Grace

Grace has been playing with dollhouse furniture, Calico Critters and other miniature pieces lately.  It's really cute.  Sometimes there's stuff sprawled all over the floor and other times they actually use the doll house.  Grace really entertains herself well when we're home.  She often colors, plays with magnet dolls or looks at books.  I don't really do school with her but she does occasionally completes Explode the Code workbooks.  She's learning to read 3 letter words and write her numbers and letters.  She loves to play on Starfall and a spelling program we bought recently.  Sometimes she goes with the twins to Courtney's school, but I don't think she likes it because she has to take naps.  I love having her with me those days.  Our routine is to go to Red's, Target and then home.  She's enjoying ballet immensely.  She'll be a lamb in her recital this summer.

Acadiana Zoo

The weather has been crazy this year.  We're in mid-May and it's still cool outside.  We had a couple of late cold fronts.  On one of those we took off to the zoo (so did the rest of Lafayette).  Out of all the exotic animals we saw, the kids were most interested in a caterpillar.  Go figure.

Our Animals

Bad pictures.  But I wanted to include what animals we have here this spring 2013.  I use 3 different cameras plus my phone for pictures which really makes it hard to upload and find the pics I want to post.  I don't know why I use 4 different sources...guess I grab what is nearby.  Anyway, this spring we have 6 new chicks (2 didn't make it).  They must be a few weeks right now and seem to be fairing well.  They're currently in the turtle habitat.  But when it rains we have to move them because that area floods.  The Mama hen is really a good broody hen.  Our plan is to convert an old camper top my Dad gave us into a chicken tractor...very soon.  We have another broody hen, but she doesn't set well.
We also have 2 Black belly sheep we're raising for meat.  Although they escaped a few times (hole in back of fence), try to eat all of the chicken feed (it's toxic for them), and Baaaa at the gate for feed, they're really cute animals.  They constantly run up to me looking for food which makes me paranoid we don't have enough grass.  I'm always like that when it comes to food and creatures that I have to feed.
The chickens are doing well.  We have 11 hens and 1 rooster.  One hen died recently.  We think she was egg bound.  After researching we tried boiling water under a cage for 1 hour.  Didn't work.  Anyway, we are getting a good amount of eggs, except when snakes steal them which seems like often this season.  We're selling eggs to a few different families.
Our rabbits are doing well.  We're getting a female to try breeding.  Found a cage on the side of the road. That always comes in handy.
Turtles are out.  Canaan's having fun catching them, but we make him turn them lose after a few days.

Easter 2013

A quiet Easter over here this year.  We had gone to the Gary family reunion the day before Easter, so we decided to stay home on Sunday.  My parents did come over for BBQ and we had a little egg hunt afterwards.  Finally, Gracie asked "When are the kids coming?"  Guess she thought we'd have a party.  I think she marked it down as a "bad day", but it was great for us parents!

Another Party

I think I forgot to mention another party we had for Grace's birthday.  This was suppose to be the original one.  The Aillets, Bunkers and McBrides came over.  The rain brought us inside for a while.  The kids are so lucky to have so many great friends and cousins nearby.

Crawfish boil 2013

We had my family in from Wisconsin again this spring.  The highlight of the event was the Bunker twins walking around playing with live crawfish the entire time.  Katy says they are always carrying around little action heroes and call them "bad guys".  So I told them, "Your holding your bad guys (crawfish)!"  Her kids are so cute.  The bottom picture is Mema and Papa.  Glad to see they are still getting out.  I love my grandparents.

Rabbits

Have I posted about our rabbits?  I'm so slacking on the blogging job that I really can't remember.  In case I didn't, we received rabbits from one of Chap's employees this winter.  They are the cutest things ever.  The first month we brought them inside all of the time and played with them.  As spring encroached upon us and I found myself in the garden more and with the other animals, the rabbits moved down on the priority list.  We think they are males.  The kids are really bad about agreeing on animal names.  All of our animals have at least two names.  So the black one is Alexander or Tommy, and the white one is Georgia.  But now that we think it's a boy, Canaan has come up with another name which I can't remember.  The Vickery's gave us their old rabbit hutch.  We fixed it up a little and it is a rabbit mansion.  We give them fresh greens daily.  The black one always lets me pet it, but his brother is very skittish.  I think I held the black one more as a baby.  They are Rex rabbits and are suppose to remain small.