Chicken and Ducks Oh my( Picture Heavy :)

Houdini sun bathing. The first time I caught one doing this my heart stopped. Over by the window Patty below was stretched out on "her"side eyes closed. I just knew "she"was dead. So I walked over and poked her and she jumped up and ran! Never knew they sunbathed, learn something new each day!

Nugget with an attitude. This one has a complex and is always challenging everyone.

Patty one of our fathered feet little ones.

Growing fast. Peep, BR, and Bumblebee(a.k.a. Bee)

She loves these guys as you can see and is really great with them. We have sad news about Sonny here on the right our chicken on steroids. He is actually a Cornish Cross(between a Cornish Game Hen and Partridge Rock). (The bin we picked him out of said Buff Orpington. )And therefore is a meat bird. They are bred with only food on their mind and are usually slaughtered between 6 and 8 weeks of age. They as pets are not expected to live long due to growing so fast they have leg and heart problems. I am really upset that the feed store had these and most were being sold as pets. I won't be buying from them again, even when they were able to tell us the breed of birds we were buying were wrong! We are limiting Sonnys' food hoping to slow his growth and keep him healthy as long as we can. Thanks to folks at
http://www.backyardchickens.com/
for giving us lots of info and helping us to identify some of these guys! PS seems Sonny is also a rooster as he has knots on the insides of his legs for spurs. Thanks mom for that info.!

Mother Hen Tayler...

Luey and Duey are not easily separated and each will holler in protest when this happens. Sorry guys you two are to big to tote at the same time. They are now almost completely white and have at least half of their big guy feathers in. It won't be long until they can go to the pond.

These are 2 of our 4 new additions. These girls are Barred Rock.

Second set. Daddy was only supposed to bring home 2 more, but decided on pairs and an even dozen. These girls are call Silver Laced Wyandotte. He picked them up from a feed store in Greenwood. They seem to have a much better set up and are able to tell you what you are buying and the sex. We wanted to even our odds and make sure we had at least a few females for egg laying. Joshua's' fav. is the smallest closest to his stomach. He calls her sleepy guy, this is the only one he likes to hold. The other 3 are still nameless feel free to help us out. :)

Butterfly on left and Houdini on right. Big size difference, we are thinking that Houdini is either a Bantam(small breed) or possibly a Jersey Giant (one of if not the largest breed of chickens). "She" as you can see is very small compared to others, even the other bantams. The Jersey Giant matures at a very slow rate, and "she" seems to have barely grown at all. Only time will tell.

Major Mud Puddle!

Josh is in the process of fixing our driveway so it doesn't wash out with rain. He got the water running right where he wants it to, but collecting in another. So another load of dirt and gravel if and when it dries out should fix this. In the meantime the kids love this puddle. I will let them play in it a couple a times a week before dark and baths.

Brenden pulling Tayler through by Black Snail Island.

Trucks are fun in mud, if only I hadn't pressure washed the garage before they brought them in. :( Now they have to rinse them in the hose first.

Who needs a shirt it was wet anyway!

Even this girly girl loves the mud!

I took this picture the same night of the pond, I loved the reflection of the clouds and trees in the water.

Flower Beds Right Side

Joshua helping daddy dig a hole for an Indian Hawthorne bush.

Tayler and Brenden took the extra dirt and filled in the holes around the bricks.

Flower bed under porch beside the steps. Gardenia, Indian Hawthorne, and Lorapedlum.

We aren't quite finished. We still have to buy 3 more Indian Hawthorne, and 1 more Lorapedlum. I have flowers we bought and have been trying to plant them if the rain will ever hold up and let things dry out long enough! The flowerbed under the window (far right) is yet to be decided. I think we will just leave it for now and plant something in the fall. Josh really wanted me to post some pictures, to show off our hard work. :) So I will post in stages.

Growing Babies Now With Names

Sonny looks a bit rough because new feathers are coming in. This is baby chick on steroids as I call it. Sonny is by far the biggest and was the same size as all the others 2 weeks ago when we brought them home.

Here we have Left to Right Nugget, Patty, Peep, Griffin, Butterfly, Houdini, and Bumble Bee. These wings have really developed and many have taken to flying now! On Griffin(red) you can even see tail feathers starting to grow. How neat it is to see their progress.

They really love to cuddle and will get right up under my chin to snuggle.

Heuy, and Duey investigating Taylers' clothes.

These guys or girls :) are getting their tail feathers as well and even have white down coming in under their yellow feathers. I think they have doubled in growth the last two weeks.

Rain and A Puddle

Brenden running threw a puddle.

As you can see in the background Joshua wasn't to thrilled about getting splashed. This was his first experience playing in the rain and it didn't last much past this.

Tayler was the one who started it all. I looked all over and finally found her outside in the rain playing. I figured why not the weather wasn't bad. So I went and asked the boys if they wanted to join her.

Here Joshua got a head start running for the porch leaving Mommy when the rain started really coming down as Brenden and Tayler headed to the creek.

Horse Party

Birthday Girl Alexis

Tayler helped hold the Cocoa after unloading. She is so proud I think this more than made her day!

Alexis on Strawberry. Josh went on a field trip with Tayler a few years back at Triple N Ranch, and there was a horse he had to lead around because they needed extra hands and it kept trying to bite him. He told me this was the same horse if the horses name was Strawberry and sure enough! 

Alexis, Tayler, and Austin. These are our neighbors. Unfortunately we don't get to see them much due to conflicting schedules. The kids had such a great time riding and playing! What a great birthday party!

We kept asking Joshua did he want to ride and he would reply no each time. Josh told him you have to try it, so finally Josh just picked him up and set him on the horse. He was thrilled and loved it! He ended up riding both horse a few times.

Brenden on Cocoa, she is actually a mule horse mix.

The kiddos all except Tayler tired out quickly of riding horses and rode bikes instead. Tayler sat on Cocoa the whole time until it was time for the horses to go.

Zoo April 27th Highlights

Joshua wasn't much for picture taking this trip,
We arrived at 9 after dropping Josh off at the airport. There wasn't much to be said about arriving early (they open at 9) apparently all the schools decided it would be a field trip day. Wow it was crowded and a bit chilly. We tried to stick to the indoor stuff until the sun starting peaking around the clouds. All in all it was a great day. We didn't leave until around 4!

This was our first stop. We have never seen these so active. There happened to be a volunteer near to tell us about them. There are two sisters here named Nina and Lilly. She told us they can jump up to 15 feet high. WOW! And that they are the only ones in the cat family to not stock their prey. They lie in wait in tall grass and use their keen hearing to listen to an animal to pass by then jump and pounce. It is awesome we are learning more and more with each visit!

These guys were our second stop. We went inside the cafeteria to get a closer look(one wall makes the side of this exhibit). We must have stayed there 30 minutes watching them. They were very entertaining they would chase the kids from window to window, jump, swing, and clean each other in odd positions. Joshua and Tayler got a kick out of the hiney in the air one. LOL Kids!

Close Up Shot

Taking a rest.

High Five Man

Pink Necked Fruit Dove(I love this one, they seem to be communicating)

We must have come on a good day we saw the Pandas(above),Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Monkeys, and many of the birds eating.

Hugging. I can't remember the name of these guys. But they obviously love each other.

We finally made it to the Sea Lion show and Joshua actually sat through it. Brenden has been wanting to see this for the last three visits and our timing never seemed to be right.

Of course we had to see the Giraffes Joshua's favorite! We came up on this one eating right near the fence. Tayler and Joshua jumped up on a bench they have for little one to have a better look. This guy sneezed all over both of them! It was so funny and they were so grossed out by the Giraffe boogers as Joshua called them.