Aaaand summer's here!

A big spring project was building a chicken tractor to hold our meat birds this summer. I collected scrap wood from a home building site and my friend Jainie helped me with the construction. I'm still in the process of covering it with hardware mesh but i'll have to finish soon as our 30 birds currently residing in the garage will soon have to move into it! More photos on that soon.  

A lopez holiday is the Procession of the Species, a parade in which all are invited to dress as a species of choice. Julia dressed as a momma bird with her babies in the nest.  Paradeing comes naturally to Julia. 

what does the fox say?

this April, Theo had his first birthday! 

we had a small party and he had his cake! 

life for him then was all about climbing into things.  

and playing in the sand 

and trying soo hard to reach things

and just being mr sunshine in general.

and then he learned to walk! 

Julia discovered she can wrangle goats just fine. which is really good since we got 2 meat goats. 

she also got a promise of a kitty! (an outdoor mouser-type kitty!) 

we've been spending hours and hours in the garden. maybe I'll do a garden post soon.  

everyone around here is in love with lawn mower.

and in love with daddy. 

Julia's kindergarten teacher took her out paddleboarding!

then she got to go ride the bus to the big school to see what that was like. 

she gave herself a haircut...

just the regular travel around here. 

Dad graduated from a year long leadership program hosted by a neighboring island.  

and i couldn't delete any of these...

we cooked our last turkey at "half thanksgiving", my new favorite holiday. 

we lost 9 baby chicks to turkey vultures, figured out that a raccoon has been after our big chickens, then we got 2 muscovy ducks. 

Julia had her last day of preschool! 

summer means breakfast on the porch!

theo is all business about his oatmeal. 

Julia "graduated" from preschool.

and performed in the tap show for 3 nights in a row! she loved every minute of it! 

We've kicked off swimming lessons, and Julia is soooo thrilled to go to them. She realllllllly wants to learn to swim.
In other goings on, I lightened my schedule a lot by finishing my term on the preschool board and I gave my job baking at the Bay back to the friend who gave it to me. That may just be for the summer, but I'm enjoying the break! baking late at night was getting to be too much. I'm still doing some childcare and my EMT work but with running the house and garden and kids, that's plenty! Dave has been home lots the last few days, as he had a minor surgery to fix an umbilical hernia. It's been pretty great to have him ignore work for a few days, but he's not supposed to lift more than 10 lbs for a month! We've been spending lots of mornings working around the house and afternoons at the beach. Theo has taken to walking beautifully and is constantly up to some sort of schenanagans. Most often it is emptying the house one object at a time, throwing it off the porch, and heading back for more. Soon we will head to Oregon to celebrate my grandma's 90th birthday followed by my family's arrival here for a few days. Our kitty is almost ready to come live with us, we might get a few more layer hen chicks, maybe another duck or two... and after that it will be late summer already!!