Pickin' up chicks

See what James buys when he goes to Tractor Supply? He's such a sucker for a bin of cute baby chicks.

We have been talking about chickens for a few years, and I finally got James to discuss seriously with me the effective and cheap insect control, not to mention free range eggs, and a job for the kids. Everybody wins with chickens! So when he finally gave the go ahead, I started finding out how to make my own incubator, what kind of breed I wanted, and got all excited about hatching eggs with the kids for our science project. Then James came home with 4 pullets and made it all a crash course in chicken raising! I'm learning though that it's easier than I thought it would be thanks to BackyardChickens.com

And all I hear from Maxwell now is "Mom, can I hold a chickie?" About 40 times a day. And huge tears when I take them back from him. When we take the chickens outside, he gets a little overwhelmed at their cuteness and gets crazy. So he has to be separated for their safety, lest he love them too much.
This suffices as a pen for this piglet. He can't get off of it yet :)

His cuteness is pretty overwhelming too! And it's become very apparent that his baby looks are quickly disappearing, and I see this mischevious little boy more and more show through.

And this lovely lady has been such a good Mama for the chicks. She greets them good morning and wishes them good night, and holds them in the kitchen atleast every time she walks by. 3 times today she asked to take them outside. 3 times I said ok!

She was hesitant at first holding them. She's a lot like me, just jumpy and naturally reserved about animals, but she is finding her confidance and couldn't get shown up by her 2 year old brother. So I think the chickens will primarily be her thing, she wants it to be.

Why isn't Kellan in any of these pictures? Because he won't hold them! He's just like me too. And he just doesn't care, when Maren and Max will willingly hold them and take them in/out. He's content to sit back and watch. But that's always been Kellan, he'll do things in his own time, his own way, when we're not expecting it of him.

Just a snippet of what keeps me busy~ living the life in the fast lane with three kids, trying to slow it down with some chickens in the yard and a glass of lemonade.

Road Trip

At the beginning of this month, we took sort of a spontaneous road trip up to see some awesome friends in Maryland. And by 'we' I mean only myself, with all three kids. It was great driving up there, the kids were amazing the entire drive.

We saw beautiful country driving through Virginia, and we realized that the posted speed limit is just a suggestion to the rest of Virginians, they go about 15 mph faster. Even the cops. We saw a lot of road kill, maybe even a panther but I wasn't going to turn around and go back to find out for sure!

We stopped at a McDonald's off of the freeway, hoping for a play place, but they had a fenced in area to dine outside, so that was good enough for these monkeys. We saw this van drive by while there, being covered entirely with sparkling stickers would be hard to NOT see this beautiful monstrosity. My kids begged to do this to our new car. Threats may or may not have been issued.

We added a stop in Washington D.C. on our way there, but ended up sitting on the freeway for an hour only moving 5 miles the entire time, so we cancelled that detour, and added it on our way back instead. We only drove through to see some of the sites, since we had an entire day of driving ahead of us too.

Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

Jefferson Memorial

My kids made some great connections with the Gunter kids (not pictured is little Maeli, she was in the stroller, and between you and me she was my favorite because she was the only one who wanted me to hold her all the time :)

This was at a dock near the Gunter's house, we got to see different ships anchored there from different time periods. And the kids displayed their modeling talents, I see potential!


They had a blast. Don't let the stories of all the tattles tell you otherwise!


Pay no attention to the unaccompanied 7, 6, 5, 4, and 3 year old right near the river. They've got it under control.


Someone had spilled a huge pile of corn kernals in the parking lot, so we did our part as environmentalists and took many scoops to feed the birds.

Then we headed back home to play pirates!

We had a science lesson on salt water and fresh water. With tasting. Their face says it all!

What a good looking bunch of pirate wenches running this crew, don't you think? We really had a good time, we even took it upon ourselves to spend an entire day with a throw up party of two, just so we could add an extra day. And Maxwell was so sad to hear that we were heading out the next morning, so he got desperate for a souvenir and swallowed a penny. Scary moment for his mom as he was choking on it at first. But his plan did not prevail, he didn't end up extending our stay with an ER visit, he passed it the old fashioned way when we got home to NC. The little devil!

Great memories, great friends, and a blast of a time tag teaming all the mom duties with another mom, I could use one around here every day!