4-H Farm Tour & Projects

This week Ethan's 4-H club hosted a farm tour. Several of the families in our club drove around the countryside to five different farms to see animal projects. We saw lots of chickens, which I enjoy, bees sheep, dogs, horses and a return bottle calf. We were blessed with beautiful weather and delicious picnic to end the evening!

 Our place was the second stop, here everyone is trying to see Ethan's sheep.

The sheep weren't interested in being on display and hid in the corner. Ethan did his best to get them to come  out. :) Glad we have a month to work with them before fair! 

There were a bunch of kids!

You had to watch were you stood in this barn, chickens in the rafters are a dangerous thing! 

My nephew with one of my favorite chickens.

Just a nice group shot.

My nephew showing us his return bottle calf. 

Allison taking a ride on Mark. I think he picked out the right shirt for the evening. :)

I had some leftover glass etching cream from a craft we did with our moms group. I realized that Ethan had  a Cadet badge for glass etching and it could double as a 4-H fair project. So he had a friend over and showed them how it worked. 

It is considerably different showing mothers near my age how to etch glass vs. 10 year old boys! :) They did well and are happy with their projects. I hope to find a couple more "art" things for Ethan and Amelia to do before fair and my dad hopes to teach Ethan some woodworking by building a garden box with him. 

Mothers Day and the Rest of May

Here's a few May pictures to get caught up.

We had a birthday party for Mark's Grandma, and took some family pictures as part of the celebration. Here's Mark's siblings and cousins with Grandpa and Grandma.

Next was Great Grandchildren with Grandpa and Grandma. 

Elijah seems to be our accident prone child. He's had stitches, glue and now a broken arm. Here's the story. He's been bumped up to riding part of the big motocross track at our place instead of his own "kid track". Well, he was riding with Mark and crossed the track in front of him, T-boning Mark, and breaking his arm. :( He's a trooper, so at least if he gets hurt often he isn't crabby or whinny about his situation.  :)

I wanted to get a picture with the kids for Mothers Day before church but time didn't allow. So after getting home from the hospital with Elijah's broken arm we got our picture. 

Anton is my little helper lately. He had the job of putting the bean seeds in the ground here. 

Elijah's helping one armed.

I asked Allison "How did you get so dirty?" and Anton pipes up, " She had dirt on her face so I helped her." Um, I'm thinking you made matters a little worse buddy. :) 

The cats caught this cute little bunny. I heard it screaming and saved it. Thankfully Amelia was already in bed or we would probably had to keep it. :)

Another reason to get the landscaping done soon. The kids are making forts with our supplies! Its just a matter of time before the wreak something. :)

Ethan's chapel team participating in the last field day event. I can't believe he'll be a fifth grader next year!

Amelia's chapel team won the field day activities! Here she is during the last relay. 

The kids got out at noon the last day of school. So we grabbed some lunch and helped dad plant beans for a little while. (No one was very interested in my picture, as you can tell.) :)

It seems like forever since it's been dry! Crazy Iowa weather!

Allison keeping watch over the beans.

Just a cute father/daughter snapshot.

With all the rain we've been having, it was nice to see the sun pop out and see beautiful double rainbow.

Elijah's first cast, filled with signatures!