AWANA Awards :) 2012 :)

The kids had a great year at AWANA this year! J finished his 3rd book and was almost done reviewing it and is SUPER excited to go to T&T's (Truth and Training) next year! He also got a Leaders Choice award. L and E stayed neck in neck all year and both finished their 1st book and about half of their 2nd book this year! 

We are so proud of them for keeping up the good fight and memorizing all those verses!! 

Momma's New Maid.. A Mixer :)

Papa got a nice bonus from work this spring... This spring it was really nice as he wasn't going to school and his bonus didn't just get thrown into the 'surviving while going to school' pot. Instead he picked out some beer stuff he WANTED not needed.. er.. as much as anyone NEEDS beer making stuff. :) Just kidding honey.. I know I know beer is your chocolate :) *blog about beer stuff coming soon :)

ANYWAY.. he also picked out a mixer for me! He's been wanting to get me one for quite some time and I've been not letting him.. why, now that I have it, I'll never know.
I LOVE IT!! Makes my life ten time easier.



Mine has cookie paddles that make great chocolate chip cookies and clean butter like nothing else!! It's got a dough hook and a large enough bowl that can make my bread recipe THREE TIMES!! Which means I can do less bread making and more other stuff! It makes wonderful ice cream too! He also got a slicing thingie to go with it but I haven't used it yet. I imagine I'll be using that a lot more in the fall for canning etc.

As I've been typing this out J's has been getting everything we need for chocolate chip cookies ready by the mixer.. I love how he can read the recipe and get everything out and all I have to do it throw it all in the mixer (J could do that already too! But a momma gets to have some fun!) and then I let him turn it on and wait for it.... all of 20 seconds and we have the. best. cookie dough. EVER!!! See ya!

~Bravery~

I recently got brave.

HA I know what your thinking..

You think I'm very brave because we/I


- Raise our kids God's way, not mans!
- Know who I am in Christ and live it!

- I have 6 children, and will very likely have more!
- And had the last 4 babies without pain meds :)
- Drive a truck that turns 40 this year. (We are going to have a party for her :)
- Milk a cow and raise and butcher chickens and pigs.
- Home church and Home school my kids and LOVE it!
- Live in a partly finished straw bale house.
- Make a lot of the foods most people buy, butter, bread, etc.

Ok I GOT BRAVER!!!

I typed in.. cutting long hair into layers on google
and found this YouTube movie.. watched it twice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-GAilMmCqQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Then I walked into my bathroom.. with my iPad for reviewing the movie in necessary.. and CUT MY HAIR!!

I didn't even need to watch the movie again! What I should have done then is search up how to cut the front to frame your face. I didn't. I just remembered what my last hair dresser did and DID it..

Yes I really did! Other then the fact that it's all a bit too long still,
I LOVE IT!!!
Would I do it again? YES!! Every month I think :)
I also took my thinning scissors and thinned it evenly all around with my head still upside down over the toilet. I never lost the extra hair I got while pregnant with J3. So I had all that and all the stuff from Baby G and that was a LOT of hair!! I could have made a fair large mammal.. like a small cat!

I just realized I should have taken pictures. HA!! NOT!!

I really like the way it feels, how it curls in layers and how easy it is to brush and take care of now. I've been playing a bit with hair 'do's but I'm more of a farmer then a hair dresser and I'm not having tons of luck with that. One of the ladies from home church, all the ladies said they liked my haircut even though I'd gone to bed with wet hair and it was a FUZZ ball :), also wanted/needed a haircut so I sent her the link.. I haven't seen it yet but she says she loves it ;) * I've since seen her hair cut and it looks awesome. She took it one step farther and did the same idea as in the movie but split her hair in half over her shoulders and cut it that way too! Which I think I'm going to try for layers in the front!

Papa likes it too :) He says it's long enough to keep him happy and short enough to keep me happy!

What a great deal :) No having to find someone to sit the kids, making appointments and wasting time waiting forever! No awkward talking to some one I barely know of while she cuts my hair.  It took me less then 10 minutes and that was the first time!  I saved money too :) BONUS!!!

Birds~ Birds~ Birds!

A few of these are running around loose :) No surprise there! 

Red winged Black bird. We have at least one pair of these on the place, maybe two.

White crowned sparrows.. TONS!

A pair of Robins :) The female is closer to the camera.

 The female! 

And NEW, to us anyway as we JUST found out what these are, 

The Yellow Rumped Warbler!! This sneaky little fellow is very hard to get pictures of! 

Good thing he likes all the bugs in the cow pen! 

 And a front view of this little warbler! 

We also have ravens, several chickadees, juncos, magpies, eagles, crows, more sparrows, and we are finding more all the time :) 

How Many White Crowned Sparrows Do YOU See??

I took this picture this morning. I did not count how many birds there were in the picture but J did :)  They are everywhere... and they LOVE the pig pen ;) 

Sorry the movie is a bit jumpy.. I had to stay quite a ways away and zoom in!

J counted 51!! 

Chick Update :)

Looks like the chicks had a good night. Papa checked them before we went to bed around 10 and they were spread out and doing good. The main thing you watch for with chicks this young is that they don't get too cold and bunch up.. they will pile on each other for warmth and the ones on the bottom will die! I realized at 1am that our temps hit 0C so I went out to make sure they were warm enough. Chip the fearless dog came with me to protect me from cougars as there has been one spotted on our road! I figured he was better then nothing even if he's yellow and tastes like chicken :) *off the Robots movie for those of you who haven't seen it ;) If nothing else he'd make enough noise to wake Papa up if there was something out there. The moon is almost full or full and I barely needed my head lamp. The chicks were happy and spread out. Peeping softly. I didn't even go all the way in.. happy chicks! As I headed back to bed I realized I'd been so focused on checking chicks and cougars that I hadn't even looked at the full moon! Tonight I will take the time to enjoy the moon.. and worry less about cougars :)

The little chick with the scab on his back is doing wonderfully! Can't hardly tell which one is him! We do have one with a bit of blood on it's beak that is looking poorly and smaller then the rest! It's absolutely  amazing how fast these guys grow! In just a few short days they will have full wing feathers and double in size! Even now they are showing the first white of wing feathers!

Here is a Blast From the Past :) 2009

 E at age 2 holding a chick :) 

J at age 5.

L at age 4 :) 

R at age 1. 

And a Link to my chick blog that year. 

A One Year Old Lives Here!

Yup, and a BOY one year old at that!!! 

Bird Unit Study!!

Here is a  cool movie on chicks development and hatching!! It starts at the beginning and goes right through to hatching!! Great tool for our home school study on birds :) So far we're making a book on birds we have here, made birds out of blocks, drawn birds, colored different birds accurately (Robins, eagles, sparrows juncos and will do more yet for our book),  listened to birds outside and watched them, looked up birds we have in our yard on the Internet and listened to their songs online so we can tell which song belongs to which bird, helped with the chicks this morning and will continue to help with chick chores, reading bird books and we watched the movie Rio which is about birds :) And we are not done yet :)

~Chicks~

We got 300 Cornish Giant cockerels today!! The kids got to help take them out of the boxes this year. What fun!! It went really well with Papa doing most of the unloading and the kids doing the odd bird here and there. They loved it!! New tradition I think :)

Here is a hundred! 

Taking them out of the box.. chaos... but with gentleness. 

The 2nd box is almost empty and J3 is almost holding a chick :) 

Two hundred! 

Papa taking chicks out the boxes. There was only 1 dead! Not bad. We have no idea how many there really are. We didn't bother to count them. Normally they send you several extras for each 100. So I imagine there are about 300 and 10? 15?? 

L was pretty excited. He was trying really hard to be 'cool' about it though. He did hold several of them and was super careful to move slowly as to not step on them. 

E was SUPER EXCITED!! Oh she couldn't hardly keep her hands OFF them! We had to tell her twice to not clap her hands because she was so excited!! She kept picking them up and cuddling with them or getting them a drink or food or cuddling with them.. well I'm sure you get the picture! 

R holding a chick that I imagine is saying TAKE THE PICTURE LADY SO I CAN BREATHE!!

She looked so pleased though I didn't have the heart to tell her she's choking him! 

J holding a very alert chick!! He loves babies of all shapes and sizes! 

  J3 really didn't like them! At one point he was stomping at them when they got too close to him!  He didn't want to hold one but did pet one when I asked him to!

Three hundred! 

There is one little chick right in the middle of this picture that might not make it. He was stuck to the box when we got them and Papa had to pry him off.. his leg was stretched out behind him and he was dragging it at first but about 2 minutes later I saw him walking around doing quite well.. so who knows he may survive! The are eating a mixture of smashed hard boiled eggs, cow colostrum and feed that we put on newspapers close to the lights so they can stay warm and eat at the same time. The eggs, Papa says, is like colostrum is to a calf for a baby chick which is why we feed them for the first several days! Good start!

~Baby G 5 Months~

I love this age!!
Her smiles are SO BIG,

Her giggle is fantastic,
Her hands are always reaching out,
Her moods change with just a smile.
She is rolling over,

Exploring,

Charming everyone in the room.
Big enough to be distracted,
To wait a little.
Little enough to cuddle,
Easy to settle.
So much love,
Excitement,

Pure joy,
Frustration,
Curiousness,

Anger,
Additude,
Feelings she has very little knowledge of.
But she has them anyway!