End of School

Well another school year has come and gone. Emma has had some of the best teachers with some great activities, and wonderful learning opportunities. We really like this preschool! Once again I'm amazed at her intelligence and willingness to increase her knowledge. Emma loves learning so much I'm afraid being here at home with me all summer will be dull...

First day of Preschool: Aug 2013, Mrs Carolyn's class

Enough pictures Mom, let's get my coat and backpack!

Last Day May 2014

I ran across these old photos. Thought I'd share just for fun: Emma about 18 months old (Parker's current age) Aug 2011

End of the Year Field Trip

Emma's preschool class went to a local farm recently for a class field trip. Parker and I went (parent helper or what not) and enjoyed being outside and seeing the kids be silly and run around.

I just love Emma's preschool and teachers. It was great to be there first hand as they corralled those kids from here and there and kept them entertained and respectful.

Emma is best pals with this boy named Dalton (Dalton has a few speech needs and never talks back…this might be why Emma likes to be best buds with him, she's bossy and he doesn't question her).

Plus, Emma only rides the bus for field trips. This may have been her favorite part.

Parker wasn't impressed with the cows or goats.

Bus ride back to school.

we have a walker

Easter Happened

Shane was out of town working for Easter this year. That leaves me to get everybody to church on time and presentable... so the kids were a little disheveled-no big deal we still had a great day. The kids and I enjoyed church and sang easter songs and talked about the symbolism of eggs and why that silly old rabbit leaves baskets of goodies. We saved our family egg hunt on Monday for Family Home Evening when Shane got back.

***Side Note to Remember: Sunday morning when I mentioned to Emma the Easter bunny came she was so excited to jump out of bed and start an egg hunt…I remind her (for the umpteenth time) that the bunny brings a basket and our family will do eggs when Dad gets home. Emma was so mad about there being no egg hunt that morning, that she pouted in her room for over an hour and we were almost late for church! She finally came out and found her basket. I have no idea where this stubborn and sassy behavior comes from-Sheesh!

"CHEESE"

Ok, watch sister and copy her.

"cheese" Did I do it right Mom? 

 Both the kids got several outside play things in their easter baskets this year. So naturally we had a rainstorm Easter Day…

…once again my sassy Emma had an opinion to share! If she only knew I filmed her yelling at the weather!

Organic Chicken & Turkey

Well it's time! We've been slowly changing and perfecting our Fodder (Fodder: food, especially dried hay or feed, for cattle and other livestock.) system. I wanted something that would water itself and Shane wanted something that would take up very little space. Well we did the best we could with an 18 tray vertical system with a water pump! To purchase a system equivalent to what Shane built us would be well over $400, we made our own in less than half that amount!


Now to answer the why: Why grow your own fodder?

   We currently have a quantity of poultry in the 100+ range. These birds all eat…a lot! if we let them free range throughout our yard we would never have a garden, never have grass, and constantly be on the lookout for birds of prey, large neighborhood dogs and the like. Instead they free range in their safe and comfortable habitats. This means they need to eat store bought feed or we have to grow our own fodder.
     Well, considering that one 50LB bag of store bought feed is $20 and 100+ birds go through 4-5 bags a week we decided it would be better to buy chicken from the store like everybody else. However, when you grow your own fodder and feed 100+ birds on one 50LB bag of barley seed ($13 at the IFA)    every other week the choice is obvious. Fodder is all natural and VERY healthy. We just turned our Oldfield Family Farm into an Organic Farm, reaping even greater benefits for raising our own meat.

Now if you find me organic chicken breast in the grocery store for less than $0.32 per LB than I'll consider bagging  the idea of raising my own. How much do you spend?


Why raise your own:

     This is one small step for our family to become self reliant. I don't want to rely on what the grocer tells me about their products and I don't want to rely on truckers constantly getting to our small stores here in Cedar City. All it takes is one earthquake or other disaster to destroy the roads for our grocery store shelves to go empty and I live in the middle of no-where. I'm not living for dooms day-I'm not some kind of extreme prepper. I simply want to provide for my children and make sure we have good, healthy, reliable food. Also, I just love learning new skills.

Some pictures:

How I started.

This is how it looked at first.

Parker looking in the hatcher.

Our first baby turkey!

A few of the reasons we need fodder.

It takes about 8 days to look like this. This is how we feed it to the Poultry.

18 tray vertical set up.

You can see the daily progression!

hair cut

We've been trimming Mr. Man's hairs, the few that he has, for 5 months now. Somebody told me when you shave the head of a baby it will stimulate the hairs to grow in faster and thicker…I can't confirm that cutting the hairs has actually helped my bald baby but I can say I believe it has!


I just trimmed Parker's hairs vs. shaved them for the first time. He is looking as cute as ever and really starting to show fuzz. If I have another baby I'm totally going to shave his or her head in hopes that I don't have another bald baby until 2 years old.

Before

After

Just my cute kids again...

Parker is getting more brave. I think walking is soon to follow, but let's be honest, I'm not doing much to encourage it. Walking babies = more exploring and bigger messes

Just my cute kiddos being friends

Parker only wanted to share for a moment…the moment is gone

My silly Emma just as cute as can be.