Random pictures and more Ginger-dos.

Warning, this post contains a lot of random pictures, old and new.  I was just looking through the pictures and there were a few funny ones I thought I would share.  A lot of them are of Ginger's hair dos.  A few people have asked me about her hair.  I think it's adorable.  It is in full blown toddler mullet and reddish, I would say.  The top is trying desperately to catch up with the back.  The top is straight and the back is curly.    So, I have been trying to do something with it a lot more, especially when we go out because if I don't, the top just hangs in her eyes.  Enjoy.

Ginger modeling a cute coat and hat set a friend gave us.

Ta-da!  Ginger the trickster.

I don't know if you can tell that all 3 are covered in sand, head to toe.

You really want me to go out in public like this?

What did I say about random?  The old Suburban that we sold in August.

I have been thoroughly tortured getting my hair done and now I need my baby and blanket.  I think I'll just rock for a while.

Yea, Daddy's home!

So wrapped around that little finger.  And see what I mean about the hair in the eyes?

I was trying to take a picture of the cute Sunday outfit  but it just turned into a tantrum because I wouldn't let her have the camera.

The Ginger sweet face.

Ginger tired face at lunch.

Can't stay awake. . . 

. . . for another second.

Turkey Day 2011.  Not fancy.  Just us.  It was great!

Wyatt, show me your turkey.

Ginger piggy tails.

Picasso Ginger.  And one ponytail Ginger which doesn't work out so well for all those short hairs on top.

Ginger hair do for today.  It wanted to be a regular pony tail but it doesn't work with the short hair on top.

The kiddos after church today.  Shane had already started changing his clothes.  But, it is a nice picture of a the scrape on his stomach that happened while going over the handlebars of his bike.  Yea for boys.

Here's the dress I made for Ginger, for those that wanted to see it.  It's lime green paisley fabric.  The only way Ginger would hold still for pictures was to give her another camera so it too is in ALL the dress pictures to follow.

The back.  It does have a tie that you can't see in this picture.

With the sweater, cuz it's cold outside.

Just another one.

And one of my favorite parts, the lace pants and boots.  I fell in love with these adorable lace pants.  All the old ladies at church giggle at her "pantaloons" but I think they're adorable, am I old?  Maybe old fashioned.  Oh well, it's still cute.

Here's a picture of what they look like from the place  I got them.  Cute, right?

So now you know what has been happening the last little while.  I still have a few other events to post from August and October.  Better late than never!

Our Halloween. Or as Shane says, our October Thirty-Oneth.

Last Saturday we had our annual ward Trunk or Treat.  It is always has a huge turnout.  It's also a chili cook-off and a dessert bake-off.  Usually about half the people there are friends and family of those in the ward.  It's great.  Mike was working so he met us at the church right after work.  I had hand out candy duty and Mike had trick or treat duty.  So on Monday, for Halloween, we had a party at home, watched movies, and Shane and Wyatt got to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood.  We also handed out some of our excess food from recent shopping trips to their parents.  It was lots of fun!

Ginger's brothers really like to "play" with her.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of all of them together.  I was really busy that night!

This was my attempt at decorating my trunk.  I need a spider webbing class.  Still, I did try.

Isn't she a cute Ginger-pea?

The view from the top.

This was the first costume I ever sewed.  Wyatt loves dinosaurs and red, so there you go!

But the red dinosaur really does love his sweet pea sister.

Hmmm . . . I wonder if the red dinosaur is looking for a tasty sweet pea dinner.

He loves her so much that he wants to "play" with her all the time.

We hope you all had a happy Halloween too!

Mmmmm . . . . eggs anyone?

When Mike got home from work tonight, he went to check on our sweet little chickies and look what he found!  Our first two eggs.  It looks like they came from the same chicken.  We thought they would have started laying sooner.  They roam around in the forest all day so it's possible some lucky possum has gotten a few.

A Ginger-tantrum.

No words needed.

Shane lost his first tooth!

I haven't posted in a looooong time. But don't worry, I haven't given it up. Yesterday, Shane lost his first tooth . . . finally. I only say that because the new permanent tooth was half way up before we noticed it. Like a shark, he was starting on his second row of teeth. Oops and hello braces. The baby tooth wasn't really loose either. We wanted to get it out to see if the new tooth would move up a bit. So last night amid the yelling and screaming, Mom holding Shane down and Dad about to put some Deputy moves on Shane, Dad finally yanked it out. Shane was yelling, "No, no, no, no, no!" and then when it came out all he said was, "Oh." He sounded a little surprised that it didn't really hurt.  Here are the pictures from my phone:

Happy Graduation, Happy Father's Day, Georgia wildflowers, the McLelland Family Farm, and kids who put metal things in electrical outlets.

First of all, I wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS to our dear sweet sister, sister-in-law, and aunt ANNA!  She has just graduated with a master's degree and we are so proud of her.  Unfortunately we were unable to make it to her party but we are sending lots of love cross country to California from Georgia!  Can you feel it?

And today of course is Father's Day and I would like to wish all of our fathers - Grandpa Steve, Grandpa Matt, Grandpa Jack - a very happy Father's Day!  We, uh, sent you some cards but they probably won't get there until Tuesday or so.  Sorry.  We still love you tons though!  I helped the kids make some cards for Mike for Father's Day, in addition to the cute ones they drew, wrote, or scribbled.  The following 3 pictures are some of Mike's favorite photos so I thought I would make him a cute, but not toooo cutesy, keepsake (sorry to use mushy words honey) from each kid.

Gotta love that scrunchy face.  Ginger now has a similar one when you say, "Smile!"

Wyatt and his piercing stare.  Here's looking at you Dad!

And of course, sweet little Ginger.

And now, as I promised in May, here is the Father's Day book that Shane made for Mike at school.  It's so cute, I love it!

Here is a survey that Shane's teacher filled out with Shane's answers about Mike.

This is actually from last Thanksgiving.  I just thought it was so adorable that he was thankful for his "Dab."

Okay so here's the cover page and book (following) - enjoy!

When I asked Shane what was going on over there on the left hand side, he told us that was Mike with his hands around a "bad guy's" neck.  Now we know what he thinks Mike does at work.  Also really like the spelling of "jale" and "pulys ofsr."

This is a picture from today.  Here's Mike, chilling with his peeps, driving to church, in the beautiful blue burb, biking backwards.  Just kidding.

The boys really wanted me to take pictures of them being scary.

Here's really scary Wyatt.  I can't keep a tie on that kid.  If he does wear it, it's usually zipped down and hangs to his knees.  His teacher usually hands it back to me after church.  Silly boy.  Maybe one day he'll wear it.

Hmmm. . . . not so scary.  Here's the new smile face.  Kinda looks like the one up top of Shane with Mike in the swimming pool.

Mike sure loves the burb.  He was laughing at me taking so many pictures.

This one is a little blurry but still shows off these two cute little boys.

Now on to the pretty wildflowers in the backyard.

I found this beautiful flower in the backyard near the fire pit.  I thought all we had back there was thorny sticky weeds.  I actually found two of these flowers.  Shane picked them for me and I had to take a picture.  Then I Googled to try to find out what they are.  It was easy to find.  You all probably have seen them before but I had no idea what they were.  This is a purple passionflower.  I guess they grow wild around here.  We've also got wild blackberries and strawberries in the backyard.  They're hard to find in all the weeds though.  I think I might look for some more of these and let them grow.

This is a better picture that I found on the internet.  My camera isn't too great.

As many of you know, we have been trying our hand at raising laying hens.

These are the new additions, cochins.  Mike found them from a craigslist ad.  They were free from a cochin breeder.  We got 13 little chicks but we lost one last night.  We had a severe thunderstorm and a few power surges.  The light bulb burnt out and they were all pretty cold this morning by the time we discovered the burnt out light.

A little closer.  You can kind of see the feathers that go all the way down to their feet.  Cochins are very feathery, or is it hairy? I don't know.  When they're older, they look like they are wearing petticoats all the way down to their feet.

Here's a picture of what our will look like.  Well mostly.  I can never remember exactly what color Mike said they will be.  They're all black except for one brown one.

Here's the revamped chicken coop.  It now stands a little taller with the feeder and waterer hanging underneath to keep it somewhat protected from the storms.  Nothing like cleaning out a big bucket of wet chicken feed.  Yuck.  This is Sooner's old dog house.  We did use it for the Tyson meat chickens that we had for awhile.  We had 10 of those.  They came from a Tyson chicken farm nearby that was hit by a tornado.  A bunch of them got out and I guess Tyson doesn't let them back in.  Let me tell you, those Tyson chickens ain't right.  I know that they have messed with them genetically but they sure did stink!  They also never really pecked and rooted around for bugs.  Our other chickens scratch and dig in the dirt all day.  We started with 10 of the Tyson meat chickens, one died early on, 3 more died several weeks later when something got in there.  Maybe a possum.  Mike has already killed two possums this summer, one trying to get in the coop and one that was living in the garage.  Yuck.  Mike butchered 2 Tyson chickens about two weeks ago and the last 4 last week.  We kept the first two and sold the other 4.

You can sort of see our older 7 laying chickens behind the feeder.  Our friend, Stephanie hatched these from her laying chickens.  They are Arakana or Americana.  I don't know my breeds very well.  I think there at least 2 roosters in there.  They'll probably have to go.

Another view. So right now, we have 7 older laying hens (I think they're about 6 weeks old) from our friend and 12 cochin chicks that are maybe 5 days old.

Don't know if I posted a picture of this before.  The boys "jungle gym" that Mike made.  Now it sort of serves as a place to stack firewood too.

A view of the back porch stairs.  You can see the compost pile that has at least one squash plant  (don't know what kind yet) and a tomato plant.  And more stacked wood that needs to be split.  On the other side of the rounds there is some split wood that WAS all stacked neatly until the last storm.  At least half of it fell over.  Yea, we get to stack it again.  I smell an FHE activity coming up.

Here is our new grow boxes that we put in this year.  I say we but I meant Mike.  He did most of the work.  He did a great job don't you think?  About half of the wood we got from the culled wood pile at Home Depot for 51 cents a board!  Gotta love those deals.  Haven't found any since of course.  We have tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, strawberries, onions, squash, blackberries, and a blueberry bush that might make it.  Now all we have to do is keep beating back the forest.  Sometimes it feels like its encroaching way too fast.  It's hard enough to pull weeds, but in Georgia, a lot of those weeds are trees.  You can't even mow over them.  We need a brush hog.  And there's poison ivy growing right next to the driveway.  I already had a little fun with that this year.

Now change subjects.  When Mike and I got up Saturday morning, look what we found behind our bedroom door!

We asked Shane and Wyatt who did it.  Shane was adamant that Wyatt did it and Wyatt didn't seem to know who did it.  I guess it could have been Ginger but I kinda doubt it.  In case you can't tell what that is, I'll tell you.  It's Mike's bolo tie with the metal tip stuck in the electrical outlet.  Nice.  We thought it was the storm that caused the electrical surges but I guess it could have been someone else . . . . 

A close up.

 Whew, I guess that's about it for now.  Too much talkie talkie.  We love you all.  Congratulations again Anna!  And Happy Father's Day to all the dads.