Kait the Great Turns Sweet Sixteen!!
For Kaitlyn’s birthday she wanted the other kids to act like missionaries for the whole day. And they did! They all made name tags, wore missionary attire, studied their scriptures, etc. Kaitlyn had beautiful weather for her birthday and everyone was so happy the entire day. I made her potato soup for lunch and taco salad for her birthday dinner. She made a delicious chocolate cake and was able to talk to her college siblings while she blew out the candles. I got most of the day in video, so not very many pictures. Make sure to check out the video!!
Pilot Mountain
One beautiful day I took the 3 little kids on a 10 mile hike up and around Pilot Mountain the longest way possible. We had a great time! This year I want to do like six to ten short hikes under 10 miles, one or two 10-15 mile hikes, and one hike greater than 15 miles. Sadly, this was my first hike of the year and it is April! And I don’t like to hike too much in the summer when it’s hot, humid, and crowded. So we need to get a bunch more in before summer and then the rest in the fall (my favorite time to hike because of the leaves!)
School is in Session… Outside!
We love doing school outside as much as possible! In the winter when it’s cold and dark when we’re starting our first subjects, we forget to go out when it warms up. But now that it’s light early in the morning and plenty warm, it’s fun to do all of our subjects outside. Here we do history and first aid. Doing school outside gladdens the heart
Spring Gardening
We planted early this year and it felt great to get the garden in. We have 10 garden boxes and everyone is in charge of one. Since the college kids aren’t here to help out, that leaves me with 4 boxes. Then we have 4 long rows in what we call “the pumpkin patch” (some years it’s all pumpkins and gourds, other years we add extra seeds), and 3 rows we just call “the extra garden.” It’s a lot for us to keep up with, especially when we’re homeschooling and me trying to spend 6-8 hours a day on my business. So it’s a very weedy garden, but we enjoy doing the best we can.
Here is a sketch of our garden. Everyone writes in what seeds they planted so that we can remember. 🙂 As I’m posting this I’m realizing a lot of things didn’t come up, like all of Samuel’s wildflowers and a lot of the flower seeds Kaitlyn planted. Also, some of her things came up all on top of each other like 20 tomatoes way too close together so I moved them into Samuel’s and Thomas’s boxes as well as the herb box which had space. Andy has since planted rows of zucchini, mini pumpkins, cucumbers, corn and a few other things. So obviously, this isn’t our finished garden plans, but you get the idea. We put these in our garden binder and it’s fun to look back over the years and see what we planted where.
We work outside most mornings until lunch and then Tilly will be the first one to go in and make everyone lunch. Here she made taco salad bowls for Kait and Kenna and a plate of leftovers for Samuel. We love coming in hot and dirty to food already prepared for us. It’s fun working together as a family.
Freeze scare: Our area was under a freeze warning so we decided to take extra precautions and cover our plants. It ended up only getting down to 38 so they were fine, but it was good practice. These old trampoline mats came with the house and I wondered if they were worth keeping. I think next year we can plant even earlier and use the mats if needed.
Rainy Spring Days
I love looking at the fog and mist around our property. It feels so magical. Also fun to see kids reading stacks of books on a rainy afternoon.
Cousin Visit
Nathan’s cousin, Emma and her husband and 3 children dropped by for a visit. I love this family so much and it was a treat to have them stay the night with us. They loved the chickens and ducks, riding the e-bikes and zipline, and playing in the sandbox. (If you order an ebike, make sure to use code “ONAFARM” for $100 off!)
