Taste of Ag

The pigs were huge!


Stephen was disgusted by the pigs... he was so eager to see all the other animals, but this is the face he made every time we brought him close to the pigs!



Sheep being sheared...

Shorn sheep...

Hannah loved petting all of the animals!

Stephen was laughing uproariously at the goats. He giggled so hard that we all started laughing, too. Then, they started eating the girls' braids, so we had to go!

Waiting in line for popcorn by the gigantic tractor... very cool.

Is it okay to touch it, Mommy?

Baby chicks! Everyone's favorite.

That's a beef cow...

And we're done!


Okay, so Taste of Ag was fun this year, but also very cold! We skipped eating all the different foods in lieu of eating dinner in a warm house. But we did hit the ice cream and popcorn booths, of course! The girls loved seeing the animals and planting their "pizza gardens." I'm going to make sure none of them spray their gardens with vinegar water this year (the blue spray bottle has the water, not the pink... remember!... ) after last year's dismal results. Stephen was old enough this year to pet the animals and was entranced by them. I can't wait to take him to the zoo this year!

Happy Resurrection Day!!!

Game faces on!

Mmm... peeps!

I bought bunches of great art supplies and paper at the homeschool convention I went to in Indy a few weeks ago and used it for the baskets.



Notice the yellow egg in the background? Stevie was so enamored with his new palatte that he never did!

Let's get eggs!

More game faces... :)



Oh, I love them!

This is my new favorite picture of Erin and Hannah! Obviously, I need to crop it and stuff, but don't you love their smiles?


As you can see, we had a lovely Easter! First, church and fellowship, then hunting for eggs and baskets (you can see I had them put on their "game faces" for egg hunting prior to them going out!), and then a yummy meal at the Swerens' house. BTW, the girls all wore dresses (for church) I had gotten at the big church consignment sale that my friend Colene participates in... I didn't pay more than $2.50 for each one, and they were in practically new condition. I especially love Hannah's dress. Her blue eyes and blonde hair really were set off by it!

Spring is here!

We are all so excited to see the bulbs that we planted last year (from Cydney's wedding) are all coming up! And, to make it even better, we have 2 robin couples building nests on each of our garage lights! It's hard to see from the pics, but there are streamers from Hannah's bike in there, and tinsel from a tree over at the retirement homes behind us. There are no eggs yet, so we are watching and anxiously waiting...

In which we see "our" cows...

About a month and a half ago (I know, I'm a slacker for not having this on here yet, but I'll explain later!) we went to the farm where we get our milk and eggs. It was perfect timing... they were also doing their maple syrup! So we were able to see "our cows" get milked and the girls fed the calves their bottles (they were only 3 days old!), the children took our kids on a pony cart ride around their property, and we all were able to go on buggy rides and see the maple syrup being made. It was wonderful to get to know the family that runs the farm (a friendly amish couple that are about our age), and all of our children played with theirs... even though ours don't know Pennsylvania Dutch, they were still able to pretend they were horses! The parents of one of our friends from church came with and brought a few of their grandchildren (who are friends with our girls), so you'll see Emmaline and Elijah in the pics, too. These were taken just when we got there, because I didn't want to make this wonderful family nervous about the camera being out (which is also why there are no pics of the cows being milked). The amish people choose to not be photographed for several reasons, and I am always dismayed when I hear of tourists trying to get pictures of them... us "Englishers" can really be rude the the amish at times, which is incredibly unfortunate. Anyway, enough of my rantings! We had a wonderful, amazing, fabulous time, and were completely exhausted by the end of the day... the last pic is us waiting for Hannah and Nate to be done at the store (we had to pick up something for the next day). I think Erin could've been at the farm another 4 hours!

Valentine's party

We have a party every year with our homeschool mom's group. The kids decorate boxes (mine used kleenex boxes covered in brown mailing paper and decorated with drawings in marker and love related stamps. We handmade valentines with a stamp of 1 Corinthians 13 (from our wedding invitations) and another pretty stamp on the inside that said Love and all of the girls signed their names. There was also much candy handed out. All of us in the group are pretty careful about everyone's sugar intake, but on Valentine's we let them go crazy! We also had heart shaped pizza made out of pita bread (super easy and yummy) and decorated cookies.

Sunny days!

I'm not sure why I don't have a pic of Hannah on my camera from this day- I took a couple of them, because she was riding her new bike (thanks, Grandpa and Mamoo!)... but when I went to upload them they weren't there. Perhaps a very precocious 18 month old was pressing buttons on the camera again when I wasn't looking. So I'll do a private photo shoot with Hannah next time we get a warm spell to satiate all of her adoring fans! :) It was over 60 degrees for two days last week, and we enjoyed every second of it! Erin's second picture is by the window that we are replacing in a few weeks (hooray!) and the compost bin that I made out of one of our garbage cans. The weather was so great, we got a lot of outdoor work done- and Nate was able to come out and put some holes in the bin for me and work on the car, too (there's a spot of rust on the door that he's been working on, but he had to put on hold because of the temperature). He's done such a great job on repairs on the car, I cannot believe that he really wasn't trained to do it... he's saved us a ton of money, and he's acquiring skills to pass on to our kids. What a great guy! :)

Fun at home

Here are some random pics of us goofing off at home while we waited for the warm weather. The lining up of the horses is a daily (okay, sometimes 20x a day) occurrence at our house. The top pic is for Kailie and Emma Block, who have matching jammies and Katy wanted to give them a "howdy" from over here in Amishland (pun intended, Caryn!).