Learning To Quilt

I took a 4 hour 1/2 part quilting class to learn some new skills. I was assigned to make 2 quilting fabric blocks. I did one sewing 7 by 7 2 1/2 in squares together making a block of 49 different fabrics (piece of cake) then I made a quilting block as you see on the left, which was kind of challenging. then I made a short table runner. Which I had a huge challenge with, I sewed it wrong twice and had to destitch it one of the time. It was a nightmare, but I finished it, never to do that forbidden project again. Sewing can be relaxing but it can also be frustrating. I was encouraged by my mom to make these fabric headbands so I tried once out and it was pretty fun. I will make more in the futures to sell and give as gifts. (If I can scrounge up more time)!

4-H cloverbuds: Chicken

Ian is almost 6 years old, so I signed him up for the 4-H program. He is doing the chicken program and the first meeting he got to show his group the pictures and video's of his new baby chick! He picked one of the yellow ones. They learned about the different layers in the egg: (shell, membrane, yolk) and taught them about how the baby grows inside. They had a fancy incubator with an assortment of fertilized eggs and taught them about that, Then they played an egg Bingo game CHICK styled. Ian had fun and the older 2nd graders were really helpful!

Chicks

We decided to try to make our own chickens this month. Ian is in the 4-H chicken club so we thought giving him a new chicken to raise would be a good learning experience. We grabbed 13 eggs from our 4 laying hens and were hoping that our rooster did a good job fertilizing them so we can have a fresh chicken batch.

Out of the 13 eggs only eight were fertilized, we had 8 newborn chicks hatch on leap year, it was exciting for the whole family. From the first crack to the last push out of the egg we enjoyed watching them come into the world.

we have 3 golden chicks, one brown and 4 black cuties. Here you see the first 4 that hatched on the 29th of February.

On the second day I allowed the boys to hold them. Asher liked the black one with the white marks on its face.

Ian chose his favorite chick to be the "fluffy yellow" one, he is going to use it for his 4-H club. They love to hold our new chicks.  Everyday they get bigger and bigger.

A Summer's Day

Its been awesome to have play dates with the Summers they have a group of well behaved children aged 1-10 and it is a joy to have them over. We flip flop on whose house we go to and we do it on Wednesdays at noon. The kids have a lot of fun together going down homemade mattress slides, and playing wii games and just having a good ol' time. Me and Brianne get to chat for a an hour or so while the little ones play. It has always been a joy to do play dates with them. A new gal moved up here and we now share a morning play date with her two little ones (under three) and it has been fun for Asher as another group of kids to play with. Its nice that there are young families up here to be friends with.

Ian came home after his 100th day in school celebration and wore his king hat to sleep, I had to snap a photo of that!

Ian lost his second tooth!

His other bottom tooth has been walking around on his gums since he lost the first one. It was about all the way on the other side before it finally came out. Ian and I tried to wiggle and pull it out last week but we decided we better let it come out on its own. And it did, finally! You can see his two adult teeth squeezin through his gumline. He is super excited for the tooth fairy to visit tonight. Every since Ian has been losing his teeth Asher has been trying to pull and wriggle his own out saying "see its loose" and we say not yet babe!

Chicken for Pot Pie

So lately our Red chicken has been acting very depressed. She strays from the group and gets picked on by the rooster. One morning I saw her in a crouched position not moving, so we decided it was time to say goodbye to our laying hen. Rhode Island Reds are good for both meat and eggs so we thought it would be tasty. Joe butchered and got it all ready and then I prepared a homemade chicken pot pie. Her meat was very dark. We had Aaron and Liam visiting and they got to give old Red a shot. She would have been 2 in June, Aaron described it as "earthy" and Joe thought it "tasted like chicken". I thought it was a bit rubbery and was not a fan. She was a skinny little thing. In the future if we want to eat a chicken we will probably just go with the cornish cross chickens. They get to be 7lbs in 13 weeks, crazy huh!

Valentines Day

We woke up to a fun day ahead of us, we had a valentines heart scavenger hunt and then we hunted for our Valentines. Ian came home with a ton of fun candies from his friends at school and we had fun reading all of them. We enjoyed snacking on our treats. That evening we went on a family date to Amy Lou's Family Restaurant where we had a delicious dinner. Later Joe went to scouts and then we had fun watching a movie together. Valentines day is fun!