New Additions

The chicks have grown and grown. We lost 4, so we have 6. Many of them have names but not all. I am starting to see the pecking order. Blondie or Meg and one of the ones with a striped head seems to be the bosses.

They have started to fly. They get as far as the top of their home. We have added more "lids" for the tub. Next weekend Todd will make them a chicken tractor home.

Saturday we brought our goats home. G was beside herself with excitement.

We did not bring home the boy we thought we would for multiple reasons, but we did bring home the one I thought was the cutest at the Carmen's. He is a Nigerian dwarf named Hugs. He was a bit uneasy about his new home...or maybe is was the 8 humans surrounding him, especially the small, loud excited ones. He seems to have settled into his new digs. He got his name because when he was very little he liked to be held. He still loves to just sit on your lap. His job is to be a companion to Heidi. Goats can get lonely, depressed and unhealthy if they are alone.Heidi on the other hand is normal wild crazy goat kid jumping on the walls, climbing on backs, and chewing on anything and everything. Heidi will be bread this fall and we will have babies in late winter and milk in the spring.

We have Chicks!

The little fluffy kind, not the little girl kind:

We have 10 Aracaunas. I am surprised how different they all are, we might even be able to tell them apart. They will eventually lay a variety of colored eggs--sometime in September I think.

N has started naming them. It is hard to come up with 10 names at one time.

barn and misc

This is the west end of the barn you can see the outhouse and the old "bathroom" remains. During the summer you can not see through the tree line here. The upstairs or loft o f the barn is still used for storage and sometimes the children play here. It is a MESS! but not a priority to clean up.

While I was taking pictures of the girls new dresses D had to get in on the photo shoot with May.

I use my Pampered Chef 4 cup batter bowl at least 3 times a week...well, I did. It got dropped and shattered into a million pieces. I have been told that if you send in the piece that has the company name on it they will replace it. the biggest piece I found was about 1" square and had no recognizable markings. Bummer.

Garden and Nest

A few days ago I noticed shiny strings in the crook of a tree.The next day I saw a bird land in the crook about 20 feet up in a tree. A robin had gathered the tinsel from our neighbor's Christmas tree that was lying in his burn pile. So we have a robin with fancy tastes to watch this summer.

We have a few small patches of grass that came back from last fall.

The second batch of lettuce I planted in the cold frames.

Spinach seedlings with Maple tree blooms. I think I am going to be constantly pulling baby maple trees out of my garden--like at our other house.

Sugar snap peas trying to come up.

Kale seedlings. We have never eaten Kale, but it is pretty and is really good for us so we will give it a try.

Girls Regency Dresses

I have been wanting to use Jennie Chancey's Girls Regency dress pattern for quite some time. She put out a "Drawstring" appendix to the pattern not too long ago. It is perfect for M and T who like to dress themselves without help. The Drawstring is actually 1/4" elastic--I used a bunch of my stash--so they can just pull the dresses on over their heads.This fabric was on the clearance rack at my favorite quilt shop. I have decided that the quality quilting fabric is much better for my children's play things because it wears so well. The less expensive cheap fabric form Wally World or even Jo Ann's just doesn't hold up to playing in the woods.

I loved the fabric so I bought a lot. since I was sewing and had lots of fabric I offered N a new dress. She of course jumped at the chance to get a new dress and match her sisters.

The Wal-Mart out by the mall was clearancing all their fabric (I have heard of many others around the country doing this) so I went to check it out. I found some of their nicer fabrics for 50% off. I bought lots of fabric for clothes for the next year and J bought fabric to make herself 4 or 5 new things also.

I told D he could learn how to use my sewing machine when I taught N last week. He bugged and bugged me until I actually did it. I believe it is a new machine for him to learn how to use. He is fascinated by all the Fancy stitches.

Last night he made a "tarp" for his Thomas trains.

First Swim

I didn't think it would be so early, but Saturday was warm and sunny and the kids thought it was TOOO HOOOTT. So I said they could get wet. They didn't stay in very long, but cooled off.

G's new friend Taylor was there to enjoy freezing. J was inside working on a new dress that she got done for church.

Easter

Just your normal egg hunt--6 children, 12 eggs each, too much candy, and we found all of them.

No one really got new Easter clothes, but the week before I had made some much needed dresses for M and T. They decided they would make good Easter dresses.