It's been a long winter

The signs of spring are all around us! The first spring in our new house has been full of surprises. From some pretty flowers that we didn't know were planted..

Isn't this pretty?

These flowers are coming up where this mess of brush used to be!!

Unfortunately we've had some water in the basement the last couple days but nothing that we can't handle. Fixing the gutters/down spouts this summer should help. There are so many plans that we have for our forever home! A large goal is to have a wrap around porch with some of it covered. It will start on the east side of the house (where you see all the brush) and wrap around to the south side (which currently is the only way into the house).

The kids absolutely love being outside! It's nice to see how happy they are.

I really wanted to be mad at the kids for playing in the puddles. Especially with Evelyn wearing her cute (clean, non-mud) boots. Seeing the joy on their faces had my anger quickly fading away and being replaced with a smile.

Meet Pancake (left, Lanes) and Noodles (right, Evelyns). Warning, don't call Noodles, Noodle. Evelyn will correct you quickly that her name is Noodles. These lambs are for a bottle lamb project this summer. Hopefully we'll be adding another 1 or 2 lambs in the coming week for the only reason of filling our freezer and bellies.

Now I do admit these sheep are not technically babies any longer. They've been weaned off of mama so they are much easier to care for. Still. They. Are. Adorable. Makes me realize how much I missed it. I will be the first to admit that I didn't really 'raise' sheep.....I showed them competitively. Also, I use the word competitively very loosely. I did very well during my showing days but sheep were 2 of my brothers lives....not mine. My dad & brothers did the daily care of the sheep so this will be a learning experience for myself as well as Mark.

Last but not least is our garden. It's tilled and ready for plants. We doubled or tripled our garden size from last year. I thought it was going to be similar in size when telling my Uncle to go one row larger. What I didn't take into consideration was that our yard size is about 7 times larger than it was last year.

You know how it says 'objects in mirror are closer than they appear' on the rearview mirror of cars? There should have been a warning posted in our yard that said 'objects in yard are larger than they look'. I'll keep you posted on how or if I'll be able to keep up with that large of a garden!