Productive Spring Days

I love spring. I love outside. I love working outside in the spring. I also love to see my family working on outdoor projects. Don't get me wrong, I also love to play and relax and that is even more fulfilling after a day of working.

Just thought I would show you some of the other things that we have been doing besides just chickens. No words are necessary.

Donnie is tilling the garden and Faith is getting rid of the rocks.Beth is working on building a bench and a trough for the chickens to eat out of.Keith is building me a compost bin. Beth built a new cross for Little Donnie's grave. See the pitiful little white one on the ground. We made that one out of paint stirrers and never changed it until now.This was the end of a good, full day.

In Their Home

Hooray, hooray hooray!! The chickens are finally in their coop that my husband so wonderfully constructed. The rest of us helped some, but Donnie was the primary carpenter. The kids and I pretty much were gophers, holders, painters and the like. We do consider it a family affair.

Anyway...the chickens are in their new home and are now awaiting their fence to be built so they can get out and forage around. This fenced in area will be their chicken run. This part shouldn't take long to build if we can just find several hours to do it. With softball now started up, time is scarce.

The fifteen chickens (yes, they all made it through infancy in my garage), are now five weeks old and all look strong and healthy. I still don't know how many roosters we have and how many hens, but I do hope that we have mostly hens. It will be several more months before we begin getting eggs, so we just sit back and wait.

Let me know if you ever decide to have your own chickens and I can recommend several library books on the ABC's of Poultry Raising that I got from my new best friend; the Lannom Public Library.

Faith told a fellow we were buying straw from the other day that her family was starting to become farmers. I kind of like the thought. I think we will be considered hobby farmers as it will not be what we earn a living from, but what we do try to be more self-sufficient with, and what we have fun doing as a family.I can't build but I can paint. Even Faith helped with this part.

The finished product. Isn't it lovely?Donnie is getting their feed and water ready. Look at the nesting boxes in the back. Those will hold our eggs.

Keith transported most of the chickens into their new home because me and the girls didn't want to hold them. (gotta get over that if we are going to be real farm girls)Remember what they looked like in the earlier pictures? They have grown a bunch.

The Not Prom

Let me first explain the title. The juniors and seniors at our homeschool Enrichment Fellowship have a banquet/dinner/awards night every year where they dress up and get together for an all night long party. Since no one could come up with an offical name, it just became known as the "Not Prom". It's really not a prom, but it does include dancing (English Contra) and dressing up as well as other fun stuff.

This past Friday night was the Not Prom and it was awesome. There were many of our kids there from EF along with lots of parents. The kids looked wonderful, the dancing was great and the food was delicious. All in all it was a fabulous night for everyone involved.

What I as a mom was so thrilled about was that it was just good clean fun. Modest clothing was worn by most every young lady there which I appreciated as a mother of a teenage son. These young people just have fun together. No competition, no pretense, no junk that I remember from my prom days. It was good.

I was also excited at who Keith went with as a friend and a friend only. (I have to make sure to say that) Keith took Allison Denny as his "date". Allison is a young lady whom we have know her entire life. Talk about a sweet, Godly young woman. She is it. I have loved her for years and she has become very special to me and to my family. To have she and Keith there together was a blessing to my heart.

Oh how I love watching my children grow up and turn into the young men and women that God wants them to be. I am so proud of Keith and the handsome, sweet young man that he is.

Still Practicing

Just an update on Keith's guitar playing. He is still practicing once a week and really enjoying it. I am so excited that he has decided to pursue this and I hope that he will continue. I think he is doing a great job and can't wait for him to get to where he can play long songs. I am still begging him to play and sing a song for me for Mother's Day. He says he will play but not sing. I guess I will be happy and content with just the guitar even though I REALLY want him to sing as well.

Jr. Miss Suzie

I have a junior Miss Suzie homemaker on the horizon and I am so thankful for that. Beth is preparing to be a wonderful wife and mother some day.

Keith and I had to go to Murfreesboro on Monday to look for prom clothes for our homeschool Enrichment Fellowship (more on that later) and were gone all day. When we got home, Beth had fixed our dinner and our breakfast for the next morning. Let me tell you more. We have been grinding our wheat for several months now and making homemade bread, muffins, pancakes, etc. Well Beth decided to make homemade pancakes and homemade banana muffins with the wheat that she had ground. So, we had pancakes for dinner and muffins for breakfast the next morning. YUMMY!!!

I was so proud of her and so thankful that I didn't have to fix dinner after being gone all day. She is such a good girl and such a huge help to me.

What's cool is that as much as she enjoys cooking, she also loves building stuff with her daddy outside. She has been helping him build our chicken coop. She's just a handy girl to have around.

It's Softball Time in Tullahoma!!

It's that time of year again. Softball is back!! Beth has played for several years and loves it and now Faith is following right in her footsteps.

This is Faith's second year to play and is having a ball (ha-ha). We had our first game on Thursday night and they played great. At this age they don't keep score so I have no idea who won or who lost. It's all for run, right? (I personally like to try to keep up with the score)

As for me, I just love seeing Faith in her cute little uniform with her sweet little smile standing out there waving at me. Yes, at times when she should be watching the ball, she is watching me and grinning from ear to ear. I love it! Her coach, probably not so much. She is learning. This is instructional league, after all.

Beth, on the other hand, is all about the competition and playing her heart out. I love watching her play and the enthusiasm and skill she has.

Maybe we will see some of you out at the softball fields. If so, make sure you say hi.

The Great Rescue

There is always something or someone to laugh at around our house and today was no exception. Today was Donnie's day.

We were working outside today before all the storms came trying to get our chicken coop built. At one point when Donnie went into the shed to get something out, one of our darling daughters shut the shed door and the other little darling locked it. Now mind you, this is an easy combination lock but for some reason we couldn't remember the combination and also couldn't find where we had written it down. So here we were...Donnie locked in the shed and the kids and I trying to figure out the combination. We finally came up with what we thought were the numbers but still couldn't get it to unlock. At this point, panic would have set in for me. Locked in the shed with any other varment that could have gotten in and a storm on its pretty way would have scared me to death. But not my sweet, laid back husband. He just sat in the chair and waited and waited. We were talking to him the whole time. Faith was crying, while the rest of us were laughing. We just couldn't help it.

After many attempts at the lock, and then beginning to take screws out of the hindges, Donnie decided to climb out the window. Faith was terrified that he would get stuck. Donnie reminded her about Pooh Bear getting stuck in the tree. This didn't make her feel any better but the rest of us got a kick out of it.

As you can see, the descent was quite comical and no he didn't get stuck. He came out smiling and we stood there laughing. Again, Faith didn't laugh, she cried because her daddy was safe.

I am so thankful for the good, no great, sport that my husband is.

By the way, he wanted me to let you know that he was able to get the lock undone with no problem. Actually, it took him two tries but who's counting.

Sorry, honey. We love you.