Aaron's Broken Fibula

Well, we have our first real broken bone. Nathan's broken little toe doesn't really count since we didn't have to anything except avoid stepping on his foot for a while. Aaron was playing outside and jumped to make a shot or swing an imaginary sword and came down wrong on his left foot.

The bruise got nice and yellow and it swelled up for a couple of days. But after a week, he still couldn't walk on it. So off we went to the doctor.

Well, they thought it was a bad sprain but took an xray to make sure. And that Xray said that Aaron had a small fracture in his fibula down near the growth plate. So then we were off to the orthopedic surgeon.

He gave us this nifty "air cast" for Aaron and said that it would heal very nicely and there was no danger to his growth plate. We go in for follow up Xrays in 2 weeks. But no baseball for a while which is sad because his season starts May 2nd. Some wonderful friends at church made him a care package so he has a little gift to open every day for the next 8 days.

Happy Easter!

We have a very nice Easter. Wonderful service, dinner with a family from church, and of course, the Easter Egg hunt.

This was the first year that Nathan hid eggs rather than finding them. They are growing up, sigh.

Nathan his one egg in the crook of his arm and amazingly it took a while for one of the girls to notice it.

Emptying the eggs for next year.

They aren't surprised by the picture, it was just too bright. I should have looked closer to the picture in the camera to see what their expressions were. Guess this one won't be on our Christmas card!

Gardening Season 2011 is open!

We have a new shiny tiller (well, relatively shiny).

It really does a great job. Note the coveralls. It is still cold here but we're planting anyway.

Now, isn't that pretty?

The Human Body

Deborah and Aaron are studying Biology this year. We started with plants and just finished the Human Body. On to animals next.

This will probably be the last time we make a full size picture of our bodies. Even now, I had to enlarge some parts so that they would look right with the children's outlines.

Chicks and Chickens

Last week, we had a quick snowstorm and our silly chickens got trapped by the bird feeder. The chickens don't like to walk on snow so they stayed under the feeder where they had a little bare spot of ground. Finally after some snow started accumulating on their backs, I sent Nathan out there to shoo them into their coop.

We have new chicks as well. This Dominic is a couple of days old.

We got a healthy batch this time - all strong and walking around almost immediately out of the box.

With our order, we elected to receive the free exotic chick. We're calling him (her) Pom since he looks like someone glued a pom-pom on his head. We're guessing he/she might be a Polish or a Silkie.

Happy Birthday to Deborah (and me)

Deborah turned nine! We have the traditional chocolate chip pancakes ...

... the nine year old girl cake with a motorcycle race...

... legos ...

... books ...

... and birthday money!

I got my wish and had a wonderful ice cream cake!

Birds and Butterflies

The Cardinals are back!

Aaron sat for a long time and tried to get a chickadee to eat out of his hands. There was one brave one that couldn't quite get up enough courage to go all the way to Aaron. He would fly down until he was about 2 feet away and then fly back to a branch.

My parents are visiting and we made our annual trip to the Butterfly House.

It was a sunny day and the butterflies were very active.

Dinosaurs!

We went with our local homeschool group to see an Argentinean dinosaur exhibit.

These are velociraptor bones. A lot smaller than Jurassic Park made them out to be!

This is the Gigantisaurus, possibly the biggest meat eater, bigger than a T. Rex.

They had a dinosaur digging site where the children can unearth bones. Deborah really enjoyed it and stayed in the box for a long time.