Getting Ready for Back to (Home)School

 We received all of our new curriculum this week and it almost felt like Christmas! The new books are so nice and clean and really make me excited for starting our school year. We are using Abeka books this year for our homeschooling. 

Little W is starting K4 this year, since he won't turn five until December. He's very excited!

Baby I was hoping that there would be toys in the boxes. Haha!

Even though he won't officially be in school, he will no doubt pick up some new

knowledge from his big brothers. 

While not quite as excited as their little brothers, the two older boys (5th and 6th grades) are pleased that I was able to work out their school schedule to being only four days a week.

They said, "That's much better than public school!"

Yes, son. Yes it is.

:)

New Butchering Station **WARNING: GRAPHIC**

 Handy Husband put his skills to use once again and made this nifty butchering stand. It'll make processing rabbits so much easier! We tried it out last weekend, along with processing a few quail. 

Feathered Friends

 Here's a bit of all things feather/fowl... 

We moved the Coturnix quail into the currently unused greenhouse, and they really love it. Their old pen was just too soggy and wet. I've been hatching out a lot of these little guys lately. 

Speaking of quail, the Bobwhite are doing well, and just started laying eggs finally. I doubt I'll do anything with them, though. They're just more of a novelty bird for us. 

This young man has some new friends: Skye, Angel, and Mischief.

They love hanging out on his shoulder. 

Most of our original flock of chickens was annihilated by raccoons and opossums recently, but thankfully I had just started an incubator full of their eggs. They won't be the same, but hopefully I'll get some good layers out of them. It breaks my heart that I've had so many wonderful birds lose their lives in such a terrible way. 

Summer Flowers

 Despite having bouts of drought, and attacks from Japanese beetles, and the lawn getting far too overgrown from issues with the mower, we did manage to have some pretty decent annual flowers in our yard this summer.

The roses, on the otherhand, didn't fare so well.... 

The Knockout roses only had their leaves stripped, but most of my old fashioned roses have died back completely and are having to grow back from the ground up. It's very sad, since the same thing happened last summer. I wonder if they'll ever be as big and full as they once were.