Christmas Program

At our church they have a children's program every year. Each sunday school class sings or does some sort of presentation. Micah is in the 2-5 class so here he is in his first performance. We really had high, high hopes for him at 2 years old. Micah does love to sing so we thought maybe he would do a little singing. But, no. Here is what he did do during the performance. One song had jingle bells so he enjoyed ringing his bell. At one point it flew from his hand and he had to go find it.
Micah clapped his hands a couple times. Also at some point the little boy behind him decided to pull on Micah's collar over and over. This I'm sure was a huge distraction for him.

Towards the end of the 5 minute program he saw some other kids crawling around on the stairs and thought he needed to join them. He did this for a bit. Finally sitting up and sitting nice till the end of the program.

We are so proud of our little performer. He was a star!!!

Pilgrim and Indian

If you have been following our blog you know that my mom has dressed Tanner and Micah up for Christmas for the last two years. The first year they were Mary and Joseph. Then last year they were angels, which was not a hit with Micah. This year my sister, who is home from Romania, will not be home for Christmas. So my mom decided that we should have the tradition at Thanksgiving time. So I give you this years dressed up Micah and Tanner, a Pilgrim and an Indian. They both thought it was very fun. Tanner has been doing lots of dressing up being a girl and all. Micah loved dressing up for Halloween. They were both very prepared for the day.
Tanner played the pilgrim perfectly being very solumn through the scripture reading. After we finished reading the scripture Micah gave us a wonderful Indain rain dance.

We conitnue to be so blessed in our family. Adam and I are thankful for an amazing son and the coming baby girl. We hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

Chicken Coop Part II

Here is the coop before the painting. Micah has his steps for feeding out "treats" during the summertime. Chickens got grapes everyday and sometime tomato's from the cherry tomato plants that magically sprouted up next to one of the new trees we planted last spring.

And here is the almost completed after picture. Trim around the top still needs the free dark brown paint for constrast and the backside of the coop gets the free pinkish-tan paint!
Up to about 8-10 eggs a day now from twelve full-size hens and now just waiting for the bantam to start laying her tiny eggs. Looks like winter treats will be some of the leafy weeds that are sprouting up.

Painting the Chicken Coop

Adam had a great idea. Let's let Micah help paint the chicken coop. A 2 year old with real paint. Here is Micah before he started. Clean and excited.
Micah had his own bucket. He would dip the paint in and it would drip all the way to the coop. While in with the chickens he was very concerned about the chickens. He doesn't always like being in the chickens anymore so he kept telling them, "be nice chickens."

What a lucky boy Micah is!!

Micah had lots of fun. This is him when he was just about finish. He only had one little accident after I took this picture. He leaned all the way on the chicken coop getting more paint on his backside. He thought painting his hands was also part of the process. His clothes, of course, we are throwing away and the paint in his hair will wash out eventually.

Halloween

We had a very fun Halloween. Micah was Bob the Builder. He loved wearing his work hat and tool belt.

The first event Micah wore his costume to was his daycare party. I must say it was a little over the top. Mainly the food. They sat down to snacks and had a cookie, a cupcake, a brownie, and jello jigglers. I was beginning to wonder when they were going to stop bringing out the treats. But Micah did have fun and enjoyed every bite. Probably because he rarely gets sweets at home. The kids then played some easy games where they won little prizes. Micah loved the spider rings.

Then they had a pinata. Micah did a great job swinging and hitting it. He loved picking up the candy. Oh course, the pinata never holds enough candy so Lori passed out to everyone an extra bag of candy. Just what we needed. We absolutely love Micah's daycare and are thrilled that he loves going everyday. Lori and Jim make every day special so on holidays I'll be sure to come to the over the top fun parties that they have.

Then, for Halloween we first went to the carnival that was out here in the Ranchos. Micah loved going through the blow-up obstacle course. After that we headed into Fresno to go to our church carnival. Following that we headed into the neighborhood around our church to do a bit of trick- or-treating. We went with our good friends, the Isaacs. Micah thought it was the most exciting thing. He said trick-or-treat over and over until the person put the candy in his bucket. Then he would say more trick-or-treat, more trick-or-treat.

The week of Halloween we carved 4 pumpkins on 4 different night because Micah thought it was so much fun. The first pumpkin didn't make it till the end for the final picture. Micah wanted Mike from Monsters Inc. He also wanted a robot pumpkin, which we made from Micah's green pumpkin. The last pumpkin we made was a sad pumpkin because we looked all around the Ranchos for a sad one and never found one. So Micah wanted a sad pumpkin. Are you noticing a pattern. We made whatever Micah wanted. He had a blast.

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumkins

At Micah's daycare they started the month early by learning and talking about pumpkins. So he has been excited about pumpkins for awhile now. Earlier in the month we had our first cooking experince together by baking pumpkin sugar cookies. Micah loved it.

His favorite part was licking the batter. Yummy!!!!

The cookie cutter was also very fun. I tried to point where is should go, but where it landed was where we cut a cookie. A few weeks later I was rolling out a pie crust and he said excitedly that we were making pumpkin cookies again. I think that he really enjoyed it.

The finished product. Micah didn't really help with the decorating. When he finally got to eat one of the cookies he ate a few bites and said "all done." I thought he didn't really like them but another day he did eat a whole one.

Micah's daycare took a field trip to Cobb Ranch. Lori bought all the kids matching shirts. Micah had been talking about going to the pumpkin patch all week. Then that morning we told him that today is the pumpkin patch and he says, "no pumpkin patch."

Cheeeeeeeese!!! I forgot to get a picture of it, but all the kids picked out a pumpkin. I tried to convince Micah to get an orange pumpkin. But no, he picked out a puke green, muffin shaped pumpkin. I wasn't too thrilled.

This last Saturday we took a trip to another pumpkin patch. Micah was not in the mood to say cheese and smile. He loved sliding on the big pumpkin. We each picked a pumpkin and this time Micah got a nice orange one. Yeah!

Micah had a blast "helping" carve the pumkin. He did not want to touch the gook on the inside. He loved picking out the shapes of the eyes and the nose and watching his mama carve it.

Here he is very cheesy with his pumpkin. He loved it when we lit it and wanted to stay outside to watch it for awhile. Halloween is shaping up to be very fun with a two year old.

Big Brother having fun

August ended with a chance to go enjoy the 50th annual Greek Festival at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Fresno. We tried some different food this year and ate some of the A' la carte items that were served inside. Micah also loved the bounce house in the kids section of the festival. We finished up the eveing listening to the band play greek music and watch some of the dancers. Before the dancers started the area was free for the little kids to "dance". Micah busted out his Turkish vest from his Aunt Jenny and proceeded to run wild around the open area. Many people pointed and thought it was cute that he wore his vest. Labor day weekend was a busy. Friday Sept. 3rd is now called "Nephew Day" at the Lee's house. On Adam's side our nephew Josh got married in the Sacramento area (just Adam went and had a wonderful time and enjoyed the beautiful ceremony and reception). Same day on Jill's side our nephew Jett was born. We couldn't wait to go see him and got going as soon as we could on Saturday morning to get the first visit in and hold him for awhile.

Then on Monday for Labor we went to Castle Air Museum in Atwater. They had over 50 real planes used by the Armed forces over the past 80 years or so to see outside and also an indoor museum area. Some of the displays like the helicopter were still set up from their big "open cockpit" day on Sunday when you can go inside many of the large planes. We will definitely go back for that event in the future.

Micah's favorite were the "rocketships". We must have spent a good 20 minutes or so watching him climb up and down from the three missiles next to the wing of the massive B-52 bomber. Several staff rode by in golf carts and didn't seem to mind even though the "no climbing" sign that had been posted for Sunday was on the ground nearby.

Lastly, here is the first view of Micah's baby brother or sister. Micah's sibling is due to be born the 1st week of March! Jill has been a trooper so far and has been pretty positive even though she had a good month plus of morning sickness that liked to sitck around for the rest of the day until bedtime. Micah is still confused about where the baby is at and thinks Jill is hiding it in her shirt. He has been great at helping to pray for the baby at dinner time. I also think he will enjoy some of the changes later on this year when he gets a "big boy" bed and moves into the other bedroom which is probably twice as big than the one that the baby will end up with.

To answer a few questions: (1) Yes, we will be finding out if the baby will be a boy or girl in the next few months. (2) Yes, we would like to have a little girl so we can have one of each. (3) Yes, we will still be so happy and excited if we get another little boy.

Eggs

It's happened. The chickens have started laying eggs. This is a little earlier then we expected but there is a little story behind that. About a month ago we had six chickens eaten in the middle of the night. It was a very sad experience for some of us. Of course, this did not include any of the three full size roosters. So that put us down to about six laying hens. For some of you, you might think this would be plenty for us. But it's not! So Adam went and bought six adolescent hens. So no one needs to fret we will still have about twelve layers. Anyway, last Saturday we had our first four eggs. They are still small (eggs will get bigger in the next month as the hens finish growing) so I also made some of the store bought eggs so that we could have a little taste test. And let me tell you, they are better. Really, our fresh eggs did taste really good. So for those of you that are planning on buying eggs from us get ready.
Micah loves going to collect the eggs with daddy. He carries them back in his hands and so far he has only dropped one. When they come inside we always count them. For some reason he likes the number six but we haven't collect six eggs yet. Six is always somewhere in there when we are counting though.

San Diego Part 2

Well being in San Diego we had to head to the beach a couple of times. I like a nice warm beach where you actually want to go a bit into the water. Well this was not the case. The days that we went were cold and gloomy. Oh well, we had fun anyways. You may know that my brother Jay runs a camp for Hume in San Diego for a month during the summer. So Jay, Jen and Tanner joined us for a few of our adventures. They joined us for some fun in the not so much sun. Here is Micah and Tanner getting ready to build a huge sandcastle.

Actually the adults did most of the building. But Tanner and Micah were really good at destroying the castle.

Their favorite thing to do was to water the sandcastle. This caused Adam to make many trips into the cold water to get more buckets of water.

Micah did actually venture into the ocean a couple of times.

San Diego

This year we decided to go to San Diego for our vacation. It has so many fun things for kids. Our first stop was the Wild Animal Park. This park is great if you haven't been. So many animals to see, lots of shade, and not overcrowded at all. Here's my two wild animals at the beginning of the day.

Here's Micah and I taking a break. It is lots of walking. If you know anything about Micah right now he is not so into walking when you have to get from one place to the next. I mean, why would you when your parents love carrying you everywhere. Actually, he did a great job and did a lot of walking that day.

Micah's favorite were the ducks. He did get to feed them but even if he hadn't he would have still loved them the most. He just likes ducks.

My favorite was the gorillas. At the Wild Animal park you get a great view of them.

This might be a shocker. Adam's favorite was the bighorn sheep. I mean really, we live in the country, we can see goats or sheep every day. I think he just actually liked this picture and how it turned out. (Adam's favorite was actually the elephants)

We had a blast. Stayed tuned for more of our adventures in San Diego.

1st week of Summer vacation

We just finished up the first week of summer for Jill. She got to spend some time in Bakersfield with Micah visiting with Grammie and Grandpa. Then this past weekend we got to go to one of Jill's favorite places in the world ... Hume Lake/ Hume Lake Christian Camp. Three of Adam's five roomates from college were all able to visit together on Saturday and Sunday. The families of Dave and Jon live farther away and rented cabins for a whole week of vacation (lucky them!), while Adam and Chad live so close by with the easy drive from Fresno. It was great to spend time with college roomates now that we all have kids.

Here are some of us braving the sunken log in the lake to see some of the huge tadpoles that they have at Hume from what I am guessing are some really big bullfrogs. This was on our Sunday morning walk along part of the lake.

Boating on Saturday before lunch. Who doesn't have fun in a row boat (aka "slow boat'").

Playing in the mud at the lake. Most of the kids are lined up in the background and are busy playing. Everyone also loved the ducks that liked to roam around on the grass. The little kids would all go after the ducks to pet them while the rest of us watched.

Jill got to make her Smore's on Sunday before heading home. This was a must do item and when camp staff was too busy to start the firepit for us, a quick walk over to the general store for some lighter sticks and scrounging up some kindling solved the problem. Micah loved his first smore's and made Jill proud with how well he kept clean of melted marshmellow (the rest of the weekend we were not as lucky with lots of sand and dirt to deal with).

The Monday was a quick day trip up to Modesto to hang out at Nana and Pappa's house along with a bunch of his cousin's. Jill said that he was nonstop playing in the water and loved the whole time he got to play with everyone else.

Cooped Up? Its time to get outside

Micah's chickens (Adam's really) spent the week following Memorial Day in their new home "The Chicken Palace" before this past weekend being let out to roam in their run. Two reasons for this. One, I did not have to finish fixing up the existing fence as quickly and two, just like dogs and cats when you move houses, chickens also transition better when kept "inside" for a few days to get used to where they need to sleep/eat before being let out.

Quick over: Our coop is ?? years old. It first was a school bus stop shelter and was moved by tractor back and forth 1/4 mile each winter. It then got "fixed" up by the last owner and turned into the chicken palace. Next had atleast a half decade to fall into disrepair before getting a new roof, door and chicken wire wall. *see fencing needed to the right.

Ammenities: Two roosting bars set apart to avoid pooping on each other. Water and food feeders. Next up this summer will be fixing or making new nesting boxes for eggs starting this fall. It is also good to have a closable pop door to close at night and keep out things that like to eat chickens. Since Jill's two silkies are so small and do not like to fly/jump a ramp-door was needed. Here is one of the Buff Orpingtons demonstrating. Yes they do wait in the morning for it to be opened and then try to squeeeze through all at once.

The little black fuzzball to the lower right in the photo below is one of Jill's silkies. The other chicken were this size at about 3 weeks old and now all are over two months old. Micah loves to bring them out a snack after dinner (so far avocado and rice are winners while cooked carrots and baked beans were not recieved with much enthusiasm).

Only one chicken is "slow" enough to easily be caught for Micah to pet (the golden one below). The other chickens are pretty quick to move out of arms reach and we do not run near them so that they won't become afraid of us or get stepped on.

Preview of next month's chicken update: "Am I a rooster?" and "Names"