Chicks and kids

The kids got kites for Easter and I'm so grateful we have this huge field to fly them in.

Clare really liked flying hers and was good at keeping it in the air.

The three rock collecting musketeers.  Trying to get the garden ready for the tiller this spring by collecting rocks.

Lena has crazy curly hair after a bath!

Nora loves any attention from Daddy, but she especially enjoys walking on the ceiling.

Nora loves helping her little sister.  If Lena needs a diaper or a toy or a burp cloth, Nora is the one to ask.  Clare is very good at helping too but she's gone so much of each school day.  Here, she's trying to get Lena to hold a toy.

These two are just so much fun to have around.  They play so well together and fight only occasionally.

In chicken news... if this post was solely about our meat birds, I would have titled it: Eat, Sleep, Poop.  Because that's about all these birds do.  They're a good mix of male and female but compared to our pullets (future laying hens) these birds are lazy.  They'll lay down next to their feeder, stick their head in, and eat.  They'll even sleep with their head in the feeder, just in case they get hungry.  I do think it's cute the way they snuggle up together and lay their heads on each other.

See this odd duckling near the bottom, in white feathers?  More about him later.

These chickens have kept Matt super busy.  Not only is he putting up a new garden fence, gates, and a greenhouse, he's also building brooder boxes and moveable coops for the meat birds.  Then our first batch of meat birds got too big and stinky for the living room so Matt had to quickly build a new brooder in the barn for them because they're still too little to go into their moveable coop.  I envision things might settle down again by next January.  Until then, it'll be go, go, go.  We have major house projects on the horizon along with cross country coaching and deer hunting in the fall, and a little thing called The Garden, with all its planting, weeding, harvesting and preserving.  Whew!  Being busy keeps us out of trouble, I guess.

During snack one day I asked Karl why he was eating the legs off his animal crackers.  "They're laying down," he said.

These two bought "shooters" from the Dollar Store and they have been loving the warm weather for "shooting" things.  Nora walks around saying, "Shoot, shoot.  Shoot monsters!"

My big boy Karl (in a 2T shirt, poor kid).  He IS growing, just slowly!  Most of his shirts are 4T - maybe he's secretly stretching this one to extend its wear.  He was lamenting the loss of some shirts he's outgrown ("I wish I still had that [monster truck, car, tractor] shirt.") so I told him to pick his favorites and we'll make him a quilt from his old t-shirts.  Hm, now to find time to actually DO that! Ha.

These two often pass for twins - there's not much height difference.

 Back to that odd duckling - turns out it's a turkey!  We'd been calling it Ducky (in honor of its being so odd).  After watching it awhile, we matched it to some pictures online of Broad Breasted White turkeys.  I called the store we got our chicks from and they said we could keep it.  So although we didn't get one of our Freedom Ranger meat birds (a $2.25 value), we did get a turkey ($6.00).  We came out ahead through that mistake!

"Ducky" is really sweet.  I've read that turkeys like people and he does!  (Actually, I have no idea if it's a he or she.)  If you talk to him, he'll walk closer to you and today he actually tried flying up to see Matt and I as we looked in his box.  He's staying with the chickens for now and getting along with them very well.

Ducky

 A new box of chicks arrived on Wednesday - 25 Cornish Cross.  They were the cutest little things - definitely the youngest chicks I've handled.  They had probably hatched the day before.

Clare loves the chicks and is old enough to handle them carefully.

Clare also loves Lena.  She took a video of Lena and is playing it for her.

Today I was trying to finish Rice Krispie bars for the kids' after school snack and Lena was super fussy (very unlike her).  Clare offered to hold her while I finished the bars.  It's nice to have a kid old enough to be trusted not to drop the baby on the floor if she starts crying.

Whew, it's hard to get a post in these days.  Life is busy!  And the weather is nice so it's hard to be inside.