The Easter Bunny came and left some treats. Slinkies were a hit.

You can see what Abby was interested in. She didn’t even care about finding the eggs, she just had to get them open and eat the chocolate from inside before she went looking for another.

It’s warming up, so there’s lots of outside time.

Perler beads are very exciting, though it usually ends up with Mommy doing all the work.

And more outside time. It’s even been warm enough the last couple of days that I’ve been able to talk them out of their coats.

Tonight, we dyed eggs.

Poor Katie only got 2 pictures, because I was helping her and Andrew was busy.

Abby had to go second because she wasn’t done eating yet. She might’ve been a little tired from playing with her cousins all day, but I’m not sure.

Eggie!

Pink eggie! She just dipped it in, and she was so very excited that it had changed color when she pulled it back out.

So much waiting.

She let them sit in the dye for about 30 seconds and declared them “DONE!”

DONE!

DONE!

DONE!

You think that my day is all cuteness and light.

It is the zombie apocalypse around here, and I have no one who’ll save me.

Three weeks ago, I set some eggs in the new incubator to hatch. I planned them around the other stuff we had scheduled, spring break, trips, whatnot. It was only about 2 weeks after that that I realized that they were due to hatch just before Easter. And lo and behold, we have easter chicks. My little incubator holds 7 eggs, so that’s how many we put in, and all 7 of them hatched!

This picture is terrible, because I forgot to switch the settings from outside to inside, but it’s the better of the two I managed to get before I started to fear for the chick’s well-being.

Because then the chick started trying to climb up to Abby’s face and tickling her and she started to really try to hold on.

Katie is pretty excited as well. There’s a chance we might get to take them in to show off to her class, which would be pretty neat.

That lambing is done for the year.

We’ve been doing all sorts of fun things, and spending a fair bit of time outside too, what with the warm winter and all the new animals. But somehow, the cameras all get left inside, and it’s hard to compose a post with no visuals.

I’m sorry to say that Felice had an accident a week ago and is no longer with us. We miss her a lot, and her mom is still freaked out any time one of her flock is missing. Which makes things a bit noisy around here this week since the other two have lambed, and they spend a night or two in the barn to bond with their babies.

First was Friday, Miss Maude was very obvious in her labor signs, so I was able to be out there with her. Which ended up being a good thing, because she was the largest of the ewes. I thought that meant decent sized multiples, maybe triplets (egad!). Nope. One gigantic singleton. Gigantic. I had to help her mom a bit to get her past baby’s shoulders, but everything went well. I named her Olive, and she was up and nursing before she was about 5 minutes old.

And then, yesterday. I loaded the kids into the truck to go to the city and drove over to toss some hay in to the sheep before we left, and there were extras! That caused a little bit of a delay, but they were up and nursing before I found them, so they didn’t really need me. I put them in the barn with their mom so they could rest away from the others and dry off and whatnot, gave Freda a bit of extra food, and we were on our way.

This one is Tilly. I’m going to figure out some sort of collar or something for identification purposes, but at this point, Tilly is the one who had a touch of entropion, so she had weepy eyes, though that seems cleared up today.

And poor little Nogg, who got her tail chomped by an overzealous Freda trying to clean them off. That’s all taken care of, and she’s fine now, by the way.

And compare them with Olive this morning. Like I said before, gigantic. She was playing tag with Percy yesterday, it was the cutest thing. It’s warm and beautiful today, so everyone’s going outside for the day, and we’ll try and get some more pictures and maybe some video as well.

And maybe someday, I can get some pictures of my own whirlwinds. I mean my own children.

I do have a picture of Katie trying out Daddy’s (turned off) snowmobile.

School day! That bus comes awfully early when you have to stay up until 10 singing songs and playing with toys you’re not supposed to have in your bed. This is an actual conversation from Monday night

Me: Katie, you’re supposed to be sleeping.

Katie: I know, Mom, but it’s just too noisy in here.

Me: Who is making the noise?

Katie: Me.

Well, come on kid.

These little cats put up with so much. They park themselves in front of the door so they get loved on by everyone who comes over.

Katie says, “Abby! Don’t hold her by her neck!”

Abby says, “Cheese!”

Baby Felice is doing wonderfully. This first picture is from the 24th, her first day outside. She was a week old.

And this was yesterday. 3.5 weeks already, all filled out and growing like crazy. Tonight she’s spending her first night outside (with the shelter, lots of straw and 3 adult sheep), because the other two ewes will be lambing before long, and since I only have 2 stalls in my barn, Felice and Annie are going to have to sleep somewhere else. Hopefully, the others will keep their lambs in a couple weeks more than Annie did, so they can be outside right away.

A few days ago, I emailed the man I bought my sheep from just to double check when I should expect lambs to show up. He told me that the first one should be due at the end of this month.

Friday, I went out at about 2 to feed and check everyone, just like every day. It didn’t look like anyone was close to lambing, so I left them out in the corral and came inside again. About 4:30, I checked again and Annie had had 2 lambs. One had died, and the other was very, very cold. I ended up bringing that one inside because I couldn’t get her warmed up outside. It took 3 hours for her to perk up enough to start bawling.

I’ll spare you the picture I took in the corral before I realized how cold she was. She was early enough that her one eye was still fused shut, and she has no fat on her at all, so it’s a bit of a struggle to keep her warm, but so far, so good.

My barn got finished, not one day too soon.

Annie is such a good mom. I expected her to act like most sheep do and reject the baby after I’d had her inside for so long, but she grabs that baby back right away. And boy, does she ever have fits when I take her away. The baby still isn’t nursing, with her rough start, it took her about 24 hours to start standing and walking, but she’ll get there. For now, she walks around and stands underneath the udder, but can’t seem to figure out what to do once she’s there. So we’re milking Annie and bottle feeding and hoping they can get it figured out.

Abby is quite concerned about her baby. She got very mad at me yesterday, because I’d told her that the baby needs lots of milk to grow big & strong. Apparently, that means that the baby needs all of the milk and I shouldn’t be offering milk to Abby.

Of course, we get a lamb on the day that both my kids come down with some sort of plague, as you can see, Katie isn’t feeling the greatest.

These pictures are from forever ago, and they’ve been resized and everything, and I just haven’t been able to get them loaded. And now it’s nearly midnight again, and that bus just comes so early.

We’ve been doing renos/having renos done, and I think that most of the dust-causing things are done now, so I can clean the house and it will maybe stay mostly clean for more than a couple of hours. But now the basement is nearly finished, so we have to unpack boxes down there, and that means sorting and tossing lots of things that we have been holding onto for no good reason at all.

There will also be some new farm news before we know it. We have one ewe who is due to have her lambs sometime in the next week or so, and the other two are due mid-March, I’m told. Very exciting.

But the barn finally got here, so if our winter decides to stop being mild, there’s a nice, draft-free place for lambing. Handy too, that they’re not all three due at once. Annie will be out of the barn long before the other two need it.

The kids are doing wonderfully. Abby’s finally decided that she will deign to speak, though she doesn’t use 2 words when one will get her point across. Katie still loves school and she’s inhaling information like crazy. So much fun. I can’t wait to see what they think about lambs.