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.

Today's wild animal spotlight is the woodchuck

Anna found a woodchuck outside our patio door this afternoon, and it didn't want to be shooed away with a broom. Bad choice by Mr. Woodchuck. Our neighbor came and killed it for us with a baseball bat, and then he disposed of it too. Full service extermination for free. Thank you, wonderful neighbors! I can handle weasels with a baseball bat, but woodchucks are a little too big for me. Well, maybe I'll try the next one. I have to upgrade from weasels at some point, right? Poor Mark. It seems like everytime we have run-ins with wild animals he's not here. We've had a weasel, bats, and now a woodchuck in the past month. He did get the skunk though. Mark came home Wed night from Alaska and had to leave again Friday afternoon for his reserve weekend in the Cities. He's been home for about one week out of the past month.

So the bat situation just gets worse

Sometimes you get kicked when you are down. It's not right, but I guess it's life. I called all around the town, the county, and then the next county to find someone to help me with my bat problem. Well, this fine gentlemen tells me that I live too far away and he doesn't want to drive 75 minutes to service us. Great. Then I call a place in Watertown, SD (which is closer). They refer me to a company out of the cities who also doesn't service this far out. However, in the process of talking to this company, the scare the crap out of me about the bats. According to them I was supposed to leave the house immediately when I saw the bats and leave the bats inside. Then, I was supposed to have someone come remove the bats and have them tested for rabies. Since I let them out of the house we should all go get rabies tests. Geez. Not what I need to hear, ya know? So, anyway, I finally found someone out of Marshall, MN who is willing to make the drive to our place. His price is....$625. Yikes. That's a lot of money for us. What can we do? We can't have bats in the house, and we can't find anyone else to come this far out. I feel like I've been kicked. Life will resume as usual, but I need a moment to recover.

Sarah's 1st Haircut - 2yo

Before pictures

After pictures

Random Pics

Playing in the rain Our new-to-use tractor and snowblower

Visiting the zoo

Checking out the garden

First slumber party