Five Months old

As many of you know we've been chronicling (St)Eve daily since he arrived here on Feb 15.  We've also been taking a picture of (St)Eve with little Savannah each month on the 23rd of every month.  Savannah was born December 23, so she is just 8 days older than (St)Eve. :)

We have a short photo shoot yesterday and I posted the daily picture on our Facebook page but there were a few more that were just too cute NOT to share.  Without further delay....more of (St)Eve and Savannah (and a couple with Big Sissy too)!

(St)Eve, whispering the secret of life to Savannah.

Savannah can't believe what's she's hearing...

Apparently the secret of life is to let your favorite rooster watch more TV.  Savannah thought this was hilarious!

Just look at those sparkly blue eyes!  I know I'm her mama but gosh, that is one cute kid! <3

Big Sissy was sitting next to me, making baby girl smile.  Savannah LOVES her big sissy!

I think she was a little nervous (St)Eve was going to step on her, come save me Big Sissy!  ;)

Big Sissy to the rescue! 

(St)Eve thought he was King Rooster being snuggled by two such cute little girls! 

These girls sure do love them some (St)Eve!

PSA#2 from Anderson

As if getting sprayed in the eye with a power washer wasn't enough, poor Anderson has another PSA to bring everyone today:

'If your big brother wants to hit your finger with a rock, DO NOT LET HIM! HE MAY HIT YOUR FINGERNAIL!  It will hurt really bad and you may lose your nail (like me).  OUCHIE!'  

We don't even know how exactly it happened but on Sunday, while we were trying to get our rental house cleaned up for new tenants, Jack hit Andy on the finger with a rock.  It doesn't seem as if it was deliberately done to hurt him, I think they were looking for bugs or possibly on another search for Bigfoot (lol), although he must have hit pretty hard to hurt his nail too.  Andy, ever the tough guy, never even mentioned that it happened until yesterday morning when I was dropping him off at daycare.  The nail on his right index finger was barely still attached.  yikes!  I got a bandaid from daycare and covered his nail/finger until I could figure out what to do.  By the time he came home last night he had tore the nail completely off.  I called the Dr, who (thankfully) said he will be fine but that it might take up to 6 months for his nail to grow back in.  We are to keep an eye on it and watch for infection.  ugh.  I've been trying to keep it bandaged but so far today we've had to rewrap it 6 times.  ;)

this poor kid is going to be tough as nails when he grows up!  I don't think he ever stops smiling either.  He's had quite a few mishaps in his young 4 years (note the remnants of a slice across his forehead courtesy of his peacock) but always has a smile to share.  :)

Too Cute for Words

Our youngest, Savannah, is almost 5 months already (wow, where does the time go?).

She is rolling over and just recently found her toes which she amuses herself by grabbing ahold of.  I snapped a few pics of her and our first peachick of the season.  It was so cute to see the two of them.  The chick was very curious of her (especially her feet) and she was a little confused by this tiny bird so close to her.  Just thought I'd share the cute run of pics I was able to snap.  Around here, our birds truly are a family affair! :)

Cutie little Peachick.

Peachick was very interested in her toes. 

Those left toes look primed for a little nibble.

Sizing up the toes, is this food?

I think it might be food, such plump little toes, they look so yummy and delicious!

Maybe just a little nibble.

Just a little peck, is this something tasty?

What?!  wasn't me!

Maybe if I distract her she won't remember I tried to eat her toes...ohh, look Savannah....something shiny!

PSA from Anderson

If your big brother gets a hold of daddy's power washer, don't wait to find out what he is going to do...RUN (and cover your eyes)! 

We are planning to re-stain our deck this weekend so in prep for that Mr Louden wanted to power wash it to get all the yuk off.  Problem was, his power washer wasn't getting good pressure so he decided to walk around the side to see if the hose was kinked.  He didn't think this would be any problem because both boys were busy playing on the playset.
While this was happening, Sydney and I were working on putting up some electric fencing so we had our back's to what was about to go down.  

We heard a frantic scream from Anderson and 'OUCH, MY EYE, MY EYE!'  I went sprinting to the deck to find Jackson holding the wand to the power washer and Anderson holding his left eye, squeezing it shut tightly and crying that it HURT!
This is what we think happened...Jackson, ever my curious little helper, picked up the sprayer wand and accidentally pulled the trigger hose.  Unfortunately for Anderson, he was right in the line of fire.  OUCH!  We both did confirm that he could see out of it so we calmed down slightly.  We didn't feel this one was quite ER worthy but definitely worth a trip to the urgent care center.  We were very lucky in that we got there 9 minutes before they closed (yeah, I'm sure they loved us!).  The Dr there confirmed the two scratches, one of them in the center of his cornea.  again, OUCH!
They sent us home with a prescription for eye drops (to be used every 4 hours) and direction to see an optamologist within 3 days.  Thankfully when we visited the pediatric optamologist two days later he was already completely healed!
We ar eso thankful he is healed and has no long term injury but goodness, sure makes a mom's heart take a leap up into her throat!

Busy? check. Overwhelmed? yep. Slowing down? not a chance!

To say life is busy here is an understatement!  With four kids, a farm and full time jobs; the husband and I are really burning the candle at both ends.  We wouldn't have it any other way though and love the life we have built together.

We have been married 11 years and have four kids ages 9, 6, 4 and 4 months.  Our oldest, Sydney is in third grade and an avid soccer player.  Big sissy loves that she is the oldest and can often be found playing mama hen to her younger siblings.  Next up is my man Jackson, he is 6 and in kindergarten.  Jack is our little farmer.  He is always the first to offer to help with the animals and never misses an opportunity to learn more about them.  Our youngest son is Anderson.  We think Andy loves the peafowl most of all but he enjoys helping all over the farm.  Andy is also our resident comedian, keeping us all laughing at every chance he gets.  Bringing up the caboose of our family is little Savannah. She was just born December 23, 2011 so we are still figuring out what she likes and doesn't. So far, she seems to like mama's milk and sleeping most of all but we are eager to show her all the fun things on our farm as she gets bigger!

We have an assortment of animals here on the farm but our main focus is on our chickens and peafowl.  We have four varieties of chickens: bantam Russian Orloff, Black Copper Marans, Blue/Black/Splash Ameraucana and Lavender Ameraucana.  We keep about 12 birds per breed, so somewhere around 50 chickens, give or take.  When it comes to our peafowl, we have sort of an addiction with over 60 adult breeders and around 20 yearlings.  We keep seven colors (blue, bronze, charcoal, opal, purple, peach and cameo) and all five patterns (barred, solid wing, pied, silver pied and white eyed).  We also have a project pen of bronze progressive pied peafowl that we are super proud of and working to gain UPA recognition for.

In addition to the chickens and pea's we have a pet pot-bellied pig named Duckie (he is Jack's pet), a mini donkey named Oswald, two nubian goats (April and Sophie), one sanaan/boer doe (the golden girl), one pygmy buck (goatie), a mini horse (Buckin Bronco-BB), a pony (Little Red) and our Maremma Sheepdog (Juno) that keeps watch over everyone.  Our golden goat had a little doeling in mid April courtesy of an unplanned rendezvous with Goatie--oops!  She's cute as can be though and according to the kids is named either Peaches or Apple.

Oh my!  I can't forget the ducks!  We have an assortment of call ducks in various colors along with a few mixed breed full sized ducks.  All our ducks free range and mostly flock together though they do form their own little clicks.  At the moment we seem to be down in our total number but there very well could be some mama's sitting on eggs now.  We expect to see some chicks any day now.  Not much cuter than a mama duck rolling up with a line of new babies!

We sell birds and hatching eggs so we almost always have eggs incubating and chicks hatching.  The breeding season just started for our peafowl so we are moving into the busiest time for our farm.  I hope you'll all join us in our adventures, laugh along with our crazy life and learn a little about how we keep it all together.  Trust me, there is never a dull moment around here!