Easter at the Farm 2016

Easter is the best when it happens at the farm. The farm at Easter time is bursting with new life, things are green, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, the wheat is green, and everything is oozing spring time. This year Grandma pushed it over the top with the purchase of baby chickens. This scene, sitting around a box full of baby chicks, under a warming light, is what Easter looked like at our house growing up. And the car rides to Easter mass were always filled with the sound of chirping chicks, just like ours was this year. I loved it! Our chickens were extremely noisy, getting themselves removed from mass after the first reading for being too loud. They might have been complaining about the three square inches they had in their tiny cage, or they could have been signing. I choose to think they were celebrating.

The boys and I  came up early on Friday for an extra day of farm fun. The weather was gorgeous and we had a lovely day full of adventures. The most exciting discovering of the morning was Rowan digging up a little frog from the dirt pile. He found it all by himself and named him Cheesy. He took great care of Cheesy all weekend and we let him go Sunday afternoon, after he took part in the Creation Story at mass Saturday evening, of course.

 Goodbye Cheesy, hope you don't freeze to death. Sorry we woke you from your slumber.

Friday afternoon we took a nature walk down by the creek. We saw all sorts of animal tracks, found some shells, rocks, and bones for the tree house, learned how to identify deer poop, discovered snail shells under every log, and we all successfully earned our Botany Badges. Dad would be so proud.

 Both boys have bug suckers now so we went on a bug hunt, trying to find dinner for Cheesy the frog. Turns out bug suckers work great at sucking up fire ants, but they also make the ants pretty angry. This bug hunt ended with both boys getting bitten by fire ants and having a new found respect for the ant den on Grandma's patio. Lesson learned.

Saturday we had our first Easter egg hunt. Neither boy was too enthusiastic about it, which I found odd from the boys who hunted eggs for a month last year. On Sunday we had the second hunt, with the Richard's kids, and both my boys opted out. However, I did a lot of egg hunting, making sure we found all the hidden eggs. I still have my egg hunting skills, don't worry.

 I forgot that Rowan hunts eggs like he trick or treats. After he had found four eggs he sat down and had a drink. Completely content with the four eggs he had. Simple, lazy, little guy!

 Saturday afternoon we went on a nature hunt/walk  in the West pasture, we found a dead rabbit and a dead baby mouse, a couple of scorpions, a few fancy rocks, and one lizard for the creation story! Still no snakes though. Not yet.... soon!!!

The huge cedar tree in the front yard, which mom has thought about cutting down for years, finally had the top blown out of it with the gale force winds this past week. We took this as the tree giving us it's permission to cut it down, once and for all. Zach earned a man badge by climbing up into the tree, cutting off the top, and most of the branches, all while risking life and limb in front of his wife and children. That's some sort of man badge, right??

 No life or limb was lost during this adventure, now onto planning all the cool things we can make with all that cedar. First plan, using the limbs as posts for the bunk beds in the lake cabin. Oh and of course we need to make that canoe and some baseball bats that Able and Grant have been planning for upwards of thirty years now.

Looks at that beauty, it had a long beautiful life.

Then it was time to get all fancy for Easter vigil mass. But first, family photo shoots!

 Mr. and Mrs. Korenak

 Me and my loves!

 Look at that smile!

 Sadly the adorable suspenders broke with the first potty break at church.

 Look at these two darlings. Love it!

 The Richards clan

 Mr. and Mrs. Blakley

Cousin shot!

Easter mass at Bison is my favorite. This year all went off with flying colors. Everyone sat through the entire mass, courtesy of some cookies in Uncle Able's pocket. Both kids did great in the creation story, both brought up all sorts of creeping and crawling things, vegetation, stars, wind, the whole nine yards. It was amazing and I loved it!!

 It's dark and we sit to the far right, so pictures during the actual performance are hard to capture, so here are the pictures from Saturday morning practice!!

 

 Cheesy ready for his big moment!

Sunday we woke up to much chilly temps, but in good news the Easter bunny brought lots of surprises. It even remembered, at 1:30am, to plant some suckers where the kids had planted jelly beans. Nice remember Easter bunny!! The Easter bunny was very tired Easter morning.

 

 My favorite part of the Easter basket haul was the Papa Lego, that came in an egg. Rowan built him a little house and everything.

 Zane loved his Lego set as well.

 The little boys had their own private egg hunt later in the afternoon, using a bug net as an Easter basket. They were adorable and ate lots and lots of candy.

 This weekend also marked the final stage of tree house construction. The guys got the two doors hung, the one on the left is a dutch door, for added amazingness. Also they added a window covering and a mailbox. The kids love it and it was nice and warm on  a chilly, windy day.

It was a great Easter, yet again!!!!