Music to my ears

Jamie and I have started piano lessons this last week. I have wanted to learn how to play the piano for years now, and took lessons for a short time after Jaime was born. Sadly my piano teacher, and best friend, moved to Africa. Seeing as travailing to Africa once a week for lesson was out of the budget, I took a brake for a time. Now that Jamie is 4 years old and asking nearly every day to learn I thought it was time to start up again.
Our first lesson went very well. Jamie took very well to her our teacher and to the method she uses. Jamie is using the book 67 Fun Songs primer by Jon Schmidt. I am using the 67 Fun songs by Jon Schmidt and love it! These books are a wonderful way to learn the basics of sight reading. In one lesson I have picked up so much that I have started to play simple peaces. I look forward to watching Jamie progress in her playing. I think that having a child at the piano making beautiful music makes a home a wonderful place.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Today is the little mans birthday. To think that 2 years ago Michael came into our lives and changed them forever. I can still remember that day so well. Oh, how blessed and scary it was. I had just given birth to this beautiful little boy, but that little boy wasn't doing so well. As the nurse took him off to the NICU I knew that he would, with time, be just fine. To have my newborn away from me was the worst feeling. It felt like part of me was missing. Now 2 tears later Michael is growing and doing just fine. We have been so blessed to has this sweet boy in our lives and I am looking forward to many more years with him in our family.

Backyard chickens

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well in our yard the chicken came first. We are now the happy owners of 3 bantam chickens. 2 hens (egglaydean and Henna) and 1 roster (Cluck Norris).
First off Bantam chickens are pet birds. These birds are not meant for meat or eggs, though they both can be eaten and lay eggs. These cute birds are 1/4 the size of the normal farm bird. We plan on trying our hand at hatching a few eggs but that will be later. Here are a few photos from this evening.



You can see that we have made a run for our birds to stretch there legs and wings. This is the first time they have been outside of a cage. the owners before us never let them out.

Michael and Jamie are feeding the birds. Yes Michael is naked, he is potty trained but now won't keep his clothes on. What can I say, he is SUCH a boy!

Jamie loves her chickens. Our kids were born for the country.

green thumb

"You have a green thumb!". This is what Jason told me this afternoon as I took him on a tour of our sprouting garden. It has been so much fun watching all our plants show themselves. We have now added strawberries to the garden because when we asked Jamie what she wanted that was the first thing out of her mouth. Our garden is expanding! We have now added a fence to help keep out the dog and kids, no more sun bathing in the beds. We will also be adding 5 more 2x4 ft beds, 4 2x2ft beds, and 4 4x4ft beds. What a lot of veggies we should have! It will be so nice to go out every night to pick a fresh salad.

These are Jamie's strawberry plants. I ordered them from Burpee Seeds.

Here are our sugar peas, beans, cucumbers,zucchini,spinach,broccoli, radishes, and cauliflower.

WE have tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, corn, onions, carrots, broccoli and something else I can't remember right now.

You can see the fence we put up around the garden, the kids play area, and in between them the chicken coop. Yes a chicken coop! More on that in the next post.

Spring is here

These are the radishes. These came up first. It was nice to have something to look at as the other seeds were still working on sprouting.


They are hard to see but here are our spinach plants. I love a good spinach salad.

Our sugar peas came up just this morning! I watered them in the morning a could see only one, by the time I took this photo there were 5!

Again it's hard to see but here we have 2 cauliflower.

This is the garden from my back door.

There you have it, our first garden! I pray that I can keep everything growing and producing tons of veggies for our family to enjoy this year.

Homesteding in the Military

So we have been doing a lot of praying as to what we should do with our family. Do we stay in the military and move every few years, should we buy a home and settle down, or do something in between? The one thing we know for sure is that we want to be more self-reliant. The price of food, fuel, and fun is going up everyday. As a family we have chosen to stay away from credit cards and needless loans. We have seen many of the young families around us well over there heads in debt due to them. So as an answer to that we have started a Square foot garden in the backyard. We are also playing with the idea of getting some chickens to add fresh eggs as well.
Jamie is very happy to have a garden in the back yard, and is eager to help. Michael is a bit more of a hindrance. Oh he enjoys helping plant the seeds, but he also likes to pull up the plants! Our dog Sam is also finding the garden useful. She thinks that the beds are just that, a bed for her to lay in. I have now added some netting to keep little hands and big dogs out and will be adding a short fence soon.
As I was watering the garden this morning I came across 4 seedling! our radishes are coming up to say hello. It is nice to have something to show for all the work I have put in. Sadly Jason won't be here for the main harvest. By the time we are in the season to enjoy all the work he will be in Afghanistan. Such is the life of an army wife. It is all fine and good so long as he comes home to me and the kids.
ANYWAY... we are taking the first step in having a homestead in the military. I just pray that we don't get caught up in some silly rule that limits what we can do. I will post pics later but for now I must get back to washing clothes.