Lily Mae is "1"

My, how the year has flown by. It seems like just a little bit ago we were holding you for the first time in our arms. The day is still very clear to me. You have added so much joy to our family and we can not even imagine how it would be without you. Your sweet toothy smile, cute little pig tails, your endless cuddles, big flowers in your hair,  your love for your brothers and sister, the expression of seeing Dada, your love for animals, are just a few of the things that make it so fun to have you a part of the family.  Your every move is always made into a huge deal from someone in our house. And we all have to stop and cheer you on or give you hugs and kisses when you get hurt. Your siblings have a love for you that is so precious. You have this funny, but cute little scoot, that gets you places now. You crawl more like an inchworm but you prefer to scoot. You can go pretty fast on the hard floors. That is probably why you don't crawl. You could never get your knees up under you on the slippery floor. You have such a laid back personality, which I treasure about you. You are very much like your brother Ethan. He was the same way. You seem to just go with the flow which is very helpful with homeschooling, or on vacations or when we are just out for the day running errands. I suppose it might have to do with being the 4th child in the family or it could have something to do with the fact that I am so much more relaxed with you and a schedule then I was with the others. There are pros and cons to them both. You, on one hand, finally slept through the night at 11 months old, where the others were by 6 months, but they were on mostly strict schedules. I am definitely enjoying those long hours of sleep now but I do have to admit that I really miss those night time feedings with you and cuddling you and loving on you.

Rockstar

Every once in a while Evan really gets in the groove.

Another gorgeous weekend gone

I thought I would just take a minute to throw up some pictures from the weekend. Unfortunately my lovely wife is not feeling well, possibly got what the kids have been fighting. I put her to bed early and tried to clean up the kitchen to the best of my abilities. Saturday was initially spent getting the chicken coup ready for the chickens as they were quickly outgrowing the nursery.

Ethan and Mia fed them from their hands today, and they seem to be pretty happy with their new house.

Chicken boy! It is extremely important to always have a bike helmet when handling poultry.

Ethan has gotten pretty good with the gas weed wacker and can really do some damage (to the weeds).

Today we worked on getting the garden ready. A while back we purchased some heavy black plastic to put down and then held it in place with some tires. By the way if you want to try it, I can hook you up with some tires cheap. Our property came with a nice pile of them, BONUS. And you can not burn them like your tree trimmings, they frown on that. Here is what it looked like this morning, at least the main area.

After:

You can clearly see where the plastic was and then the area that I got rototilled. It was so easy to rototill with no big clumpy weeds, I am now wishing I had purchased more plastic. Hopefully we will be able to stay on top of the weeds more this year with some experimental tactics, like newspaper mulch and straw.

Later in the afternoon I took a break to check on the bees. I took a helper to snap pictures of the frames and he also refilled the feeder with sugar water while I inspected the frames.

Here is one of my frames with the bees starting to work on it. Thanks to Ethan for the photo!

After dealing with the bees I needed to relax so I rode bikes around with the kids. We also set up a tetter-totter. I had ridden on one once before when we went to Blackrock freeride park with a crazy guy named Cliff. The boys did pretty well on it.

There is so much to do and so little time. I had really wanted to get a couple of weaner pigs this spring to butcher in the fall, but it has just not worked out. Right now my focus is on getting the garden going and checking on the bees, and in our spare time trying to clean the place up.