started out with a stack full of pallets and disassembled them.

Then he constructed the frame of the coop using one whole pallet as the base. Then he used the disassembled ones to make the slatted sides.

  Then we (actually it was he) drug the super heavy structure up the hill, before it got too heavy to move, and built a foundation for it to rest on. He added more slats for the roof and an egg box on the side. At this point we had spent $0 for our coop. The rock foundation was from our yard from another project we were working on that required digging out part of our hillside to add a swing set.

 We added the "run" part of the coop and I decided I wanted a bright yellow and white coop so even in the winter our backyard would have a bit of color. At this point we paid for 3 bags of cement to stick the rocks in place, 3 locks and 4 hinges, chicken wire, a few extra shingles (the previous owners left a stack of them in our shed) and exterior paint.

 These are the kids putting the chickens in the coop for the first time. They were very encouraging. Poor chickens were scared to death being in such an open space.

And this is the final picture with two coats of paint on it. I believe that is Pillow at the door...Ansley named her because she is all white and looks like a fluffy pillow. So there you have it. We are now a chicken family.

end of school year celebration

 To celebrate our last day of school, we went on a "field trip" to see the Arch.

prepositions

Ethan and Jude reciting the preposition jingle.

Lainey's 2nd Birthday

Lainey's birthday was a month ago but better to get it on the old blog late rather than never. Our Lainey-Lou has entered the land of toddlerhood. She keeps us laughing, at times can create quite a bit of drama, is always talking up a storm (sometimes at high decibels) and has been testing out her stubborn side lately as well. It was fun to see her enjoy the festivities of her birthday and know what to expect from a birthday party...singing the birthday song along with everyone, trying her hardest to blow out those candles but as hard as she tried the air that came out of her mouth blew her bangs more than it blew the flame on the candles. And she opened her presents without anyone prompting her or helping her. Such a big girl!

 We had a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme.

And just to show a little bit of this sweet, energetic, funny girl...I added a couple of videos. And yes I was letting Lainey jump on her bed like a maniac. Probably not good either that we were laughing at her and encouraging her. 

And I could not for the life of me figure out how to flip this video right side up, so if you turn your head to the left or flip your computer screen to the right, then viewing it is a little easier. This girl has some jumping skillz, for sure.

science class

This year for science we have been learning about flying creatures. From birds to bats to butterflies and every other flying insect. So what better way to really absorb all the different facts about these amazing creatures than to grow as many of them as we could in our house. Our home for the past 3 months has been incubating, hatching, molting, growing and metamorphosis-ing (don't think that is the scientific word for that). At times a bit crazy and a bit zoo-y but I can guarantee you my kids have loved every minute of it. How amazing to see God's amazing handiwork in real life...not just out of a book.

We started off with ladybug larvae and watched them pupate and then emerge into their adult beetle stage. This is when I wish I had a fancy, schmancy camera so I could really focus up close to see these little guys but this is as good as it gets with what we've got. 

butterfly chrysalis'

At the same time we were fattening up our Painted Lady butterfly caterpillars and watching them make chrysalis'. After about 10 days they emerged into beautiful butterflies and with their long proboscis' slurped on slices of watermelon that we set out for them.

Next we incubated some chicken eggs for about 21 days and out of 12 eggs we ended up with 8 that actually hatched. We intended to let them grow for a couple of weeks and then pass them on to someone who would want to raise them. But the more we started thinking about it the more we wanted to raise a few in our backyard. Crazy I know...but what a great experience for the kids right? 

Jason is in the process of building a chicken coop out of free pallet wood (later post to come) and the kids are so excited to go and collect the eggs (in a few months when they're big enough). Ansley is just glad that she doesn't have to say good-bye to Chubbie, Alice, Weak, Tiger or Rainbow (unless they are roosters of course).

 And Bella has enjoyed "guarding" the chicks for us. Thankfully she is declawed but she still loves to watch them in their brooder box.

I should have taken some more recent ones because they are much bigger than these cute, fuzzy ones a few weeks ago. So if the rain would hold off for a fews days we can finish our coop and get these chickens outside and in their own house...and more importantly out of mine. They're kind of noisy, dirty birds when they're all cooped up in a brooder box.

And our latest insect we are waiting to hatch are Preying Mantises...which we've learned are also great for gardens. So in a few weeks we will be proud owners of about 100-200 mantis nymphs. Yep, a bit nervous about that one.

And because I am my mother's daughter, once she told me about a huge puddle at the park that had hundreds of tad poles in it, I ran over and gathered about 5 so we can see them grow into frogs. New life in the spring is an amazing thing to see and experience. To be continued...