More February

Strawberries from our garden:

We have the friendliest deer that are hanging around in the pasture behind our house! They aren't even bothered by us anymore, they just stay there even if we are outside.

We have a few determined chickens that have made a nest on Anthony's workbench in the shed and will go in there every day to lay their eggs. I don't mind it, I'd rather they do that than go off and lay their eggs in the woods where I can't find them.

We had some friends come over to play and they had a blast in the swing:

Valentine's Day was very exciting for Rett! Those preschool valentines are no joke, he ended up with so much candy and so many treat bags!

These valentines had a code you could scan with your phone to see the character in 3D:

Someone with a pet veiled chameleon came in to show him off to Rett's preschool class. He was so cool! The kids loved watching him walk around and seeing him change colors. I can definitely see why Anthony wants us to get one.

Playing on Daddy:

Our new trail camera caught three deer in our yard eating acorns!

A day after his baptism, James decided to give himself a haircut while Anthony and I were taking a nap. I couldn't believe it!! I thought he was way too old to cut his own hair, but I was wrong! I took the clippers and cut his hair shorter so that it wasn't so noticeable. Crazy kid!

A view of the chickens from the RV:

We had a family home evening about the Beatitudes, so I gave Rett the job of writing down the characteristics and James the job of writing the blessings. It was adorable how excited they were to write on the dry erase board, like they were the teachers!

Anthony finally shot his first wild pig! He has been out hunting for them a few times, but hadn't been successful. A friend helped him butcher it, and we still have some of it in the freezer. Now we have to figure out the best way to prepare it since it is a lot chewier than conventional pork.

Chowing down on his catch!

James's 8th Birthday and his Baptism

James turned 8!!! I still can't believe it!! I couldn't resist this huge 8 balloon from dollar general. It was so fun!

In the morning before school, I let him open up his present from Rett. It was full of Rett's favorite things, but James was happy with it anyway!

In the afternoon I took chocolate chip cookies in to James's classroom and got to be there for his birthday trips around the sun. His teacher has a tradition in her classroom that when it is someone's birthday, they walk around a candle (representing the sun) with months of the years laid out as rays on the floor. As they walk around for each year, they show a picture on the board of a milestone from that year. I sent her the pictures before hand so she could show them. Then I told a little bit about James for each year. It was so special! (It also happened to be the 100th day of school, so everyone was dressed up like old men and women)

Holding the earth and getting ready to walk around the sun:

Another year:

And another one:

And another!

Even older now:

Almost!

Last trip!

After eating their treat it was time for recess, so we went outside to play. Their school is doing construction so they don't have a playground right now. Instead they play on the field with all kinds of fun lawn toys. The huge bowling set is a crowd favorite!

After recess they had a few science experiments to do. James got to do one on paper airplanes and testing out different shapes and designs. He didn't want to stop to go home!

We let James choose what he wanted for dinner, he requested ribs and pork chops!! So we had a meat filled, yummy dinner!

The only thing James asked for for his birthday was this cart that goes with his hoverboard to turn it into a go-cart. He loves it!

I finally got to give him this camera drone I bought on clearance over a year ago. He was so excited about it but once we opened it up and tried to use it we realized it was broken. Dang it!

Ribs from the grill!

The day after his birthday it was time for James's baptism! We were so excited and I spent the entire week wondering how in the world he could be old enough to be baptized! These were the invitations we gave out to friends and posted on our ward's Facebook page.

Anthony and James dressed and ready for the baptism to start:

During the actual baptism, James had to go under the water three times because his foot kept coming up and pushing his toes out of the water! I was starting to get worried because we had prepared him for going under the water one time (he hates putting his face in water) but he took it like a champ. He even had people tell him afterwards that he is lucky, most people only get baptized once but he got to do it three times!

It was a wonderful program, both grandmothers gave the talks, I led the music and friends from the ward who have watched James grow up and taught him in primary were there. Anthony performed his confirmation and gave him such a beautiful blessing. I wrote down everything I could remember in his baptism memory book. Such a special day!

Funny picture!

Later that night my mom wanted to take everyone out to dinner, so we went to our favorite Mexican place. We could live off the chips and salsa they bring to your table before your dinner!

The birthday boy in his birthday sombrero!

Beginning of February

I volunteered to chaperone James's field trip to a nearby park (such a weird choice for a field trip), and since I got there early Rett got to go to yoga class with everyone. He loved it! They played the "trees in the forest" game where his yoga teachers walks away from them and they sneak after her. Then when she turns around they have to do tree pose and be still trees. If they fall they are out!

Airplane pose:

The field trip was extremely cold and miserable. We were on the water, so the wind felt like it was freezing your bones! The kids were supposed to complete a nature scavenger hunt, but no one could really focus. Could someone please put me on the field trip committee next year? Because this was a waste of time.

The chickens have started to consistently lay 8-12 eggs a day and before I knew it, we had 12 dozen eggs in the fridge! So I put all the extra eggs for sale on facebook in the morning and I had all of them sold by parent pick up (mostly to parent friends from James's school). Now we have two or three people who consistently buy eggs from us and I have to say no to so many other people who ask us for eggs! I seriously wish I had twice as many chickens so that we could sell more eggs!

Radishes starting to grow in the school garden:

I was helping in James's class like I always do on Tuesday mornings and James was having a rough day. He had a substitute, which really threw him off and then he had to do a math worksheet that sent him over the edge (we are struggling with three digit addition and subtraction and with carrying/borrowing. He. does. not. get. it.). I figured the day was a wash anyway with the substitute, so I just took him home with me when I left to get Rett from preschool. James was so happy and excited, you would have thought I busted him out of jail!! On the way home, we stopped for lunch at chickfila, and then we stopped by the bank. I decided to pull out some dollar coins, dimes, and pennies to try to help James visualize the numbers when we do his math (dollar coin represents 100, dimes, 10's, etc..)

Rett doing his preschool homework on his dry erase board:

Rett decided that he wanted to play school, so he put a chair next to the dry erase board that is the "teacher chair" (just like it is at his school). He introduced the letter of the week and then assigned me to different centers. It was so cute! When he wanted me to switch centers he would yell "freeze!" and then if he had to say it again he would say, "Gosh, I had to say it twice!"

James didn't finish a writing center at school, so he brought it home to work on. He was supposed to plan a comic strip and then build it with legos (his teacher has a small bin in the class) and then caption it. He was frustrated that the legos in class weren't what he wanted, so he made a deal with his teacher that he would do it at home with his legos. He spent over an hour putting it all together and setting the different scenes! I thought it would be too complicated to draw, so we took pictures of each scene and then he wrote out the captions and we printed and glued it to multiple sheets of paper. It was amazing what he can do when he can do it the way he wants to!

One of Rett's buddies from class, Zander, had a birthday party at the park. They were so smart, they planned the party for immediately after preschool, so a lot of the kids just went straight to the park for pizza and games. Rett was so excited to play with Zander outside of school. And eat cupcakes, of course!

We saw Lego Movie 2 in the movie theater. We all loved it!

Our local library had a fun "blind date with a book" table, so I couldn't resist getting one for James. It is a total mystery what you are checking out, they put the first sentence of the book on the outside with an age range and the genre. Since we were almost finished with our chapter book read aloud, I thought it would be a fun way to try something new.

Here it is! I had never heard of it before, it's called "The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid" and it's about a bored son of a French ambassador who makes friends with a local pickpocket gang and they teach him how to pickpocket. It has been so fun to read! I wish it wasn't such a big book and the chapters are pretty long but we are loving it. 

James got sent a flat Stanley from his cousin and I thought it would be fun to take a picture with him by the horses and the goats. I didn't realize James had his bb gun in the picture until I looked down at my phone! I had him put it down and take another one without a gun that we would be able to send to an elementary school :)

Flat Stanley checking out the eggs the class are incubating:

Meeting James's teacher:

We couldn't resist buying more easter egger chicks at the feed store (the ones who lay blue or green eggs)

Our local humane society was doing heavily discounted spays and neuters, so I signed Baymax up as soon as I could. He is so big, that the cost of the surgery otherwise would be at least 4 times as much! He was not happy about wearing a cone for two weeks, but he got used to it pretty quickly. Now that he has recovered, it seems like having the surgery has really calmed him down and matured him, which is what we were hoping for!

Trigger got all prettied up for our neighbor's birthday party. She is 2 years old and loooooooves horses. She got to ride him around and a few other kids wanted rides too. Our neighbors invited us to the party, but Trigger's owner did all the work of the pony rides so we didn't have to do anything but show up.

The boys had a blast at the party, they just played on their two bouncy houses the entire time.

The next day, we a did a few pony rides of our own: