Playing in the dirt :)

This is Colorado for you. This morning we woke up to sunny skies. By 12 pm it was snowing. By 1 pm the sun was out again and it was nice and warm. Today we planted out the cooler weather seedlings and also planted turnip, rutabaga and snap pea seeds. I LOVE the smell of that fresh, rich dirt, it's lovely. We also started more warmer weather seedlings. Mid May marks our approximate last freeze date.

We still have to clean out the rabbits and figure out a new chicken coop. Those chicks are HUGE now and not quite as cute as they were when we first got them, LOL. They'll need to go outside soon.

Speaking of dirt and chickens, while we were turning over the soil the kids were finding earthworms and feeding them to the chickens who thought they were in heaven! Funny biddies.

Where's my worm!?

On the moving to a homestead effort: We have saved up enough for a 20 to 30 % deposit on the property we're looking at in Missouri and have contacted a local bank to find out if we can qualify for a 2nd home loan so we can get started. We plan on buying the property and start paying it off while we're still here and DH has a great paying job. Exciting stuff!

Life is almost back to normal! :)

Well, our houseguests have left and our children really loved getting to know two of their cousins!

We were so lucky to have a really good snow the second day after they arrived, so the two boys could experience their first snowball fight, snowman, sledding, etc. Great fun!

Here is a group photo of the whole bunch of us. A lovely lady sent us money for a family outing so we all went to Amazing Jakes which was GREAT fun for everyone! The adults especially enjoyed the Go Karts, even "Ouma" rode once or twice :) Thank you my dear friend for treating our family, and being part of creating some very special memories!

Today was "Take Your Child To Work Day" so DD7 got to go this time much to her delight.

It was the first time she got to participate in this day, and she's still there with DH as I write this, and thoroughly enjoying herself!

At lunch time the rest of us drove out there and had lunch together at a buffet restaurant and then all the other children got to tour Daddy's work as well.

In taking the children to DH's work I again avoided any highways. I get ridiculously panicked when I have to drive on a highway/freeway. I don't know why, but I was glad to find out today that I'm not alone in this fear. Fear of road travel is called Hodophobia, but I'm more fearful of highways/freeways, especially either merging onto a highway or having other vehicles merge onto the highway in the lane I'm in... I can't even stand it when DH is driving and I have been known to close my eyes when there are lots of cars merging onto the highway (when DH is driving, not when I'm driving! LOL!) How to get over it? I don't know.

Anyway, enough of that. We had a lovely lunch and the children really enjoyed seeing where DH works, I think that's important for them to know and see.

Our garden is coming alive and all the bulbs that were here before we bought this house and coming up everywhere, it's so pretty! Here are a few photos from yesterday:

Well, that's all for now, I'm sure everyone is enjoying the return of Spring and getting those veggie gardens started!

We're having company for two weeks (arriving Tuesday!) so we've been super busy getting ready for them. I'm a little intimidated at the thought of having to cook for twelve people!

We've had a lot happening here too.... first off, nope that egg I posted about earlier was not a double yolk like we had hoped.. :(

However! Shimmer has been really amazing and laid us THREE double yolk eggs this past week! Here is a photo of one of them alongside a "regular" sized egg.

We were all very impressed with her, what a great hen!

These are all our eggs from last week. Our ladies have been laying beautifully, we're getting almost three eggs every day. You can see the three double yolk eggs on the left side of the box. It's quite interesting that each hen lays a distinctive color egg. Shimmer lays darker brown eggs than Henny Penny and Miss Pearl off course lays white eggs.

We saved all the eggs up and had "egg in a hole" for breakfast on Saturday morning. YUMMY!

Hmm... what do you suppose could be in this cute little box?

Awww!!!

We split an order with friends, and our part of the order was 13 RIR chicks. Somehow they snuck an extra chick in there, so we actually have 14 chicks! Aren't they cute?! They're currently in their little brooder cheeping happily. We'll only be keeping four of them as we only need 7 layers, the rest we'll sell when they're a little older.

That is all for now, I probably won't be posting much in the next two weeks.

Conversations with a seven year old

DD7: Mommy, chickens are disgusting.

Me: Really.. why?

DD7: Because they step in their own poop!

Me: *Giggle*

DD7: That would be like if we went to the bathroom and then stuck our foot in the toilet!

Me: Hehehe!

March 20th marks our first day of Spring here in the US! Our weather was sunny and wonderfully warm and our lovely hens chose to celebrate the occasion by each laying an egg! That's right THREE eggs today! The one on the left is suspected of being a double yolk. We'll find out this weekend when we crack them all open for Saturday breakfast!



We chose to celebrate the start of Spring by planting flower seeds.


The children all got to choose four different flowers from my apparently never ending flower seeds supply.

DS4 chose to plant a wildflower, a black eyed susan, a blue morning glory and cosmos.

DD7 chose to plant a marigold, blue morning glory, forget-me-not and a pink morning glory.

DS9 chose to plant a shade wildflower, forget-me-not, morning glory and marigold.

DD11 chose to plant a daisy, cosmos, forget-me-not and a snap-dragon.

DD13 planted a sweet-pea, snap-dragon, phlox and foxglove.

Exciting stuff! We also went out to start gathering supplies for our chicks which will be arriving at the start of April. In the next couple of days we'll be getting delivery of topsoil and aged manure so we can start filling our raised beds.

Spring is wonderful. I think I love it so much because it gives us just a small taste of how amazing it must have been when God created the world. To see each new and lovely thing.

When you plant a tiny seed in the ground and witness a new plant growing from that tiny seed and how perfect the whole process is.. you're witnessing the awesome beautiful power of God.

In moments like these,
I sing out a song, I sing out a love song to Jesus,

In moments like these,
I sing out a song, I sing out a love song to Him.

Singing I love you Lord, Singing I love you Lord,
Singing I love You Lord, I love You.

Levers, Fulcrums, Plants and Cars!

What a combination! This post really just has to do with some photos I want to share.

We're currently learning about levers in school and discussed how a seesaw (oddly not a playground item you find very much in the US!) is a lever. We spoke about the very primitive seesaw that the Ingalls girls played on in the Little House on the Prairie TV series we're currently watching. This afternoon when they went out to play, what did I come outside to find?

Hehe. Put together mostly by DD11. Fulcrum in the new word of the day!

A little peek at our seedlings in case you were wondering how they are faring.

And lastly, DS4 used some of his birthday money to buy this "Cool Fewawwi". He was very disappointed when he took it out of the packaging though.
Do you notice something wrong with the car? Like maybe they put the front wheels on the back instead of on the front? LOL! Those front tires are too big for the front so they won't turn at all.

We'll have to find him another "Cool Wed Fewawwi" because the body is pop riveted together and there's no way to change it.

I wonder if it has any "strange and unusual" collector's value? Nah...

First Brown Egg!

And it would have been a real beauty if it hadn't been laid from the roost! But alas, the pullets are still in the learning stage and we hope that whoever is responsible (we strongly suspect Shimmer is) will wisen up a little and use the nest box next time!

From the left: Our first brown egg, one of Miss Pearl's

most recent eggs and a store-bought egg.