Life in the Country

We've been in our new house one week now and we are loving it.  We had a beautiful weekend here with temps in the mid 70s.  The kids aren't used to black flies or mosquitos, having lived in town their whole lives, so they ran for the house when the bugs found us on Saturday.  We're slowly getting settled in and got our kitchen table cleared of boxes so we could eat our first "real meal" in the new house.

With a country house come country "toys" - our new four wheeler which will be a workhorse in the winter, clearing the driveway with its snowblower attachment.  Matt took the kids for a spin Friday night.

Clare tries to keep up with Dad and Karl.  

Even Nora got a ride.

Spring time in the country.  Plenty of sugarplum trees.

 Matt spent over six hours on Saturday trying to get the garden tilled.  Before this, it was all grass except one small section on the left.  I'm so excited to have a huge garden area and the ability to easily rotate crops.

The fun of an old house: Karl discovered this hiding hole under the stairs.  He put his lantern and a bunch of toys in it and played for over an hour.  Nora joined him.

Our chicks are getting bigger.  They're four weeks old tomorrow and most of their feathers are in.  They can fly pretty well - when we take the cover off their house they fly up and perch on the rim.

Rhode Island Red

 Nora loves her "chick-chicks":

We took the girls outside for the first time on Saturday. They were timid at first.

Molly was pretty good except when a Red flew up atop the fence, Molly grabbed its head in her mouth. She let go right away when I yelled at her and the chicken was fine.  Since then, she's mostly ignored them.

The birds were much more comfortable outside on Sunday.  They ate food that the kids had scattered on the ground and pecked at the grass and chased low-flying bugs.

On Sunday afternoon we took a trip to the pond.  Clare wanted to catch minnows with her Dollar Store net.

Nora carries the bucket.

When we got to the pond, there were no minnows in sight.  The toads were making a crazy loud racket though, so we headed a bit south to where they were hanging out in droves.

Oops, too deep!

Looking for toads. 

Nora fell in up to her waist so her little pants were soaked.  She didn't care.

Karl liked the idea of finding toads but he didn't want to touch them.

Two of their specimens.

The view from the pond.  We are so spoiled.

Playing in standing water in the low spot on the way to the pond.  The clay bottom sucked Karl's crocs right off.

That's it for now.  Not much time for writing these days.  :-)