Life on the Farm

 Sadie running around trying to collect Easter eggs.

 We got 21 chicks at the post office several weeks ago. They are much bigger now and are ready to go out to their coop this week. Nate loved setting one of the chicks up in his tractor that moves. Nate got such a kick out of pushing the "go" button and watching his chick have a ride.

 Happy Kids' Day! When I was a kid my parents had Kids' Day for us a few times. I have such fun memories of it. Our last kids' day was about 4 years ago so we were due for another one! It was fun to do a few things we don't normally do. Sadie's favorite snack in the world is chips and onion dip and we pretty much never have it unless there's a party or something like that. So we had that for our appetizer and strawberry lemonade (another rare thing around here). Dinner was lemon/blueberry/buttermilk whole wheat pancakes and a potato/bacon/egg dish.

We played the flour game and Sade had to dive for the dime!

We played the fishing game (this is one of the games I remember playing at Kids' Day as a kid). Dave was a pretty tough fish to catch back there.

And we ended the night with a family dance party - one of our favorite things. One of the prizes Nate got during one of the games was a kite. He was so determined to fly that thing. Here he was trying to fly it from the stairs. Later on we noticed he was gone. He had gone up to his room where there is a deck outside his bedroom door. He was hanging his kite over the deck. We were all dancing...and looked out the window and saw a kite floating in the air. It made us all laugh to see his determination to get the kite flying!

One sunny day, the kids and I went rattlesnake hunting. I prefer to be on the offensive, so we decided to go on a hunt. I brought my gun and the kids brought pocket knives and sticks. And a shovel, too. We didn't find a snake but we sure looked! I guess it wasn't hot enough yet. 

We loved having our good friends from Missouri visit us over Easter weekend.

The snake hunters...preparing for battle.

We found these boots for Nate at the consignment store. Nate loves wearing his cowboy boots all around.

These pictures do not do this little story justice. We had a dental school BBQ with 4 families that we went to school with that have ended up here in Colorado. Nate and this cute little girl, Ella, had so much fun talking to each other that night. The top picture is how they looked most of the time. She was leaning in, and then he was leaning in. All smiles the whole time. I tried to get them to look at me for the picture but they were both a little shy about it.

It was such a treat for us to have a visit from Grandma Bowen, Grandma and Grandpa Walton, Brittany and Sam! Nate just loved having Grandma Bowen here. We all did!

Nate wanted a silly face picture with Grandma Walton! We loved having them here!

It was so precious when Nate quietly walked up to Grandma Bowen and said "Want to play a game with me?" I'm not sure that was Grandma's first choice of activity but before I knew it, there was Grandma Bowen walking with Nate to the game cupboard to pick a game. She sat and played with them for a long time. Such a special thing!

Ashlyn and Sadie's choirs had a big end of year performance last night. Ashlyn's choir did Newsies and Sadie's choir did Annie. I like the picture above of Sadie when we were just testing out the curly hair and outfit. It looks more like Sadie without all of the makeup!

They were supposed to wear loads of makeup for the big show. Ash had so much fun being a Newsy and Sadie loved having a little solo for Annie.

Dave and the kids have been working hard on the chicken coop. We've had so much snow that it's taken a lot longer to get it done! Those chicks are ready to go outside!

Dave and Leland have been having quite the fun trying to eliminate the prairie dog species in our yard. It's cute to see them walking around with their guns.

Nate and Jack are such good buddies.

Getting our chicks at the post office.

Ashlyn and Sadie dressed up for their end of year speeches in class. Sadie was Mansa Musa and Ash was Confucius. They had to dress up as their character and then give a speech in first person and at the end the class guesses who they are.