weekend stuff

Saturday Shawn and the kids worked on cleaning up the trees to the side of our house.  Shawn pruned them and had the kids drag all the limbs off to where they were later burned.

Everything to the left of Shawn had been pruned thus far.

This was the stand of trees we were working on, just to the right of our house.

Abram was as happy as a clam and seemed to be feeling the freedom of being outside in the dirt and mud and also seemed to possess a gift for finding the worst things around the yard to get into.  He kept me hopping.  I think he's the only one in the family that would prefer not to have a lawn put in, so that he could have a great, big mud wallow for the rest of his days.

A cauldron filled with mud

I made a picnic lunch and brought it and my camera outside to capture the progress of the moment.  Nolan had me take picture after picture of him using his "big muscles". 

Impressed?

The kids were working hard...

and so was Shawn.

And here's our Maddie, always decked out for any occasion.  (Can you tell that she's into the Little House books?) It's probably a good thing that she has such a flair for strange get-ups, because I'm sure the ones like this save her fair skin. 

I need to share a quick story about Maddie.  Today she was telling me about another book that she is currently reading, where a girl's father died because he cooked some fish wrong.  She told me that he was a duke and just really didn't know how to cook and told me everything else about this whole sad incident.  Her take on it was this:  "This just goes to show that people need to learn how to cook BEFORE they become a duke, so that later in their lives when they become a duke they already know how!"  I'm glad that she has learned that it's important to prepare for the eventualities of life :)  Stay tuned for when we become dukes...

Next Shawn took some of the kids with him and they canoed over to our island to do some pruning and clean-up there.  Shawn moved some brush and discovered a Mallard duck's nest with about eight eggs inside!  Shawn felt really bad that he had moved the brush that was sheltering their nest, but was afraid to put it back for fear that the eggs would get broken.  We thought the duck would abandon her nest, but later that night, Shawn went to start his slash pile on fire, and the duck flew off ( He decided to wait on the fire). She has been sitting on her nest ever since- I am so excited to have baby ducklings swimming around on our pond!  Can you find her?

I can't believe how well Mrs. Mallard can disguise herself!  Right in the middle of this picture is a dark shadow- that's her nest- and if you look above that, you can see her head and beak.  Try pointing that out to little kids who want to see where she is!!

Our island is to the left of the water here.  In the late spring, when things finally warm up around here, the water level rises up to the trees.  I'm excited for that to happen.

At dinner I asked what color the duck eggs were.  Shawn said, "I don't know, it's kind-of hard to say.  What color do you think they were, Belle?  Kind-of a yellow color?"  She said, "More like blue."  Caden jokingly said, "Why don't we compromise and say that they're green?"  They agreed that they were kind-of green.