Ice Skating: A typical day at the rink

 Big sister A and brother M have really loved taking ice skating. We just keep signing up for more lessons!  We do the open skate time for the first hour and then they have a lesson for half an hour. 

 Their teacher, Barbara, is super and always full of praise and encouragement.

 

  We have been taking lessons with the W family for about 20 weeks now. Our kids love spending time together (and we moms do too!) so we hang out all day on Thursdays.  We do lessons, then lunch and dinner at my house.  The W family always brings part of the meal and other fun things to share.

 Little miss L and brother S were doing free skating time, but after 16 weeks they had enough and wanted to just have time to play with their friends and hang out.

Farm Fresh: Goslings, chicks, and turkeys on the grass

 All the young poultry had time on the nice spring grass this week.Goslings were free to roam with their parental guards keeping them safe.

 4 week old chicks hanging out in the play yard.

  Turkey poults with Mama hen in the pop-up play yard.

Travels to Gettysburg and Lancaster (again)

Grandma S has been visiting us this week so we wanted to do a couple of fun day trips with her. On Thursday we headed up to Gettysburg after ice skating lessons. 

 First we thought we would walk through the museum.

It is a great museum -- very good illustrations of the differences between the North and South and the fact that sometimes brother fought against brother.  My little S asked me, "Mom, which ones were the Americans?" I showed him the display along this back wall -- it lists each state and how many from it were serving on each side. Many of them were split and had some fighting for confederates and others fighting for the union.

 There were short video clips all along the way that told the story of the war and especially the battle of Gettysburg.

 They had a lot of interactive games.  This one was the kids favorite.  They pretended to be a soldier filling his backpack and had to choose which things to bring.

  It was hard because the game told you the number of things that you had correctly chosen, but not which items.

 Miss L loved this big horse statue.

We were burned out by the end of the Museum tour and decided to do the narrated driving tour another day!  When we got home big sister A and her friend Z made a chocolate cake from scratch for our friend S's birthday.

 On Saturday we spent the day in Lancaster.  We took Daddy and Grandma S to all the fun places that we liked last time.  This time I remembered to snap a picture of the kids trying the amish scooters. They really want some for Christmas, but 200$ each is a bit much. 

The goat dairy shop was open, but the goat barn was already closed for the day. Luckily we ran into some other goats at another little shop. 

Farm Fresh: Goslings and Turkey Poults

 Broody mama hen has a better hatch rate than the incubator.  She hatched 4 of the 4 turkey eggs that were under her. Our incubator hatched 4/5 eggs from our turkey and we are waiting on another batch that should be hatching in 10 days or so.

 It is so much easier when mama keeps them warm and cares for their education (teaches them to eat and drink). Although, this mama hen is very feisty and pecks me every time I change their food and water.

 

  Here they are today (about 3 weeks old):

Yesterday Mother Goose hatched 2 goslings. She does not like to be disturbed.

Can you spot the little yellow fluff ball hiding under her wing?

 Lots of rabbit kits born last week. They get big fast and I wanted to have some small cute ones for the kids to hold at the family reunion.

We also got one more of the weird islands in our yard taken care of. Hubby pushed over the 3 dogwoods and we were able to replant one. The other two were either too crooked or did not have enough roots to replant. 

 This is what we do for FHE sometimes. Daddy puts on a show with his tractor. 

Travels to Upstate New York

We went up to my Dad's house last weekend for my Goomie's 91st birthday.  We had a pizza (Aniello's, of course!) party the night we arrived. 

Note: All these photos were taking by my pro-photographer dad @Clockworks Photo. These birthday party ones were taken with his phone I believe. 

  Hubby and the girls' dolls provided the after dinner entertainment.

Including breakdancing and cheerleading moves:

 

On Saturday we went to Palmyra.  The kids toured the sites with Grandpop while hubby and I went to the temple.

 

 After that we stopped in Ithaca to hike up Buttermilk Falls.

We love having our photographer Grandpop follow us around and send us home with wonderful pics. Thanks Dad!