Ruby's Agriculture day

I was lucky enough to go go to Ruby's agriculture day field trip with her class.  It was so stinky I kept gagging... literally,  but it totally worth it.

Ruby got to milk a goat... she was very proud of herself.

We learned all about sheep and wool and watched one get her seasonal haircut.

My sweet dear Ruby asked if she could hold the pigs heart.... then she held it long enough for me to go to the other side of the table to take a photo. I was dying!!!!! The other kids thought it was cool so a few of them asked to also hold it. Yuck!

We learned about bees and hives. It was soooo cool and perfect preparation for what happened a few days later....

Some friends of ours had a swarm in their back yard and called another friend of ours that has bees and makes honey for a hobby.

We all got a front row seat to watch him take the swarm (aprox 3 lbs of bees) from the branch and move them into their new home.  No gloves, no hat... no stings. He knew what he was doing and it was amazing.

A wicked good time

Eric surprised us with a family field trip to see Wicked in Eugene. Haley LOVED it when she saw it several years ago and Ruby and Lucy have been begging to see it for a long time.

Since Cheyenne moved back to California we had one extra ticket so had a family vote and decided Haley could bring her friend Anna.

Overall we had a great time. 

I wont mention the car accident that re-designed the driver side of my car...  that might make Eric mad :)  

Getting ready for Easter

Because we have our own little egg factory in the yard we have plenty of eggs for projects. One of my girls favorite things to do is blow out the eggs, paint them, then fill them with colored rice to make confetti eggs.  We have not made the confetti eggs yet, but we have blown out and painted tons of eggs. Several are hanging on our easter tree in the kitchen.

Lucy made an egg of Me and one of Dad. I don't know if you can tell from the photo but she used one of out super jumbo eggs for me and a regular egg for dad. I asked her why I was twice the size of Dad and she just laughed.

As if we don't have enough eggs around the house we decided to make some out of paper mache using fabric. I realized that fabric does not set up as hard as paper so we had to do several layers.

Our kitchen table looked like this for 5 days! We would do a layer, let it dry, do a layer. Then as they were waiting for it to dry, they kept started new eggs. I finally got tired of the liquid starch everywhere and just cleaned up any eggs that were incomplete when they were at school.

Here are a few of the finished eggs. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Oh boy!

So I had an ultrasound early (Eric knows a few people) to determine if we are going to have another chick at our house or if it's a rooster....

We found out that our world is about to be rocked to it's very pink core. All I can say is Oh BOY!!!!!

Driving home Lucy said "Mom, I don't want to have to change his diaper and look at that thing". 

(after we got home I fell asleep and woke up to find a vase full of daffodils with a note reading 

"Happy boy day" from Ruby")

I am still in shock, but excited. Eric is pretending to be excited but you can see the fear in his eyes. The girls are all ecstatic and fighting over who's room he will sleep in! 

Lucy has been praying that the baby will have fun in my tummy and that he will have fun when he gets out. Haley is begging us to name him Jorge or Jahon (Where is she from?) Ruby is trying to farm her sisters out to other people's houses when the baby is born so she can hold him all she wants. 

The Oregon coast/ parents of the year!

One of Eric's partners invited us (along with another partner and his family) to stay at their beach house for the weekend.  With 6 adults and 7 children I expected it to be a fun but crazy crowded time. The house was amazing, everyone had a bed to sleep in with an ocean view and the house was right on the beach! It was fabulous. 

Having grown up in California I am not used to needing sweatshirts/ jackets and rubber boots at the beach, but they were sooo handy.

After getting chilled to the bone playing in the ocean, the girls took hot baths and then had hot chocolate. Such a hard life!

We went exploring to several different locations but this was the most memorable from the trip.  We all went hiking through the Oregon rain forest. While we were walking on of the kids found a newt with a bright orange belly. All the kids were holding it and oohhing over how cool it was when another child caught one. I knew we had a critter keeper in the car (Lucy was hoping to catch a crab) so we brilliant parents all agreed the could each take one home.

After we got back to the house we were talking about the newts and someone said "I just hope they are not poisonous".  Eric quietly pulled out his phone and started Googling oregon newts. He asked Ruby to bring him one... This is where we get the parents of the year award.

Here is what we learned about the new pets we just let the 7 kids (ages 2-12) take home:

"The skin of T. granulosa contains toxins that are used as a defense against predators. Rough-skinned newts are exceptionally potent in this regard, producing a powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin. The toxin has been known to irritate bare skin and mucous membranes of some individuals. One should be careful to wash one's hands after handling them as an accidental rubbing of the eyes afterward can be very painful, but is generally not serious. Humans have been documented to die after ingesting these newts."

The kids were all crying when we told them they could not keep any of them.