Davy Turns 2!

 It's official. My baby is 2. I suspect with every birthday of his, I'll be dumbfounded that my youngest is ___ years old. It will always be a little crazy I'm sure. I think Davy understood a bit of what was going on this year, which made it really fun. He successfully blew out his candles, loved the cards he got in the mail, couldn't wait to open his presents and loved his "choo-choop" cake! It was a pretty low key day, but I think he felt pretty loved. He had his #2 Nutella pancake in the morning and snuck opening a present before we could stop him. Out of the 3 balls in the package, he loves the "Sakah ball" the most.  At dinner, I made a vegan Mac and Cheese I thought he'd like and wouldn't fight us on. :) He was thrilled to have a train cake with new train toys on top. He got some new magna-tiles that ALL of the kids have loved playing with, and a bunch of new clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Garner.

What a cutie! I held him a little longer that night when I laid him down. What a precious, precious boy we have here. Love you Davy!

Second Half of February 2021

 

Gwen got herself a pig. She was inspired when we read "Farmer Boy", and wanted to buy a pig with her own money, breed it and sell the piglets. Richie was over the moon excited about it. She's a Kune/something mix and really sweet. Gwen first named her Butterscotch, but has since changed it to Duchess. 

The snow has since melted, but before it did, I utilized some for some sensory play. Painting the snow it always a hit!

Cuties

The penitent face of a boy who decided to find some lipstick, and then kiss the perimeter of the entire room, and also run the lipstick across a few other surfaces. Poor kid was just curious and trying to show us some love, and I got after him and made him wipe it off. :)

We are averaging 50 eggs per day! The kids have a good system and can now wash and package the eggs like pros. We are working on building up a client base. It's slower going than I would prefer, and when our egg fridge in the garage starts getting full...it makes me a bit antsy. See those giant boxes? Thats 600 egg cartons! Wow!

Makenna and I really bonded over the last 8 years. We had kids at the same time, were experiencing a lot of similar things because we were in the same phase of life, we homeschooled together, and saw each other regularly for other family events. We babysat each others kids, and we were safe places for each other to vent about the daily hardships-knowing the other would understand and empathize to some degree. I've missed that close association with her since we moved to Idaho. She's about ready to pop with baby #4 and was feeling a little overwhelmed, so Richie had the idea to take us down to SLC for a quick trip so that Makenna and I could spend the night at a hotel together and relax. The kids had fun sneaking in a few play dates with old friends, and sleeping over with cousins, we even sold some eggs while we were down. Makenna and I ate out, talked, watched a movie, talked, stayed up late, talked, did some fun girly pampering things, talked, and did some shopping at City Creek. Just what the doctor ordered. So thankful for my awesome husband who set this up and who sees these needs and does something about them. 

Homeschool scenes- Finishing our Arthropod unit with symmetry art and suckers with bugs in them, making spider webs and Benson getting into Blockus. :) 

First Half of February 2021

 

We finally made it to the post office to donate Gwen's hair! She was so happy to do it and says she wants to grow it out, and cut it for donation again and again. We made a quick date out of it and grabbed lunch. 

Davy  and I getting in some park time while the older 3 are at swimming, and Benson is at preschool.

Richie's the best.  He's been making a concerted effort to be with the kids outside when he gets home from work, doing whatever farm chores need to be done. Last week, they worked on a bike ramp! 

Our new friends here, the Baxters, have this awesome Go-Cart that Miles and Gwen got to go out driving. 

I've been working slowly but steadily on giving the school room a face lift. Here's Richie trying out texturing the ceiling. A first time for everything!

Sometimes Sunday's are hard. Church is at 1, and trying to keep everybody happy and productive until then can be challenging. This was one of those Sunday mornings I'd like to remember. Everyone was happily working on something, either together or separate. Benson read books for a while, Davy helped me make a pie, Gwen worked on a pillow, and Miles and Lindy played Uno for quite a while. When those good moments come, you gotta breathe them in!! 

Our chickens are laying in earnest now! We are getting about 40 eggs a day at this point and they are gorgeous!! It brings me so much joy! We have managed to sell a bunch and hope to be able to keep up with their production. We are slowly building a customer base and I've ordered official egg cartons and we hope to have a logo soon. 

Getting ready for Valentine's Day! I love all things Valentine's. We spent one night cutting out hearts in a frenzy so that we could heart attack our neighbors under the cover of night. We did 3 neighbor' houses. We got our Valentine's ready for our homeschool group exchange, which was so fun. When we were all together, we made even more valentine's to donate to a nursing home. We decorated sugar cookies (a must!) and gave a bunch away to other neighbors. It's just the best to have an excuse to help those around you feel loved. 

We finally got a good snow day here! It really dumped on us and the kids were in heaven! After getting Saturday chores, we played in the snow all afternoon. Richie is the best Dad and helped them build forts and igloos and snowmen and snowballs.  We made snow ice cream and then came inside and cozied up by one of our first working fires! Very Hygge! 

Miles turns 12!

 Well, I can hardly believe it, but we have a 12 year old in the house! Miles is one of the best kids out there, hands down. I realize he's not perfect, and won't always get every choice right, but it's hard to envision that these days. He's good to his core. 

We didn't do a friend party this year, since we don't have a lot of friends readily available since moving. But we did invite the older Fogle boys over for pizza night on Friday and Miles chose the movie. Percy Jackson I think? Staying up later with friends and popcorn is always a good idea. 

The next day was his actual birthday (Saturday), and he didn't complain one bit when we had to do chores. I thought maybe I'd excuse him from the typical labors, but he said, "Just because it's my birthday doesn't mean I don't need to work and help." And he proceeded to clean 2 bathrooms. Then Richie had arranged with neighbors to process some chickens. We have the plucker, so Jeff and Sylvia brought some of their roosters over. Miles never complained that we were slaughtering chickens on his birthday. In fact, he was the biggest helper out of everyone. 

That night, Richie and I took Miles out on a date, just the 3 of us, like it was once upon a time. We took him to JC Penny to get him some new duds. He needed new church clothes, but we decided to get him some really nice stuff, seeing as he's now a deacon and it passing the sacrament.  

Then the 3 of us went to a fancy restaurant in Nampa, called Brick 29. At least it's fancy for us. :) Miles is just at that age where ordering off kid's menus etc, is old hat and he's trying to learn how to order properly from a grown up menu. We ate delicious food, chatted, he got a special creme brule dessert on the house, and then we returned home. I think he felt special.

On Sunday he requested Sweet and Sour Chicken for dinner, and then I made him a giant smores cake. He opened a couple of presents and went to bed contented.  We sure love our Miles boy!

2nd Half of January 2021

Our ward put together a sledding activity up Grimes Creek. It was about an hour drive to finally find some snow! Crazy! Turns out, the activity was poorly planned, and we never found anyone from our ward to sled with! Too bad for them, cause we had all the ward snacks with us! Later on we found out that 2 other families (out of the entire ward!) had come up sledding too, but we never found each other. No matter. We had a fantastic time sledding just us! I was grateful to be a bit pushed into this, because truthfully, getting everything ready to go sledding is a bit of a hassle. I was lucky enough to find some of the last sleds at Walmart ($60, who knew sleds were so expensive?) and found everyone's snow gear, etc etc. We had one split lip, a few scrapes and bruises, one melt down, and both sleds were broken by the end of the excursion. Totally worth it. The kids had so much fun. The memories are a great trade off for our time and effort.

 

When we got the bulk of our chickens, we didn't have them sexed. We were hoping we'd end up with a few roosters, so that we could hatch some of our own chicks. We ended up with about 20! They were really aggressive with the hens, and there was too much crowing for my tolerance. So Richie decided it was time to have another chicken processing day, on a smaller scale. We clumsily processed about 15 roosters. I was amazed at how much smaller they were than the Cornish Cross. Also, we must not have had the temperature correct or this breed is just harder to pluck? But the plucker wasn't as effective this time, and we ended up hand plucking a lot of the feathers, which was tedious and destructive. Lesson learned, hopefully! We ended up with a few more birds in the freezer and I made a huge batch of broth and soup.  Miles and Lindy are eager helpers, Gwen really doesn't enjoy the process. I don't blame her! But we do push her to participate where she can. What a learning experience we are all having!

Our chickens are really starting to produce eggs in earnest now! At this point, we are getting about 20 eggs a day, so we are starting to try and sell them. We also end up eating quite a few! :)

We are sprucing the school room because the popcorn ceiling and wood paneling is driving me crazy. If we knew what the remodel plans are longterm, we would do something more intense, but we are just doing some bare minimum stuff so that it doesn't make me so crazy. Henry scraped off all the popcorn ceiling, yay! And then I painted all the wood paneling. Once Richie retextures the ceiling and hangs the curtains, I'll post a finished picture. The room was in disarray for about 2 weeks while we worked on it, and it always hard for me to handle. But as of last night, I wiped everything down, reorganized the bookshelves and put the furniture back where it belongs. *Sigh*So Much Better!

Homeschool Scenes, including Miss Lauren teaching the kids embroidery (which they have loved! So grateful for her sharing her talents with something Im unskilled with), making our own flat bread as we finished our study of ancient Egypt. And keeping the littles entertained during group with the popcorn maker. Classic. 

Scenes from the homestead