Cooking day

Today has been a beautiful, busy, fulfilling, "Whew I'm pooped" kinda day.

I chuckled to myself as I came in a few minutes ago...What would my facebook "friends" from high school say if I changed my status to "Heather is finished cleaning out the hen house and now picking chicken mess out of her cast!"

My, my, who ever thought I would be posting pictures of chickens... not to mention really liking them and referring to them as "my little friends!" In reality, I am quite taken with our new little pets. (Egg-specially since they are beginning to be quite the little producers!) One of my favorite things to do is sit on our back porch and watch them mill around and peck at bugs. However, this is not quite as relaxing for my husband... the chickens enjoy scratching in the straw holding his grass seed in place!








Hannah displaying our eggs!







Today was cooking day! The kids and I are leaving town next week, and we wanted to make sure Scott has plenty to eat while we are gone. The girls (esp. Hannah) did a significant portion of the cooking... and the clean up!












Hannah made two pans of lasagna and a double batch of blueberry muffins. Sarah made a double batch of "rotel muffins," a quiche-like recipe. Both muffin recipes freeze well and make a super quick, relatively healthy breakfast.

Cooking day was briefly interrupted by a spur of the moment water balloon fight... Hannah and I did not participate, but we were lured away from chopping onions to take pictures and serve as witnesses!


















We also kept taking brief breaks from our tasks to run (for myself, I use the term quite loosely) upstairs and check on our new KITTENS!!! Last night Sophie (lately known as Fatso-phie) gave birth to three kittens! We have been speculating as to whether or not she was pregnant, getting extremely fat, or just really fluffy. Lately, the fluffy option had been ruled out, and we were fairly certain that the obesity option could be ruled out as well...she definitely had the pregnant mama waddle goin' on!

Anybody want a free kitten?!







As we worked, we had all of the windows open and enjoyed my favorite background noise... the sound of Scott on the tractor and the boys... and sometimes Sarah... playing outside. I can't explain it, exactly, but the sound of the tractor is a comforting, secure... "this is home kind" of sound. Scott got most of the backyard disced up, harrowed, and seeded. How I look forward to the day when I look out the back windows and don't see a vast expanse of red dirt!! It won't be long; our front yard is getting green!

When we finished our cooking, we joined the boys outside for some chores, and the kids had a great game of hide-n-seek in our tall rye grass. At "dark-thirty," we all came in for baths and supper, and spent some time reading aloud before bed. What a great day!