Our Week In Pictures - Picture Overload Edition

Another week is coming to an end at the old homestead. It's been a busy one and a fun one, that's for sure. I am going to take a few minutes to share what's been happening around here the last 6 days. Enjoy.

Chicken Mania

A certain roo learned to crow like a big boy this week. He is strutting around like he's so proud of himself. Our last rooster learned over about a 2 week period. This little guy (Chocolate) just let it rip with a full cock-a-doodle-doo. Here he is eating from my hand. He's quite tame, which is what we were trying for with him. I don't know if he will stay that way, but we are hoping.

Most of our chicken will eat from your hand if given the chance. It's hard for the boys because sitting still and waiting for them to come to you is not their favorite activity. Here are a few of our chickens eating from our older son's hand. At one point all 6 were trying to get in there and eat. He loved it. 

You can see buckets in the corners in this little clip. Our younger son wanted the birds to have buckets to play with. My husband said they wouldn't be interested and put the blocks of wood you see on the right side of the screen out for them to play with and on. My son laid down the bucket until we left the chicken yard. Guess who couldn't get into those buckets fast enough? Yep, all 6 chickens ... in the bucket ... at once ... sitting and standing on each other. They love the buckets. So, they now have two to play with and we see them in them all the time playing around. Who knew. 

This young lady started out yellow and was named Buttercup. Our younger son couldn't have a white chicken named Buttercup, so he's trying to come up with the perfect one. 

School Time

This week's topic for language arts was subjects and predicates. I remember learning them myself as a kid.

We have a trial of Reading Eggs. My kids used to work with it but got bored. They like the new set up much better. My younger son was so excited to find a pet to buy with his winnings that looks like his kitty.

Yes, my older son's avatar does look like an elf. No, I don't know why. 

ART! We love art in our home. Both of my kids enjoy drawing, creating, and studying art. My older son has a talent with drawing and my younger son just loves to draw no matter how good he is.

Cat Tales

This first cat, Furno (named after a cartoon character) has his "who me" face on because, what you can't see, is the remains of a dead cardinal. Yep, a gorgeous red male cardinal. His entire tail, some miscellaneous feathers, sigh. He's a good boy, just wish he wouldn't lay his left overs in our yard. These were right under my clothes line where I had to walk around them when I was hanging clothes to dry. If he just wasn't so cute. 

Talk about cute. This is Smokey (see the Reading Eggs cat above). He's about 6 months old and is the light of my younger son's life. This cat can do no wrong in my son's mind. He found my younger son's toy camo blanket that they had been playing with and was using it to hide and prepare for his attack. You can see his huge eyes as he spots the boys, sure they can't see him. 

Do I Really Have to Explain?

I saw this one just hours after my younger son came up to me while I was sitting on the sofa. Here's how it went:

Him: Mom, do you like peace and quite?
Me: Yes, yes I do.
Him: (laughing hysterically) You know that's never going to happen while I'm around?! (walks off laughing)

Fun and Funny

My kids enjoy Scrabble. They don't even care if I win. Yeah, love that. But, I try to let them win sometimes or at least help them a bit. However, on this day I couldn't hold back the biggest word I ever made. See the word at the bottom? Engineer? Yeah, That's a word worth 140 points. Hello! Here's how it's done. 

You HAVE to have one letter already there, but not on the triple word score. The letter I started with was the first N, as you can see. Now, I put down all 7 of my letters for a total of 10 points (imagine if those had been higher scoring tiles - I drool as I think about a Z in there). Now, because you already had a letter in the word, your tiles stretch out over TWO triple word scores. Here's the math:

10 points (there was a double letter in there as well) x 3 = 30. 

I got the second triple word so I took the new score of 

30 points x 3 = 90. 

Then, I didn't have to stop because I also used all 7 letters which gives me a 50 point bonus. 

90 points + 50 point bonus = 140 points! 

(taking my bow now)

We went to a reenactment event at the local fort. This is the actual fort. There are many other buildings such as a blacksmith shop, the foundation of the kitchen and other small buildings like that, and more. It's just a fun place to visit if nothing is going on, but reenactment weekend is awesome. My kids dressed the part in homemade costumes. We got to see a real civil war cannon being fired every hour, watched demonstrations, drank tasty homemade root beer, discussed the history of the fort, and just had fun as a family.

Ah yes, my son. This is him while he vacuumed my living room carpet. He asked if he could do it while I was plugging it into the outlet. I said sure and let him at it. I looked down to see my sweetie's little feet.

Side note: look at those sweet toesies.

Movie time!! Star Wars is a big hit in this house. We laid out in the living room and just relaxed one afternoon. It was so nice.

My soap ingredients came this week, including my cutter. This just makes me ready to make soap. Can't you already see the crinkle cut bars sitting on the edge of the sink?

The boys had a mad game of marbles in the living room one afternoon. They had been out playing, taking care of the animals, and having fun and were tired. So they plopped down on the floor, spread out their marbles, and had a great time. You can see a suede bag near my younger son. That is from my father who passed away last year. He made sure my older son got it when he died. My older son now uses it for his marbles.

Beauty

We finally pulled out the quartz that we got in Kansas. It's a nice sized piece and so pretty. I will leave you to enjoy the beauty of God's creation.

Last But Far From Least

We started this speech program this week. I did the testing for the boys, figured out where we needed to go and what we needed to work on, and Thursday was their first "speech" time in school. They liked it, which is good considering we didn't even start with the games. It's a lot of work. They have oral motor weakness so we are working a lot with where their tongues need to be, how to move their lips, and where to place their jaw.