What I Love About Spring -

Quarantined Birthdays

 Like most families, we have celebrated some birthdays in quarantine. Last week, Oliver turned one! He was supposed to have a large backyard party with the theme "Oliver Garden"; he even got official first birthday pictures as a chef -

Instead we just went over to their back yard to sing Happy Birthday and give him his gifts. 

Oliver is the most outgoing child I have ever met and he loves all his aunts and uncles. Here he is with "Aunt Leelee" 

Oliver was a little nervous about the rocking dinosaur we got him; he took some warming up to. 

Yesterday, we celebrated my birthday a bit early; let's just leave it with "I turned old in my opinion" - 

Moriah made me a delicious chicken parmasean! She is quite the awesome cook considering she is a vegetarian and can't even taste her creations! 

And look at these lovely new cushions the girls got me for my chairs? I love them!

 Jenny

Dogs and Goats

 We have had 8 baby goats for almost 8 weeks now. They are all sold now, except for Edith that we are keeping. They will start leaving for their new homes next week. I have one goat left to birth sometime soon and two probably bred for the fall. Here's our goat momma and babies, and some dogs for good measure, in no particular order. 

Selah and Eeyore 

breakfast hour 

Eclipse 

 This is Alaska during the Easter egg hunt; he wasn't sure how he felt about the running and yelling. 

Alei has been dropping Lucca here for day care when she works. She recently bought him the blue ball because it is too big to roll under the furniture, but it's a big tougher to cram in his mouth alongside another ball.

Back to baby goats - 

Baby Estter

Ewok - 

Eeyore again 

 This is Eddie and Eclipse; they are sold to a lady to add to the little boys she bought from me last year. 

Little Eddie and Eclipse 

This is Montana and Alaska showing how we feel about spring, including the sneeze. 

Selah is the biggest animal lover in the family!

This year was year three of me replacing the front row of bushes in the flower beds across the front of the house. Alaska chews on them. This year, I constructed some upside down tomato cages around them and once I tack them down, I'm hoping he will leave them alone.

It hasn't slowed him down from napping in the mulch though. 

 

Pool Deck

JD is tackling building a pool deck at the one end of the pool. I requested one large enough for a few chairs - he is building it way bigger and better than I requested. 

He had some help digging out the footers - of course the county required them to be dug half way to China and a permit and inspections to prove it. 

The big holes get covered for rain and pumped out after rain - 

Elijah is JD's right hand man; he is learning a lot and enjoying working alongside his dad. (His payment isn't hurting his motivation either.)



The base of the deck is going in as of yesterday. 

Here's my seating area in the screened in porch that we are enjoying in warm weather. I'd like to have some friends come sit out here with me if we can get past this quarantine period!

A Week at Home

 Since I normally seem to spend my days in the car driving kids from event to event, I often used to say that I could get things done if I could have one week at home. Well, I wouldn't choose this but I have had my week at home. I have gotten a lot more done....

Alyssa and I tacked the baby boy clothes in my storage room. A lot of Nathan's baby clothes were left here as Alayna and Nathan spent a good bit of his babyhood here. Moriah brings clothes home from the little boy that she is a nanny for and they get dispersed to Samuel and Oliver and then everything somehow finds it's way back here because I'm the one with the storage room. 

We unpacked and repacked MANY boxes and labeled by size, so whoever needs them next will not have to tackle all the boxes at once. If the next person has a girl, we don't have anything for that!

It's the first time Oliver played downstairs and really enjoyed pushing trucks and tractors around, so some need to move upstairs. 

We found the tiger hat that I had bought Nathan on a trip to the San Diego Zoo. It was hot and sunny and Nathan spent the whole time taking it off and throwing it on the ground like a normal baby. Oliver, however, was thrilled with every hat we tried on him! He turned 11 months the other day and remains the most outgoing baby I have ever seen.

I started Selah and Bella on packing up their winter clothes and getting out the summer, so after Alyssa went home, we worked another few hours. It's finally to the point that it's not a three day task for me each season swap - just part of a day since the girls are the only ones that we even swap for. They still have a ton of clothes - Elijah and the girls above them just don't have many. 

My task was separating and dispersing the ones that Bella has outgrown. Since we are on lockdown, they are waiting to be delivered to their new owners. 

Other than clothes, I spent a good few days organizing all the bookshelves. This is definitely a post organize photo; they were a mess. I have gotten rid of most of what my kids have outgrown, but then Nathan starts K in the fall, so there is still things I don't want to part with. We have a lot of bookcases; I organized nine bookshelves in three rooms. 

Today we did massive goat maintenance and treating a baby that seems to have a touch of something. I drove the kids down our easement road and we cut pine branches for them to snack on. 

The fruit trees are blossoming pink and white and I truly appreciate my laying chickens as eggs were scarce when I was shopping last week. 

Yesterday the kids learned to play chess at Aunt Debs, so this morning I dug out the chess board that JD bought in Turkey many years ago. They were thrilled.

 Bella made us some cookies here and then brownies at Aunt Debs. 

 I hope you are all well during this trying time - I grieve at the impact in other places in the world that are so much worse off than ours! I pray it ends as quickly as it seemed to come!