This is how my life goes.....

I'm painting the bunkbeds generic white before we put them up again (due to the situation coming in a few weeks), and look what happens. A chicken sits on my paint job and poops on the bed frame.

A Day in the Life....of Us....

The kids are out before 8:00 playing with chickens. Sarah loves the dog even though he thinks she is a chew toy.

Every morning the kids check the chicken nest and find two eggs from our brown chickens. We are eagerly waiting for the other chickens to start laying too.

What day wouldn't be complete without a tantrum?

Mark & kids hauling metal junk to the salvage yard. They have been cleaning up the buildings and grove all summer. Wasn't it nice of the previous owners to leave us some work? Check out our beautiful old farm truck and trailer.

This week on the prairie

Despite being weird homeschoolers who DO immunize, Jonah caught whooping caugh. The doctor put all the kids on antibiotics since it's not something you want kids to catch. Here are the medications lined up and ready to go. I put different colored rubber bands to attach each syringe. I don't know how else I would keep them straight. Another cute sib pic.

We spent Mark's reserve weekend in the Cities having fun. It's only the second time we've gone despite having free lodging and transportation for the weekend. The kids & I made out like bandits on free activities. We swam at the hotel, went to the Como Park zoo, and the Minnesota Children's Museum - all for $0!

Eli at the Children's Museum.

Sarah wearing Mark's military boots.

We visited LegoLand at the Mall of America too. A definite must-see for little boys. Here are the kids posing on huge legos outside the mall.

And one more delayed post....

My two littles who are best friends.

Putting up the crib.

Proof that I canned this year. My first attempt - 6 jars of apple pie filling made with apples from our trees. We'll see how it works out in a few months.

Sarah & I taking a nap together. She insists on sleeping on top of my pregnant belly. Weirdo

No title for this post. Oops!

Our guinea hen laid eggs and hatched them somewhere in our grove. We were absolutely amazed find the guinea parents and babies a few weeks ago, especially since we didn't realize the parents were still alive. Supposedly guineas rarely hatch and survive in the wild. Here is Mark herding the family into our chicken shed. Here is Anna holding the one little guinea that wasn't strong enough to make the walk. Here are the kids ready to drown the bat Mark caught in the house. Big excitement.

Here is our relaxing view from our living room. This picture was taken by a little person.

Here is my little baseball player practicing his catching.

Some togetherness

The kids picked peppers from our garden and flooded my kitchen with produce. I don't know what got them going, but it was completely their idea to pick buckets and buckets and then bring the dirt and bugs into the kitchen. Good work, kids! Here they are having fun with a science project. They made some goop that wasn't quite a solid and wasn't quite a liquid. It went with our science lesson on the states of matter, or didn't really go with it since it wasn't a clear state of matter. The rest of the science lesson was more educational. This was just for fun.

And here they are making religious crafts. I have to tell you that they were listening to poetry at the same time. It was an amazing, perfect homeschooling hour.

Cute sibs.

Sibs playing babies together. Looks like we have too many babies.

Eli is 4!!

It finally happened, folks. My little big guy turned 4 years old this week. He is officially 46 lbs and 43.5 inches tall, both in the 97th percentile for his age. His birthday fell on a Tuesday, so we had an all-day celebration. He opened one present before Mark left for work and then we had donuts while waiting for Anna at her public school class. At lunchtime he opened another present and then Mark took him out to eat. Then, finally, we had his favorite things for dinner.... pancakes and cake....and one last present. We were sneaky in that we gave him toys Jonah really wants (and Eli wants by default). All day long Eli was 100% completely and utterly in charge of playtime. It was so nice seeing him one-up his big sibs, even if it was only for a day.

Bulldozer and digger birthday cakeBirthday lunch date with Dad Big birthday boy! This weekend is the county fair, our favorite weekend of the year! Anna, Jonah & Mark have been working in the 4-H food stand (I played the pregnant card) and loving it. We thought Jonah would be too young, but you should see him go. He's completely in a work-till-I-drop zone. Mark received compliments on both kids yesterday, so I guess he will go out in public with them again.

Jonah entered the pedal tractor pull yesterday and won second prize. His friend Keaton won first, and I'm not surprised they pulled a 1-2. They are both very physical, competitive all-boy boys. Here is Jonah riding the little tractor. They have it hooked up to some contraption with weights on it. And I'll leave you with a sweet something. Here's Sarah sleeping on the stairs next to her baby.