1 week old baby chicks

These little baby chicks are so cute and fluffy!! They are 1 week old Cornish Cross meat birds. They grow quite fast and eat alot!!

Look at the legs on this fella!!

 They are very curious and love to see what I am doing...cause of course they assume I am  bringing them food! 

Dance time!!

Root Beer Floats from homemade rootbeer

It hot outside!! We are about to break a record here for most 100 degree days in a summer and that has been disastrous for our backyard! But on a happier note...when its hot what is more fun than icecream...and even more fun than that is ROOTBEER FLOATS!!!  We have had a bottle of root beer extract for about a year and have yet to use it. So, in celebration of... well, everything ... we are making Rootbeer! And what is more fun than a "pre-dinner activity" with friends!

Bryan found this recipe on the Backwoods Home website (backwoodshome.com). We wanted to brew the rootbeer so we could bottle it...but this recipe with the dry ice just looked like WAY too much fun to pass up!

Super-kwik super-cooled root beer:
6 cups sugar
3¼ gallons cold water
2 ounces root beer extract
4 pounds dry ice

In a large cooler or tub, mix sugar and water together until sugar dissolves. Stir in the extract. Gently put dry ice into the liquid and cover with a lid, loosely. Don't tighten it down or pressure may build up. Let the mixture "brew" for about an hour, then serve. Store the remainder in gallon jugs or bottles.

So, here we go!!

First, I would like to add a note...read your recipe! I thought I had read the recipe very carefully and when it say "2 oz of extract" that does not necessarily mean it will be the entire bottle...I put in the entire bottle which was 4 oz (oops). So we had to make some quick adjustments of quantities! 

   

Now that we have our water, sugar and extract all stirred together...its time for the fun part!!! DRY ICE!!

Henry, the girls won this one!

This method of root beer does not produce a carbonated beverage...but it was very cold and delicious over ice cream! The dry ice was a delight for the kids to watch as it bubbled and produced the overly exciting fog! Definitely the recipe I recommend if you are making root beer for a group...not the recipe I would recommend if you are wanting to bottle it though.


All these wonderful pictures were taken by my dear friend Nicole! Check out more of her pictures on her blog!

My First Week as a Home school Mom

We have been talking about homeschooling for several years and low and behold the time has finally arrived for me to gear up and go for it! I have my degree in Education (as well Theater and Music) so I thought for sure this would be a breeze...I mean, after all, its just kindergarten!! HAHAHA "just".  Well, I have gained a tremendous amount of respect for ANY home-school mom just from a week of this!

Teaching Henry to read: First off, I promise you that I KNOW how to READ! But why oh why is it SO hard to teach him to read!! Patience...Patience...Patience...along with Phonics!

Teaching Addie her letter and numbers: She could care less! I'll point at an A on a chart and ask her what letter it is and she will say "TWO!!!" and be VERY proud of herself. I will say "No, thats an A"...she keeps a big smile on her face while saying "Ok mommy" not even a moment of care crosses her face that she missed that by a long shot! ... now we have backtracked to 1 letter and 1 number of the week!! Patience...Patience...Patience...and more Patience!

Our First day of School!! Last Monday was our "official first day". The kids went to bed Sunday night SO intensely excited for school the next morning. You would have thought it was Christmas eve or something! We woke up the next morning and went outside to get all the goat milking, gardening and egg collecting done for the day and then we were going to jump right in to schooling! I walked outside and the crisp cool breeze almost took my breath away (very lovely since it has been in the 100's here lately). We were outside for a good hour, all the while Henry and Addie were bugging me to get in and "start school" (oh how differently they will feel someday!!). I feel like we haven't been outside in MONTHS because of the atrocious heat we have been having...so our first "official school activity" was RECESS!! Henry and Addie cheered!! We stayed outside for a few more hours enjoying the delightful weather and then we were blessed with a good rain (which of course we stayed and played out in for a while!). Finally we hussled inside  soaked, cooled off and SO excited, quickly changed clothes and sat down for school. Ok...so here we are...the kids are looking at me with such great anticipation and I had a blank stare looking back at them. "Ok, here we go!" We had a good hour of work and it went quite well...they were both asking for more. Then my sister called me and thought it would be fun to go to the zoo since the weather was so nice (it had stopped raining by this point)...To the ZOO we go!!! After spending a few hours at the zoo I thought it was time to get home and maybe fit in another hour of school. Then my sister reminded me that it was ice cream day at my grandpas nursing home. Yes, ice cream and grandpa won!! We loaded up the kids to go see great grandpa Al and have some ice cream. By the time we got home it was getting close to dinner time and the window of opportunity for another hour of school was gone. So we ate, milked goats, got ready for bed and went to bed early to have a big day of work tomorrow :) This was very far from what I always pictured my first day of homeschooling looking like and definitely outside of my lesson plan. Regardless, I couldn't have planned a better day!

Much more to come in our new adventures of homeschooling!!