Bringing Home the Chickens

We got them! Our chickens. I have waited so long for this. We are so excited. They should start laying eggs in a few months. Hopefully they are all hens, no roosters.

Here we are getting ready for the little hens... Hopefully, hens.

Here are their baskets.

Little C and Mr. C are filling the water.

L is watching, waiting for the chickens to come out.

Here they come!

C is eager to hold one.

He is so gentle with them.

L thought she was ready, but changed her mind.

Aren't they cute? We wanted all different. they two on the left are sisters and the two on the right are sisters a little bit younger.

Ah-Oh, one got stuck. We need to get a string for that latch. I don't want to be locked in with the kids when we are the only ones home.

Now can we call our home a farm?

Bees

We had a small problem yesterday afternoon. Well, I guess it would have only been a problem if we didn't catch it right away. When Mr. C left for work, he texted to let me know we had bee's again. So, I called the bee guy that removed the bee's before for us. The bee guy was kind enough to come and remove them again. Yes, "the bee guy" does have a name, but I only got permission to post the pictures, no other info on him. 

Here is a picture of the massive bundle of bee's. It's crazy!

To remove the bee's he had to smoke them to calm them and suit up.

C and L were very excited to watch all the bee excitement.

The bee guy is going to swipe the bee's into the box. When he came before, he didn't have the suit with him. He had to do it in regular clothes! Now that is a dedicated bee lover.

Swiping them out. Ew! It looked gross.

He is showing us how the bee's on the edge of the box are flapping their wings really fast to release the pheromones to let the other bee's know that the queen is in the box. Pretty cool!

Here is a closer picture. You can see the bee's on the edge, but not the flapping wings.

Now that he is all done, this little box is going to ride home with him. He said they won't sting in the car if there are any loose. They get confused because they navigate by the sun and since he is driving, the sun is always moving. The bee's are just trying to get out. Again, I have to say, pretty cool! Cause I thought it was.

Look, we got fresh honey from the bee guy. C is very excited. We go through a lot of honey around here.

Here is another bee or actually honey fact. If you have allergies, you should eat a teaspoon of LOCAL honey a day. It builds your body's immunity to those pollens. Again, pretty cool! I don't like it, but I can bear it in tea. So I will be eating honey.

Science, fire, fresh squeezed orange juice and fun...

Sundays are our only family day. Our church has 2 services Saturday nights which works great so we have Sunday's all day to do whatever we want. The kids usually stay in their jammies if we don't have plans. I also love being able to keep the kids engaged in activities that they can learn from. Today was one of those days. The house did get so messy though that my husband couldn't stand it anymore so he got the kids to help him clean while I showered. Nice!


Today, it's so cold here in Southern California that we started a fire last night. Really, it was 47 degrees farenheit, that's cold. Anyway, that fire we started last night was still making a little noise this morning. Yes, there are glass doors on the fireplace. Then about an hour after we got up we saw flames, it re-lit. That same fire has been burning all day as we are adding wood to it. I love having enough wood to keep the fire going this long.

The kids were getting a little restless not wanting us to relax anymore so I decided to look for some kitchen science experiments for kids. There are some good ones out there but we only had the stuff for a couple experiments. Tomorrow morning I have a few extra items added to my grocery list.

This is supposed to be a homemade lava lamp. It didn't quite work. One set of instructions said you needed oil, water and food coloring. Another one had antacids on the list. We will be picking up antacids.

This little experiment is pretty cool, stalactites and stalagmites are supposed to grow on the yarn. The camera didn't pick it up, but it is starting already. They are supposed to start to appear in about 3 days.

L's attention span isn't quite as good as C's for this kind of stuff yet. She just wants to get her hands in everything. Maybe next time I'll just give her a bowl of cornstarch and water. That's when my husband decided to clean and take the kids out to pick some oranges. They cut 1/2 the oranges before I could take a picture, you can't see any of the blood oranges.

Here is one left on the counter. YUMMY! They smell even better then they look.

C and L love to squeeze the orange juice.

Time to relax before nap. C has to make sure there is enough heat coming out of the fireplace.

 A little more play for L.

Enjoy the moments!