Spring at Last

I think I can safely say that it is finally Spring.  Since I last posted, a few feet of snow have melted, fallen, and melted again.  We have lots of bare ground in our yard and experienced our first rainfall of the Spring this morning.  The birds are slowly returning.  I saw this confused looking robin from our living room window last week.  I like to think it was asking the red squirrel what's going on.

In my head, their conversation goes something like this:
Robin says to squirrel "What's with the snow?  I heard it was all melted?"
Squirrel says to Robin "That was last week.  You missed it."

We've been busy during this time of waiting for green grass and sunshine.  We got an invite from some friends of my Dad's to go see their newborn calves.  A visit to a farm is always fun for us. We met a day old calf and her ornery mama, two big dogs, some bunnies, a flock of chickens and a duck.  The kids had a blast!  And, I asked them a million questions about their chicken and rabbit setups.

The General leads Matt and the kids into the birthing pen.

She does not look happy to see us.

We celebrated Easter.  The kids dyed eggs, we went to Easter Mass and out to brunch with Matt's family.

We've had a few birthdays in the family.  Joey turned 4 and had a party at the local bowling alley the same weekend as Matt's sister, Tina celebrated her birthday.  Their birthdays are two days apart and both of them were born on Good Friday.

We got our spring chicks. We added five Rhode Island Red pullets, five Marans pullets, one Buff Orpington, and one Brown Leghorn to the flock this year.  I am especially excited for the Marans because we've never had them before and they lay eggs that are very dark brown.  We've lost a few hens since the last time we bought chicks and a few more are getting pretty old and rickety and may not make the year, so its time to add some new ones.  I hope to add two more chicks this year also.  If I can get to L&M when they have them, I'd like to get a couple of Buckeye pullets.  They are a reddish brown chicken that looks much like a Rhode Island Red, but they were developed in Ohio and have a "propensity for catching mice."  I'm all for anything that eats mice.

One little Rhode Island struck a pose for me.  She kind of looks like Paris Hilton.

We have begun cleaning up from the winter both indoors and out.  Matt finally took down the deer bones that have been making our front yard look like a scene from a horror movie and I've been organizing.  We've finally taken down the Christmas/winter decorations from the porch and replaced them with more colorful cheery warm weather things.

Thrifted buckets, crate and flower art.  The chicken and silk flowers are from Walmart.
The red thing is a piece of sidewalk chalk that happened to be laying there.

  

The spring flowers are starting to peek up through their blanket of leaf mulch.  Seeing the peonies coming up always makes me smile.

I see a few more crowns than last year.  This is promising!

I've tried several new recipes.  Cinnamon Roll Cake is heavenly.  The recipe says to serve it warm, but I think it tastes better the next day.  Chicken and Dumpling Casserole got mixed reviews.  We'll see how the Rutabaga and Carrot Mash goes over tonight.  It looks tasty and Joey informed me this morning that he just loves rutabagases, they're from Canaba you know.

I've been doing some thrifting.  In my travels, I've found some clothes for the kids, a few more vintage bowls for me,  toss pillows for the living room, some metal and ceramic containers to serve as planters and several books for me to read.  I also picked up a family size George Foreman grill and a waffle iron for very reasonable prices.

I hosted my card swap group over the weekend. There are five of us in the group and we meet every other month to share cards.  We each take a turn hosting, have a potluck lunch, stamp and gab.  Its nice relaxing girl time.  And, the cards are always beautiful.  I'm very happy with this last bunch.

We've also checked out the new Cherry Berry frozen yogurt place in town, (it was ok, but over priced and not enough tables), been to the public library, had some play dates and a sleepover with the neighbor kids.  

Springtime is getting off to a good start.  I just hope it doesn't decide to be winter again until about mid-December.

Here's to Sunshine! :)