Birthday Girl

  It's been awhile since I have posted!!  We've been pretty busy here and I will show you why after I say a big 'Happy Birthday' to our girl.  Six years old already!  She wanted a Sofia themed party (even though we don't know much about Sofia - but she wears purple and that is the birthday girls' favorite color :)  We've switched around some of the rooms so our 6 and 4 yr old now have a room to themselves.  What a fun way to decorate with such pretty purple Sofia sheets.  She was very happy to see that.  We love you sweet girl.

What's been keeping me for posting lately is the venture of my new business!  Beautiful Hair Wraps!  It has been excited seeing it all come together and a relief to finally get it out there.  I'm working on an official website but for now we have all the items listed on Etsy.  You can find us at www.BeautifulHairWraps.com.  We will be adding hair pins and earrings as well as some different styled head coverings.  I think the logo is so beautiful!  Love the way it turned out.  Now to pray in some orders :)

Grandpa's Homegoing

My grandpa went home to be with the Lord this past Thurs.  Although we lived a distance away and couldn't visit as often as I would like to, we enjoyed our chats on the phone and through email.  For a 92 year old, he was pretty good with technology!!  Although grandpa's health was failing, it was still a shock to hear he had passed away suddenly.  I'm so thankful he professed Christ as Savior, and I have the hope of seeing him again one day in glory.  How different it is to lose someone when you know you will see them again in eternity!  We will still miss his presence here, but how thankful we are that he is now in the presence of the Lord!  No more suffering, no more sin, no more pain.  We love you Grandpa and will miss you.

Fun week

We had such a great week last week with our visitors.  We had hubby's uncle and family visiting with us and the kids had such a wonderful time together.  We enjoyed their fellowship so much and always look forward to their visit!  Next time....2 weeks, right!!!
We also celebrated hubby's 40th!  So thankful for him :)
And our girl lost another tooth.  It was wiggly and not quite ready to come out, but when you're playing around with your younger sister and she bops you in the mouth....it popped right out!!  She was so excited to get some new cowgirl boots for her present.

Me and my love

Thought we would update our pic together!

Tooth

Look who lost her 'first' tooth (the right way!)  The one beside it is loose as well....won't be long :)

Kids photos

Birthday boy

Here is his birthday pic!  Such a handsome fella.....

Happy Birthday

Our boy turned 8 today!  We say it every time, but it sure feels like time is just flying by with each birthday.  His theme this year was dinosaurs.  He enjoyed his day very much and appreciated all the cards, gifts and calls.
We love you so much!!!  You are such a blessing to our family!

Updates

Haven't posted for a while so I'm trying to think if there is anything new around here.
   We took the month of August off for school, so we are back into the swing of things starting our new year.  So far the kids are enjoying their subjects.  Our oldest LOVES her history program this year.  She kept talking about it so much that our oldest boy now sits in during her audio portion (on CD) and he loves it too.  Still trying to work out a good system of adding the 4th full time child into the mix.  Hoping things will smooth out quickly and we will get into a good routine.
   All the animals are doing well.  Our batch of black maran chickens are starting to mature and we think we have 3 roosters so far (out of 9 chickens).  Rabbit cages have all been set up and the 7 of them are in seperate cages now.  We have one female ready for breeding but still need to wait on the male to mature.  I am anxious to start getting little bunnies!!!  Hopefully by Christmas we will be able to enjoy some rabbit meat.
   The ducks and guineas are laying eggs but since there is no nesting area, we find them broken in the yard every once in awhile.  Today we found an intact duck egg, so hubby is looking forward to trying it out :)  Puppy is growing!  He has done really well around all the animals so far.  We will take him into the chicken pens with us, and he is more interested in eating chicken poop than anything else.  How gross!  He also has a habit of eating any dead mice our barn cat leaves laying around.  Double gross!!
   I think that is about it.  We are enjoying the cooler weather!  Walking is so much more enjoyable with a nip in the air than humidity.  I love autumn!!  Our boy is also going to have a birthday this week.  Eight years old....how time flies.

Pigtails

Oh what a cutie!  And getting sooooo big......

Puppy

Last week we got our puppy!  He is a Great Pyrenees male, almost 6 weeks old.   We called him Duke.

Baby boy

On Thursday, I got to hold my baby boy in my hands....way too early.  At 14 weeks pregnant, our baby unfortunately miscarried and we met our precious son.  I did have to go to the hospital for an overnight stay due to much blood loss but I'm back home recovering.  We have a tree in by our front porch that droops over much like a weeping willow tree does.  We thought this would be the perfect place to put our little boy and I thank God for the short time I was able to carry him!
God has been so very good to us!

Good morning on the farm

"Good morning" from all of us!
The last pic is not one of ours.  He ate our last 2 adult Tophats that made it through the first massacre (by our dog).  We trapped him!!

Pics

   Getting around to posting a few pics.  Here are our new 'babies'.  I think we are already going to lose one, probably tomorrow.  It was weak from the time it arrived so I don't think that one will make it.  We have 15 Tophats in total.

    I baked up 2 more pumpkin today and got 4.5 cups of puree.  I guess I'll be making several loaves of pumpkin bread tomorrow!  We tried pumpkin pancakes and they were o.k.  Nothing spectacular.  I have cucumber coming out my ears!!!  I think next year we will only plant half a row!!  

   Here is a pic of our boys' cake.  Nothing spectacular again.....I was quite tired that day :)  Funny thing about it was I had it all done and was making room in the fridge for it.  As soon as I got it in there, a container of hummus fell right onto the cake landing on the '10' so I had some fixing up to do.
    I forgot to get a pic of all the rabbits we are watching.  We have one of the pens completely full of rabbit cages.  Quite the sight!  

   Our ducks are starting to mate.  I'm wondering if we are getting close to having them lay eggs.  We still haven't created any permanent nesting area for them so we need to get onto that soon!   

Updates

   We had some baby chicks arrived today!  Yep.....we missed our little Tophats so much we ordered some more.  The kids were surprised because we didn't tell them they were coming :)
   Hubby is going to watch a rabbit slaughter tonight.  It sounds gross, but these are meat rabbits like the ones we have and he is going to learn the whole process tonight from start to finish.  Hopefully he won't be too grossed out!  He's not really looking forward to it, but we have to learn how to do it.  Our rabbits will be ready for breeding the end of next month.  We are also rabbit-sitting for the next 2 weeks for friends.  They have lots of bunnies and juniors and we will be getting one of their bucks!
   The garden is continuing to produce daily.  Every other day I'm processing something, whether it is pickles, pumpkin or green beans.  We are waiting on our tomatoes and ocra,  and only one cantaloupe is growing (out of a whole row!!!)  Lettuce still is forming but nothing yet.  We went and plowed all the rows that didn't produce anything.  I lost all my onions, peppers, garlic, chives and strawberries. Such a disappointment.  We are certainly learning the things that work well and what doesn't and how much to plant next year.  It's been a great learning process and I'm already excited about next years' garden.
  Other than that, nothing else new I guess.....just staying busy!

Garden-fresh homemade pumpkin bread

How exciting!  My first 2 loaves of homemade pumpkin bread with our very own garden grown pumpkin!!  Tastes good too :)  We roasted the seeds as well, but the pumpkins were just a tad under-ripe so the seeds weren't the best.  I'm waiting to process the rest of the pumpkins to make sure they are fully ripened.  It was really easy though!  I'm going to have lots of pumpkin stored away for future goodies!  I also put in a picture of my pressure canner.  I've canned several jars of green beans so far, and the second batch of green beans I blanched and froze.  Our cucumbers are growing like crazy and some are just huge!!!  Tonight I will be doing my 5th batch of pickles.

Birthday pic and pickings

Here is our boys' 10th birthday pic.  (Well, one of the many!)  And another pic of today's harvest.  I've done 3 batches now of pickles but today we got out there and picked the green beans for the first time, more cucumber and our first pumpkin!  My pressure canner arrived in the mail today so tomorrow will be another first for me as I attempt to learn how to can!

Sad day and celebrations

This morning was a sad day on the farm.  We woke up to a sea of dead chickens across our yard.  All our top hats and Maran chickens are dead.  It was really quite sickening to see.  From the looks of the fur we see caught on the fence, it was our dog that did it through the night.
There is so much to be thankful for though.  We recently moved our Guinea and Easter Egg chickens out of that pen into a different area, so the devastation could have been much, much worse.  We also, thankfully, were hatching some of the Maran eggs in our garage and currently have 9 chicks that have hatched.  What a blessing that we will be able to replace our Maran population!
Needless to say, we don't have our dog anymore.
I guess it's part of life on a farm.  An unfortunately part....

In other news, we have a potty trained girl!!  She has gone (I guess a week now) with no accidents or even having to be told to go potty.  She always goes on her own!!  She hasn't been able to get through the night dry yet, but we will be working on that.  She loves her new underwear from Nana.  Thank  you Nana!

We also celebrated our boys' 10th birthday.  WOW!  Double digits!!  He's our farmer-in-the-making and loves the outdoors.  He does such a great job taking care of the animals.  He's also such a good big brother.  Happy birthday to our boy!  We love you!

My first canning experience

Here is our first pick of the harvest!  We have quite a few pickling cucumbers ready so I tried my hand at the hot water bath method and made some dill pickles today.  It was quite exciting!!