It hasn’t been my intention to be so quiet the last couple of weeks, life just sort of happens and I go with it. It’s the only way I know how to survive. 🙂
While it’s been quiet here on the blog, it certainly hasn’t been quiet here in our home! We’re continuing to settle in and find our groove here on our new homestead.
This is a view from my dining room one recent morning. When we began searching for a new home for our little tribe, one of the non-negotiables was to be out of town with a couple acres. We wanted country. And country we got! What we weren’t exactly expecting was some of the wildlife. In addition to the regular wildlife I knew we would find, we have coyotes, bear, and a possible mountain lion. You can only imagine where my mama brain goes sometimes.
We are surrounded by farms. It’s nothing to drive down the road and see a variety of cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. There are even alpacas about half a mile away. If you slow down, the alpacas will come up to the fence and sometimes even run with your car when you leave. My kiddos have had some good laughs at this. 🙂
Our family has been drinking raw milk for almost 6 years now and we actually live 2 miles from the farm where we have milk shares. I love driving by and being able to see “our” milk cows out in the pasture grazing. And I think it’s pretty cool that my children get to meet the bovine beauties who produce their milk. The picture above is of our 7 year old getting to learn how to milk a cow by hand.
And that 7 year old turned 8 this month! I invited some of his buddies who were free for a last minute surprise lunch. I threw together some frugal lego activities and decorations and it was great fun. I am so thankful for the joy and life this young man brings into our family! You can’t be around him without his happiness rubbing off on you. It’s contagious!
We have been taking full advantage of the warmer spring weather when we can and the children are exploring the property and finding all the “good” spots. One of their favorite spaces is under a spruce tree beside our house. It provides a natural canopy and they love the enclosed space. You can’t tell in the picture, but they can stand up under the branches quite easily.
We are very slowly beginning to meet some of our neighbors. And one nice fella even plowed up a garden area for us! Those of you who know me well won’t be surprised to hear that I had my hands in the dirt as soon as the tractor was off the patch. I have a thing for smelling freshly turned dirt. 😉
We were finally able to execute Operation “You’ve Been Egged” and it turned out to be quite comical. Y’all, the CIA will not be asking our family to participate in covert operations any time soon. This is the only photo I was able to snag to serve as proof that we actually did this activity. I was busy prompting little ones to quickly throw place their eggs in the grass and to be quiet. We were spotted as we were driving away, but it sure was a whole lot of fun! We had a nice Easter weekend enjoying being together as a family and celebrating the resurrection of Christ.
This little one has been busy rolling over and all the other great things 3 month olds do. She is the best sleeper we have ever had at this stage and I am so grateful for that! She is sweet and wonderful and we all just adore her. Oh how I could gush on and on. 🙂
We’ve added our first official homesteading project that I’ll be sharing about soon. There’s a hint in this picture, wanna take a guess?
I look forward to sharing more about what we’ve been up to soon! How has your April been? Praying it was full of family, laughter, and love!
Davene Grace says
Ooo, I loved this update! And I’m guessing that you got bees. 🙂
My next-door neighbor told me that a bear was spotted on a farm not too far from my house a week or so ago, which caused great excitement in our household and made the boys eager to practice drills about What to Do if You See a Bear. Fortunately, we haven’t actually needed to apply those action steps, but they’ve been having fun practicing. 🙂
Jo says
Yes, bees! 🙂 The bear drills made me smile. Sounds like we’ve been doing some of the same thing. 🙂 There was actually a mother bear with cubs seen around so I’ve been reminding our 3 year old to walk away from baby bears, no matter how cute they seem. I’m considering buying whistles for the kids when they go down into the woods. Just not sure they would only use them in emergencies. Or if their idea of an emergency would line up with mine. 😉