New Laying Hens!

A friend of mine on facebook had some chickens for sale and we bought her out of her older hens! We've wanted to get some more laying hens for some time and with winter closing in we decided we wanted a few more to help keep the coop warm this winter. So we drove over to Sarah's house and with her 3 kids and one of ours ( J) helping we caught all 25 chickens in about an hour!! LOL. We had a great time!! Papa had brought our chicken catcher but it turns out meat birds have much thicker feet then laying hens and the hens legs would slip out. So most of the birds were caught by sheer persistence! I was holding the bag (no pun intended :) that the chickens were going into as they caught them and Sarah was directing and opening and closing the coop door as necessary and we could watch the chickens slowly getting tired and then finally get caught! It was great! Kids and chickens and Papa everywhere. Most running, some stalking, some taking a deep breath or two trying to get their wind back! There were a lot of 'near misses',  herding and frantic grabbing motions :) This is really a horrible picture but they all stayed in the bush for the 1st few days we had them, leery I think of Chip and the kids, and this picture shows the tarp I stapled up to keep them out of our shed. There are a few white and black ones, about 10 barred rocks and about 10 black or dark red ones. They are all 2 or 3 years old!  They still haven't found the chicken house! Papa and I will soon make a pen for them all and put them in the chicken barn for the late fall and winter. Looking forward to not having to egg hunt and boy are we ever enjoying eggs for breakfast or lunch every day! Now I have a total of 37 laying hens! YAY!! Thanks Sarah!

Baby J and Baby T SMILING!!

Papa T was talking to Baby T,  I was talking to Baby J and Papa took the picture! Momma T is holding them. So this picture was very much a GROUP effort!! And totally worth it!! These two little boys are 15 days apart and super cute!

Face Painting With Crystal!!

R is a Clown.

E is a Tigger!

 L is a Lion King!

J is a Leopard!

Here is the whole crew with the artist, my wonderful cousin Crystal!

Reading!

J and I have been muddling through our 1st week and a bit of homeschooling and we are slowly getting a system that works for all of us. Today was a GREAT DAY as J read his first word today! VERY COOL to see his confusion turn to PRIDE when he realized what he'd done! I thought it very fitting that his first word read was Mama!  Awww.. Makes all the 'work' worth it to share that moment with J!!

Creative L!

L 'wrote his name' with fence pieces the other day! I love watching them learn and create! I'm SO blessed to be able to stay at home with them and watch them grow up moment by moment!!

Primed Floor Picture.

Just realized I forgot to put up a picture of the whole floor primed. Here it is in the sunlight!

Cute Kitties!

Our newest critters :) Cute aren't they!! So far name choices are Pretty, Princess, Marmie (short for marmalade) and Sweetie! I think it will end up being Pretty and Sweetie! But we're still taking votes!

New Floor!

This is part of our house building project, and the only part we are doing this year. This addition will be our entrance and milk cleanup area with shelves for storage and the wood stove as well. We are really looking forward to getting it done. Here is a picture of the area we are working on right now. The 1st picture is the area all cleaned out and ready to put up the floor. The 2nd picture is the floor plywood mostly on! Papa let me use his air drill and I actually screwed over half of the floor down!! Which is great as drills and I DO not get along normally. With the big floor Papa dubbed me a 'lost cause with drills' but I'm apparently getting better!!!

  

The above picture is the boys and Papa filling in the cracks on the floor. They had a great time. Below is L putting primer on the floor! And the bottom one is J priming the floor!! They loved to help paint! Papa did most of it and it looks WONDERFUL. It is the 1st paint on our new house! As many of you know we are building a straw bale house and the bales for this addition are reserved and we will be picking them up soon! 200 bales, we won't use quite that many but we want to have some extras. We are buying the bales from a farmer near us which is wonderful as we thought we'd have to get them sent to us from Alberta. This farmer has already sold building bales for another house put up in a near by town!! SWEET!!

The next big step will be to paint this part and move everything from our POC ( piece of crap) addition on to this area and dismantling the POC addition so we can finish the floor! But first we need steps and possibly some plumbing done.  Coming along though!

School Time!!

J has started school this fall. We are home schooling using the ACE program and so far we love it. He has a teacher thru an online school and she needed proof of schooling by the 20th of Sept to get our funding. This was his 'About Me' 1st artwork project!

Chicken Pox!!

 

We've had a rather busy couple of weeks and right in the middle R got the chicken pox!! She got them Wednesday morning and by Saturday they had all popped out and dried up and she was no longer contagious. They only bothered her at night right before she went to sleep so I calamined her up and put a sleeper on her after the 1st night and then she could fall asleep. She was the 1st of my kids to get a fever with the pox and I hope that means she will not be getting them again next time they go around!  The older 3 have already had them a couple of years ago. J had them 2 times. We did not think Baby J would get them as he is nursing and is getting antibodies from me (R was 3 months old when J, L and E had them and she never got them). Well surprise! Baby J got them on Sunday morning (The day after chicken butchering day here when he was being passed around and when he may have infected several children! Oops! How was I too know!) and they lasted for just a few days and he only got about 30 spots with no fever so I have a feeling in a year or two he'll get them again good and proper. I am amazed though at how many people think that children should never have this simple childhood illness and how many people vaccinate for it.