This was a great week! We had beautiful spring weather so we took off school and worked and played outside all day every day. In the evenings we read and played games. Kaitlyn celebrated her 13th birthday and our very first chicks hatched!

Lots of outside time!

The whole week was sunny, cloudless skies, temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s, and no humidity. It was wonderful! We did a lot of yard work projects. I made a list of projects to do in the month of April and we got 28 out of 44 projects done! Only 16 more and we have 2 weeks of April left. I’ll certainly be adding more though, because I love to work outside and get things done. It feels so good. And this is the best time of year to do them.

Getting projects done

Every morning after breakfast and chores the kids played while I worked on my blog. We ate lunch outside from 11-12 and then 12-1 was our work time. That was when I released the younger kids at least, but I was always having a great time so I continued to finish or find more projects to do. Makenna and Samuel were my best helpers and often stayed with me for another hour or two. After dinner we’d all run out to play and I’d find a few more simple projects to do. Makenna and Tilly often helped me so we accomplished more than I thought we would this week.

Here are some things we did:

We cut, hauled, and stacked wood.
Thomas built another garden box.
We weeded the other 9 garden boxes, hauled composted dirt to them, and planted lots of seeds.
Flowers were planted in the flower pots.
We worked on Blueberry Hill, cutting brambles and trees out of the blueberry bushes.
I put up a new trellis for the blackberries and Thomas and I fixed the grape posts and trellises that were broken.
We did little things like fix the porch steps, cleaned gutters and sticks from the roof, picked up sticks in the yard, and mowed. A retired neighbor came and fixed a pipe to the garden hose in the back yard.

It was such a productive week!

Campfire

Tuesday I cut down a dead tree and then burned the branches. It left a perfect smoldering fire for foil dinners so I quickly got everything ready and we had a wonderful dinner outside by the campfire. Afterwards we roasted marshmallows of course.

Gardening

This week we planted potatoes, a few more strawberries, basil, rosemary, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. We mulched the peas and hauled new dirt to a few other boxes in need. I hope each year I can make our garden a little better than last year.

Thomas making another raised garden bed. Now I have to weed the area we’re putting it in and haul dirt. Makenna wants it for her watermelon seeds.

Beautiful spring around the farm

Artist Talea

Kaitlyn’s a teenager!

Kaitlyn celebrated her golden birthday this year. She turned 13 on the 13th. She couldn’t think of anything to do even when I suggested going to a state park because the weather was beautiful. Or a movie day, game day, reading party, campfire, etc. She didn’t plan anything. That was fortuitious because in the morning the first little chick hatched! So we sat by the incubator all day watching the others hatch. If she planned something we wouldn’t have wanted to leave the house and would have had to cancel. She’d been incubating the eggs for 3 weeks and expected them on Easter but they waited until her birthday instead!

Kaitlyn didn’t know what kind of cake to have so she just put candles in ice cream and had ice cream sundaes instead. Everyone put Easter candy on their ice cream and I made some chocolate sauce. She got to talk to her 4 older siblings whom she adores. She watched a movie with Thomas in the afternoon. When all the kids were in bed she and I played Racko together. She said she had a great day!

Chicks hatch on Kaitlyn’s birthday!