Spring is upon us!

And then we got home from West Virginia and it feels like the winter projects are going to need to wrap up fast to make way for the spring ones - which is officially upon us tomorrow! Jason is outside, as I type, prepping the ground for peas, lettuce, dill, parsley, kale, beets onions and oats - all of which we hope to get in the ground before he takes off for his 10 day 40th birthday trip with our dads next Saturday!

...and that was as far as I got before Terah woke from her afternoon nap!

We've had a fun and full hosting weekend - kicking it off with friends on Friday evening for a green St. Patrick's Day meal here, complete with a surprise beautiful snow shower (with flakes that looked more like little snowballs falling from the sky)! We then enjoyed a 24 hour visit with a contingent of the Benner family :) and now are enjoying a visit from Jonathan, friend and former T.W. resident!

So, due to wanting to focus on the visiting still happening for the remainder of this weekend, here's some visuals from the homestead in recent days:

The seed shelf is full! It's that time where we need to get the onions in the ground so we can get the tomatoes starting. It's always a little like dominos around here - one thing has to give before another can.

Sweet potato slips - they are so beautiful AND we have a lot of them!!

Speaking of beautiful - I have yet to stock the top, but we are using and loving the wood storage!

And more beauty and cuteness - she likes meal times a whole lot (at least for the first few minutes until she has satisfied her hunger and is ready to move on).

So much for Lent being a time of sacrifice. Our "no grocery shopping" commitment is really not creating much hardship anymore. Here pictured is a recent breakfast of Kali's duck eggs or Jason's chicken eggs, fresh steamed spinach and a potato corn saute with homemade hot sauce. Yum!

Another cutie pie - happy on her planned family night - dinner out, a stop at the library to stock up on books, and ice cream cones and a game back at home.

We are fans of Las Chamas, especially the fried yucca and tostones. Another yum!

Keeping Terah content in a restaurant is a bit of a challenge, but having Grandma and Grandpa along on our family night was a big help. 

I considered our dinner out to also be a celebration of my dad's pending retirement - THIS FRIDAY!!

This trio is too much sometimes...and Kali puts up with an awful lot with so much grace and patience. 

Cousin time on the front walk - Marcie's first experience of sidewalk chalk (it was very hard to convince to join us for lunch inside)...

And more cousin time - Terah is a huge Ivy fan (that feels like a major understatement)!

Ok, so we have a number of Ivy fans in this house!

Ivy tried her very first food at our home last evening - a Tangly Woods sweet potato (which she downed pretty expertly and seemed to enjoy thoroughly - if her mommy kept shoveling it in fast enough to satisfy her).

And the first chicks have hatched!  A great broody mama hatched 8 out of 9 eggs (and the 9th was infertile so hardly her fault!). One chick died, but there are 7 cute fuzz balls in the compost coop.

I love how she is looking at them!

And, the picture isn't quite enough, as hearing a mama and her chicks is so fun for me. She clearly is communicating with them. I love watching them bury under her:



And I'll end with some of the bedtime fun happening at our home the other evening. Don't be deceived by this - this was a somewhat rare and very pleasant end to the day. More often than not tiredness takes over for the two littlest and the strung out mommy in this household. But this night, we all enjoyed hanging out for awhile and Terah was getting a kick out of laughing heartily:



ps. forgive any typos please; this one is not even being read through for a quick editing...