Fire Station field trip: Chloe's class took a field trip to the jordanelle fire station and of course Blain and Avenlea got to come too. They all had a blast learning to "stop, drop and roll", tour the fire station, shoot the fire hose and climb on the fire truck.
Avenlea and Blain in the ambulance and Chloe sporting her fire hat
Playing on the fire truck
Chloe shooting the fire hose
Blain was so excited the whole time. He wore his fire fighter suit, radio and hat and answered all their questions best he could. My favorite answer was to the question, "should you wrestle by the campfire?" His response had me in tears. "No because if you do you might roll into the fire and get burned up then they would chop you up and put you in a s'more" said with all his cute little Blain inflections.
Cutie pie fire fighter
Princesses: My sweet girls all dressed up ready for church. Chloe loves primary and sings lots of primary songs now. Avenlea went to Nursery for the first time this past week! They said she loved singing time, snacks, and bubbles.
St. Patrick's Day Fun: Chloe's preschool does a leprechaun party and she was very into the whole thing. She made a trap at home to catch one inside a little paper bag with gummy bear bait, a treasure box made out of cardboard and construction paper for her special gold coin, and made clues for her, mommy, Blain and Avenlea to go on a treasure hunt.
Chloe with one of her clues and putting some of her treasure in the new box that she made
Chloe all ready for picture day and Blain all dressed in the armor of God for an FHE lesson
Homesteading: Little Prince Ali is growing well and spunky as ever. I've noticed him munching on hay with his mom and is interested in the grain too. Betty has gotten so much better while milking. She is giving just under a quart per milking (at least it only takes about 10-15 minutes to milk her out now) but she is behaving a million times better. She barely moves her feet at all any more even after finishing her grain. Nate got all the kinks worked out of the stanchion and now the little bum pusher is fully functional. We get to milk on the correct side the whole time, sit on a stool (yay no more kneeling!) and I feel very safe that she can't kick me. We just need to find a better way to keep the stanchion clean. She pees and poops almost every time I milk her, so it gets pretty wet and sloppy. I shovel it out best I can after each milking but I' too afraid to wash it because I don't want to make ice for her (or me) to slip on.
The cooling system is also up and running. It drops the milk 20* as it passes through the coils and then goes strait to the back of the fridge as it is filtered while we pour it through the funnel and strainer. If I don't use the coil set up I put the milk in the freezer for an hour (with timer) after filtering then put it in back of the fridge. Nate also rigged up a cool stainless mesh screen for the top of the milking bucket to catch the hair, etc. before it falls into the milk.
Her milk is sweet and tastes really creamy. I have been using it in cereal, for drinking, and cooking with it. I have also made a total of 6 quarts of yogurt (two batches 3 quarts each), both of which turned out really good. The second batch I used about a cup of yogurt from the previous batch, making the yogurt extremely cheap to make (so far 1$ for the 6 quarts). I also tried making butter last night with the cream (about a cup) It never separated from the butter milk but looks like tub butter only harder. It tastes like butter too, so I'll just use it up fast since the "buttermilk" being in there will make it sour faster.
We continue to get an egg a day from Siri and are counting down the days until our chicks arrive. I have started digging the garden again to get ready to plant the cool weather stuff in a couple weeks. The weather has been really nice and our daffodils are about ready to open up. My comfrey hasn't popped up so I'm hoping I didn't kill it, especially since it's supposed to be nearly impossible to kill. The grass is slowly turning green again and I have a couple tiny broccoli sprouts in my windowsill. This time of year is so fun!!
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