Pork for dinner

I am not good at coming up with good meal plans... my sister K is far better than me in that regard. However this last week, Momma told me to just pull something out of the freezer for the next day's dinner. K suggested looking through one of her cookbooks, the River Cottage Meat Book, for a recipe. I used a recipe for a lamb roast, swapping out several ingredients and switching pork for lamb. It was a little dry since it stayed in an hour longer than it should have... (consequences of having siblings running the oven while one is gone) But the flavor was delicious and I am hoping to make it again... this time with garlicky mashed potatoes!

Learning to Read

J has mild-moderate hearing loss in one ear and profound hearing loss in his other ear.
Recently we were blessed to receive some Love and Learning dvds and books from another family of a child with Ds. J really enjoys watching his 'school work'

I hope you all enjoy listening to J 'read' and hopefully, we'll be able to add more videos of J reading his other books!

Pool time!

O, B, and C dug a small pool two or so weeks ago and filled it with water. The next day, O and I dug the 'pool' deeper and made a slide out of dirt.

J thought it would be fun to play in the water.... that is until he actually got into it! Believe me, that boy has quite a healthy pair of lungs! :) In the end, J decided that as long as I held him, he was fine. He did eventually get off my lap to play with a plastic toy boat C brought over for him.

O very thoughtfully put up the canopy to shade the pool and James from the sun!

Family Life

B caught reading a book!

K's birthday dinner... just waiting for the salmon. It was an absolutely delicious meal!

And now, I have a 18 year old sister! my goodness, how time flies!

Momma has more pictures of what country children do when they don't have a swing set over on One Big Adventure, plus an update on J's recent trip to Atlanta!

Meet Gusty.... aka Gustavus Adolphus snoozing on the side porch.

The treats after chicken processing... We had two families over who wanted to learn the 'how-to'.

We just did 75 chickens, since all of the 150 weren't big enough for slaughter yet. It made for a quick day. Although, we were all exhausted by the end of the day. J decided to finish up the day with some excitement by cutting his hand on a lounge chair on the porch... Poor baby! It's looking much better now, but we are still keeping it cover and putting antibiotic ointment on it.

So that's what we've been doing around here lately.... Hope you all enjoy the quick visit around the farm!

~Hannah

The Miracle of Life

Around March 24th, we put 10 turkey eggs in the incubator... We were a bit apprehensive if the turkeys would actually hatch, since we had messed up several things during the 28 days. This past Monday, Momma, J and I had come back from the day's trip to Atlanta and we were making dinner when I checked the eggs. I was thrilled to see that one of the eggs was hatching!

The second egg that started cracking actually hatched out first and most of us got to see it happen.

Tuesday evening... so cute!

We moved them to a small brooder in the mudroom and they are already feathering out.... They're growing so fast! On May 5th, we have another batch of 20 turkey eggs in the brooder that, Lord willing, are due to hatch! We are hoping that the turkeys will lay more eggs to have another clutch, so far we have 4 eggs on the counter waiting for their turn in the incubator!

The Beauty of Birds

Or the nests, for that matter! B found a old bird's nest while helping Daddy with brush clearing. She brought it inside for all of us to see it. Of course, we took pictures after we positioned properly in a bush in front of the house.

The proud finder of the nest!

That's actually a plastic bag that was woven into the nest.

Look at her short hair! She cut it off, so she could donate it to Locks of Love.

Ah, the beauty of God's creation!

The Little Man

J really loves to dress up in a suit and tie (the tie is probably the most important, since he thinks it makes him look like Daddy, even though Daddy rarely wears one.) Yesterday, we were looking for an outfit J could wear today to Atlanta for an appointment and J found a tie. We pulled out a suit J was given back in 2007 (he was almost 3 then) and it still fits him, probably because he's gotten taller and slimmed down from all the steroids.

B, C, and I took J outside and got some pictures of him all dressed up with the new camera from Grandpa John and Grandma Nan (Thank you so much!)

I do have some more pictures to post, but they are on the other computer, so they will have to wait for right now! But they are some great pictures of things we've been doing around here! 

Hannah