Spring Chicks Coming Soon!

We have 7 chickens at the moment for our small backyard flock which we will be expanding with this incubator we recently purchased. I love the viewing windows so the kids can observe and see when they hatch. We have been collecting eggs all week and finally placed 14 eggs in the incubator last night! It has an automatic egg turner in it so we do not have to worry about turning eggs twice a day!

In about 21 days, hopefully that means we will have some cute fluffy little chicks peeping, I love how science can take a natural ebb and flow from your lifestyle and way you naturally live your life. For us, country living allows for endless nature and science opportunities.

This incubator was well worth the money we spent on it and we are hoping to use it on a regular basis, from chickens to quail. In about 7 days, we will be candling them to see how many of  the 14 eggs may be fertile and getting rid of the ones that are not fertile.

Baby chicks are always so much fun, we can not wait!

At least something feels like spring around here, because the weather sure is not spring at all! Brrrrr

No Impact Man: No Fridge Experiment

I have been reading how others have given up using a refrigerator and how many Americans refrigerate far more than they really need to.

I must say this has intrigued me and reading Little Blog in The Big Woods article on No Fridge for 30 years gave me the courage to unplug ours November 3! Our daughters own words were "Wow what an interesting experiment!"

Then yesterday we reinforced this concept a step further by watching the Documentary "NO Impact Man"  which is an inspiring story about a Man and his family living in New York City did a one year experiment of trying to live the entire year without impacting the environment and zero waste. They gave up motorized transportation, take out food, disposables, espresso's, buying anything new, eating only local in season foods and even gave up electricity.

It was interesting and I was surprised by my daughter wanting to give up many things that were shown in the documentary.

It is lovely that you can take things from your daily life and quickly turn them into a rich learning experience.

The one thing I REALLY need to think through is the upcoming Thanksgiving Dinner! 

What interesting non conventional things are you learning right now? I would love to hear in the comments!

Opportunities Everywhere

It really has been a wonderful week, with perfect cool but sunny weather and the time to seize opportunities as they come up!

We spent the week writing pen-pals, continuing to learn Japanese words ( which by the way is really really hard but fun!) video-gaming, watching movies and watching all the new season shows like Raising Hope, Glee, Fringe, X factor and of course tonight Terra Nova!

Friday when hubby came home he mentioned a moving sale down the road and said town was full of garage sales so of course we grabbed the puppy and the fam piled into Bronco Bob and we headed out on our treasure hunt!  We managed to pick up an almost brand new bike for Corin for 10 bucks, an ice cream maker, a toaster and a few things hubby needed as well along with a new lamp table to go next to our couch!
Our family LOVES Garage Saling and everyone gets excited when we get to go.

Saturday had Corin asking me to take her on an extended bike ride so we went on a few mile bike ride down a country road. On our ride we came across a baby snake so of course had to bring it home for everyone to marvel just how tiny this little guy was! It was NOT easy holding him in one hand while he wiggled and squiggled while riding bike with my one free hand and NO brakes on my bike. Of course my daughter kept stopping directly in front of me but somehow I managed to always avoid the impending disaster! At home we all got a good look at him, making comments of how little he was and his need to go into hibernation soon as the weather heads into a cold season, then we took and released him back into the wild so he could go about his business.

Without time frames and rigid schedules, we are able to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves to us, one of my favorite things about this life style! It always for a spontaneous change of plan when things come up everyone would enjoy taking advantage of. We do not have to wait for anyone, or worry about being back at any given time, we are free to explore and take advantage going where the day leads us at any given moment. We take pleasure in being able to be sponaneous and free flowing going here or there and watching the contagious excitement of family members as opportunities present themselves. It's AMAZING to not be tied down to calendars or clocks and be free to do whatever, whenever and catch the wave.......

River Walk Picnic!

Nothing beats a nature walk on a beautiful sunny autumn day! With our beautiful days numbered we headed to our local River Walk parks for an active and fun nature walk roaming , running and laughing through the wooded paths with puppy in tow. Our puppy Sophie is a border collie with extremely strong herding instincts already in place so she became frantic when the  whole family split into running every direction they could playing a form of woodland tag through the wooded paths. Sophie would whine like crazy and pull on her leash trying to round up her "flock" that was going every which way! We had a blast though and knowing our puppy would be tired out followed up the nature walk by having a picnic lunch back at the park part of the walk that had a few playground equipment and picnic tables. So while we ate and then watched the kids play, Sophie got a much needed rest and nap!

Later that night we went shopping and all shopped for food and some much needed new clothes which always makes the girls happy! They love getting new clothes and as I said, they really did need some new ones! We also were able to purchase a few affordable movies for our home collection as we sold our whole movie collection when we moved back to Michigan so really have had nothing on hand to watch at will other than our Netflix movies that come in the mail. We bought Zombieland, Barbies the princess and the Pauper, Knightstale, Fried Green Tomato's, The Blind Side and Date Night!

It was one of those days that just really could not of been any better! Pure AWESOMENESS of a family spending time together and enjoying every minute of it!

Garage Sale Find!

The other day I noticed a garage sale within walking distance of our house and found this Triops hatching kit for only $4! I love Smithsonian kits and was very excited to find this and when I brought it home, the kids were both just as excited and can not wait to try this out! Triops are basically considered Dinosaur Shrimp and I am hoping they are just as fun as the Sea Monkeys I had as a kid. I think we will be doing this today or sometime this week anyway and we look forward to getting to hatch and observe these wonderful little critters! The only thing this was missing was the lid to the tank so now our biggest problem will be to keep the cat from drinking the water or perhaps trying to eat the shrimp!