Beginning of January, 2015

January was full of lots of cold, snowy days.  We spent a lot of time inside doing schoolwork, but also found opportunities to get out for fun times too.

 We had a stretch of a couple warm days and I was able to get into the chicken/turkey barn and clean our 4-5 wheelbarrow loads of poo!  My garden sure did appreciate it this summer too!

We butchered 4 of our chickens in January because they had started eating their eggs and wouldn't stop.  We weren't getting any eggs from them at all anymore!  I roasted all of them and picked the meat off and froze it and then made a bunch of wonderfully healthy bone broth!  We were left with these 3 chickens for a while and they have been very good producers for us, and they're really friendly too :)

I think we had gotten a light snow in November but this was our real first snow.  The kids were so excited. I was surprised with how much Katy liked the snow this year.

 my little trouble maker :P

We were able to get to the ponds and skate a bunch this winter too.  If it was cold enough, we were there!
This was a Saturday afternoon and we ended up playing a fun game of pond hockey with some Mennonite kids:

This was on a Sunday afternoon and the pond was packed!:

Ricky got to play some pond hockey with some of his former teammates:

This pond is always a lot of fun but there might have been TOO many people there that day.

Ronda and I went back with the kids during the week a couple days the following week so we could enjoy the pond without so many people there.

It always amazes me how they pull each other around on those sleds the whole time we are there. That is actually really hard work!

 Chase building his leg muscles and giving me a ride on the sled! :P

In January I commissioned an old order Mennonite man to build me a kitchen hutch.  I gave him a general idea of what I was wanting and he just went from there.  I love how it turned out! 

It was nice to free up some kitchen counter space and move the coffee maker over too.

We had a mouse problem in our chicken barn so Chase was busy shooting them with his bb-gun before the poison started working.  I couldn't believe he could actually hit them!  Of course he and Ricky were very proud :P

And I learned a new crochet technique called Tapestry Crochet.  You hold two colors at the same time and then it allows you to have sharp color changes.  It's a very neat affect: