Chickens

I have kind of been toying with the idea of getting some chickens since spring time. Talking with Pete he wasn't so sure about the idea, but had said if we did get chickens he didn't want anything to do with them. Well, the boys spent the night at Gramma's house this past weekend, she called to tell me the boys were asking if they could take home some of Gramma's chickens. Guess what I said? Yes, we now have 5 cute, well I guess they are kind of cute, chickens!

Pete was such a sweetheart, even after saying he wanted nothing to do with them he built an awesome chicken coop. More than I could have done, although I would have tried! He is such a sport!! I spent one morning on the computer looking at different coops and decided I wanted one that we could move around the yard...a chicken tractor, and this is what he built. He was even so kind that once it was built I decided we needed a door down below and he put it in without to much grumbling.

In this picture you can see that the one side opens up so that when they start laying eggs we can easily collect them. I still need to put in their nesting boxes and their roosting bar, but you get the idea.

Steven even helped put the chicken ladder on. He was so excited to be able to use the air gun. There is a rope on a pulley system that will close up the ladder at night, which I think is pretty clever.

It hooks up to the lawn mower for transporting around the yard. You can see in this picture that we ran out of roofing, so it isn't totally complete yet. Back to Lowes we go. Here you can also see how the top part closes up to keep them safe at night.

Right now we have the tractor under the apple tree, they should be quite happy there for awhile. The dogs are quite fasinated by them too!
I thought I would share this cool picture Austin took of his chicken "Mellow Yellow" Isn't it neat?

Steven turns 7!

Steven had his birthday this past weekend. I truly cannot believe he is 7! WOW! He had his birthday party at the local Lazer Fun Zone, where they played lazer tag of course, video games and had ice cream cake. All the kids had a great time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY

"The Abby Show"

Abby got a new camera for her birthday and has had fun playing around with it. Here is one of her videos she created. She has more videos on youtube under username "princessgrl12", but this one is by far my favorite!
This is what she does when I am not home. LOL ;-)

Summer

Summer is definitely here and we have been busy as usual. I thought I would just do a big group of pictures that have been taken so far this summer, as a way to catch up:)

As some of you know we have had exchange students in the past and so I guess once you have hosted your name must go on a list of people that will host. We were contacted 2 times to host this summer and I had originally said, "No, we don't really have room right now, we are going to pass right now. However, if you are in dire need let me know." Well, they were in need so we couldn't say no.

The first two exchange students were two boys from China, Raymond and Rudolph, (obviously not their real name, I think they let them choose an easier name, so that we can all pronounce it.LOL) They were placed with a host family, but the host family was going to be on vacation part of the time, so we took them during that time, 10 days. We picked them up June 27th, and it was pretty quiet as it usually is when everyone first meets. By the time they left on July 6th they were anything but quiet...they fit right in. They had a great time playing with the kids, especially with the Wii. Pete and I would hear them all cracking up and teasing each other. We really had a great time with them and hated to return them to the other host family. They had really enjoyed our loud chaotic crazy family.
During Raymond and Rudolph's stay with us we also had Aratte from Spain join us on July 2nd. She stayed with us until July 29th when we sadly had to say goodbye to her. She will be greatly missed. While the 3 students where with us we celebrated the 4th of July which was a lot of fun for them. They all thought the fireworks were great fun. Here is short slide show of pictures taken from the Lacey Fireworks and fireworks we did at our house.


We went climbing through the Ape Caves http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/NatMonument/PointsInterest/ape_cave.html which was a good time for most of us. Raymond and Rudolph didn't like it so much, they had said that is was hard, dark and scary. We felt quite bad or them by the end. We all laughed about it at the end, trying to image what they were thinking when we said, "we are going to climb in this cold dark cave and it's going to take us about 2-3hours, and it's going to be fun". They were good sports though. Aratte on the other hand seemed to really enjoy herself. Our kids along with my sister's kids loved it and took off way ahead of us. Putting my boys to bed that night I asked them if they liked the caves and they said, "Yes, can we go again tomorrow"!
Here are some pictures that turned out okay. It was about 40 degrees down in the caves and extremely dark as you will see. When we turned out the headlamps it was pitch black you couldn't even see your hand right in front of your face.


We also enjoyed going swimming at Stewart waterpark in Tacoma. It was nice to go on a really hot day.

While Aratte was with us we went camping at Cape Disappointment. Hiked up to the North head Lighthouse, played on the beach (it was too cold to go in the water), roasted smor'e (Aratte's first time having them).

Pictures of our camping trip to Cape Disappointment


We also went to Ellensberg for Pete's best friend Andy's 40th birthday. It was really nice to see everyone we haven't seen in awhile.

Well, now that the exchange student are all gone, life is somewhat returning to normal, if there is such a thing.

Baseball

A little late, but I really wanted to post these awesome pictures of the boys playing baseball. Well, I say awesome, because I created them. I actually created a page for all the kids on the team and had them bound together to make a book and then handed them out at the end of the season. I think they turned out really well.

The boys had a lot of fun this season playing. They had an awesome coach who really took the time to work with them, yet he made it a point to always make it fun. They definitely want to play next year, but I think we will be moving to the Cal Ripken league (our coach will be joining us too) which is suppose to be a better league.