Home on the Range

Guest post by Crazy Fox.

We went to a cattle ranch and we saw a lot of cows and some babies.

There was over 325 cows all together and we got to feed them all.

We got to ride on a hay wagon and it was fun.

The cows were hungry.

I like this cow a lot because he looks cool.

These cows are heifers. That means they have not given birth to a calf.

Just One Extra Hour . . .

So much for resolutions.

We woke up this morning to fresh snow. I had big plans for today. A new week, a new year and a new schedule. We were going to start school as soon as the Zookeeper left for work. The only problem is, I love to have fun with my kids. I love to make memories with them. I think it is one of the joys of home schooling to tell your kids they can go play in the falling snow. We still got all our school work done. We just took one extra hour of Christmas vacation.

Little Lady and Crazy Fox making snow bricks.

Digging Badger making a stockpile of snowballs.
(Thanks Great Grandma and Great Grandpa!)

Crazy Fox sliding down the hill.

Digging Badger on his snowboard.

Little Lady doing what Little Lady does.

Little Lady's Tobaggan Trouble

This morning's fun started out great. Little Lady lugged the toboggan up the short slope and waited for her turn to go down. She has learned it is better to let one of her boys go down first to pack down the snow.

She was all set and ready to go.

She gave it a little forward heave ho, but she didn't move.

Her brother gave her a little help and she started in a downhill direction.

But still no speed. None at all.
She leaned over the side and started digging herself out. All three of them were laughing so hard. Little Lady continually cracks us up. She was just so matter-of-fact in the way she decided that she could dig her sled out and gain the speed she was looking for. All the while laughing with that deep belly laugh, the genuinely tickled laugh that can not be reproduced. It is the laugh that comes out of her when she is making other people laugh. The noise that allows her to get away with almost anything.

One more little heave ho, and she was off!

Little Lady guiding the toboggan like a pro.
Can I have some hot cocoa?
I love that girl!

Happy New Year!

The kids and I had a quiet evening at home. Well, it wasn't really quiet. You see we took all of the Christmas decorations off the tree and transformed it into a New Year's Eve tree. We put shiny hats and horns and sparkly tinsel and garland all over it.

We had a basket of noise makers and instruments we found around the house. And the kids used them . . . all night long. It was really very festive, just not really quiet.

Little Lady helped me decorate our clock cake. We just used what we had on hand.

We made it 11:59 so we could do a count down.

Happy new year from our zoo to yours!

O Christmas Tree

Our family is a real tree kind of family. We love to walk into the living room and smell the pine scent. We love that our tree is different every year. We love making a yearly ornament out of a slice of the trunk. Oh, and of course the challenge of keeping the water full and the floor clean. The convenience of an artificial tree is tempting, but we have not given in yet.

We were planning on getting our tree the first week of December, but one thing led to another and come Christmas eve, we still did not have a Christmas tree. We have friends that always get their tree on the 24th. It is their family tradition to go get their tree and decorate it after dinner on Christmas eve. I myself an more of a planner. Decorating a tree is a messy undertaking. But as the month passed by and our living room was still void of a tree, I realized that most of the tree lots were also void of trees. And then I realized that we would be putting our gifts under a house plant if we didn't take action.

It so happened that the Zookeeper was working a 24 hour shift on Christmas eve. I had called around to several stores and guess what, they were all out of trees too. There is a landscaper that grows trees not to far from us, so I gave him a call. He said, "You need a tree today? Well I stopped selling trees a few days ago, but you are welcome to anything out in the pile". Usually this pile is clippings and dead trees from his jobs that he burns every few months. So I thought to myself, maybe we can get some branches and try to shape them into a tree, anything would be better than my sickly pothos plant.

So the kids and I loaded into the truck for the 1/4 mile trip. It was of course, snowing by this time. We pulled up to "the pile" and under the snow there were several Christmas trees still wrapped in twine! I tugged on the first one I could uncover and dragged it away from the pile. Digging Badger helped me get it into the back of the truck. We drove the short trip home and backed into the driveway.

The fairy tale tree story takes a short break here. . .

We somehow managed to get the water-logged tree onto the porch. I was covered in snow and very heavy. I got the tree stand out and tried putting it on, but the trunk was just as big as the opening of the stand. The boys helped me hold it and turn it enough that we got it crammed into the stand, but then it started to lean, so I tightened it some more, and then it leaned some more and the boys thought they were going to be killed on Christmas eve by a huge Christmas tree that refused to stand up.

We'll just do it the old fashioned way. I don't need to water it anyway. So out to the shop I went to find some scrap wood and a few screws. I grabbed the power drill too, because after turning the rusty screws in the tree stand back and forth, my hands were aching. Half way back to the house I dropped one of the screws, a black screw, onto the white, snow-covered driveway. I looked for the screw for ever, but it could not be found. I'm sure one of our tires will find it. Back to the shop to get another screw. I'll just grab a few extra this time. So, I get back to the house, which has it's door wide open, because there is a monster of a tree hanging out of it, while it is literally freezing outside and the heater is blasting, but I don't care because I am sweating after trying to get this tree up. I screwed the first piece of wood into the bottom of the trunk. That was easy! I get the other cross piece started and guess what? The battery goes dead. So back out to the shop I go to switch out batteries. By the way, it is still snowing. So now the cross piece is on and the boys help me stand the tree up. . . until it hits the ceiling. All I can think of is Chevy Chase and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I got the loppers and cut the top 16 inches off that tree. That was easy! We got it to stand up without tipping over and it is now 1/2 an inch from the ceiling. Still room for a star!

I cut the twine expecting there to be a big poof of branches opening up, glad to be unbound. There was no poof. There was no being unbound. There was just a stiff, frozen, skinny tree.

I started to pull the branches down like you would an artificial tree coming out of storage. I thought this is great, I get the smell of a real tree and the fun of fluffing a fake tree.

Notice the frosty color on the branches. That is not camera effects people, that is the real deal.

As I am fluffing up our tree, I begin to wonder how safe it is to put lights onto a tree that is dripping melting snow into a puddle on the floor. I put a few towels around it and decided to take a lunch break.

Back to our previous fairy tale. . .

We plugged in the lights that were all untangled and all worked. We trimmed our tree with Christmas music playing in the background. The kids each put on their ornaments from years past. And they all went to bed with visions of sugar plums in their heads.

And on Christmas morning when the Zookeeper walked in the door, he saw only the love that went into putting our tree up.

Our Knights in Shining Armor

We are in the middle of our Christmas break from school. We have been studying medieval times. The boys have not given up their lessons completely though. They have been taking advantage of the snow and acting out jousting tournaments in our yard. But instead of horses they are using sleds and instead of lances they are using pool noodles.

They have been doing this a lot.

Reformation Day

My knights in shining armor guarding their fair lady.

Little Lady was a fair maiden, but after she took the tulle off her crown,

she told everyone she was a queen.

Digging Badger and Crazy Fox prepared to defend the castle.

The boys and the Zookeeper in the final stages of sword construction. Everyone was a little tired here. They were really having fun, it just wasn't captured on film.

Apple Picking

The kids and I went apple picking today and we had so much fun. We went to a small u-pick orchard. The favorite job was holding the huge picking basket. . .

. . . until it was full.

The orchard has an ongoing contest for the largest apple picked. We didn't know about it until we took our load of apples to be weighed, but Digging Badger's came in at 12 ounces. Little Lady and Crazy Fox both had an apple that weighed 12.5 ounces.

Along with her big apple, Little Lady had one baby apple that she held onto all morning. I bet it is going to be tart!

Crazy Fox was very good at finding any defects on the apples, before he picked them.

We picked Golden Delicious, Rome and Crisp Red apples. We sampled them on the way home and they are wonderful. We are planning on making applesauce, an apple cake and some apple crisps for the freezer.

Anyone can count the number of seeds in an apple,

but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.

~Robert Schuller~