My Love From Home: 2016 Jan-Mar

2016 New Years - Easter

Our new tradition for the past couple of years has been to travel to NC and spend New Year's Eve with Mitch's siblings at his sister, Brianna's house. They live on a "you pick" apple orchard, Justus Orchard. Even though the apples aren't in season this time of year, the kids still have plenty to do on the farm, and of course we all enjoy spending time with each other, the siblings, the cousins, the nieces and the nephews. As a fun outing, we took the kids to Carl Sandburg's Home, and of course the best part was playing with the goats.

2016 was Maddox's first year in wrestling since we moved go Georgia. He couldn't participate in 2015 because of his burned foot. Unfortunately he didn't seem to like wrestling much this year.

Josiah's 3rd birthday and our traditional candle lit breakfast.

Mason's 4th birthday! Getting so big!

For their birthday party, we invited our friends and family and enjoyed an at home celebration in the backyard.

Below from left to right, Mason, Ethan, Beau, Josiah, Ashlynne, Gage, and Ellie. Degs was there, but not in the picture.

I knew that this particular day below was going to be good when my eggs smiled at me in the morning.

This is a creek by our dirt road. The kids and I enjoyed a walk and spending time outside on this warm winter day.

mmmm Salmon patties! lol, whenever I think a meal looks extra delicious and something away from the boring norm, I like to take a picture :)

2016 was definitely the year of the birds! I was over run with chickens. Though, at the time of this picture I didn't feel that way. For over a year we have had free range, free roaming chickens (that pooped everywhere, including my porch!) I would later give away all the "mutt" chickens or "barnyard" chickens and start over with just Plymouth Barred Rock chickens that we keep inside a chicken run, with their own cozy coop. Our ducks are still free to roam where they please. They don't poop on my porch.

Grass would eventually grow here, but for a long time most of my yard was nothing but sand, because my dad and my uncle graciously dug up my yard to expand my pond. Mason and Jojo never seemed to mind.

In March we took the kids on a family field trip to Tifon's Agrirama, a living museum and historic village. The kids love this place, and so do I! Skylar was able to go last year with our homeschool group, but Maddox missed out because of his burned foot.

Here the kids are grinding and bagging grits.

This old school house is adorable. Probably one of my favorite spots in the village. The on staff teacher did a great job of bringing this old school to life for my kids, sharing stories about the different school rules, disciple techniques, curriculum, and how one teacher would teach several different grades and ages of students in one room. (Sounds familiar!)

Below is Skylar's riding horse Rig. The horse belongs to her riding instructor, Ms. Janet. Rig would soon become the mom to Skylar's baby horse Murray.

Random backyard memories...

Below is our evil rooster Lucky. He was my first rooster. We named him Lucky because out of the batch of meat chickens we were about to butcher, and put away in our freezer, I decided to pardon one, so that I would have a rooster to crow on our little hobby farm. Little did I know that this rooster would grow up to be mean and ungrateful. This awful rooster would chase and attack anyone who was outside. The last straw was when he attacked my youngest, Josiah. Bless this rooster's heart, he had no idea that the punishment for flocking my baby would be death.

We had this rooster for so long, that I had actually developed a love hate relationship with him. A part of me felt bad for having him butchered, but he had to go. I ended up making chicken enchiladas out of him.

March was so warm. Mitch had a 3 day weekend scheduled, and the night before this trip Mitch and

I decided to take the kids on a spontaneous beach trip! Skylar and Josiah's bathing suits were at my mom's, but we decided we would make do and go anyways.