Soccer

The big boys are starting soccer this Fall. Charlie has been wanting to do this for awhile and I kept putting it off. Miles is excited to start too, although he still has to wait another week for his official practice to start. When we found out that two of Charlie's friends from Kindergarten were on his team, he was more excited than I had ever seen him, because it included the fastest kid in his class whom Charlie had always challenged to race. Anyway, Charlie has been loving it. He probably has the least experience out of all his teammates but he is picking it up quick and has a whole lot of confidence. Max was able to join us on the first day about halfway through. His dreams are coming true because he gets to do sports with his kids. He's already been having a blast practicing with his boys and going over the rules to help them better understand. And I was pretty excited about the Summer Evening light, so most of the photos aren't really soccer related...

  Miles found this large branch (log?) and pulled it over to us. The big boys (6 year olds) on Charlie's team kept say "whoa, he pulled that all the way over here, he must be strong." Miles was glowing, Charlie was oblivious.

Miles got a chance to take some photos....and show me in my true soccer mom ways...yoga pants, top knot... sigh...

 

After practice we stayed for awhile longer to play as a family. (and enjoy the summer evening)

Anyway, we are excited because the boys are so excited!!

Back to school

And now Charlie is in First grade. He was kind of excited and kind of indifferent. He has really been enjoying summer and sleeping in. He's in a much better mood when he wakes up on his own, so that has been the biggest difference. He has loved seeing his friends everyday and having some time to play at school. He has already noticed that 1st grade isn't as fun as Preschool and kindergarten and is jealous that Miles will be starting preschool soon. ( I haven't broken the news to him that preschool is as fun as it gets! ha!)

On Charlie's first day, everybody was ready early enough for us to walk to school, so that was fun. Charlie was excited to see some of his good friends in his class, and he is always quick to make new friends. Charlie is my very active and very "different than me" child. He loves PE and anything active whereas I was the kid that wanted all the worksheets and to read books. So I think the transition to first grade has been a little tough as he is still in super active mode! Luckily soccer started the same day, so that should help. SO here are some photos we snapped on our way out the door.

 So there is our Charlie! Ready to conquer first grade!

Chicken Tragedy

Warning: This blog post contains information and photos about our chickens being slaughtered and may not be for everyone, overall, I want this documented because I really do like my chickens and I was pleased with how my children handled it. If you want to only read happy stuff...scroll to the bottom and watch Edwin's chicken impression. 

Anyway, we had six chickens that we all loved! They all had names even though we couldn't really tell them apart very well, haha! They were awesome sisters and always stayed together. We let them free range our yard all day and they would generally stay in our yard or two of our neighbors yards who didn't seem to mind. They would always come back to their home base every little bit and once the sun was going down they would go into their coop. Pretty awesome animals. They were about 3 months old and they should have started laying eggs between 4-6 months.

 They had stayed safe thus far. We were working on a closed run for them but hadn't finished it since free ranging seemed to work for us and them. I let them out last Wednesday morning before heading out on some errands. It was after 10am so not even that early. I went to my friends house for a playdate for two hours. On my way home, I was driving up the gravel road to our house, I stopped abruptly when I saw this...

 I thought it couldn't possibly be our chicken. It was way farther than it had ever been from our house. But really, no one in our neighborhood has chickens that look like this. I got out of the car right there and inspected it. It was no doubt our chicken but didn't look attacked at all. And then I noticed another of our chickens on the other side of the road...

 I was so confused. We had been gone for two hours, they were far from the house and they didn't look attacked. I parked at our house and the boys were eager to help clean up the bodies and search for the remaining chickens. The boys immediately found one chicken still alive in our yard which was a relief but in our gut we knew that if the other chickens weren't with her, they would likely be dead because they generally flock together. We pulled a bucket and gloves over to the bodies. I was about to pick them up but then Charlie asked if he could. I was kind of relieved. Thank goodness for this farm-boy-in-training. The boys told me they were really sad but they were very realistic and eager to help clean up and search for the remaining chickens.

 

After an initial search for the remaining 3 birds we took a lunch break, put Edwin in bed for a nap and went searching some more. We also gave Trixie (our remaining alive bird) some extra love. She just seemed so lonely. We still had no idea what had caused the deaths. I was initially thinking poison or dehydration but it seemed weird to have 5 birds gone in such a short period of time.

 Charlie was fascinated with the birds body, at first I was hesitant about letting him explore it, but then I gave in as I saw how he was gently looking at all the birds features. (with gloves)

 I still didn't want to hold or touch the dead birds, so when Max got home he did a more thorough investigation and found bite marks in one of the birds.

 Shortly after dinner time, our nieghbor texted us this photo and mentioned they had seen a coyote out in the middle of the day. The mystery was finally solved. The coyote is looking at our coop in this photo.
 

So what we gathered is that the coyote attacked and one bird got away, but they coyote could only carry off three so two lay lifeless along the road. It still makes me shutter a little bit. And it just seems so wasteful to ruthlessly kill them all. 

The most heartbreaking thing was Trixie being all alone in the coop after spending everyday with her sisters

 She kept getting some extra love, so thankful for Gwenevere's love!

Daddy love! Yes, we are turning into crazy chicken people.

 But after two nights alone, Trixie needed some new friends! We found some people selling Rhode Island Reds (excellent egg layers) We got two that are only a few weeks older than Trixie so they should be laying eggs soon and Trixie doesn't have to be alone. And luckily they didn't peck each other to death.

 Trixie meeting her sisters and establishing the pecking order.

But we still wanted more than three hens....so....we just went and got 6 more chicks to start the process all over again...this time going into it more educated so we could get the most kid friendly and high egg laying chicks.

And baby chicks are just so fun!

Anyway, half of them are named so far but i'll spare you all those details so I don't reveal all my weird chicken quirks...yet. I know we aren't really supposed to name livestock because their life is so fragile but we just can't help it. And since the incident,  I haven't let the larger chickens out of the coop because of the creepy lurking coyotes and our closed run isn't done yet. And it's still unnerving that coyotes are roaming around in the daylight hours (or any hours) And that is where we are...we will soon have a closed chicken run and maybe even a fenced yard eventually!