15/365, Chickens Ordered, Check!

I haven't been getting the camera out during the day much lately.  Gotta get back into that.  As I type about yesterday's picture (that was taken late last night), at almost 9:30 tonight, I have yet to take today's picture.  Will get on that as soon as I'm done posting this one!  Anyways, we're getting chickens!  They have been ordered and we will be getting them the end of March, very soon after they hatch.  We will be the owners of seven chickens, a mixture of Rhode Island Reds, and Portland Rocks.  My neighbors have had chickens for about a year, and have become very knowledgeable in chicken raising, so I feel like we will have some good support to make this a success.  I am so very excited, and have wanted to do this for years!  I just cannot wait to see those babies, and get started!

A Trip to Mercer

So, this past Sunday, we made a trip to visit Greg's Uncle, Aunt and 3 kids up in Mercer, ME.  This is always a nice trip to make, even though it is a three hour drive each way!  They own Greaney's Turkey Farm, and run a slaughterhouse, but also have some cows and chickens that the kids love to see.  My plan was to get some good pictures of the animals, but it was so darn cold, I just didn't do it!  I took the kids out to say hi to the animals, then we scrambled back into the warmth of the farmhouse.  My kids adore their cousins (I guess they are technically second cousins) Emily (15), Ben (13), and Adam (8).  Ana always attaches herself right to Emily; she couldn't remember her name, even though we talk about her all the time!  She just called her "my friend" which was really cute anyways.  Adam was so cute with Cooper too; he got right down with him on the floor and spilled his buckets of Army men out so Cooper could play with them.  Cooper loves little figures, or "guys" as he calls them, and had a ball carrying around one in each hand yelling, "Go, go, go, go, go!" as he banged them together.  I think he was making them fight...it was pretty funny, actually; which is pretty ironic for me to say since I have never been one to allow guns, or toys that even relate to guns or fighting at all!  Adam was very sweet to bag up a handful of "guys" for Cooper to bring home, and he has already had a lot of fun carrying them around the house.  As far as Ian goes, we hardly saw him the entire time we were there, as he went off with Ben to play video games and compare apps on their iPods.  Anyways, we had a really nice time, and were treated to a fantastic ham dinner.  We can't wait to go back; I just hope it's a little warmer out next time! 

The day started with a trip to Dunkin' Donuts.
Yes, that is an entire munchkin in his mouth.... 

Adam playing with Cooper

Ana and "her friend"

Ana and Emily lounging on the couch.
What you can't see is Angel, a tiny dog  snuggled just behind Ana.
She says she wants a little dog now!

Ana and "her friend" again.

14/365, Men Down

13/365

So, I bring some laundry downstairs and come back up to Ana and Cooper standing at the top of the stairs.  Ana is dressed like a princess, Cooper has this silver sequined pink feathered beret on his head and a sword in his hands.  These kids crack me up!  He looked sort of like a knight....which is what I think Ana was going for; maybe a drag knight?  Anyways, Cooper just goes along with the flow of any play that Ana dreams up; it is so funny to watch!  There is such an age difference between Ian and Ana that we didn't have a whole lot of the "monkey see, monkey do" stuff, but now with Ana and Cooper, we see it all the time!  If Ana says, "Hey Cooper, let's have a princess tea party!"; Cooper replies "Oh!  Yeah!  Pincess tea, pincess tea!!".  They are beyond cute together.  I'm loving watching their relationship develop.  

So, when I saw his outfit the other day, I had to snap a picture and grabbed the closest camera I could find which happened to be Greg's phone.  It's not a great shot, but it does show my crazy Cooper's antics!  

11/365 and 12/365

11/365, Snow Angels

We finally got some snow!  Ana was beyond thrilled, she just adores the snow!  She was begging from the moment she opened her eyes at "0 dark thirty" to get outside and play, and when we did make it outside, she literally ran out into the yard, flopped on her back and started making snow angels.  It was so funny!  She had a ball rolling around in it, running around in it, and eating it!  We always get a kick out of how, out of all the kids, she has the most tolerance for the cold; she was so meant for our family right here in NH!

12/365, Learning

More Ana.  What can I say, she's always up to something interesting!  We went to my mum and dad's house this afternoon and my sister was there as well.  She happens to own an i-pad that Ian goes crazy over, and she had it with her.  Izzy was showing Ana some of the things that can be done on it, and Ana was absolutely unwilling to leave, because she was having so much fun!  I promised her that she could play a game on my Nook when we got home.  So here she is doing an activity I downloaded a while back called iTouchiLearn Words.  In this game, she has to take the jumbled up letters on the bottom of the screen, and match them to the letters that spell out a word at the top of the page.  I have to remember I have this next time we are waiting in the doctor's office, or elsewhere because she loved this!

Time Out, 10/365

Greg just returned from a 4 day work trip.  As usual, he arrived bearing a little trinket for each of the kids.  Cooper received a little die-cast airplane which has a moving propeller...he adores it!  Yesterday was a day that Stevie and Febi came to spend with us.   Cooper and Stevie are only a year apart; they like the same toys, and they go back and forth between being great sharers and non-sharers.  Stevie was as taken with that little airplane as Cooper was.  Overall, they really did great yesterday, with the one exception when Stevie dared to try and grab the airplane from Cooper, and Cooper in turn thought it fitting to smack Stevie in the head with it!  Cooper has done this a handful of times to Stevie...he's a bit of a ruffian!  He is hands down, the happiest, most laid back child 99% of the time.  There are moments though that I'm thinking to myself, "Who is that kid?".  Like when he wraps his pudgy little arms around his cousin's waist and tries to haul him to the floor.  Maybe we have a football player in the making!

Anyways, I know I'm a mean mom for pulling out the camera for this one.  But I couldn't resist not capturing this face!

These Boots, 9/365

Ana has always been a shoe lover.  Even before she could walk, she would crawl around with the shoes on her hands!  We found a pair of cowboy boots at Wal-Mart last summer that Ana absolutely fell in love with!  She wore them EVERY day, regardless of what else she was wearing (it was August, so a lot of swimsuits with boot looks!).  Then one day, she left them outside by the sandbox, and I didn't realize they were there....we looked and looked inside the house for them for days!  Meanwhile, they were getting rained on outside.  They were absolutely ruined by the time we discovered them, and I had a very sad little girl!  Well, yesterday, Ana's friend Emma (who happens to be daughter to our fabulous neighbors, and sister to very good friends of Ian) passed on a bag of clothes and in it was an identical pair of boots!  Ana is in her glory!  She doesn't even care that her size 10 foot absolutely floats in the size 1 boot.  Emma was over to play yesterday, and she cuddled up with Ana and Cooper in the recliner.  I took the opportunity to snap this picture.  I think it's hilarious to see the two pairs of boots, almost the same size, and one pair on legs half the length!  That's my girl...a slave to fashion!

Shadow Flowers, 8/365

Narcissus have to be some of the happiest flowers on Earth...but they wither away so quickly!  Greg bought me a small pot of them about a week ago, and they are already looking very haggard.  Nonetheless, they are still sitting on the computer desk, behind my laptop.  A little while ago, I was sitting in the computer chair (which happens to be a recliner, weird...I know!) watching Ana do a craft (read, glue stuff to other stuff).  I was a little sad, because we had to miss Ana's dance class today due to an "on the way out the door Cooper Poop Incident" (involved shower spray down, possible clothing loss, hair washing, tub scrubbing...yup, it was that bad.  I was moping, thinking about how I wasn't going to do a picture of Ana in dance class for my picture of the day when suddenly I noticed the bright sunshine streaming through the window causing this shadow on the wall.

I thought it was kinda neat looking.

So it became my picture for the day...

Ever notice the shadows around you?