Quilts of Passion

Don't forget to check Quilts of Passion. I will be having a quilt along starting in Aug. Check back for more details.

Summer Craft

Well, I decided I should not just sit around all summer hand have nothing to show for it at the end. We are going to be doing some sort of craft hopefully at least once a week. This week we have started with garden faces! The kids had fun with them and I will post another picture in a few weeks when their "hair" has come in .

These are mine!

The Lake

Well, we have moved and are no longer living with my parents. I am grateful to them for letting us live with them for a year but at the same time I am glad to be in my own place again. So our first week here we took a short day trip to the great waters. And I tell you it was awesome!! Fresh water so no alt in the eyes like at the ocean beach, I didn't mind going under water, it was a lot quieter and less people, no big waves that would swallow up my kids, and Simon LOVED it!!

Girls Camp

This year I was the Camp Director for our unit. It was very fun planning the things we were going to do when we had our free time. I was also in charge of our meals we did not have with the Stake. That was just about every breakfast, and 2 dinners (one of those being Dutch oven for the cook off with the Stake.) It was fun for me and I hope the girls I was in charge of had fun too.

We had 2 first years, 1 second year, a first year YCL and a third year YCL.

Nauvoo and Cousins

So to start off our Summer this year we got a visit from cousins!! The kids had fun even though it was unusually HOT! My Sister and I were very excited to get our daughters together. They have been somewhat pen-pals. Alas, they are still girls and still had "those" moments where you know that boys would not have such a problem. Regardless they still had fun I am sure.

So of course while they were here we HAD to go to Nauvoo!! It was a BLAST!!

Katie got to help make rope.

We also discovered Katie is good on Stilts! GO KATIE GO!!

Leo, not so much... yet. Katie is behind him holding him up.

CHICKENS!!

Well, I have gotten a few questions about the chickens we have here so I decided to do a post of its own. First off, these are not my chickens. They are my parents, I am currently staying with them for a while. But I do get to help feed, water, clean up after, and all that other dirty gross stuff. A lot of the time not very fun. But I do think its fun to have chickens. Make for a great learning experience for my kids. So I have tried to label the pictures as best I knew how. So here goes.

I will start with the Fryers. They actually have a mixed breed name but we generally call them Fryers. We have these fryers in 3 different ages right now. We have the 5 Big Fryers, 3 Teenage Fryers, and 25 Little Fryers. Here we really refer to them as far as what their location is because they are currently in 2 different places. Now one might ask why we have so many fryers and at different ages. Well, it is because of this. My sister is bringing her 5 younger kids to visit and they have never lived in the country. As a matter of fact this will be the kids first time coming here to visit. So the kids want to experience "farm" life while they are here. So we got some fry babies from the farm store here so we would have some ready to butcher when the kids are here. At the same time she got the babies she also purchased 3 other babies (we will get to those later) for my kids. Then a couple weeks later she saw 2 other chicks that she thought were cute and going to be different from the other chickens she has and wanted to get them. But by then the store made a policy that you had to get a minimum of 5 chicks to purchase them. So she got 3 more fry babies. It gets better now. So now we have plenty of "farm" experience ready for the kids. But that is not all the fryers my parents wanted overall. They already had 25 fry babies ordered that would not get here till mid April and those would not be ready by the time the kids got here. The fryer groups are in 2 different locations. The older group is outside in a small(er) coop and chicken run. The fry babies are in my Dad's workshop in a trailer bed that he built a cover for so the don't escape. And believe me, the do try!

Original 5

Now I will tell you about the Layers- chickens that lay eggs. My Mom was looking for already laying chickens because last late Fall her 8 or so chickens were only coming up with 1 egg a day. How can you have 8 chickens and only get one egg a day? So we killed those so we were not taking care of the chickens all winter just for one egg. So she found a guy on craigslist that had plenty of chickens he was trying to clear out for some reason I never paid attention to. So Mom got 10 egg layers (one had died for some unknown reason so now there are 9), that were not currently laying eggs because egg laying is determined by how much day time the chickens have and they had basically been pinned up in a dark barn. So we had to wait a week or so before we started getting eggs. In the mean time my Mom had to make a run to the farm supply store for chicken feed and saw that it was "chick days" at the store. She came home and said how great it would be to get chicks for my kids to take care of and then butcher them when my sister comes (reference above.) I said no way will you get my kids a pet only to kill them a couple months later! If you want to get them chicks then by all means you may but they should be layers that you will keep around. So she took the kids to pick out their chicks. Leo and Simon got black chicks and Katie got a brownish red chick. Couple weeks later (reference above) we are picking up feed.... again. And lo and behold Mom sees 2 layer chicks that just look different. One we could already tell was going to be white with black specks and the other chick was yellow with a grey tint on its back. As said before the store had changed policy and we had to buy a minimum of 5 chicks to get them. So we did. So I introduce to you the layers!

I think I mislabeled Leo's chick. That one is Simon's and the other like it is Leo's.

These would be the 3 chicks my kids picked out.

And here they are now!

Leo's and Simon's look alike but Simon's is darker than Leo's

The 2 chicks my Mom liked (obviously older than little chicks now.

So now aside from chickens we got another delivery in the mail. Can you guess?? I won't make you. We got turkeys! They are so cute! Half went to a friend and we kept 7. One or two will go to another friend, one will be Thanksgiving dinner and hopefully one will be a tom (male) that my Dad will keep with 2 hens to hatch his own turkey next year.

Now my Dad is working on getting coop built that we will move the 25 fryers into and later after they are butchered the Turkeys will go in.

And that is life currently on the farm.

Oops! I forgot Waldo! But you already know about him.

Remember that cute chick?

Waldo

This picture was taken at 4 1/2 weeks!