It's Spring! I Think...

The first day of spring was a beauty here in Rixeyville, Virginia - sunny and in the 70s.  We spent time outside, took a trip to the park, even had some frozen treats from an ice cream truck!

Then, 2 days later, it snowed.  Again.  Initial predictions were for accumulations up to an inch.  Then 1-2 inches.  Then 2-4 inches.  I measured 5 inches in our backyard when all was said and done.  (Note: Daddy took Addisyn's snow pants to work in his truck, so we had to improvise with a trash bag and some gorilla tape.  They were a pretty good fit!)

But that's okay - the forecast only gets better from here, and it looks like it will finally stay that way!
We have started tomatoes and peppers inside for our first garden.

Addisyn had her second ever dental cleaning and check up.  She went first (we all had appointments) and was up in the chair having her teeth cleaned and checked without a moment's hesitation.

We acquired a new ameraucana rooster from our neighbor who was apparently having a problem with too many roosters.  Big Red has fit in nicely with our flock, and is warming up to our presence when we go out to feed and check for eggs.  When we first got him he was a big wimp, and would bolt when we came near the coop!

One of our small chickens, a Mille Fleur I expect, laid her first egg today!  The Mille Fleurs and the silkies were our first chickens, which we bought as chicks last fall, so this was quite the exciting discovery for me!  We have been getting 5-6 large to extra-large eggs a day from our red-star hens, and that tiny white egg sitting in the box with 5 big, brown eggs was priceless.

I am enjoying the wide variety of birds I have had at my bird feeders, which have been VERY popular as of late.  My feeder list recently includes: Dark-eyed juncos, Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, northern cardinals (we've had a group of a dozen or so several days in the last week!), goldfinches, pine warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, mourning doves, northern flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, brown-headed cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, American crows.  And while we haven't seen her at our feeders (that would be AWESOME!), Addisyn and I have gotten a couple good looks at a female pileated woodpecker in our yard.

I have been making an effort to pick up my camera more lately.  I have wanted to "do something" with my photography for years, and before we got pregnant with Addisyn it was my plan to get something started during my time at home with our baby/young child.  I have discovered that after spending the day at home with a baby, then small child, and now 2 children, I have very little energy and motivation left at the end of the day to even take a shower, let alone become self-employed.  But that desire and ambition to do something more productive with photography has always been there.  Lately I have been researching stock photography - websites where photographers upload photographs which can be purchased for use in books, on websites, blogs, etc.  This is a very appealing option for me as I can essentially photograph whatever interests me, do everything as my time permits, and choose to do as little or as much as I want to with it.  Definitely sounds like a good place for me to start!  So I have been  practicing and experimenting with some of the more complicated settings and features on my camera that I hadn't been utilizing as much as I should, and just taking pictures.  The next step would be to buy photo-editing software at some point, and learning to use that.  I would love to upgrade my camera at some point, but that will have to wait.

We paid a brief visit to friends who live on a horse farm, and Addisyn was thrilled to sit on, brush, and take Wolfie the horse for a walk.

 

Addisyn has a new betta fish, whom she has named Fishlock.  Fishlock currently takes up residency in the middle of our kitchen table, and Addisyn diligently feeds him at breakfast and dinner time.

We have finally started to do some things around the house to make it our own.  Matt will have quite a bit of time off work for the next month or so, and needed to have "projects" to do - his idea, not mine.  We started with fresh paint in our room.  Matt has been talking about painting it grey for months, because it was a "calming" color.  I was unsure, but we went with "almost charcoal" - I have never had a dark-colored room, but I really do like this choice.  Addisyn's room was next, and she wanted purple, so her room is now "quite lavender".  Currently in progress is replacing the linoleum in the entryway, and the carpet in the hallway with laminate wood floors, and it's coming along nicely!

Happy Spring, Everyone!

Goodbye Facebook!

I have been telling myself for some time that Facebook is too much of a distraction.  That I have other things that are much more important in my life that really deserve to have more time and attention: my kids, my husband, myself.  It's not that I spend large amounts of time on Facebook, I just feel I check it too frequently.  Time to myself or with my husband seems to be too fleeting anyway, so why waste it on Facebook?  I love keeping up with friends of family and see what everyone is up to.  I hate reading the kinds of things that people post just to get a rise out of others - the kinds of things you know you shouldn't pay attention to, shouldn't respond to, but they still linger on your mind for the rest of the day, affecting your mood, and distracting you even when the phone is off or the computer is closed.

The thought that Facebook deserved less of my time, and other things deserved more (or I deserved more time to do other things) finally coincided with a reason to actually follow through on those thoughts: Lent.  So I have deleted the Facebook apps from my phone and iPad, and haven't been on since.  After some debate, I have decided to keep my Facebook Messenger app as it is strictly for communication and doesn't involve getting sucked into reading through statuses and the like.  So if anyone wants to contact me that way, feel free.

I expect that after Lent is over I will resume my Facebook activity, but will be checking and updating less frequently than before.

So what have we been up to in the last week?

After being away working for 2 weeks, Matt got home.
There were 3 separate times he was supposed to come home, but it fell through due to problems with the airplane, then weather, then the company decided to reposition the airplane for the next charter flight instead of letting the pilots come home.  But he made it, and we've had a few days to spend with him.

We have 6 new chicks, and 2 ducklings to raise and add to our flock.
We have welcomed 4 pullet (hen) chicks that will be some variety of red chicken, 2 straight-run (unsexed) black giant chicks, and 2 rouen ducklings.  Rouens' markings are identical to mallards, but they are a larger, domestic breed.  I always wanted to have a duckling when I was growing up, so they have been a childhood dream come true in my adult life.  They started out a little larger than the chicks, but are quite a bit larger already (we have had them almost a week).  We drew a bath and let them swim in the tub yesterday, and they were quite comical - diving and swimming underwater.Needless to say, Addisyn and Elizabeth love watching them, too.

Matt's brother, his wife, and their two girls visited for a weekend.
Addisyn had a blast running around and playing with her cousins!  We took a trip to Massanutten with the intention of going ice skating, but the weather was too warm and the rink was closed.  Our nieces and the daddies enjoyed some go-carting, and Addisyn, her cousins, and myself tried out the bungee dome - what a work out that was!

Elizabeth had her 15 month checkup.
She is growing beautifully!  20 pounds 4 ounces, and 30.75 inches.  She has been walking for about 2 months now, and is very quick on her feet.  She has 16 teeth.  And just within the past week she has started sleeping through the night!!!  For those of you who aren't parents, the definition of "sleeping through the night" is sleeping for 6 hours at a time.  She slept 6-8 hours a couple of times as a new born, and at 15 months she is finally starting to sleep 6+ hours regularly at night.  She actually slept 10 hours straight a few days ago!

We are currently planning and have made reservations for our first trip away without the kids.
We will be spending 2 nights at a bed and breakfast in the mountains of West Virginia!  At the end of April!  Obviously Matt has been away from the kids frequently for work, but this will be my first time away from either child overnight.

Elizabeth got her first fat lip.
She fell on her face in the kitchen.  There were tears for a few minutes, a little bit of blood, and then she was fine.  She actually cried more about me trying to take her picture after the fact than she did about falling and hitting her mouth.