Recently a vicious raccoon chewed its way into the chicken coop and killed one of our hens. We had also lost one or two back in the fall due to age and/or predators. Heather's friendly little bantam just disappeared last fall.
So, it was time to add to the family.
Five new little chicks, 2 of them are bantams. I don't know what kind the others are.
Here is Heather holding one of the bantams.
We have 3 of the older girls left. A white one wandered out of this shot.
Heather, all ready for softball practice,which as you can see, ended up getting rained out. She doesn't need to wear her shirt to practice, but she "wanted to."
Grammie and Joanie joined us for a dinner of favorites - meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I'm behind the camera and Wayne is absent from the photo because he was at jazz band rehearsal for a couple of hours.
Opening presents.
Wayne (back from band) gave him an "April Fool's" present which was a box inside of a box, inside of a box, inside of a box, inside of a box (each one wrapped) in which he found a note that led him on little scavenger hunt. Eventually he was lead to a $1 bill hidden behind the TV.
Eleven candles is quite a lot.
Hope you had a great birthday Cole. We love you so much!
Last night, Wayne played in the north east middle school concert. It was held at North Country High School to a standing room only crowd.
Below, Wayne is to the left of your screen. There were students from all over northeastern Vermont. We even saw kids from the Greensboro/Hardwick area that we knew from piano lessons. Wayne did a great job. It had been a busy week for him: 1. History Fair - winning 2nd place overall in the 7th grade division and 1st place in the student choice award. He and his friends, Asom and Ben, compared rivals Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. Wayne built a working Tesla coil as part of their display. I'd like to do a blog post on it, but he wouldn't let me take any pictures in front of his friends at the fair. It also was held at NCUHS. 2. Basketball tournament in St. J, and 3. this concert, taking a bus to NC on Fri morning and spending all day rehearsing with kids from all over and then the concert in the evening. He did a great job and looked very handsome.
(Sorry, shaky video. I blame a restless, wiggly Heather sitting next to me and the people in front of me moving their heads around.)
The conductor of this band was Chris Rivers, whom Wayne had met at the Opus 29 concert. He was the lead trumpet layer.
We have had nothing but sub-zero temperatures for weeks and weeks now. Most of these outdoor photos that are shown here are from a while back. I recently found them lingering around in my camera and thought I should do a blog post. It's been a while.
Snowshoeing with Cole one day after school.
Ice Skating on New Year's day.
King of the Mountain on the snowbanks.
Or, Queen of the Mountain.
After many snowfalls, we gave up on shoveling off the pond and tried out the rink at Orleans school.
We made a snowman.
Heather and I went snowshoeing.
Heather picked one of the lemons off of our dwarf lemon tree.
There was a school concert made up entirely of music and songs from Frozen. Cole and his friend Grant sang "Reindeer(s) are Better than People." The 4 boys in the 5th grade class were supposed to do this all together, but the other 2 did not show up. Unfortunately, the video quality is poor and I only managed to get a few seconds, but they were by far, the hit of the show.
This week, Wayne has a basketball tournament in Newport. After one of his games we went to see the ice maze.
Ice blocks taken from Lake Memphremagog. The ice is quite clear. The ice blocks are about 18-24 inches thick.
Snowshoeing in very deep snow. Thank goodness Spike is always eager to cut the path for me.
The house is cold in the mornings. Heather and Patches snuggle up in an afghan (made by my grandmother, probably before I was even born) and watch cartoons.
Winter is fine, but I sure wish we had some temps at least in the teens.
I'm not really in this, but here is the preschool where I work.
(It's hard to see the player controls at the bottom of the video screen, but if you hover your mouse over where the play button would be, you'll kind of see it.)
