City girl, Country heart

Lexi's daily farm chores:

 Gathering eggs

 Hugging and kissing all the chickens (yes, every day). Because of this, she's also the best chicken catcher out of all of us!

Giving lots of love to the baby goats

And being her wonderful, giggling, happy self. :-)

What can I say? This girl loves her life. 

I'm thankful we got into urban farming last year! If we have to live in the big city for a while, we might as well make it awesome!

Happy birthday Lyla!

Last Thursday we celebrated two years of life with our sweet Lyla Grace. 

 Since the girls are such early risers, Lyla is usually in bed for the night by the time Eric gets home from work. Because of this, we have family breakfasts several times a week in the wee hours of dawn. This also holds true for birthday parties, and allows Aunt Alli to be able to participate with us as well.  :-)

Lyla was so excited about the blueberry muffin and the bacon that she was shaking! 

My daughters aren't huge meat eaters (probably since we only eat it once a week if that), but they DO love bacon!!

Present time!! We try to get our kids presents that the whole household can benefit from. This year, Lyla received some books (which are always in high demand at our house), animal magnets for the refrigerator, a no-spill bubble bucket, summer sandals, and a new dress along with a bank from Grandma and Grandpa.

After Eric and my sister Alli left for work, we spent the morning playing outside in the sun and blowing bubbles with Lyla's new bubble bucket. Seriously, these no spill buckets are well worth the money with all these toddler hands around!!!

 After playing outside, we had a cupcake decorating party. And who needs to invite friends when we already have four in the house?! Each girl got a paper plate with a cupcake, a dollop of homemade buttercream frosting, some sprinkles, and a spoon to spread the frosting with. As soon as they finished decorating their cupcakes, they ate them. :-)

Happy 2nd birthday to our sweet girl! 

Spring babies!!

The day finally arrived! Our Nigerian Dwarf Goat, Jane (officially registered as Janelle), was bred this last fall when we purchased her. We moved Jane and Claire to our urban farm in February, with the knowledge that they would both be kidding this spring. After a good month of observing Jane's behaviors, we knew right away that she was in labor yesterday morning. By 3 PM, she was delivering her babies. I went to check on her (for the 100th time that day) and noticed that she had already delivered one kid. I raced to get Eric, and then raced back just in time to clear the mouth and nose of her second kid. The third one came soon after when all of us were in the shed together. I was so excited and blessed to be the one to "midwife" the delivery while Eric and the little girls looked on. The experience was wonderful. Jane kidded two does and a buck.

Above is doeling Penelope on the left with our buckling Patrick on the right.

Hazel, above. Another sweet doe. Not sure if it is a trick of the camera, or if her eyes really are blue. Remains to be seen.

Eric picked up my youngest sister out in the suburbs yesterday so she could share in the experience. Lucky for them, they arrived home less than an hour before Jane gave birth!

And here's a laugh for your weekend. Selfie Saturday, anyone?

Milking for our own consumption begins in about two weeks. Couldn't be more thrilled that we are actually doing this! And while living in the city! Hopefully in 5 to 10 years we will be on a bit more land out in the country, but for now, while we are in the midst of foster parenting kids in Chicago, we are just excited that we can have the city life with a bit of animal husbandry mixed in. ;-)