Farm Fresh: New Chicks ALREADY!

It's hard to believe that it is already chick time again. We got 20 Rhode Island Reds in the mail last Thursday and here we go again!

I know you are thinking, "but you already have SO many animals!".  That is actually not as true as it was before Christmas.  A little Romanian immigrant woman came over needing live birds for their traditional Christmas and New Year's feasts. I sold her 4 chickens, 2 ducks, and 2 turkeys. That left me with only 8 laying hens and our fair rooster (plus about a hundred other animals).  My new Romanian friend would like to buy more birds from us as well. Hence the influx of these lovely ladies -- they are a good dual purpose breed so we can eat them for meat or keep them for egg layers, depending on how many she wants to buy.

Grandpop Comes to Town

A few days after Christmas Grandpop came to town and took these beautiful pictures of our day. Breakfast:

 

 

 A little home schooling time:

 Play time:

Chores mixed with playtime:

 The puppies are doing amazingly well. They are learning fast and we are doing our best to train them.

Making salad for our dinner (clearly this is not a pro-picture) and is the only one in the series that I took:

 Visiting my brother P's family:

 

December Birthdays

We celebrated big sister A's birthday and brother M's birthday each on their respective days, but with the same cake!  Per their request it was a Costco size cheesecake and even with the two birthdays we only ate about half of it.  Good thing the missionaries came over for dinner a few nights later to help finish it off. 

 

   Presents!

   One of our traditions is unwrapping a Christmas book each night to read together before bed.  This evening was unusual because usually Daddy reads while I am outside finish chores or cleaning the kitchen.

Happy Boy - We call brother M our "Giggle box" because he is usually so happy.

 

 All his wishes were coming true! Thanks Grandparents!

Christmas 2017

Christmas Eve we had our traditional snack food dinner & movie party.  I look like I am asleep in this picture, possibly because I had just eaten about a pound of shrimp cocktail. 

 

Christmas morning the kiddos snuggled under the Christmas blankies and waited excitedly for the stragglers to arrive on the scene.

Then we opened our stockings.

I thought they might feel like they got a lot less than last year, but everyone seemed pleased.

  They were especially pleased that even though they got dogs for Christmas, and I had warned them that their would not be much else, a few large-ish educational type presents were also under the tree.

 

  AND a few hand-made presents also made it under the tree -- this quilt is for A's Kirsten doll's bed and made from antique scraps that a friend gave me.

 They were excited to have presents from each other as well.  It really is amazing what you can find at the Dollar Tree.

 

 

 After the presents the kids presented a magic show that they had been planning for over a week.  it included some disappearing coins, disappearing feet, and a dance routine from the two littlest.

 It was a nice day of relaxed cozy winter celebrations.