A Sweet Spring Day

 "Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's Party'!"Robin Williams 

Today I want to share two pictures that pretty accurately sum up today on the farm. Here's the first one: 

This picture seems provides proof that spring is in the air!

This picture above makes me so happy. There are two reasons: 

1. Ultimate Beastmaster and American Ninja Warrior are very popular in our home -- and they've stretched to our front yard. I love our "Ninja course" because I love my kids wanting to be strong, active, athletic, and outside. We have a lot of plans for our course. We want to make it bigger and better and especially add some upper body work. 
2. The second reason I love this picture above is because it shows what playing outside when the weather is warming up means. I was "babysitting" some of my cousin's children, and there were eight children playing outside. As they kept moving, they got warmer, and that meant clothes being stripped off and smattered hither and wherever. I love kids being active. And I love spring weather. We are still dealing with abnormally cold temperatures for March (was in the teens the last two nights). But today provided sunshine and the ability to get outside. 

My "nephew" Gabe holding one of our baby rams before he is castrated. 

Today included lots of hard labor. I got over 12,000 steps and over 100 active minutes on my Fitbit as proof of this. We started the day by Grampa, Jacob, and I going with our neighbor Lloyd's house to load logs on Lloyd's tractor. The county took down a bunch of trees for power line issues at the church he attends with Grampa and Grama. Around here they let you choose: they'll remove the tree or they will let you remove the tree. Because so many people have wood stoves and fireplaces around here, most choose to leave the trees behind. 

Lloyd helped cut the wood, and we loaded it up so that we can have wood through the winter. This morning we made two trips. While I didn't lift as much of the heavy stuff that Grampa and Jacob did, there was still a lot of activity.

After that, I returned to the house where Grama was holding down the fort while JB was at work. The kids were mostly through their piano lessons with Ms. Leslie. I jumped in and did my lesson, and then Jacob suggested we go and get some sheep work done since it was such a beautiful day. 

Jacob, Gabe, his sister Kari, and myself headed out to the paddock while the other kids watched a movie. We needed to put collars on some of the new baby girls, check castration on some of the males, and castrate a few that had recently been born. The picture of Gabe is him holding one of the little lambs before the deed was done. (For those of you who are interested, we use a rubber band system that causes no pain and just a little discomfort.) 

We finished off the evening with the boys taking karate. It was a great day on our sunny farm. I love that my kids can go flying out of the house without me even knowing where they are going. There is so much adventure and green grass and sunshine. I know for certain that while I never dreamed of living rural, I could never do anything but that now. 

I'm so glad we bought this farm even though I still can't believe this is my life,