Seeing Green and a Present to be Named Later

We went to an auction on Saturday that had farm and lawn equipment and got a lawn mower so we can mow our yard! YEAH! This was a steal for us and will definitely be easier than last years method of hoping for our contractor or my parents to come for a visit and bring a lawn tactor or push mow our few acres! This should allow us to keep our yard nice and neat this year! (and boy did the kids have fun on this this weekend...)

Bailey on the trailer as it was being loaded with the lawn mower and Seth's birthday present to be named later...Mr. Kemner was kind enough to load up our stuff on his trailer and bring it back up to the house. You don't find many neighbor's like the Kemner's. They are wonderful people!
Here is Seth's birthday present to be named later. He wants to build a go cart. This is the back half of a VW with a transmission in place...he can do whateve he wants to do with it. Between this and fishing, we should be able to keep him out of trouble for the next few years...

A Hopping Good Time

John Armistead is a genius! Check out this creation! This cake is the ode to Teddy's hoppy year. I know that he will all too soon call a frog a frog and not a hoppy like he did all last summer. Last summer-all summer, he and Bailey caught hoppies and put the hoppies in little puddles and carried the hoppies around with them in various containers for hours and hours. John's hoppy cake will help me to always remember the hopping good time he had. Thank you John.

Teddy had a hoppy theme, but a different green theme with his gifts-John Deere. He got a t-shirt, hat, wagon and truck/trailer set and some sand box toys that were John Deere!Finally, it was time for Teddy's 'ter-tay' and presents.

Teddy went inside and a few minutes later I realized he had not come right back out, so I went in to see what he was up to and found him with raspberry tea mix on one hand and eating the rest of his cake off from a spatula...nice grin!

Pump up the WOW factor on the walls

Before crown molding...this joint is in the parlor...some spots are better than others,but the joint between the old plaster walls and the newer drywall ceilings...not a pretty site...

The family room with crown molding. We actually used 3 seperate pieces to get this look. One on the wall, one on the ceiling and a small piece of crown attaching the two. It sure does look good! I am painting it the same color as the woodwork throughout the house.

A Slate Backdrop for the Wood Stove

The child is not camera shy... Here is the slate wall going up. This is in the kitchen where we were thinking of putting a bar and wine storage... Now it will be our ode to ameren gas bills...
Here is the wall all the way up. The slate pieces going around the front edge really look nice. Now we just need grout and a stove. Dad was able to trade and barter and get all the pieces of pipe we need, saving us quite a bit of money! Thanks Dad!

Swinging Chicks

Teddy is a little afraid of the chicks. He likes to watch but is not sure about the holding thing...He still looks awful cute holding one. This one is a road island red. Very common breed known for laying brown eggs and being good layers. We have 13 of these guys. This chick is less than a week old.

Ben could not be more happy! He wants to be a farmer and sees this as the first step on the path to land ownership, and lots of birds! GO Ben! He is holding a buff orington which we only have two of. They are mild mannered and good brown egg layers. These are less than a week old.

This is the chicks part of the title...we are the proud owners of 23 chicks. The boys cleaned out a stall and then Charles and Seth and Ben spent most of Friday and Saturday enclosing one of the stalls in the barn with chicken wire. We have chicken wire on the sides to the ground. We have beams across the top that are enclosed with chicken wire so the coons and other varmints can't come in through the top. We have chicken wire on the door and even put a beam across the top of the door so that we could have no gaps in our coverage with chickenwire. We have 3 heat lamps hung, two waterers and two feeders in two seperate boxes in the enclosed stall because one set of chicks is about a week oder than the others and will not hurt them until they huddle up at night...at which time, they will smush the little ones. Our goal is eggs for the boys to sell to customers. We are hoping they will learn to save money, care for a product, market, sell etc...I am really hoping I don't end up caring for the girls myself...

Here, Seth is holding an araconda(I'll have to check the spelling on the chicken types...) They are between 1 and 2 weeks of age. These chicks naturally lay eggs that are blue, green and yellow so they are nicknamed easter egg chickens. I am very curious to see their eggs. The 8 chicks we got of this type should average 2 dozen eggs every two days.

Bailey LOVES to hold them and istrying to name them all. In this picture, she is holding an araconda. These guys are getting their feathers already and should be laying eggs in about 4 weeks...

Here they are all huddled in a corner trying to figure out what is going on in their world! Cute though aren't they! Wish us luck.

Swinging Chicks

The title got your attention didn't it...

Too cute with the upside down thing and the hair going on...isn't she. Bailey and Teddy got a swingset for their birthdays. This weekend, we put it together and both of them (all four of them actually...but the older two are less likely to admit it...) are ready to spend hours playing on the set. Bailey and Teddy were playing on what we had done as we were finishing other parts!

Teddy on the slide and loving it. He kept asking if we were all done yet. Then he would walk over and look at our progress and say, "all mose" (almost)

And if you look carefully, you can see all four of them on the set in this shot!

The Long Road...

We do know that this used to be a street. We know that because we now own like 7 pieces of land and the land to the south of the house is divided into lots. We don't know if there ever were any houses to the south of our house. We do think that there was at one time, because of the old red barn, chicken coop (or dog kennel) and the second storm cellar. But we do not see any sign of an old foundation... Anyway, the city needs to use our drive to get to the sewer line and they asked if I minded if they scrape it and put down new rock...I suggested that maybe they could use the remaning waste lime as a base and they agreed this might work...so bye bye lime mountain...They then requested that they always have access to the drive and filled in the parking spots for the vehicles so we stay out of their way!! Doesn't it look GREAT!!! Thank you city of Sturgeon.