A springtime photo essay: without a hint of green,

but plenty of brown,
and more brown,

and some mud. (and nice red pants)

Cute kids, wearing cute boots,

more brown,

and muddy water.

Playing in the brown muddy water.

Very cute kids,

in a brown landscape.

I call this "Ode to a Brown Spring, With a hint of a green pine tree in the distance"

I need to give special thanks to the photographer of this photo shoot--Amy. Not only is she the photographer she is the most wonderful daughter whom gave her mother an hour of peace and quite, during the season of "brown".

Pray This Song

at Faith and Family Live!

I Heart Faces-Kids

This weeks I Heart Faces theme is "pout" and it doesn't come get any better than this. My great-niece, Elsie Rae giving us "her face!"
Check out all the entries at IHeartFaces. I am sure they will make you smile.

The Lemons to Lemonade Award

I was very excited to receive this award from Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile. I am especially happy to receive this from this wonderful blog because I enjoy all the great books we are introduced to because of this very well read infant.

The rules of the award are as follows:

1) Put the logo on your blog or post.
2) Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude.
3) Link to your nominees within your post.
4) Let the nominees know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5) Share the love and link to the person from who you received your award.

Now for my nominees:

My Four Girls

Our Pride and Joys

Ava Elizabeth and Brendan James

Alston Academy

Just Another Day in Paradise

Three Plus Two

Living on Adrenaline and Grace

Pay it Forward

I saw this neat idea on Living on Adrenaline and Grace and thought I would join in the fun.

The Pay It Forward Exchange....
is based on the concept of the movie “Pay it Forward”.

I will send a hand made gift to the first three people who leave a comment to this post on my blog requesting to join the PIF exchange.

All the gifts will be made and posted out "sometime within the next year".
How exciting to not know when your surprise package will arrive!
What you need to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.
This Exchange is only open to those with active websites or blogs.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PROMISE TO POST THE SAME PAY IT FORWARD PICTURE AND THIS MESSAGE ONTO YOUR BLOG, WHICH MUST BE ACTIVE IN ORDER TO PLAY. YOU WILL PAY IT FORWARD TO THREE PEOPLE WHO COMMENT ON YOUR BLOG.

Unplugged Project-Books-A whole lot of feathers...

This weeks Unplugged Project is BOOKS, and is graciously being hosted by Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile.

If you have visited my blog before, you know that we enjoy books, many, many books and keeping with our "farm" theme , we are again, "down on the farm."

Today we honor the poultry among us. We enjoyed roosters,
a "loose goose",

and a mystery chick.

After reading our books, I found these cute printables from Homeschool share. I use the search feature often at this site to find activities pertaining to a certain book or subject. We usually are NOT making a lapbook, but I print out the activities to use by themselves.

The printable above is "the story of an egg."
I simply printed this out and then discussed the proper sequencing of events and then let the kids practice their new skill.

I also found a cute printable song book at this site. This has an animal sound song written to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus. It was a big hit.
We also made these extremely cute chickens, from this kit.
Our house is becoming a make-believe farm with all the farm crafts we have been making lately. Make sure to check out our past "down on the farm" crafts.

Also, make sure you check out the other great Unplugged: Books posts.

Next week, the Unplugged theme is: WORDS. It will be back at the original site, Unplug Your Kids.

Tot-School: Down on the Farm

Luke is now 46 months old

Kimberly is now 34 months old
Spring has arrived in upstate New York, so Tot-School has taken a decidingly outdoorsy turn.

We have spent some lovely days at the creek out back, exploring rocks and mud---a lot of MUD!!

Nothing is more fun for a 3 year old than MUD. We have also been enjoying a "farm" theme this week at Tot-School. We made these great "muddy pigs" that I posted about here.

"Keep shining sun!! Keep shining!!"

Daddy also took us to the zoo this week. We always take a picture on the tiger.

Of course, since it is "farm week" we paid special attention to the barn and farm animals at the zoo.

We saw the giant rooster,

and a fun little piggy.
This fun farm mobile is now hanging with our other farm crafts.
I found the printables for this at DLTK crafts.

We also made this cute little sheep magnets for the refrigerator. Instead of using paper, I cut out the pieces using foam sheets. We added wiggle eyes, pom pom noses, and cotton ball wool.

These magnets have been added to the refrigerator with our piggy magnets.

Our chick craft was a lot of fun.

We used yellow ovals, cut out of cardstock,

big wiggle eyes,

yellow paint,

white cardstock,

brass fasteners. The first step is to paint little hands yellow and then stamp them onto white cardstock.

This is a good time to have a teenage assistant!

This is just cute!

We then made orange paint by mixing yellow and red.

Here Luke is painting his chick's feet.

The kids both love to paint.

After the handprints were dry, I cut them out to resemble chick's wings, and then used brass fasteners to attach them to the chick. We then glued on big wiggle eyes.

The beaks are orange squares of paper folded into a triangle. These turned out very cute.

I have posted other farm posts this past week, you can find them here, here, and here.

Make sure to check out all if this week's Tot School posts for some great ideas.

Check out Margie Sue

She is one of the most gorgeous newborn babies I have ever seen! Congratulations to my niece mommy Jenny, husband daddy Brad and big sisters Georgia, Josie, and Emeline!

Go over and congratulate the beautiful family at My FOUR Girls.

Kimmy at the zoo: now and then

We spent a lovely day at the zoo yesterday, and of course, we had to take the traditional penguin picture.

Kmmy-3/27/09

We have taken this picture before.....

Kimmy-8/30/07

She looks so little!

I just had to include this picture of the elusive Red Panda. This is the first time we have seen it. We usually only get a tiny glimpse of it's hiney as it sleeps.

Thanks for coming outside for us today!!

Picture of the Day: Red-Winged Blackbirds in flight

A real sign of spring--a flock of red-winged blackbirds.