"If I had words to make a day for you, I'd give you a morning golden and true."

Happy First Day O' Spring! (posted yesterday, but internet was gone...)

Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it marvelous? Doesn't just knowing that it's the first day of Spring make you smile? Take a deep breathe in. Lovely! Now, let it out slowly . . . The air is sweet! For those of you who did not join me in deep breathing (yeah, you) you are missing out. (Thankfully Spring air is faithful for yet another 3 months, and you have not lost your last chance.)

Spring blossoms are coming through desert earth.

 

To help share our first day of Spring with you, Beautiful People, my best poser came out with me, to take pictures of our freshly picked fleeds.

(Not quite flower + not quite weed = Fleed.)

As I took pictures with Goldilocks, everyone's favorite cat, Oskar, just purred and purred, circling her feet.

 

 

He wanted to be a part of our photo fun, and as soon as we acknowledged him, he was as silent as . . . a silent cat.

 

(I wasn't raised Southern, I'm Southwestern, and I don't have the enviable knack of making clever similes off the top of my head. Unlike Jase of Duck Dynasty.)

 

Below, Goldilocks and Oskar are surrounded by carrot, potato, and radish sprouts from our little garden.

Did you see our first sunflower this year?

Well, my fabulous friends, I leave now, wishing you a spectacular Spring!

~Mari

"The fires of luuhhhve"

{Just so you know, the following was written last Sunday...and then I forgot to post it.}


We've had a pretty full couple of weeks, the highlights being the weekends, so I thought I'd post a little update.

Three Saturdays ago: We got a new dog.

Meet Chewbacca. Or Chupacabra. "Chewy" for short.

That's not the best picture of him, but he'll be getting his own post soon (in theory).

Two Saturdays ago: We had this big party at our house with some of our friends and friends' friends. For those of you who don't know, it was meant to be a bonfire/outdoorsy gig, but it ended up raining all day. It was still a lot of fun though. To those who couldn't make it, you were missed! But look on the bright side. Because it was an indoor party, and our house being more on the cozy side than the comfortable side, you probably wouldn't have fit. Our house is perfect for just the eight of us (did I say "just" "eight"? I've been homeschooled too long...) but when you cram 40 other people inside...well, let's just say people get to know each other really fast. But we praise God that it was a big success and everyone had a lot of fun--it ended up going from 4:00 until 11:30. Oh, and Chewy was a huge hit. ;)

This is the only picture we got. About...1/2 of the group I think. Everyone else was in the kitchen. :)

This past Saturday: Mari had her birthday on Friday (she's so old!), but she also had to go to Mexico to get some cavities filled and wisdom teeth looked at. So we did most of the celebrating on Saturday. We went to see a movie at the cheap seats, gave her gifts, had a bonfire (the one we were supposed to have last Saturday), and received "hobbit gifts" from her.
She is such a generous person. Selfish is a word that simply could not describe her. She loves and welcomes anyone, no matter what. Anytime someone is mean to her, or something bad happens, she is the first to blame herself, even when the blame doesn't belong to her. She's such a great older sister.

Okay, enough sentimentality. Here are some pictures from the bonfire.

It's Elsa! Haha, couldn't help myself.

"You don't say much, do you kid?"

*ahem* Sorry for the silence. But you're probably used to that by now, huh? I'll give a quick sum up of the last month.

1. Us three girls are doing Camp Nanowrimo! Put together, by the end of the month we will have written 4o,ooo words of three extremely different stories. Risa is writing a super cool sci-fi, Mari a really touching historical fiction about a boy who rode one of the Orphan Trains (heard of those?) and I am writing a fantasy, like everyone else =P.

2. School...is not ending. It's very sad.

3. We are working very hard for our chickens (something got into the coop and gobbled up all our layers, but we have ten little things who are close to laying age. We will protect you, chicks!) and we've been building fence segments like crazy. Soon we will have a nice new fenced yard. Yay!

4. Our papa (grandpa) is, in case you were unaware, a part time missionary to China and left today for a four month stay. We will miss him, and prayers are appreciated. He will be teaching English (secretly the Bible as well) at a college, preaching at some registered churches, getting some theology books spread in Chinese and ministering to the underground church. Yes, prayers are greatly appreciated.
This brings me to the joke bit. Our papa has always been the King of Corny jokes. Those silly puns and play on words that make you literally say, "Ha. Ha. Ha." while you roll your eyes. And some of that has rubbed of on Mom and Mari as well. This was their conversation a couple nights ago at dinner:

Mom: Just be careful over there [China] Dad, they have that bird flu going around.
Papa: Well, I hear it's tweetable.
Mari: But you'll definitely be feeling under the feather.
Papa: The worst part is the bill the doctors send you afterwards.
Mari: Well, you know they're all a bunch of quacks.
Mom: It may leave you a shell of a man.
Papa: Alright, enough yolks!
Mom: Then stop egging me on.

 
It actually continued with a couple more puns that I can't remember after this. We love having him over for dinner ^.^.

How's April been for you all? Sorry for the lack of pictures! Some of those, and the answers to last months game will be posted soon. Really.
Sam

Chicken names...finally

We are now posting our chickens pictures and their names. Sorry it took so long. They are all named after characters from movies or tv shows. See if you can guess!

 

Twister [Turrill]

Merry

Pippin

Qwali

Pearl

Ruby

Big Mama (okay, her name isn't from anything, we just liked it)

 Foghorn J. Leghorn (actually female, unlike the character)

 

Dory (actually male, unlike the character)

Here's where they all are from:
Twister: Larkrise to Candleford, BBC mini series
Merry and Pippin: The Lord of the Rings, who doesn't know this? ;]
Qwali: Imagine That, movie
Pearl and Ruby: Larkrise to Candleford, BBC mini series
Foghorn J. Leghorn: Looney Toons, he's the rooster
Dory: Finding Nemo, he's extra unintelligent and has a similar color on his face.

Did you get them right?
Sadly, our chicken numbers have been reduced to 6. Two roosters are gone by our hand and two hens by the hand, erm, paw, of a coyote.
Sam

Chichins and Roosoos

Even though he says, "No." he means, "Yes!"

And it's true. All the sudden we have ten of them. Six chickens and four roosoos--um, I mean roosters. I know, way to many roosters.

Isn't she so funny looking?

So far that ^ is the only one we have good pics of.

"She's right behind me, isn't she?"

A little bit of sun during a rain streak.

The chickens came much sooner than we expected, in fact we didn't have much time to expect them at all. A neighboor called saying he wanted to get rid of his chickens and could he bring them by right now? So here we are working on the chicken coop.

He wanted to help.

Letting in some sunlight.

Caught you on camera, Risa! Ha!

So there you have it. Soon to come: a post with more chick-pics and their names as well as pictures from Momo's time out of town.

-Sam

Of Cub Scout Cupcakes, Rain and a "Dork Beetle"

A Peek Into Our Day

(Warning: This maybe very... boring.)

We have been blessed with rain. This ↑ is a picture of our front yard before the rain. Even before the rain we got a rainbow, how sweet is that!

As we took a walk last evening the sky was a beautiful grey, ready to rain.

I took a picture of my sisters next to the tallest agave plant in our neighbor hood.

Samantha took a picture of said agave plant from a more artistic angle.

I love the scenery in our new neighborhood. We have mountains to the North, South, East and West!

During our walk we spied many critters. Of the rabbits, horses and goats, we have no pictures for you. But we did see some ants that were "connected". One was carrying the other.

See?

It was really weird. So of course I took a picture just for you, Reader.

See how this beetle's leg is up and out? Picture each of those legs taking
exaggerated steps over and over again. It makes it look like it's
walking, well, dorkily. (A word to me.)

Then this morning we dropped off some cookies and cupcakes to the Cub Scouts. (The Cub Scouts are having a bake sale today.) These cookies are ranked in our top ten best cookies. They were so good.

Want the recipe?

These are the cute cub-cakes we made. Sam saw a picture on some cooking blog, and we did our best to duplicate. I think they turned out pretty well.

After delivering the baked goods, some of us played Monopoly. Goldilocks can't play, but she was my helper. Jack was playing for Sam in the picture. He was her "helper".

Sorry it's so fuzzy, he moves a lot and I don't know how to use the camera.

I'll have to ask him to be my helper next time.

See all those hotels he was racking up? Wow. =)

SquiRe didn't win, he was too generous. Whenever someone was in a finacial crisis he would give them help, plus he would sell off his property for almost nothing. 

This picture was taken today. SquiRe is a big reader,
 but he especially likes to read aloud to someone. He was
 reading to Mom. I think he knew I was taking his picture.

And the news we have been wanting to share is that Sam recently started taking in animals from the Humane Society to care for until they are ready to adopt. Thus far she has had two cases. One was a litter of four very young kittens, and just about an hour ago we got a dog.

Because these weren't named we got to name them ourselves. Though Sam at first didn't want to because she thought we'd be to attatched, I told her we wouldn't be and I was right. I'm so glad we got to name them!

The orange cat, the runt, was the only male. We named him Kalmar after the prince of Anniera. (From Andrew Peterson's Wingfeather Saga.)

The grey female cats we named Arabella, Samara, and Houdini (the escape artist).

We weren't big fans of the name Arabella, but we thought it would get her adopted just a little quicker.

They are all three chasing and wrestling each other in this picture.

 This is the dog we just got. She unfoutunately already has a name: Lulu.

 Lulu is just here until she gets socialized. Why would they give a dog in need of socilization to a family of conservitive homeschoolers is what I want to know. *hahaha*

Well, I've bored you long enough. I'll let you go after showing you what I found this morning.

And I can't believe I didn't kill it. I saw it at 5:30 am so I guess I was too tired to think: "Maybe I should do more than just take pictures of this creepy thang."

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Momo