Sunday With The Kids

Soggy chickens. The tarp isn't working so great so we'll have to devise another shelter until the chicken coop is finished.

The green onions are beginning to freeze so Lucas wanted to help me pull half of them.

The onions kept breaking off on him so he went to pull carrots (that also broke in half!).

He was pretty proud of his harvest.

Lucas got to spend part of the day with just Mom and Dad. We drove up to the Monument to check the view. It will all be yellow soon!

Then we drove up another road to see the other side of the hill. Lucas got a kick out of driving back out.

We picked up a bunch a pallets at one of the parts stores. I wanted them to stack my wood on and for under the freezer. I want to move it out of the house and save on electricity. Went grocery shopping, too, which isn't much fun especially on a tight budget.

Yesterday I worked on food for lunches. I baked two large and three mini loaves of pumpkin pie bread, a loaf of rhubarb bread and 36 muffins, boiled eggs, made jello cups, scooped portions of peaches from a large can and bagged up carrots from the garden. My lunches for the kids have always been a little shady. I really disliked making them and never seemed to have anything to put in them. This year I am making four lunches and decided to change my attitude and have fun with it. It's either than or continue to be miserable (and Lord knows there are plenty of other things making me miserable; don't need one of them to be food! LOL). What will we bake today?

I never seem to have a shortage of helpers when baking. Wish I could say the same when it came to cleaning! :)

Elijah, Olivia and Lucas have the sniffles so they all were in bed early. Nick, Emily, Dad and I watched Oceans Eleven. Nick hadn't seen it. Next it will the Oceans Twelve and then Oceans Thirteen. Santa brought the set to me one Christmas. :)

I'm really getting into composting and am having fun teaching the kids to be less wasteful. There are three bowls going on the counter at all times...one with scraps for the chickens, one with the things the chickens can't chew plus paper towels for the worms and one of egg shells and coffee grounds for the compost bins. The only thing we toss are the meat products which the dogs would love, but don't need!

Awhile back I started to recycle everything which was a mistake. It was too over-whelming. Now we are trying it again, but building up to everything. The kids are almost perfect about saving the scraps and we've got the aluminum down. Now I am saving the steel cans and working on the kids with plastics. (I always save the newspapers). After we get really good at these items then I will go back to the cardboard as well. I am far from the "granola" type, but it really does feel good to recycle especially when we are using it around the house.